Book iv

. chap. 13), maintains that in this case a great deed is imposed upon a soul which is not strong enough for it:--

"There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away."

This interpretation is brilliant and thoughtful, but not entirely just. One can trace in it the spirit of the period of humanity, transforming in its own image a figure belonging to the Renaissance. Hamlet cannot really be called, without qualification, "lovely, pure, noble and most moral"--he who says to Ophelia the penetratingly true, unforgettable words, "I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me." The light of such a saying as this takes the colour out of Goethe's adjectives. It is true that Hamlet goes on to ascribe to himself evil qualities of which he is quite innocent; but he was doubtless sincere in the general tenor of his speech, to which all men of the better sort will subscribe. Hamlet is no model of virtue. He is not simply pure, noble, moral, &c., but is, or becomes, other things as well--wild, bitter, harsh, now tender, now coarse, wrought up to the verge of madness, callous, cruel. No doubt he is too weak for his task, or rather wholly unsuited to it; but he is by no means devoid of physical strength or power of action. He is no child of the period of humanity, moral and pure, but a child of the Renaissance, with its impulsive energy, its irrepressible fulness of life and its undaunted habit of looking death in the eyes.

Shakespeare at first conceived Hamlet as a youth. In the First Quarto he is quite young, probably nineteen. It accords with this age that he should be a student at Wittenberg; young men at that time began and ended their university course much earlier than in our days. It accords with this age that his mother should address him as "boy" ("How now, boy!" iii. 4--a phrase which is deleted in the next edition), and that the word "young" should be continually prefixed to his name, not merely to distinguish him from his father. The King, too, in the early edition (not in that of 1604) currently addresses him as "son Hamlet;" and finally his mother is still young enough to arouse--or at least to enable Claudius plausibly to pretend--the passion which has such terrible results. Hamlet's speech to his mother--

"At your age The hey-day of the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment,"

does not occur in the 1603 edition. The decisive proof, however, of the fact that Hamlet at first appeared in Shakespeare's eyes much younger (eleven years, to be precise) than he afterwards made him, is to be found in the graveyard scene (v. I). In the older edition, the First Gravedigger says that the skull of the jester Yorick has lain a dozen years in the earth; in the edition of 1604 this is changed to twenty-three years. Here, too, it is explicitly indicated that Hamlet, who as a child knew Yorick, is now thirty years old; for the Gravedigger first states that he took to his trade on the very day on which Prince Hamlet was born, and a little later adds: "I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." It accords with this that the Player-King now mentions thirty years as the time that has elapsed since his marriage with the Queen, and that Ophelia (iii. I) speaks of Hamlet as the "unmatch'd form of blown [_i.e._ mature] youth."

The process of thought in Shakespeare's mind is evident. At first it seemed to him as if the circumstances of the case demanded that Hamlet should be a youth; for thus the overwhelming effect produced upon him by his mother's prompt forgetfulness of his father and hasty marriage seemed most intelligible. He had been living far from the great world, in quiet Wittenberg, never doubting that life was in fact as harmonious as it is apt to appear in the eyes of a young prince. He believed in the realisation of ideals here on earth, imagined that intellectual nobility and fine feelings ruled the world, that justice reigned in public, faith and honour in private, life. He admired his great father, honoured his beautiful mother, passionately loved the charming Ophelia, thought nobly of humankind, and especially of women. From the moment he loses his father, and is forced to change his opinion of his mother, this serene view of life is darkened. If his mother has been able to forget his father and marry this man, what is woman worth? and what is life worth? At the very outset, then, when he has not even heard of his father's ghost, much less seen or held converse with it, sheer despair speaks in his monologue:

"O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew: Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!"

Hence, also, his naïve surprise that one may smile and smile and yet be a villain. He regards what has happened as a typical occurrence, a specimen of what the world really is. Hence his words to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth." And those others: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! ... in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world!" These words express his first bright view of life. But that has vanished, and the world is no longer anything to him but a "foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." And man! What is this "quintessence of dust" to him? He has no pleasure in man or woman.

Hence arise his thoughts of suicide. The finer a young man's character, the stronger is his desire, on entering life, to see his ideals consummated in persons and circumstances. Hamlet suddenly realises that everything is entirely different from what he had imagined, and feels as if he must die because he cannot set it right.

He finds it very difficult to believe that the world is so bad; therefore he is always seeking for new proofs of it; therefore, for instance, he plans the performance of the play. His joy whenever he tears the mask from baseness is simply the joy of realisation, with deep sorrow in the background--abstract satisfaction produced by the feeling that at last he understands the worthlessness of the world. His divination was just--events confirm it. There is no cold-hearted pessimism here. Hamlet's fire is never quenched; his wound never heals. Laertes' poisoned blade gives the quietus to a still tortured soul.[1].

All this, though we can quite well imagine it of a man of thirty, is more natural, more what we should expect, in one of nineteen. But as Shakespeare worked on at his drama, and came to deposit in Hamlet's mind, as in a treasury, more and more of his own life-wisdom, of his own experience, and of his own keen and virile wit, he saw that early youth was too slight a framework to support this intellectual weight, and gave Hamlet the age of ripening manhood.[2]

Hamlet's faith and trust in humankind are shattered before the Ghost appears to him. From the moment when his father's spirit communicates to him a far more appalling insight into the facts of the situation, his whole inner man is in wild revolt.

This is the cause of the leave-taking, the silent leave-taking, from Ophelia, whom in letters he had called his soul's idol. His ideal of womanhood no longer exists. Ophelia now belongs to those "trivial fond records" which the sense of his great mission impels him to efface from the tablets of his memory. There is no room in his soul for his task and for her, passive and obedient to her father as she is. Confide in her he cannot; she has shown how unequal she is to the exigencies of the situation by refusing to receive his letters and visits. She actually hands over his last letter to her father, which means that it will be shown and read at court. At last, she even consents to play the spy upon him. He no longer believes or can believe in any woman.

He intends to proceed at once to action, but too many thoughts crowd in upon him. He broods over that horror which the Ghost has revealed to him, and over the world in which such a thing could happen; he doubts whether the apparition was really his father, or perhaps a deceptive, malignant spirit; and, lastly, he has doubts of himself, of his ability to upraise and restore what has been overthrown, of his fitness for the vocation of avenger and judge. His doubt as to the trustworthiness of the Ghost leads to the performance of the play within the play, which proves the King's guilt. His feeling of his own unfitness for his task leads to continued procrastination.

During the course of the play it is sufficiently proved that he is not, in the main, incapable of action. He does not hesitate to stab the eavesdropper behind the arras; without wavering and without pity he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death; he boards a hostile ship; and, never having lost sight of his purpose, he takes vengeance before he dies. But it is clear, none the less, that he has a great inward obstacle to overcome before he proceeds to the decisive act. Reflection hinders him; his "resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," as he says in his soliloquy.

He has become to the popular mind the great type of the procrastinator and dreamer; and far on into this century, hundreds of individuals, and even whole races, have seen themselves reflected in him as in a mirror.

We must not forget, however, that this dramatic curiosity--a hero who does not act--was, to a certain extent, demanded by the technique of this particular drama. If Hamlet had killed the King directly after receiving the Ghost's revelation, the play would have come to an end with the first act. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary that delays should arise.

Shakespeare is misunderstood when Hamlet is taken for that entirely modern product--a mind diseased by morbid reflection, without capacity for action. It is nothing less than a freak of ironic fate that _he_ should have become a sort of symbol of reflective sloth, this man who has gunpowder in every nerve, and all the dynamite of genius in his nature.

It was undeniably and indubitably Shakespeare's intention to give distinctness to Hamlet's character by contrasting it with youthful energy of action, unhesitatingly pursuing its aim.

While Hamlet is letting himself be shipped off to England, the young Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, arrives with his soldiers, ready to risk his life for a patch of ground that "hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it." Hamlet says to himself (iv. 4):

"How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge!... ... I do not know Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do.'"

And he despairs when he contrasts himself with Fortinbras, the delicate and tender prince, who, at the head of his brave troops, dares death and danger "even for an egg-shell":

"Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake."

But with Hamlet it is a question of more than "honour," a conception belonging to a sphere far below his. It is natural that he should feel ashamed at the sight of Fortinbras marching off to the sound of drum and trumpet at the head of his forces--he, who has not carried out, or even laid, any plan; who, after having by means of the play satisfied himself of the King's guilt, and at the same time betrayed his own state of mind, is now writhing under the consciousness of impotence. But the sole cause of this impotence is the paralysing grasp laid on all his faculties by his new realisation of what life is, and the broodings born of this realisation. Even his mission of vengeance sinks into the background of his mind. Everything is at strife within him--his duty to his father, his duty to his mother, reverence, horror of crime, hatred, pity, fear of action, and fear of inaction. He feels, even if he does not expressly say so, how little is gained by getting rid of a single noxious animal. He himself is already so much more than what he was at first--the youth chosen to execute a vendetta. He has become the great sufferer, who jeers and mocks, and rebukes the world that racks him. He is the cry of humanity, horror-struck at its own visage.

There is no "general meaning" on the surface of _Hamlet_. Lucidity was not the ideal Shakespeare had before him while he was producing this tragedy, as it had been when he was composing _Richard III_. Here there are plenty of riddles and self-contradictions; but not a little of the attraction of the play depends on this very obscurity.

We all know that kind of well-written book which is blameless in form, obvious in intention, and in which the characters stand out sharply defined. We read it with pleasure; but when we have read it, we are done with it. There is nothing to be read between the lines, no gulf between this passage and that, no mystic twilight anywhere in it, no shadows in which we can dream. And, again, there are other books whose fundamental idea is capable of many interpretations, and affords matter for much dispute, but whose significance lies less in what they say to us than in what they lead us to imagine, to divine. They have the peculiar faculty of setting thoughts and feelings in motion; more thoughts than they themselves contain, and perhaps of a quite different character. _Hamlet_ is such a book. As a piece of psychological development, it lacks the lucidity of classical art; the hero's soul has all the untranspicuousness and complexity of a real soul; but one generation after another has thrown its imagination into the problem, and has deposited in Hamlet's soul the sum of its experience.

To Hamlet life is half reality, half a dream. He sometimes resembles a somnambulist, though he is often as wakeful as a spy. He has so much presence of mind that he is never at a loss for the aptest retort, and, along with it, such absence of mind that he lets go his fixed determination in order to follow up some train of thought or thread some dream-labyrinth. He appals, amuses, captivates, perplexes, disquiets us. Few characters in fiction have so disquieted the world. Although he is incessantly talking, he is solitary by nature. He typifies, indeed, that solitude of soul which cannot impart itself.

"His name," says Victor Hugo, "is as the name on a woodcut cut of Albert Dürer's: _Melancholia_. The bat flits over Hamlet's head; at his feet sit Knowledge, with globe and compass, and Love, with an hour-glass; while behind him, on the horizon, rests a giant sun, which only serves to make the sky above him darker." But from another point of view Hamlet's nature is that of the hurricane--a thing of wrath and fury, and tempestuous scorn, strong enough to sweep the whole world clean.

There is in him no less indignation than melancholy; in fact, his melancholy is a result of his indignation. Sufferers and thinkers have found in him a brother. Hence the extraordinary popularity of the character, in spite of its being the reverse of obvious.

Audiences and readers feel with Hamlet and understand him; for all the better-disposed among us make the discovery, when we go forth into life as grown-up men and women, that it is not what we had imagined it to be, but a thousandfold more terrible. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Denmark is a prison, and the world is full of such dungeons. A spectral voice says to us: "Horrible things have happened; horrible things are happening every day. Be it your task to repair the evil, to rearrange the course of things is for you to set it right." But our arms fall powerless by our sides. Evil is too strong, too cunning for us.

In _Hamlet_, the first philosophical drama of the modern era, we meet for the first time the typical modern character, with its intense feeling of the strife between the ideal and the actual world, with its keen sense of the chasm between power and aspiration, and with that complexity of nature which shows itself in wit without mirth, cruelty combined with sensitiveness, frenzied impatience at war with inveterate procrastination.

[1] See Hermann Türck: _Das psychologische Problem in der Hamlet-Tragödie_. 1890.

[2] See E. Sullivan: "On Hamlet's Age." _New Shakspere Society's Transactions_. 1880-86.

XV

_HAMLET AS A DRAMA_

Let us now look at _Hamlet_ as a drama; and, to get the full impression of Shakespeare's greatness, let us first recall its purely theatrical, materially visible side, that which dwells in the memory simply as pantomime.[1].

The night-watch on the platform before the Castle of Elsinore, and the appearance of the Ghost to the soldiers and officers there. Then, in contrast to the splendidly-attired courtiers, the blackrobed figure of the Prince, standing apart, a living image of grief, his countenance bespeaking both soul and intellect, but with an expression which seems to say that henceforth joy and he are strangers. Next, his meeting with his father's spirit; the oath upon the sword, with the constant change of place. Then his wild behaviour when, to hide his excitement, he feigns madness. Then the play within the play; the sword-thrust through the arras; the beautiful Ophelia with flowers and straw in her hair; Hamlet with Yorick's skull in his hand; the struggle with Laertes in Ophelia's grave, that grotesque but most significant episode. According to the custom of the time, a dumb show foretold the poisoning in the play, and this fight in the grave is the dumb show which foretells the mortal combat that is soon to take place: both are presently to be swallowed up by the grave in which they stand. Then follows the fencing-scene, during the course of which the Queen dies by the poison which the King destined for Hamlet, and Laertes by the stroke of the poisoned sword also prepared for the Prince, who, with a last great effort, kills the King, and then sinks down poisoned. This wholesale "havock" arranged by the poet, a fourfold lying-in-state, has its gloom broken by the triumphal march of young Fortinbras, which, in its turn, soon changes to a funeral measure. The whole is as effective to the eye as it is great and beautiful.

And now add to this ocular picturesqueness of the play the fascination which it owes to the sympathy Shakespeare has made us feel for its principal character, the impression he has given us of the agonies of a strong and sensitive spirit surrounded by corruption and depravity. Hamlet was by nature candid, enthusiastic, trustful, loving; the guile of others forces him to take refuge in guile; the wickedness of others drives him to distrust and hate; and the crime committed against his murdered father calls upon him from the underworld for vengeance.

His indignation at the infamy around him is heartrending, his contempt for it is stimulating.

By nature he is a thinker. He thinks not only when he is contemplating and planning a course of action, but also from a passionate longing for comprehension in the abstract. Though he is merely making use of the players to unmask the murderer, he gives them apt and profound advice with regard to the practice of their art. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern question him as to the reason of his melancholy, he expounds to them in words of deep significance his rooted distaste for life.

The feeling produced in him by any strong impression never finds vent in straightforward, laconic words. His speeches never take the direct, the shortest way to express his thoughts. They consist of ingenious, far-fetched similes and witty conceits, apparently remote from the matter in hand. Sarcastic and enigmatical phrases conceal his emotions. This dissimulation is forced upon him by the very strength of his feelings: in order not to betray himself, not to give way to the pain he is suffering, he must smother it in fantastic and boisterous ejaculations. Thus he shouts after having seen the apparition: "Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come!" Thus he apostrophises the Ghost: "Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?" And therefore, after the play has made the King betray himself, he cries: "Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders!" His feigned madness is only an intentional exaggeration of this tendency.

The horrible secret that has been discovered to him has upset his equilibrium. The show of madness enables him to find solace in expressing indirectly what it tortures him to talk of directly, and at the same time his seeming lunacy diverts attention from the real reason of his deep melancholy. He does not altogether dissemble when he talks so wildly; given his surroundings, these fantastic and daring sarcasms are a natural enough mode of utterance for the wild agitation produced by the horror that has entered into his life; "though this be madness, yet there is method in't." But the almost frenzied excitement into which he is so often thrown by the action of others subsides at intervals, when he feels the need for mental concentration--a craving which he satisfies in the solitary reflections forming his monologues.

When his passions are roused, he has difficulty in controlling them. It is nervous over-excitement that finds vent when he bids Ophelia get her to a nunnery, and it is in a fit of nervous frenzy that he stabs Polonius. But his passion generally strikes inwards. Constrained as he is, or thinks himself, to employ dissimulation and cunning, he is in a fever of impatience, and is for ever reviling and scoffing at himself for his inaction, as though it were due to indifference or cowardice.

Distrust, that new element in his character, makes him cautious; he cannot act on impulse, nor even speak. "There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark," he begins; "so great as the King" should be the continuation; but fear of being betrayed by his comrades takes possession of him, and he ends with, "but he's an arrant knave."

He is by nature open-hearted and warm, as we see him with Horatio; he speaks to the sentinel on the platform as to a comrade; he is cordial, at first, to old acquaintances like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; and he is frank, amiable, kind without condescension, to the troupe of travelling players. But reticence has been suddenly forced upon him by the bitterest, most agonising experiences; no sooner has he put on a mask, so as not to be instantly found out, than he feels that he is being spied upon; even his friends and the woman he loves are on the side of his opponents; and though he believes his life to be threatened, he feels that he must keep silent and wait.

His mask is often enough only of gauze; if only for the sake of the spectators, Shakespeare had to make the madness transparent, that it might not pall.

Read the witty repartees of Hamlet to Polonius (ii. 2), beginning with, "What do you read, my lord?" "Words, words, words." In reality there is no trace of madness in all these keenedged sayings, till Hamlet at last, in order to annul their effect, concludes with the words, "For yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward."

Or take the long conversation (iii. 2) between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the pipe he has sent for, and asks them to play on. The whole is a parable as simple and direct as any in the New Testament. And he points the moral with triumphant logic in poetic form--

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you would make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest notes to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent music in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me."

It is in order to account for such contemptuous and witty outbursts that Hamlet says: "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."

To outward difficulties are added inward hindrances, which he cannot overcome. He reproaches himself passionately for this, as we have seen. But these self-reproaches of Hamlet's do not represent Shakespeare's view of his character or judgment of his action. They express the impatience of his nature, his longing for reparation, his eagerness for the triumph of the right; they do not imply his guilt.

The old doctrine of tragic guilt and punishment, which assumes that the death at the end of a tragedy must always be in some way deserved, is nothing but antiquated scholasticism, theology masking as æsthetics; and it may be regarded as an instance of scientific progress that this view of the matter, which was heretical only a generation since, is now very generally accepted. Very different was the case when the author of these lines, in his earliest published work, entered a protest against such an intrusion of traditional morality into a sphere from which it ought simply to be banished.[2]

Some critics have summarily disposed of the question of Hamlet's possible guilt by the assertion that his madness was not only assumed, but real. Brinsley Nicholson, for instance, in his essay "Was Hamlet Mad?" (_New Shakspere Society's Transactions_, 1880-86), insists on his morbid melancholy; his strange and incoherent talk after the apparition of the Ghost; his lack of any sense of responsibility for the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, of which he was either the direct or indirect cause; his fear of sending King Claudius to heaven by killing him while he is praying; his brutality towards Ophelia; his constant suspiciousness, &c., &c. But to see symptoms of real insanity in all this is not only a crudity of interpretation, but a misconception of Shakespeare's evident meaning. It is true that Hamlet does not dissemble as systematically and coldly as Edgar in the subsequent _King Lear_; but that is no reason why his state of mental exaltation should be mistaken for derangement. He makes use of insanity; he is not in its power.

Not that it proves really serviceable to him or facilitates his task of vengeance; on the contrary, it impedes his action by tempting him from the straight path into witty digressions and deviations. It is meant to hide his secret; but after the performance of the play the King knows it, and, though he keeps it up, the feigned madness is useless. It is because his secret is betrayed that Hamlet now, in obedience to the Ghost's command, endeavours to awaken his mother's sense of shame and to detach her from the King. But having run Polonius through the body, in the belief that he is killing his stepfather, he is put under guards and sent away, and has still farther to postpone his revenge.

While many critics of this century, especially Germans, such as Kreyssig, have contemned Hamlet as a "witty weakling", one German writer has passionately denied that Shakespeare intended to represent him as morbidly reflective. This critic, with much enthusiasm, with fierce onslaughts upon many of his countrymen, but with a conception of the play which debases its whole idea and belittles its significance, has tried to prove that the hindrances Hamlet had to contend with were purely external. I refer to the lectures on Hamlet delivered by the old Hegelian, Karl Werder, in the University of Berlin between 1859 and 1872.[3] Their train of thought, in itself not unreasonable, may be rendered thus:--

What is demanded of Hamlet? That he should kill the King immediately after the Ghost has revealed his father's fate? Good. But how, after this assassination, is he to justify his deed to the court and the people, and ascend the throne? He can produce no proof whatever of the truth of his accusation. A ghost has told him; that is all his evidence. He himself is not the hereditary supreme judge of the land, deprived of his throne by a usurper. The Queen is "jointress to this warlike state." Denmark is an elective monarchy--and it is not till the very end of the play that Hamlet speaks of the King as having "popp'd in between the election and my hopes." In the eyes of all the characters in the play, the existing state of the government is quite normal. And is he to overturn it with a dagger-thrust? Will the Danish people believe his tale of the apparition and the murder? And suppose that, instead of having recourse to the dagger, he comes forward with a public accusation, can there be any doubt that such a king and such a court will speedily make away with him? For where in this court are the elder Hamlet's adherents? We see none of them. It seems as though the old hero-king had taken them all with him to the grave. What has become of his generals and of his council? Did they die before him? Or was he solitary in his greatness? Certain it is that Hamlet has no friend but Horatio, and finds no supporters at the court.

As matters stand, the truth can be brought to light only by the royal criminal's betraying himself. Hence Hamlet's perfectly logical, most ingenious device for forcing him to do so. Hamlet's object is not to take a purely material revenge for the crime, but to reinstate right and justice in Denmark, to be judge and avenger in one. And this he cannot be if he simply kills the king off-hand.

All this is acute, and in part correct; only it misstates the theme of the play. Had Shakespeare had this outward difficulty in mind, he would have made Hamlet expound, or at least allude to it. As a matter of fact, Hamlet does nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he upbraids himself for his inaction and sloth, thereby indicating clearly enough that the great fundamental difficulty is an inward one, and that the real scene of the tragedy lies in the hero's soul.

Hamlet himself is comparatively planless, but, as Goethe has profoundly remarked, the play is not therefore without a plan. And where Hamlet is most hesitating, where he tries to palliate his planlessness, there the plan speaks loudest and clearest. Where, for example, Hamlet comes upon the King at his prayers, and will not kill him, because he is not to die "in the purging of his soul" but revelling in sinful debauch, we hear Shakespeare's general idea in the words which, in the mouth of the hero, sound like an evasion. Shakespeare, not Hamlet, reserves the King for the death which in fact overtakes him just as he has poisoned Laertes's blade, seasoned "a chalice" for Hamlet, out of cowardice allowed the Queen to drain it, and been the efficient cause of both Laertes's and Hamlet's fatal wounds. Hamlet thus actually attains his declared object in allowing the King to live.

[1] K. Werder: _Vorlesungen über Hamlet_, p. 3 _et seq._

[2] Georg Brandes: _Æsthetiske Studier_. Essay "On the Concept: Tragic Fate."

[3] Karl Werder: _Vorlesungen über Shakespeare's Hamlet_, 1875.

XVI

_HAMLET AND OPHELIA_

There is nothing more profoundly conceived in this play than the Prince's relation to Ophelia. Hamlet is genius in love--genius with its great demands and its highly unconventional conduct. He does not love like Romeo, with a love that takes entire possession of his mind. He has felt himself drawn to Ophelia while his father was still in life, has sent her letters and gifts, and thinks of her with an infinite tenderness; but she has not it in her to be his friend and confidant. "Her whole essence," we read in Goethe, "is ripe, sweet sensuousness." This is saying too much; it is only the songs she sings in her madness, "in the innocence of madness," as Goethe himself strikingly says, that indicate an undercurrent of sensual desire or sensual reminiscence; her attitude towards the Prince is decorous, almost to severity. Their relations to each other have been close--how close the play does not tell.

There is nothing at all conclusive in the fact that Hamlet's manner to Ophelia is extremely free, not only in the affecting scene in which he orders her to a nunnery, but still more in their conversation during the play, when his jesting speeches, as he asks to be allowed to lay his head in her lap, are more than equivocal, and in one case unequivocally loose. We have already seen (p. 48) that this is no evidence against Ophelia's inexperience. Helena in _All's Well that Ends Well_ is chastity itself, yet Parolles's conversation with her is extremely--to our way of thinking impossibly--coarse. In the year 1602, speeches like Hamlet's could be made without offence by a young prince to a virtuous maid of honour.

Whilst English Shakespearians have come forward as Ophelia's champions, several German critics (among others Tieck, Von Friesen, and Flathe) have had no doubt that her relations with Hamlet were of the most intimate. Shakespeare has intentionally left this undecided, and it is difficult to see why his readers should not do the same.

Hamlet draws away from Ophelia from the moment when he feels himself the appointed minister of a sacred revenge. In deep grief he bids her farewell without a word, grasps her wrist, holds it at arm's length from him, "peruses" her face as if he would draw it--then shakes her arm gently, nods his head thrice, and departs with a "piteous" sigh.

If after this he shows himself hard, almost cruel, to her, it is because she was weak and tried to deceive him. She is a soft, yielding creature, with no power of resistance; a loving soul, but without the passion which gives strength. She resembles Desdemona in the unwisdom with which she acts towards her lover, but falls far short of her in warmth and resoluteness of affection. She does not in the least understand Hamlet's grief over his mother's conduct. She observes his depression without divining its cause. When, after seeing the Ghost, he approaches her in speechless agitation, she never guesses that anything terrible has happened to him; and, in spite of her compassion for his morbid state, she consents without demur to decoy him into talking to her, while her father and the King spy upon their meeting. It is then that he breaks out into all those famous speeches: "Are you honest? Are you fair?" &c.; the secret meaning of them being: You are like my mother! You too could have acted as she did!

Hamlet has not a thought for Ophelia in his excitement after the killing of Polonius; but Shakespeare gives us indirectly to understand that grief on her account overtook him afterwards--"he weeps for what is done." Later he seems to forget her, and therefore his anger at her brother's lamentations as she is placed in her grave, and his own frenzied attempt to outdo the "emphasis" of Laertes's grief, seem strange to us. But from his words we understand that she has been the solace of his life, though she could not be its stay. She on her side has been very fond of him, has loved him with unobtrusive tenderness. It is with pain she has heard him speak of his love for her as a thing of the past ("I did love you once"); with deep grief she has seen what she takes to be the eclipse of his bright spirit in madness ("Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"); and at last the death of her father by Hamlet's hand deprives her of her own reason. At one blow she has lost both father and lover. In her madness she does not speak Hamlet's name, nor show any trace of sorrow that it is he who has murdered her father. Forgetfulness of this cruellest blow mitigates her calamity; her hard fate condemns her to solitude; and this solitude is peopled and alleviated by madness.

In depicting the relation between Faust and Gretchen, Goethe appropriated and reproduced many features of the relation between Hamlet and Ophelia. In both cases we have the tragic love-tie between genius and tender girlhood. Faust kills Gretchen's mother as Hamlet kills Ophelia's father. In _Faust_ also there is a duel between the hero and his mistress's brother, in which the brother is killed. And in both cases the young girl in her misery goes mad. It is clear that Goethe actually had Ophelia in his thoughts, for he makes his Mephistopheles sing a song to Gretchen which is a direct imitation, almost a translation, of Ophelia's song about Saint Valentine's Day.[1] There is, however, a more delicate poetry in Ophelia's madness than in Gretchen's. Gretchen's intensifies the tragic impression of the young girl's ruin; Ophelia's alleviates both her own and the spectator's suffering.

Hamlet and Faust represent the genius of the Renaissance and the genius of modern times; though Hamlet, in virtue of his creator's marvellous power of rising above his time, covers the whole period between him and us, and has a range of significance to which we, on the threshold of the twentieth century, can foresee no limit.

Faust is probably the highest poetic expression of modern humanity--striving, investigating, enjoying, and mastering at last both itself and the world. He changes gradually under his creator's hands into a great symbol; but in the second half of his life a superabundance of allegoric traits veils his individual humanity. It did not lie in Shakespeare's way to embody a being whose efforts, like Faust's, were directed towards experience, knowledge, perception of truth in general. Even when Shakespeare rises highest, he keeps nearer the earth.

But none the less dear to us art thou, O Hamlet! and none the less valued and understood by the men of to-day. We love thee like a brother. Thy melancholy is ours, thy wrath is ours, thy contemptuous wit avenges us on those who fill the earth with their empty noise and are its masters. We know the depth of thy suffering when wrong and hypocrisy triumph, and oh! thy still deeper suffering on feeling that that nerve in thee is severed which should lead from thought to victorious action. To us, too, the voices of the mighty dead have spoken from the under-world. We, too, have seen our mother wrap the purple robe of power round the murderer of "the majesty of buried Denmark." We, too, have been betrayed by the friends of our youth; for us, too, have swords been dipped in poison. How well do we know that graveyard mood in which disgust and sorrow for all earthly things seize upon the soul. The breath from open graves has set us, too, dreaming with a skull in our hands!

[1]

OPHELIA. "To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes And dupp'd the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more."

MEPHISTOFELES. "Was machst Du mir Vor Liebchens Thür Kathrinchen, hier Bei frühem Tagesblicke? Lass, lass es sein! Er lässt dich ein Als Mädchen ein Als Mädchen nicht zurücke."

XVII

_HAMLET'S INFLUENCE ON LATER TIMES_

If we to-day can feel with Hamlet, it is certainly no wonder that the play was immensely popular in its own day. It is easy to understand its charm for the cultivated youth of the period; but it would be surprising, if we did not realise the alertness of the Renaissance and its wonderful receptivity for the highest culture, to find that _Hamlet_ was in as great favour with the lower ranks of society as with the higher. A remarkable proof of this tragedy's and of Shakespeare's popularity in the years immediately following its appearance, is afforded by some memoranda in a log-book kept by a certain Captain Keeling, of the ship _Dragon_, which, in September 1607, lay off Sierra Leone in company with another English vessel, the _Hector_ (Captain Hawkins), both bound for India. They run as follows:--

"September 5 [At "Serra Leona"]. I sent the interpreter, according to his desier, abord the Hector, whear he brooke fast, and after came abord mee, wher we gave the tragedie of Hamlett.

"[Sept.] 30. Captain Hawkins dined with me, wher my companions acted Kinge Richard the Second.

"31. I envited Captain Hawkins to a ffishe dinner, and had Hamlet acted abord me: wch I permitt to keepe my people from idlenes and unlawfull games, or sleepe."

Who could have imagined that _Hamlet_, three years after its publication, would be so well-known and so dear to English sailors that they could act it for their own amusement at a moment's notice! Could there be a stronger proof of its universal popularity? It is a true picture of the culture of the Renaissance, this tragedy of the Prince of Denmark acted by common English sailors off the west coast of Africa. It is a pity that Shakespeare himself, in all human probability, never knew of it.

Hamlet's ever-increasing significance as time rolls on is proportionate to his significance in his own day. A great deal in the poetry of the nineteenth century owes its origin to him. Goethe interpreted and remodelled him in _Wilhelm Meister_, and this remodelled Hamlet resembles Faust. The trio, Faust, Gretchen, Valentin, in Goethe's drama answers to the trio, Hamlet, Ophelia, Laertes. Faust transplanted into English soil produced Byron's Manfred, a true though far-off descendant of the Danish Prince. In Germany, again, the Byronic development assumed a new and Hamlet-like (or rather Yorick-like) form in Heine's bitter and fantastic wit, in his hatreds and caprices and intellectual superiority. Borne is the first to interpret Hamlet as the German of his day, always moving in a circle and never able to act. But he feels the mystery of the play, and says aptly and beautifully, "Over the picture hangs a veil of gauze. We want to lift it to examine the painting more closely, but find that the veil itself is painted."

In France, the men of Alfred de Musset's generation, whom he has portrayed in his _Confessions d'un Enfant du Siècle_, remind us in many ways of Hamlet--nervous, inflammable as gunpowder, broken-winged, with no sphere of action commensurate with their desires, and with no power Of action in the sphere which lay open to them. And Lorenzaccio, perhaps Musset's finest male character, is the French Hamlet--practised in dissimulation, procrastinating, witty, gentle to women yet wounding them with cruel words, morbidly desirous to atone for the emptiness of his evil life by one great deed, and acting too late, uselessly, desperately.

Hamlet, who centuries before had been young England, and was to Musset, for a time, young France, became in the 'forties, as Borne had foretold, the accepted type of Germany. "Hamlet is Germany," sang Freiligrath.[1]

Kindred political conditions determined that the figure of Hamlet should at the same period, and twenty years later to a still greater extent, dominate Russian literature. Its influence can be traced from Pushkin and Gogol to Gontscharoff and Tolstoi, and it actually pervades the whole life-work of Turgueneff. But in this case Hamlet's vocation of vengeance is overlooked; the whole stress is laid on the general discrepancy between reflection and power of action.

In the development of Polish literature, too, during this century, there came a time when the poets were inclined to say: "We are Hamlet; Hamlet is Poland." We find marked traits of his character towards the middle of the century in all the imaginative spirits of Poland: in Mickiewicz, in Slowacki, in Krasinski. From their youth they had stood in his position. Their world was out of joint, and was to be set right by their weak arms. High-born and noble-minded, they feel, like Hamlet, all the inward fire and outward impotence of their youth; the conditions that surround them are to them one great horror; they are disposed at one and the same time to dreaming and to action, to over-much reflection and to recklessness.

Like Hamlet, they have seen their mother, the land that gave them birth, profaned by passing under the power of a royal robber and murderer. The court to which at times they are offered access strikes them with terror, as the court of Claudius struck terror to the Danish Prince, as the court in Krasinski's _Temptation_ (a symbolic representation of the court of St. Petersburg) strikes terror to the young hero of the poem. These kinsmen of Hamlet are, like him, cruel to their Ophelia, and forsake her when she loves them best; like him, they allow themselves to be sent far away to foreign lands; and when they speak they dissemble like him--clothe their meaning in similes and allegories. What Hamlet says of himself applies to them: "Yet have I something in me dangerous." Their peculiarly Polish characteristic is that what enervates and impedes them is not their reflective but their poetic bias. Reflection is what ruins the German of this type; wild dissipation the Frenchman; indolence, self-mockery, and self-despair the Russian; but it is imagination that leads the Pole astray and tempts him to live apart from real life.

The Hamlet character presents a multitude of different aspects. Hamlet is the doubter; he is the man whom over-scrupulousness or over-deliberation condemns to inactivity; he is the creature of pure intelligence, who sometimes acts nervously, and is sometimes too nervous to act at all; and, lastly, he is the avenger, the man who dissembles that his revenge may be the more effectual. Each of these aspects is developed by the poets of Poland. There is a touch of Hamlet in several of Mickiewicz's creations--in Wallenrod, in Gustave, in Conrad, in Robak. Gustave speaks the language of philosophic aberration; Conrad is possessed by the spirit of philosophic brooding; Wallenrod and Robak dissemble or disguise themselves for the sake of revenge, and the latter, like Hamlet, kills the father of the woman he loves. In Slowacki's work the Hamlet-type takes a much more prominent place. His Kordjan is a Hamlet who follows his vocation of avenger, but has not the strength for it. The Polish tendency to fantasticating interposes between him and his projected tyrannicide. And while Slowacki gives us the radical Hamlet type, so we find the corresponding conservative Hamlet in Krasinski. The hero of Krasinski's _Undivine Comedy_ has more than one trait in common with the Prince of Denmark. He has Hamlet's sensitiveness and power of imagination. He is addicted to monologues and cultivates the drama. He has an extremely tender conscience, but can commit most cruel actions. He is punished for the excessive irritability of his character by the insanity of his wife, very much as Hamlet, by his feigned madness, leads to the real madness of Ophelia. But this Hamlet is consumed by a more modern doubt than that which besets his Renaissance prototype. Hamlet doubts whether the spirit on whose behest he is acting is more than an empty phantasm. When Count Henry shuts himself up in "the castle of the Holy Trinity," he is not sure that the Holy Trinity itself is more than a figment of the brain.

In other words: nearly two centuries and a half after the figure of Hamlet was conceived in Shakespeare's imagination, we find it living in English and French literature, and reappearing as a dominant type in German and two Slavonic languages. And now, three hundred years after his creation, Hamlet is still the confidant and friend of sad and thoughtful souls in every land. There is something unique in this. With such piercing vision has Shakespeare searched out the depths of his own, and at the same time of all human, nature, and so boldly and surely has he depicted the outward semblance of what he saw, that, centuries later, men of every country and of every race have felt their own being moulded like wax in his hand, and have seen themselves in his poetry as in a mirror.

[1]

"Deutschland ist Hamlet! Ernst und stumm In seinen Thoren jede Nacht Geht die begrabne Freiheit um, Und winkt den Männern auf der Wacht. Da steht die Hohe, blank bewehrt, Und sagt dem Zaudrer, der noch zweifelt: 'Sei mir ein Rächer, zieh dein Schwert! Man hat mir Gift in's Ohr geträufelt.'"

XVIII

_HAMLET AS A CRITIC_

Along with so much else, _Hamlet_ gives us what we should scarcely have expected--an insight into Shakespeare's own ideas of his art as poet and actor, and into the condition and relations of his theatre in the years 1602-3.

If we read attentively the Prince's words to the players, we see clearly why it is always the sweetness, the mellifluousness of Shakespeare's art that his contemporaries emphasise. To us he may seem audacious, harrowingly pathetic, a transgressor of all bounds; in comparison with contemporary artists--not only with the specially violent and bombastic writers, like the youthful Marlowe, but with all of them--he is self-controlled, temperate, delicate, beauty-loving as Raphael himself. Hamlet says to the players--

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing--Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

"I _Play_. I warrant your honour.

"_Ham_. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor."

Here ought logically to follow a warning against the dangers of excessive softness and sweetness. But it does not come. He continues--

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; _for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as't were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure._ Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O! there be players, that I have seen play,--and heard others praise, and that highly,--not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought that some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

"I _Play._ I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us.

"_Ham_. O! reform it altogether."

Thus, although it appears to be Hamlet's wish to caution equally against too much wildness and too much tameness, his warning against tameness is of the briefest, and he almost immediately resumes his homily against exaggeration, bellowing, what we should now call ranting declamation. It is not the danger of tameness, but of violence, that is uppermost in Shakespeare's mind.

As already pointed out, it is not merely his own general effort as a dramatist which Shakespeare here formulates; he lays down a regular definition of dramatic art and its aim. It is noteworthy that this definition is identical with that which Cervantes, almost at the same time, places into the mouth of the priest in _Don Quixote_. "Comedy," he says, "should be as Tullius enjoins, a mirror of human life, a pattern of manners, a presentation of the truth."

Shakespeare and Cervantes, who shed lustre on the same age and died within a few days of each other, never heard of each other's existence; but, led by the spirit of their time, both borrowed from Cicero their fundamental conception of dramatic art. Cervantes says so openly; Shakespeare, who did not wish his Hamlet to pose as a scholar, indicates it in the words, "Whose end, both _at the first_ and now, _was_, and is."

And as Shakespeare here, by the mouth of Hamlet, has expressed his own idea of his art's unalterable nature and aim, he has also for once given vent to his passing artistic anxieties, his dissatisfaction with the position of his theatre at the moment. We have already (p. 106) noticed the poet's complaint of the harm done to his company at this time by the rivalry of the troupe of choir-boys from St. Paul's Cathedral playing at the Blackfriars Theatre. It is in Hamlet's dialogue with Rosencrantz that this complaint occurs. There is a bitterness about the wording of it, as though the company had for the time been totally worsted. This was no doubt largely due to the circumstance that its most popular member, its clown, the famous Kemp, had just left it (in 1602), and gone over to Henslow's troupe. Kemp had from the beginning played all the chief low-comedy parts in Shakespeare's dramas--Peter and Balthasar in _Romeo and Juliet_, Shallow in _Henry IV.,_ Lancelot in _The Merchant of Venice_, Dogberry in _Much Ado About Nothing_, Touchstone in _As You Like It_. Now that he had gone over to the enemy, his loss was deeply felt.

The above-mentioned little book, dedicated to Mary Fitton, gives us a most interesting glimpse into the English life of that age. The most important duty of the clown was not to appear in the play itself, but to sing and dance his jig at the end of it, even after a tragedy, in order to soften the painful impression. The common spectator never went home without having seen this afterpiece, which must have resembled the comic "turns" of our variety-shows. Kemp's jig of _The Kitchen-Stuff Woman_, for instance, was a screaming farrago of rude verses, some spoken, others sung, of good and bad witticisms, of extravagant acting and dancing. It is of such a performance that Hamlet is thinking when he says of Polonius: "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps."

As the acknowledged master of his time in the art of comic dancing, Kemp was immoderately loved and admired. He paid professional visits to all the German and Italian courts, and was even summoned to dance his Morrice Dance before the Emperor Rudolf himself at Augsburg. It was in his youth that he undertook the nine days' dance from London to Norwich which he describes in his book.

He started at seven o'clock in the morning from in front of the Lord Mayor's house, and half London was astir to see the beginning of the great exploit. His suite consisted of his "taberer," his servant, and an "overseer" or umpire to see that everything was performed according to promise. The journey was almost as trying to the "taberer" as to Kemp, for he had his drum hanging over his left arm and held his flageolet in his left hand while he beat the drum with his right. Kemp himself, on this occasion, contributed nothing to the music except the sound of the bells which were attached to his gaiters.

He reached Romford on the first day, but was so exhausted that he had to rest for two days. The people of Stratford-Langton, between London and Romford, had got up a bear-baiting show in his honour, knowing "how well he loved the sport"; but the crowd which had gathered to see him was so great that he himself only succeeded in hearing the bear roar and the dogs howl. On the second day he strained his hip, but cured the strain by dancing. At Burntwood such a crowd had gathered to see him that he could scarcely make his way to the tavern. There, as he relates, two cut-purses were caught in the act, who had followed with the crowd from London. They declared that they had laid a wager upon the dance, but Kemp recognised one of them as a noted thief whom he had seen tied to a post in the theatre. Next day he reached Chelmsford, but here the crowd which had accompanied him from London had dwindled away to a couple of hundred people.

In Norwich the city waits received him in the open market-place with an official concert in the presence of thousands. He was the guest of the town and entertained at its expense, received handsome presents from the mayor, and was admitted to the Guild of Merchant Venturers, being thereby assured a share in their yearly income, to the amount of forty shillings. The very buskins in which he had performed his dance were nailed to the wall in the Norwich Guild Hall and preserved in perpetual memory of the exploit.

So popular an artist as this must of course have felt himself at least Shakespeare's equal. He certainly assumed the right to address one of her Majesty's Maids-of-Honour with no slight familiarity. The tone in which he dedicates this catchpenny performance to Mrs. Fitton offers a remarkable contrast to the profoundly respectful tone in which professional authors couch their dedications to their noble patrons or patronesses:--

"In the waine of my little wit I am forst to desire your protection, else every Ballad-singer will proclaime me bankrupt of honesty.... To shew my duety to your honourable selfe, whose favours (among other bountifull friends) make me (dispight this sad world) iudge my hert Corke and my heeles feathers, so that me thinkes I could fly to Rome (at least hop to Rome, as the old Prouerb is) with a Morter on my head."

His description of the _Nine Daies Wonder_, with its arrogant dedication, has shown us how conceited he must have been. Hamlet lets us see that he had frequently annoyed Shakespeare by the irrepressible freedom of his "gags" and interpolations. From the text of the plays of an earlier period which have come down to us, we can understand that the clowns were in those days as free to do what they pleased with their parts as the Italian actors in the _Commedia dell' Arte_. Shakespeare's rich and perfect art left no room for such improvisations. Now that Kemp was gone, the poet sent the following shaft after him from the lips of Hamlet:--

"And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too: though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it."

This reproof is, however, as the reader sees, couched in quite general terms; wherefore it was allowed to stand when Kemp returned to the company. But a far sharper and much more personal attack, which appears in the edition of 1603, was expunged in the following editions (and consequently from our text of the play), as being no longer in place after the return of the wanderer. It speaks of a clown whose witticisms are so popular that they are noted down by the gentlemen who frequent the theatre. A whole series of extremely poor specimens of his burlesque sallies is given--mere circus-clown drolleries--and then Hamlet disposes of the wretched buffoon by remarking that he "cannot make a jest unless by chance, as a blind man catcheth a hare."

It is notorious that an artist will more easily forgive an attack on himself than warm praise of a rival in the same line. There can be very little doubt that Shakespeare, in making Hamlet praise the dead Yorick, had in view the lamented Tarlton, Kemp's amiable and famous predecessor. If there had been no purpose to serve by making the skull that of a jester, it might quite as well have belonged to some old servant of Hamlet's. But if Shakespeare, in his first years of theatrical life, had known Tarlton personally, and Kemp's objectionable behaviour vividly recalled by contrast his predecessor's charming whimsicality, it was natural enough that he should combine with the attack on Kemp a warm eulogy of the great jester.[1]

Tarlton was buried on the 3rd of September 1588. This date accords with the statement in the first quarto that Yorick has lain in the earth for a dozen years. Not till we have these facts before us can we fully understand the following strong outburst of feeling:--

"Alas, poor Yorick!--I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?"

Alas, poor Yorick! Hamlet's heartfelt lament will keep his memory alive when his Owlglass jests recorded in print are utterly forgotten.[2] His fooling was equally admired by the populace, the court, and the theatrical public. He is said to have told Elizabeth more truths than all her chaplains, and cured her melancholy better than all her physicians.

Shakespeare, in _Hamlet_, has not only spoken his mind freely on theatrical matters; he has also eulogised the distinguished actor after his death, and given a great example of the courteous and becoming treatment of able actors during their lives. His Prince of Denmark stands far above the vulgar prejudice against them. And, lastly, Shakespeare has glorified that dramatic art which was the business and pleasure of his life, by making the play the effective means of bringing the truth to light and furthering the ends of justice. The

## acting of the drama of Gonzago's death is the hinge on which the tragedy

turns. From the moment when the King betrays himself by stopping the performance, Hamlet knows all that he wants to know.

When James ascended the throne, _Hamlet_ received, as it were, a new actuality, from the fact that his queen, Anne, was a Danish princess. At the splendid festival held on the occasion of the triumphal procession of King James, Queen Anne, and Prince Henry Frederick, from the Tower through the city, "the Danish March" was brilliantly performed, out of compliment to the Queen, by a band consisting of nine trumpeters and a kettle-drum, stationed on a scaffolding at the side of St. Mildred's Church. How this march went we do not know; but there can be little doubt that from that time it was played in the second scene of the fifth act of _Hamlet_, where music of trumpets and drums is prescribed, and where, in our days, at the Théâtre-Français, they naïvely play, "Kong Christian stod ved höjen Mast."[3]

[1] Compare _New Shakspere Society's Transactions_, 1880-86, p. 60.

[2] _Tarlton's Jests and News out of Purgatory._ Edited by J. O. Halliwell. London, 1844.

[3] The Danish national song of to-day, written by Ewald, and the music composed by Hartmann, 1778.

XIX

_ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL--ATTACKS ON PURITANISM_

The fortunes of the company having declined by reason of the competition complained of in _Hamlet_, it became necessary to intersperse a few comedies among the sombre tragedies on which alone Shakespeare's mind was now bent.

Comedies, therefore, had to be produced. But the disposition of mind in which Shakespeare had created _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ had long deserted him; and infinitely remote, though so near in point of time, was the mood in which he had produced _As You Like It_.

Still the thing had to be done. He took one of his old sketches in hand again, the play called _Love's Labour's Won_, which has already been noticed (p. 47). Its original form we do not exactly know; all we can do is to pick out the rhymed and youthfully frivolous passages as having doubtless belonged to the earlier play, to whose title there is probably a reference in Helena's words in the concluding scene:--

"This is done. Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?"

It is clear that Shakespeare in his young days took hold of the subject with the purpose of making a comedy out of it. But now it did not turn out a comedy; the time was past when Shakespeare's chief strength lay in his humour. We could quite well imagine his subsequent tragedies to have been written by his Hamlet, if Hamlet had had life before him; and in the same way we could imagine this and the following play, _Measure for Measure_, to have been written by his Jaques.

We find many indications in _All's Well that Ends Well_-- most, as was natural, in the first two acts--of Shakespeare's having come straight from _Hamlet_. In the very first scene, the Countess chides Helena for the immoderate grief with which she mourns her father: it is wrong to let oneself be so overwhelmed. Just so the King speaks to Hamlet of the "obstinate condolement" to which he gives himself up. The Countess's advice to her son, when he is setting off for France, reminds us strongly of the advice Polonius gives to Laertes in exactly the same situation. She says, for instance:--

"Thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech."

Compare with these injunctions those of Polonius:--

"Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice."

Notice also in this comedy the numerous sallies against court life and courtiers, which are quite in the spirit of _Hamlet_. The scene in which Polonius changes his opinion according as Hamlet thinks the cloud like a camel, a weasel, or a whale, and that in which Osric, who "did comply with his dug before he sucked it," reels off his elegant speeches, seem actually to be commented on in general terms when the Clown (ii. 2) thus discourses about the court:--

"Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may easily put it off at court: he that cannot make a leg, put off's cap, kiss his hand, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and, indeed, such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for the court."

Now and again, too, we come upon expressions which recall well-known speeches of Hamlet's. For instance, when Helena (ii. 3) says to the First Lord:

"Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute,"

we are reminded of Hamlet's ever-memorable last words:

"The rest is silence."

Among other more external touches, which likewise point clearly to the period 1602-1603, may be mentioned the many subtle, cautious sallies against Puritanism which are interwoven in the play. They express the bitter contempt for demonstrative piety which filled Shakespeare's mind just at that time.

_Hamlet_ itself had treated of a hypocrite on the largest scale. Notice, too, the stinging reference to existing conditions in Act iii.

## Scene 2:--

"_Hamlet_. Look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours.

"_Ophelia_. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

"_Ham_. So long? Nay, then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year; _but by'r lady, he must build churches then_, or else shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse; whose epitaph is, 'For O! for, O! the hobby-horse is forgot.'"

In _All's Well that Ends Well_ Shakespeare has his sanctimonious enemies constantly in mind. He makes the Clown jeer at the fanatics in both the Protestant and the Catholic camp. They may be of different faiths, but they are alike in being unlucky husbands. The Clown says (i. 3):--

"Young Charbon the Puritan, and old Poysam the Papist, how soe'er their hearts are severed in religion, their heads are both one; they may joll horns together, like any deer i' the herd."

A little farther on he continues:--

"Though honesty be no Puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart."

When Lafeu (ii. 3) is talking to Parolles of the marvellous cure of the King of France which Helena has undertaken, he has a hit at those who will find matter in it for a pious treatise:--

"_Lafeu_. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world.

"_Parolles_. It is, indeed: if you will have it in showing, you shall read it in--what do you call there?--

"_Laf._ A showing of a heavenly effect in an earthly actor."

Shakespeare clearly took a mischievous pleasure in imitating the title of a Puritanic work of edification.

This polemical tendency, which extends from _Hamlet_ through _All's Well that Ends Well_ to _Measure for Measure_, in the form of an increasingly marked opposition to the growing religious strictness and sectarianism of the day, with its accompaniment of hypocrisy, proves plainly that Shakespeare at this time shared the animosity of the Government towards both Puritanism and Catholicism.

Though there is little true mirth to be found in _All's Well that Ends Well_, the piece reminds us in various ways of some of Shakespeare's real comedies. The story resembles in several details that of _The Merchant of Venice_. Portia in disguise persuades the unwilling Bassanio to give up his ring to her; and Helena, in the darkness of night mistaken for another, coaxes Bertram out of the ring which he had made up his mind she should never obtain from him. In the closing scenes, both Bertram and Bassanio are minus their rings; both are wretched because they have not got them; and in both cases the knot is unravelled by their wives being found in possession of them. There is a more essential relation--that of direct contrast--between the story of _All's Well that Ends Well_ and that of _The Taming of the Shrew_. The earlier comedy sets forth in playful fashion how a man by means of the attributes of his sex--physical superiority, boldness, and coolness--helped out by imperiousness, bluster, noise, and violence, wins the devotion of a passionately recalcitrant young woman. _All's Well that Ends Well_ shows us how a woman, by means of the attributes of her sex--gentleness, goodness of heart, cunning, and finesse--conquers a vehemently recalcitrant man. And in both cases the pair are married before the action proper of the play begins.

Seeing that Shakespeare in _The Taming of the Shrew_ followed the older play on the same subject, and that he took the story of _All's Well that Ends Well_ from Boccaccio's Gilette of Narbonne, a translation of which appeared as early as 1566 in Paynter's _Palace of Pleasure_, this contrast cannot be said to have been devised by the poet. But it is evident that one of the chief attractions of the latter subject for Shakespeare was the opportunity it offered him of delineating that rare phenomenon: a woman wooing a man and yet possessing and retaining all the charm of her sex. Shakespeare has worked out the figure of Helena with the tenderest partiality. Pity and admiration in concert seem to have guided his pen. We feel in his portraiture a deep compassion for the pangs of despised love--the compassion of one who himself has suffered--and over the whole figure of Helena he has shed a Raphael-like beauty. She wins all, charms all, wherever she goes--old and young, women and men--all except Bertram, the one in whom her life is bound up. The King and the old Lafeu are equally captivated by her, equally impressed by her excellences. Bertram's mother prizes her as if she were her daughter; more highly, indeed, than she prizes her own obstinate son. The Italian widow becomes so devoted to her that she follows her to a foreign country in order to vouch for her statement and win her back her husband.

She ventures all that she may gain her well-beloved, and in the pursuit of her aim shows an inventive capacity not common among women. For the real object of her journey to cure the King is, as she frankly confesses, to be near Bertram. As in the tale, she obtains the King's promise that she may, if she is successful in curing him, choose herself a husband among the lords of his court; but in Boccaccio it is the King who, in answer to her question as to the reward, gives her this promise of his own accord; in the play it is she who first states her wish. So possessed is she by her passion for one who does not give her a thought or a look. But when he rejects her (unlike Gilette in the tale), she has no desire to attain her object by compulsion; she simply says to the King with noble resignation--

"That you are well restored, my lord, I'm glad; let the rest go."

She offers no objection when Bertram, immediately after the wedding, announces his departure, alleging pretexts which she does not choose to see through; she suffers without a murmur when, at the moment of parting, he refuses her a kiss. When she has learnt the whole truth, she can at first utter nothing but short ejaculations (iii. 2): "My lord is gone, for ever gone." "This is a dreadful sentence!" "Tis bitter!"--and presently she leaves her home, that she may be no hindrance to his returning to it. Predisposed though she is to self-confidence and pride, no one could possibly love more tenderly and humbly.

All the most beautiful passages of her part show by the structure of the verse and the absence of rhyme that they belong to the poet's riper period. Note, for example, the lines (i. I) in which Helena tells how the remembrance of her dead father has been effaced in her mind by the picture of Bertram:--

"My imagination Carries no favour in't but Bertram's. I am undone: there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. It were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it; he is so above me: In his bright radiance and collateral light Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. The ambition in my love thus plagues itself: The hind that would be mated by the lion Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague, To see him every hour: to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls, In our heart's table; heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favour: But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy Must sanctify his relics."

If we compare the style of this passage with that which prevails in Helena's rhymed speeches, with their euphuistic word-plays and antitheses, the difference is very striking, and we feel what a distance Shakespeare has traversed since the days of his apprenticeship. Here we find no glitter of wit, but the utterance of a heart that loves simply and deeply.

Though the play as a whole was evidently not one of those which Shakespeare cared most about, and though he has allowed things to stand in it which preclude the possibility of a satisfactory and harmonious end, yet he has evidently concentrated his whole poetic strength on the development and perfection of Helena's most winning character. These are the terms (i. 3) in which, speaking to Bertram's mother, she makes confession of her love:--

"Be not offended, for it hurts not him, That he is lov'd 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 intenible sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more."

There is something in her nature which anticipates the charm, earnestness, and boundless devotion with which Shakespeare afterwards endows Imogen. When Bertram goes off to the war, simply to escape acknowledging her and living with her as his wife, she exclaims (iii. 2)--

"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? . . . O you leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim; move the still-'pearing 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."

In this there is a fervour and a glow that we do not find in the earlier comedies. When one reads these verses, one understands how it is that Coleridge calls Helena, "Shakespeare's loveliest character."

Pity that this deep passion should have been inspired by so unworthy an object. It undoubtedly lessens the interest of the play that Shakespeare should not have given Bertram some more estimable qualities along with the all too youthful and unchivalrous ones which he possesses. The poet has here been guilty of a certain negligence, which shows that it was only to parts of the play that he gave his whole mind. Bertram is right enough in refusing to have a wife thrust upon him against his will, simply because the King has a debt of gratitude to pay. But this first motive for refusing gives place to one with which we have less sympathy: to wit, pride of rank, which makes him look down on Helena as being of inferior birth, though king, courtiers, and his own mother consider her fit to rank with the best. Even this, however, need not lower Bertram irretrievably in our esteem; but he adds to it traits of unmanliness, even of baseness. For instance, he enjoins Helena, through Parolles, to invent some explanation of his sudden departure which will make the King believe it to have been a necessity; and then he leaves her, not, as he falsely declares, for two days, but for ever. His readiness to marry a daughter of Lafeu the moment the report of Helena's death has reached him is a very extraordinary preparation for the reunion of the couple at the end of the play, and reminds us unpleasantly of the exactly similar incident in _Much Ado About Nothing_ (p. 217). But, worst of all, and an indisputable dramatic mistake, is his entangling himself, just before the final reconciliation, in a web of mean lies with reference to the Italian girl to whom he had laid siege in Tuscany.

It was to make Helena's position more secure, and to avoid any suspicion of the adventuress about her, that Shakespeare invented the character of the Countess, that motherly friend whose affection sets a seal on all her merits. In the same way Parolles was invented with the purpose of making Bertram less guilty. Bertram is to be considered as ensnared by this old "fool, notorious liar, and coward" (as Helena at once calls him), who figures in the play as his evil genius.

Parolles in _Love's Labours Won_ was doubtless a gay and purely farcical figure--the first slight sketch for Falstaff. Coming after Falstaff, he necessarily seems a weak repetition; but this is no fault of the poet's. Still, it is very plain that in the re-writing Shakespeare's attempt at gaiety missed fire. His frame of mind was too serious; the view of the subject from the moral standpoint displaces and excludes pure pleasure in its comicality. Parolles, who has Falstaff's vices without a gleam of his genius, brings anything but unmixed merriment in his train. The poet is at pains to impress on us the lesson we ought to learn from Parolles's self-stultification, and the shame that attends on his misdeeds. Thus the Second Lord (iv. 3), speaking of the rascality he displays in his outpourings when he is blindfolded, says--

"I will never trust a man again for keeping his sword clean, nor believe he can have everything in him by wearing his apparel neatly."

And Parolles himself says when his effrontery is crushed (iv. 3)--

"If my heart were great, 'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more; But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft As captain shall: simply the thing I am Shall make me live. _Who knows himself a braggart,_ _Let him fear this; for it will come to pass_ _That every braggart shall be found an ass_"

The other comic figure, the Clown, witty as he is, has not the serene gaiety of the earlier comedies. He speaks here and there, as already noted (p. 49), in the youthfully whimsical style of the earliest comedies; but as a humoristic house-fool he does not rank with such a sylvan fool as Touchstone, a creation of a few years earlier, nor with the musical court-fool in _Twelfth Night_.

A single passage in _All's Well that Ends Well_ has always struck me as having a certain personal note. It is one of those which were quite evidently added at the time of the re-writing. The King is speaking of Bertram's deceased father, and quotes his words (i. 2)--

"'Let me not live,'-- Thus his good melancholy oft began, On the catastrophe and heel of pastime, When it was out,--'Let me not live,' quoth he, 'After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses All but new things disdain.'... This he wish'd: I, after him, do after him wish too."

A courtier objects to this despondent utterance--

"You are lov'd, sir; They that least lend it you shall lack you first."

Whereupon the King replies with proud humility--

"I fill a place, I know't."

These words could not have been written save by a mature man, who has seen impatient youth pressing forward to take his place, and who has felt the sting of its criticism. The disposition of mind which here betrays itself foretells that overpowering sense of the injustice of men and of things which is soon to take possession of Shakespeare's soul.

XX

_MEASURE FOR MEASURE--ANGELO AND TARTUFFE_

A covert polemical intention could be vaguely divined here and there in _All's Well that Ends Well_. It contained, as we have seen, some incidental mockery of the increasing Puritanism of the time, with its accompaniment of self-righteousness, moral intolerance, and unctuous hypocrisy. The bent of thought which gave birth to these sallies reappears still more clearly in the choice of the theme treated in _Measure for Measure_.

The plot of _All's Well that Ends Well_ turns on the incident, familiar in every literature, of one woman passing herself off for another at a nocturnal rendezvous, without the substitution being detected by the man--an incident so fruitful in dramatic situations, that even its gross improbability has never deterred poets from making use of it.

A standing variation of this theme, also to be found in the most diverse literatures, is as follows:--A man is condemned to death. His mistress, his wife, or his sister implores the judge to pardon him. The judge promises, on condition that she shall pass a night with him, to let the prisoner go free, but afterwards has him executed all the same.

This subject has been treated over and over again from mediæval times down to our own days, its latest appearances, probably, being in Paul Heyse's novel, _Der Kinder Sünde der Väter Fluch_, and in Victorien Sardou's play _La Tosca_. In Shakespeare's time it appeared in the form of an Italian novella in Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_ (1565), on which an English dramatist, George Whetstone, founded his play, _The Right Excellent and Famous History of Promos and Cassandra_ (1578), and also a prose story in his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_, published in 1582. Whetstone's utterly lifeless and characterless comedy is the immediate source from which Shakespeare derived the outlines of the story. He is indebted to Whetstone for nothing else.

What attracted Shakespeare to this unpleasant subject was clearly his indignation at the growing Pharisaism in matters of sexual morality which was one outcome of the steady growth of Puritanism among the middle classes. It was a consequence of his position as an actor and theatrical manager that he saw only the ugliest side of Puritanism--the one it turned towards him.

Its estimable sides well deserved a poet's sympathy. Small wonder, indeed, that independent and pious men should seek the salvation of their souls without the bounds of the Anglican State Church, with its Thirty-Nine Articles, to which all clergymen and state officials were bound to swear, and to which all citizens must make submission. It was a punishable offence to use any other ritual than the official one, or even to refuse to go to church. The Puritans, who dreamed of leading the Christian Church back to its original purity, and who had returned home after their banishment during the reign of Mary with the ideal of a democratic Church before their eyes, could not possibly approve of a State Church subject to the crown, or of such an institution as Episcopacy. Some of them looked to Scottish Presbyterianism as a worthy model, and desired to see Church government by laymen, the elders of the congregation, introduced into England, in place of the spiritual aristocracy of the bishops. Others went still farther, denied the necessity of one common form of worship for all, and desired to have the Church broken up into independent congregations, in which any believer might officiate as priest. We have here the germs of the great party division in Cromwell's time into Presbyterians and Independents.

So far as we can see, Shakespeare took no interest whatever in any of these ecclesiastical or religious movements. He came into contact with Puritanism only in its narrow and fanatical hatred of his art, and in its severely intolerant condemnation and punishment of moral, and especially of sexual, frailties. All he saw was its Pharisaic aspect, and its often enough only simulated virtue.

It was his indignation at this hypocritical virtue that led him to write _Measure for Measure_. He treated the subject as he did, because the interests of the theatre demanded that the woof of comedy should be interwoven with the severe and sombre warp of tragedy. But what a comedy! Dark, tragic, heavy as the poet's mood--a tragi-comedy, in which the unusually broad and realistic comic scenes, with their pictures of the dregs of society, cannot relieve the painfulness of the theme, or disguise the positively criminal nature of the action. One feels throughout, even in the comic episodes, that Shakespeare's burning wrath at the moral hypocrisy of self-righteousness underlies the whole structure like a volcano, which every moment shoots up its flames through the superficial form of comedy and the interludes of obligatory merriment.

And yet it is not really against hypocrisy that his attack is aimed. At this stage of his development he is far too great a psychologist to depict a ready-made, finished hypocrite. No, he shows us how weak even the strictest Pharisee will prove, if only he happens to come across the temptation which really tempts him; and how such a man's desire, if it meets with opposition, reveals in him quite another being--a villain, a brute beast--who allows himself actions worse a hundredfold than those which, in the calm superiority of a spotless conscience, he has hitherto punished in others with the utmost severity.

It is not a type of Shakespeare's opponents that he here unmasks and brands--it is a man in many ways above the average type, as he saw it. The chief character in _Measure for Measure_ is the judge of public morality, the hard and stern _Censor morum_, who in his moral fanaticism believes that he can root out vice by persecuting its tools, and imagines that he can purify and reform society by punishing every transgression, however natural and comparatively harmless, as a capital crime. The play shows us how this man, as soon as a purely sensual passion takes possession of him, does not hesitate to commit, under the mask of piety, a crime against real morality so revolting and so monstrous that no expression of loathing and contempt would be too severe for it, and scarcely any punishment too rigorous.

From its nature such a drama ought to end by appeasing in some satisfactory manner the craving for justice awakened in the spectator. But comedy was what Shakespeare's company wanted; and besides, it would have been unwise, and perhaps even dangerous, to carry to extremities this question of the punishment of moral hypocrisy. So the knot in the play was summarily loosed, without any great expenditure of pathos, by the provident care and timely intervention of a wise and invisibly omnipresent prince, an occidental Haroun-al-Raschid. Fastidious in his choice of means this prince was not. With an ingenuity which is profoundly unsatisfactory to any one of the least delicacy of feeling, he substitutes a lovable girl, whom the iniquitous judge had at one time promised to marry, for the beautiful young woman who is the object of his bestial desire.

The Duke, wishing to test his servants, gives out that he is leaving Vienna on a long journey. He intrusts the regency during his absence to Angelo, an official of high standing and reputation.

No sooner does Angelo come into power than he begins a regular crusade against licentiousness and all laxity in the domain of morals. In the first place, he decrees that all houses of ill-fame in the city of Vienna are to be pulled down. In the older drama by Whetstone, which Shakespeare used as a foundation for his play, there was a whole troop of disreputable personages, procuresses, prostitutes, bullies, improper characters of every description. Shakespeare retains part of this company; he has a single procuress, Mistress Overdone, who reminds us slightly of Doll Tearsheet, a single bully, that very amusing personage, Pompey; and he adds to them an extremely entertaining character, the utterly dissolute but witty tattler and liar, Lucio.

But the chief alteration he makes in the subject-matter of the play is that the Duke, disguised as a friar, is witness from the beginning of Angelo's abuse of his power as ruler and judge. Among other advantages resulting from this modification, we must reckon the fact that the spectators are thus reassured in advance as to the final issue. On the Duke's disguise, moreover, depends most of the comic effect arising out of the character of Lucio, who is constantly repeating to him the most absurd slanders about himself, as if he had them from the best authority. Further, the Duke's concealed presence is essential to the other great change made in the story, namely, that Isabella is not really required to sacrifice herself for her brother, her place being filled, as in _All's Well that Ends Well_, by a woman who has old claims on the man concerned. In this manner the too revoltingly painful part of the subject is avoided.

Shakespeare has imagined one of the men who were the bitterest enemies of his art and his calling invested with absolute power, and using it to proceed against immorality with cruel rigour. The first step is his attack on common prostitution, which he persuades himself he can exterminate. This vain imagination is repeatedly ridiculed. "What shall become of me?" says Mistress Overdone. "Come; fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients." In the Act ii. sc. I we read:--

"_Escalus_. How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?

"_Pompey_. If the law would allow it, sir.

"_Escal_. But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna.

"_Pomp_. Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city.

"_Escal_. No, Pompey.

"_Pomp_. Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then."

And Lucio (iii. 2) also ridicules Angelo's severity as fruitless:--

"_Lucio_. A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him: something too crabbed that way, friar.

"_Duke_. It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.

"_Lucio_. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred: it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down. They say, this Angelo was not made by man and woman, after this downright way of creation: is it true, think you?"

But besides taking strict proceedings against actual debauchery, Angelo revives an old law which has long been in disuse--according to the Duke for fourteen, according to Claudio for nineteen years--making death the punishment of all sexual commerce without marriage; and by this law young Claudio is condemned to death for his relation to Juliet.

It was an innocent relation. He says (i. 3):--

"She is fast my wife Save that we do the denunciation lack Of outward order: this we came not to, Only for propagation of a dower Remaining in the coffer of her friends."

But this avails nothing. An example is to be made. It is in vain that even the highly respectable Provost feels compassion for him, and says (ii. 2):--

"All sects, all ages smack of this vice, and he To die for it!"

The young men of the town cannot explain this insane severity in any other way than by the supposition that Lord Angelo is a man with "snow-broth" in his veins in place of blood.

It soon appears, however, that he is not the man of ice he is taken to be.

Escalus, an old, honourable nobleman, bids him bear in mind that though his own virtue be of the straitest, it has, perhaps, never been tempted; had it been exposed to temptations, it might not have stood the test better than that of others. Angelo answers haughtily that to be tempted is one thing, to fall another. But now comes Claudio's sister, Isabella, young, charming, and intelligent, and beseeches him to spare her brother's life (ii. 2):--

"Good, good my lord, bethink you: Who is it that hath died for this offence? There's many have committed it."

He is inexorable. She shows the unreason of punishing so stringently the errors of love:

"_Isab_. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder.-- Merciful heaven! Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle."

And she continues in such a strain, that we cannot but hear the poet's voice through hers:--

"But man, proud man! Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd, His glassy essence,--like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal."

And she appeals to his own self-knowledge:--

"Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know That's like my brother's fault."

He invites her to come again the next day; and hardly is she gone when, in a monologue, he reveals his hateful passion, and even hints at his still more hateful purpose of forcing her to gratify it in payment for her brother's release.

He makes her his proposal. She is appalled; she now sees, like Hamlet, what life can be, what undreamt-of horrors can happen, to what a pitch villainy can be carried, even on the judgment-seat:--

"O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell, The damned'st body to invest and cover In princely guards! Dost thou think, Claudio?-- If I would yield him my virginity, Thou mightst be freed."

She cannot even denounce him, for, as he himself points out to her, no one will believe her; his stainless name, his strict life and high rank, will stifle the accusation if she dares to make it. Feeling himself safe, he is doubly audacious. Thus, when, at the conclusion of the play (v. 3), she lays her indictment before the reinstated Duke, Angelo says brazenly, "My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm." Then follows, as if in continuation of Isabella's just-quoted speech, the fiery protest springing from the poet's intensest conviction:--

"Make not impossible That which but seems unlike. 'Tis not impossible, But one, the wicked'st caitiff on the ground, May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute, As Angelo."

(See p. 241.)

But the protest has no immediate result. Isabella is, for the time being, sent to prison for slandering a man of unblemished honour. And the irony is kept up to the last. The Duke, in his character as a friar, has learnt bitter lessons; amongst others, that there is hardly enough honesty in the world to hold society together. But when he himself, in his disguise, relates what he has witnessed, his own faithful servants are on the point of sending him also to prison. In his rôle of Haroun-al-Raschid, he has seen and realised that law is made to serve as a screen for might. Thus he says--

"My business in this state Made me a looker-on here in Vienna, Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble Till it o'er-run the stew: laws for all faults, But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop, As much in mock as mark. _'Escal_. Slander to the state! Away with him to prison."

As a play, _Measure for Measure_ rests entirely on three scenes: the one in which Angelo is tempted by Isabella's beauty; that in which he makes the shameless, proposal that she shall give her honour in exchange for her brother's life; and, thirdly, that most dramatic one in which Claudio, after first hearing with fortitude and indignation what his sister has to tell him of Angelo's baseness, breaks down, and, like Kleist's Prince of Homburg two centuries later, begins meanly to beg for his life. Round these principal scenes are grouped the many excellent and vigorously realistic comic passages, treated in a spirit which afterwards revived in Hogarth and Thackeray; and other scenes designed solely to retard the dramatic wheel a little, which, therefore, jar upon us as conventional. It is, for example, an entirely unjustifiable experiment which the Duke tries on Isabella in the fourth act, when he falsely assures her that her brothers head has already been cut off and sent to Angelo. This is introduced solely for the sake of an effect at the end.

In this very unequally elaborated play, it is evident that Shakespeare cared only for the main point--the blow he was striking at hypocrisy. And it is probable that he here ventured as far as he by any means dared. It is a giant stride from the stingless satire on Puritanism in the character of Malvolio to this representation of a Puritan like Angelo. Probably for this very reason, Shakespeare has tried in every way to shield himself. The subject is treated entirely as a comedy. There is a threat of executing first Claudio, then the humorous scoundrel Barnardine, whose head is to be delivered instead of Claudio's; Barnardine is actually brought on the scene directly before execution, and the spectators sit in suspense; but all ends well at last, and the head of a man already dead is sent to Angelo. A noble maiden is threatened with dishonour; but another woman, Mariana, who was worthy of a better fate, keeps tryst with Angelo in her stead, and this danger is over. Finally, threats of retribution close round Angelo, the villain, himself; but after all he escapes unpunished, being merely obliged to marry the amiable girl whom he had at an earlier period deserted. In this way the play's terrible impeachment of hypocrisy is most carefully glozed over, and along with it the pessimism which animates the whole.

For it is remarkable how deeply pessimistic is the spirit of this play. When the Duke is exhorting Claudio (iii. I) not to fear his inevitable fate, he goes farther in his depreciation of human life than Hamlet himself when his mood is blackest:--

"Reason thus with life:-- If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences, That do this habitation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still. . . . . . . . . . Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get, And what thou hast, forgett'st. Thou art not certain; For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor; For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friends hast thou none; For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins, Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth, nor age, But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld: and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this, That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even."

Note with what art and care everything is here assembled that can confound and abash the normal instinct that makes for life. Here for the first time Shakespeare anticipates Schopenhauer.

It is clear that in this play the poet was earnestly bent on proving his own standpoint to be the moral one. In hardly any other play do we find such persistent emphasis laid, with small regard for consistency of character, upon the general moral.

For example, could there be a more direct utterance than the Duke's monologue at the end of Act iii.:--

"He who the sword of heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe; Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go; More nor less to others paying, Than by self-offences weighing. Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking! Twice treble shame on Angelo, To weed my vice, and let his grow!"

Similarly, and in a like spirit, the moral pointer comes into play wherever there is an opportunity of showing how apt princes and rulers are to be misjudged, and how recklessly they are disparaged and slandered.

Thus the Duke says towards the close of Act iii.:--

"No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure scape: black-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?"

And later (iv. I), again:--

"O place and greatness! millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee. Volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious quests Upon thy doings."

It is quite remarkable how this dwelling on baseless criticism by subjects is accompanied by a constant tendency to invoke the protection of the sovereign, or, in other words, of James I., who had just ascended the throne, and who, with his long-accumulated bitterness against Scottish Presbyterianism, was already showing himself hostile to English Puritanism. Hence the politic insistence, at the close, upon a point quite irrelevant to the matter of the play: all other sins being declared pardonable, save only slander or criticism of the sovereign. Lucio alone, who, to the great entertainment of the spectators, has told lies about the Duke, and, though only in jest, has spoken ill of him, is to be mercilessly punished. To the last moment it seems as if he were to be first whipped, then hanged. And even after this sentence is commuted in order that the tone of comedy may be preserved, and he is commanded instead to marry a prostitute, it is expressly insisted that whipping and hanging ought by rights to have been his punishment. "Slandering a prince deserves it," says the Duke, at the beginning of the final speech.

This attitude of Shakespeare's presents an exact parallel to that of Molière in the concluding scene of _Tartuffe_, sixty years later. The prince, in accordance with James of Scotland's theories of princely duty, appears as the universally vigilant guardian of his people; he alone chastises the hypocrite, whose lust of power and audacity distinguish him from the rest. The appeal to the prince in _Measure for Measure_ answers exactly to the great Deus-ex-machinâ speech in _Tartuffe_, which relieves the leading characters from the nightmare that has oppressed them:--

"Nous vivons sous un prince, ennemi de la fraude, Un prince dont les yeux se font jour dans les cœurs Et que ne peut tromper tout l'art des imposteurs."

In the seventeenth century kings were still the protectors of art and artists against moral and religious fanaticism.

XXI

_ACCESSION OF JAMES AND ANNE--RALEIGH'S FATE--SHAKESPEARE'S COMPANY BECOME HIS MAJESTY'S SERVANTS--SCOTCH INFLUENCE_.

In _Measure for Measure_ it is not only the monarchical tone of the play, but some quite definite points, that mark it out as having been produced at the time of James's accession to the throne in 1603. In the very first scene there is an allusion to the new king's nervous dislike of crowds. This peculiarity, which caused much surprise on the occasion of his entrance into England, is here placed in a flattering light. The Duke says:--

"I'll privily away: I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes. Though it do well, I do not relish well Their loud applause and Aves vehement, Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does affect it."

It is also with unmistakable reference to James's antipathy for a throng that Angelo, in Act ii. sc. 4, describes the crowding of the people round a beloved sovereign as an inadmissible intrusion:--

"So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons, Come all to help him, and so stop the air By which he should revive: and even so The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love Must needs appear offence."

Elizabeth had breathed her last on the 24th of March 1603. On her deathbed, when she could no longer speak, she had made the shape of a crown above her head with her hands, to signify that she chose as her successor one who was already a king. Her ministers had long been in secret negotiation with James VI. of Scotland, and had promised him the succession, in spite of a provision in Henry VIII.'s will which excluded his elder sister's Scottish descendants from the throne. This had to be set aside; for there was not in the younger line any personage of sufficient distinction to be at all eligible. There was obvious advantage, too, in uniting the crowns of England and Scotland on one head; too long had the neighbour kingdoms wasted each other's energies in mutual feuds. All parties in the nation agreed with the ministers in looking to James as Elizabeth's natural successor. The Protestants felt confidence in him as a Protestant; the Catholics looked for better treatment from the son of the Catholic martyr-queen; the Puritans hoped that he, as a new and peace-loving king, would sanction such alterations in the statutory form of worship as should enable them to take part in it without injury to their souls. Great expectations greeted him.

Hardly was the breath out of Queen Elizabeth's body when Sir Robert Carey, a gentleman on whom she had conferred many benefits, but who, in his anxiety to ensure the new King's favour, had post-horses standing ready at every station, galloped off to be the first to bring the news to James in Edinburgh. On the way he was thrown from his horse, which kicked him on the head; but in spite of this he reached Holyrood on the evening of the 26th of March, just after the King had gone to bed. He was hurriedly conducted into the bed-chamber, where he knelt and greeted James by the title of King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland. "Hee gave mee his hand to kisse," writes Carey, "and bade me welcome." He also promised Carey a place as Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber, and various other things, in reward for his zeal; but forgot all these promises as soon as he stood on English ground.

In London all preparations had been carefully made. A proclamation of James as King had been drawn up by Cecil during Elizabeth's lifetime, and sent to Scotland for James's sanction. This the Prime Minister read, a few hours after the Queen's death, to an assembly of the Privy Council and chief nobility, and a great crowd, of the people, amidst universal approbation. Three heralds with a trumpeter repeated the proclamation in the Tower, "whereof as well prysoners as others rejoyced, namely, the Earle of Southampton, in whom all signes of great gladnesse appeared." Not without reason; for almost the first order James gave was that a courier should convey to Southampton the King's desire that he should at once join him and accompany him on his progress through England to London, where he was to receive the oath of allegiance and to be crowned.

On the 5th of April 1603, James I. of Great Britain left Edinburgh to take possession of his new kingdom. His royal progress was a very slow one, for every nobleman and gentleman whose house he passed invited him to enter; he accepted all invitations, spent day after day in festivities, and rewarded hospitality by distributing knighthoods in unheard-of and excessive numbers. One of his actions was unequivocally censured. At Newark "was taken a cutpurse doing the deed," and James had him hanged without trial or judgment. The displeasure shown made it plain to him that he could not thus assume superiority to the laws of England. In Scotland there had been a general demand for a strong monarchy, which could hold the nobles and the clergy in check; in England the day for this was over, and the new King's successors learned to their cost the futility of trying to carry on the traditions of despotism on English soil.

James himself was received with the naïve, disinterested joy with which the mass of the people are apt to greet a new monarch, of whose real qualities nothing is yet known, and with the less disinterested flatteries by which every one who came into contact with the King sought personal favour in his eyes.

There was nothing kingly or even winning in King James's exterior. Strange that the handsome Henry Darnley and the beautiful Mary Stuart should have had such an insignificant and ungainly son! He was something over middle height, indeed, but his figure was awkward, his head lumpish, and his eyes projecting. His language was the broadest Scotch, and when he opened his mouth it was rather to spit out the words than to speak; he hustled them out so that they stumbled over each other. He talked, ate, and dressed like a peasant, and, in spite of his apparently decorous life, was addicted to the broadest improprieties of talk, even in the presence of ladies. He walked like one who has no command over his limbs, and he could never keep still, even in a room, but was always pacing up and down with clumsy, sprawling movements. His muscles were developed by riding and hunting, but his whole appearance was wanting in dignity.

The shock inflicted on his mother during her pregnancy, by Rizzio's assassination, probably accounts for his dread of the sight of drawn steel. The terrorism in which he was brought up had increased his natural timidity. While he was yet but a youth, the French ambassador, Fontenay, summed up his description of him thus: "In one word, he is an old young man."

Now, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, he was a learned personage, full of prejudices, wanting neither in shrewdness nor in wit, but with two absorbing passions--the one for conversation on theological and ecclesiastical matters, and the other for hunting expeditions, to which he sometimes gave up so much as six consecutive days. He had not Elizabeth's political instinct; she had chosen her councillors among men of the most different parties; he admitted to his council none but those whose opinions agreed with his own. But his vanity was quite equal to hers. He had the pedant's boastfulness; he was fond of bragging, for instance, that he could do more work in one hour than others in a day; and he was especially proud of his learning. Some Shakespeare students have, as already observed, seen in him the prototype of Hamlet. He was certainly no Hamlet, but rather what Alfred Stern somewhere calls him--a Polonius on the throne. We have a description by Sir John Harington of an audience James gave him in 1604. The King "enquyrede muche of lernynge" in such a way as to remind him of "his examiner at Cambridge aforetyme," quoted scraps of Aristotle which he hardly understood himself, and made Harington read aloud part of a canto of Ariosto. Then he asked him what he "thoughte pure witte was made of," and whom it best became, and thereupon inquired whether he did not think a king ought to be "the beste clerke" in his country. Farther, "His Majestie did much presse for my opinion touchinge the power of Satane in matter of witchcraft, and ... why the Devil did worke more with anciente women than others." This question Sir John boldly and wittily answered by reminding him of the preference for "walking in dry places" ascribed in Scripture to the Devil. James then told of the apparition of "a bloodie heade dancinge in the aire," which had been seen in Scotland before his mother's death, and concluded: "Now, sir, you have seen my wisdome in some sorte, and I have pried into yours. I praye you, do me justice in your reporte, and, in good season, I will not fail to add to your understandinge, in suche pointes as I may find you lacke amendmente." Perhaps only one European sovereign since James has so plumed himself on his own omniscience.

James's relations with England during Elizabeth's reign had not been invariably friendly. Nourishing a lively ill-will to the Presbyterian clergy, who were always trying to interfere in matters of state, he had in 1584, at the age of eighteen, appealed to the Pope for assistance for himself and his imprisoned mother. But the very next year, in consideration of the payment of a pension of £4000 a year, he concluded a treaty with Elizabeth. When this was ratified in 1586, his mother disinherited him and nominated Philip II. her successor. At the very time when the trial of Mary Stuart was going on, James made application to have his title as heir to the throne of England acknowledged. This unworthy, unchivalrous proceeding made it impossible for him in any way to interfere with the carrying out of whatever sentence the English Government chose to pronounce in his mother's case. Nevertheless her execution naturally affected him painfully, and it was his resentment that made him hasten on his long-planned marriage with the Danish princess Anne, daughter of Frederick II.--an alliance which he knew to be disagreeable to Elizabeth. He gained a political advantage by it, Denmark waiving her claim to the Orkney Islands.

His bride, born at Skanderborg towards the close of 1574, was at the time of her marriage not fifteen years old--a pretty, fair-skinned, golden-haired girl. Daughter of a Lutheran father and the Lutheran Sophia of Mecklenburg, she had been brought up in Lutheran orthodoxy. She had received some instruction in chemistry from Tycho Brahe; but her education, on the whole, had been rather that of a spoilt child. Great ideas had been instilled into her of what it meant to belong to the royal house of Denmark, so that she agreed with her future husband in a conviction of the importance of kingly state. Other features of her character were good-humour, inborn wit, and a superficial gaiety which sometimes went to unguarded lengths. Her behaviour, only three years after her marriage, gave rise to a scandal--public opinion (doubtless unjustly) making James accessory to the assassination of the Earl of Murray, whom it was supposed that he had good reasons for wishing out of the way.

The difficulties which beset Anne's voyage from Denmark to Scotland in 1589 are well known. A storm, for raising which many Danish "witches" and no fewer than two hundred luckless Scottish crones had to suffer at the stake, drove the bride to Oslo in Norway. The impatient bridegroom then undertook the one romantic adventure of his life and set off in search of her. He found her at Oslo, was married there, and spent the winter in Denmark.

As Queen of Scotland, Anne already showed herself possessed by the same mania for building which characterised her brother, Christian IV. As Queen of England she aroused dissatisfaction by her constant coquetting with Roman Catholicism. By her own wish, the Pope sent her gifts of all sorts of Catholic gimcracks; they were taken from her, and the bearer was consigned to the Tower. She showed a certain amiable independence in the sympathy and good-will which she displayed towards Sir Walter Raleigh, whom her husband imprisoned in the Tower; but on the whole she was an insignificant woman, pleasure-loving and pomp-loving (consequently a patroness of those poets who, like Ben Jonson, wrote masques for court festivals), and, in contrast to the economical Elizabeth, so extravagant that she was always in debt. Very soon after her arrival in England, she owed enormous sums to jewellers and other merchants.

The new King soon disappointed the hopes which Puritans and Catholics had cherished as to his tolerance. Even during the course of his journey from Edinburgh to London numerous petitions for the better treatment of Dissenters had been handed to him, and he seemed to give good promises to both parties. But as early as January 1604, on the occasion of a conference he summoned at Hampton Court, there was a rupture between him and the Puritans--the very mention of the word "Presbyter" making him furious. The formula, "No bishop, no king," though not invented by him, expressed his principles. And when the House of Commons favoured measures of a Puritan tendency, he retaliated by proroguing Parliament, after rebuking the House in undignified and boastful terms. He complained in this speech that whereas in Scotland he had been regarded "not only as a king but as a counsellor," in England, on the contrary, there was "nothing but curiosity from morning to evening to find fault with his propositions." "There all things warranted that came from me. Here all things suspected," &c. &c. The Puritan clergy, who refused to accept the Anglican ritual, were driven from their livings.

The Catholics fared still worse. James had at first intended to lighten the heavy penalties to which they were subject, but the discovery of Catholic conspiracies led him to change his mind. The Catholic priests and the pupils of the Jesuit schools were banished. After the discovery of Guy Fawkes's great Gunpowder Plot in 1605, the position of the Catholics naturally became as bad as possible.

One of the most marked traits in James's political character was his eagerness to bring about and preserve peace with Spain. While yet on the way to London, he ordered a cessation of all hostilities, and by 1604 he had concluded peace. One of the reasons for his at once assuming a hostile attitude towards Raleigh was that he was well acquainted with Raleigh's hatred of Spain and disinclination to peace with that country; and Raleigh increased the King's displeasure during the following months by constantly urging upon him a war policy. But there were other and less impersonal reasons for the King's hostility. Raleigh had been Elizabeth's favourite, and had in 1601 presented to her a state-paper drawn up by himself on "The Dangers of a Spanish Faction in Scotland," the rumoured contents of which had so alarmed James that he offered Elizabeth the assistance of three thousand Scottish troops against Spain. Raleigh had been an opponent of Essex, who had sought support from James and attached himself to his fortunes. And what was worse, he had an enemy, though he scarcely knew it, in the person of a man who had opposed Essex much more strongly than he, but who had, even before the Queen's death, assured James of his absolute devotion. This was Robert Cecil, who feared Raleigh's ambition and ability.

Raleigh was in the West of England when the Queen died, and could not at once join in the great rush northwards to meet King James, which emptied London of all its nobility. By the time he started, with a large retinue, to wait on the King, he had already received a kind of command not to do so, in the shape of one of the orders dispensing the recipient from attendance on the King, which James had sent in blank to Cecil, to be filled in with the names of those whom Cecil thought he should keep at a distance. James received Raleigh ungraciously, and at once told him, with a bad pun on his name, that he had been prejudiced against him: "On my soul, man, I have heard but _rawly_ of thee." A few weeks later he was deprived (though not without compensation) of the office of Captain of the Guard, which was given to a Scotchman, Sir Thomas Erskine; and within the same month he was ordered immediately to give up to the Bishop of Durham the town palace of that See, which he had occupied, and on which he had spent great sums of money.

At last, one day in July 1603, as he was standing ready to ride out with the King, he was arrested and imprisoned on a charge of high treason. This was the beginning of a long series of base proceedings against this eminent man, who had deserved so well of his country. He was a prisoner in the Tower for thirteen years, and the persecution ended only with the judicial murder which was committed when, in 1618, after making the most beautiful speech ever heard from the scaffold, he laid his head on the block with incomparable courage and calm dignity.

It is difficult for us to-day to understand how a man of Raleigh's worth could at that time be the best-hated man in England. For us he is simply, as Gardiner has expressed it, "the man who had more genius than all the Privy Council put together;" or, as Gosse has called him, "the figure which takes the same place in the field of action which Shakespeare takes in that of imagination and Bacon in that of thought." But that he was generally hated at the time of his imprisonment is certain.

Many disliked him as the enemy of Essex. It was said that in Essex's last hours Raleigh had jeered at him. Raleigh himself wrote in 1618:--

"It is said I was a persecutor of my Lord of Essex; that I puffed out tobacco in disdain when he was on the scaffold. But I take God to witness I shed tears for him when he died. I confess I was of a contrary faction, but I knew he was a noble gentleman. Those that set me up against him [evidently Cecil] did afterwards set themselves against me."

But what mattered the falseness of the accusation if it was believed? And there were other, much less reasonable, grounds of hatred. From one of Raleigh's letters, written in the last days of Queen Elizabeth, we learn that the tavern-keepers throughout the country held him responsible for a tax imposed on them, which was in fact due solely to the Queen's rapacity. In this letter he prays Cecil to prevail on Elizabeth to remit the tax, for, says he: "I cannot live, nor show my face out of my doors, without it, nor dare ride through the towns where these taverners dwell." It seems as if his very greatness had marked him out for universal hatred; and, being conscious of his worth, he would not stoop to a truckling policy.

There was much that was popularly winning about the tall, vigorous, rather large-boned Raleigh, with his bright complexion and his open expression; but, like a true son of the Renaissance, he challenged dislike by his pride and magnificence. His dress was always splendid, and he loved, like a Persian Shah or Indian Rajah of our day, to cover himself, down to his shoes, with the most precious jewels. When he was arrested in 1603, he had gems to the value of £4000 (about £20,000 in modern money) on his breast, and when he was thrown into prison for the last time in 1618, his pockets were found full of jewels and golden ornaments which he had hastily stripped off his dress.

He was worshipped by those who had served under him; they valued his qualities of heart as well as his energy and intellect. But the crowd, whom he treated with disdain, and the courtiers and statesmen with whom he had competed for Elizabeth's favour, saw nothing in him but matchless effrontery and unscrupulousness. In spite of the favour he enjoyed, his rivals prevented his ever attaining any of the highest posts. On those naval expeditions in which he most distinguished himself, his place was always second in command. He was baulked even in the desire which he cherished during Elizabeth's later years for a place in the Privy Council.

He was now over fifty, and aged before his time. His untrustworthy friend, Lord Cobham, was suspected of complicity in Watson's Catholic plot; and this suspicion extended to Raleigh, who was thought to have been a party to intrigues for the dethronement of James in favour of his kinswoman, Arabella Stuart. He was tried for high treason; and as the law then stood in England, any man accused of such a crime was as good as lost, however innocent he might be. "A century later," says Mr. Gardiner, "Raleigh might well have smiled at the evidence which was brought against him." Then the law was as cruel as it was unjust. The accused was considered guilty until he proved his innocence; no advocate was allowed to plead his cause; unprepared, at a moment's notice, he had to refute charges which had been carefully accumulated and marshalled against him during a long period. That a man should be suspected of such an enormity as desiring to bring Spanish armies on to the free soil of England was enough to deprive him at once of all sympathy. Little wonder that Raleigh, a few days after his indictment, tried to commit suicide. His famous letter to his wife, written before the attempt, gives consummate expression to a great man's despair in face of a destiny which he does not fear, yet cannot master.

While this tragedy was being enacted in the Tower, London was making magnificent preparations for the state entrance of King James and Queen Anne into their new capital. Seven beautiful triumphal arches were erected; "England's Cæsar," as Henry Petowe in his coronation ode with some little exaggeration entitled James, was exalted and glorified by the poets of the day with as great enthusiasm as though his exploits had already rivalled those of "mightiest Julius."

Henry Chettle wrote _The Shepheard's Spring Song for the Entertainment of King James, our most potent Sovereign_; Samuel Daniel, _A Panegyrike Congratulatorie to the Kings Majestie_; Michael Drayton, _To the Majestie of King James, a Gratulatorie Poem._ The actor Thomas Greene composed _A Poet's Vision and a Prince's Glorie. Dedicated to the high and mightie Prince James, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland_; and scores of other poets lifted up their voices in song. Daniel wrote a masque which was acted at Hampton Court; Dekker, a description of the King's "Triumphant Passage," with poetic dialogues; Ben Jonson, a similar description; and Drayton, a _Pæan Triumphall_. Ben Jonson also produced a masque called _Penates_, and another entitled _The Masque of Blackness_; while a host of lesser lights wrote poems in the same style. The unobtrusive, mildly flattering allusions to James, which we have found and shall presently find in Shakespeare's plays of this period, produce an exceedingly feeble, almost imperceptible effect amid this storm of adulation. To have omitted them altogether, or to have made them in the slightest degree less deferential, would have been gratuitously and indefensibly churlish, in view of the favour which James had made haste to extend to Shakespeare's company.

It is most interesting to-day to read the programme of the royal procession from the Tower to Whitehall in 1604, in which all the dignitaries of the realm took part, and all the privileged classes, court, nobility, clergy, royal guard, were fully represented.

In the middle of the enormous procession rides the King under a canopy. Immediately before him, the dukes, marquises, eldest sons of dukes, earls, &c. &c. Immediately behind him comes the Queen, and after her all the first ladies of the kingdom--duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, viscountesses, &c. Among the ladies mentioned by name is Lady Rich, with the note, "by especiall comandement." At the foot of the page, another note runs thus: "To go as a daughter to Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex." James desired to honour in her the memory of her ill-fated brother. Among the lawyers in the procession Sir Francis Bacon has a place of honour; he is described as "the King's Counsell at Lawe." Bacon's learning and obsequious pliancy, James's pedantry and monarchical arrogance, quickly brought these two together. But among "His Majesty's Servants," at the very head of the procession, immediately after the heralds and the Prince's and Queen's men-in-waiting, William Shakespeare was no doubt to be seen, dressed in a suit of red cloth, which the court accounts show to have been provided for him.

James was a great lover of the play, but Scotland had neither drama nor actors of her own. Not long before this, in 1599; he had vigorously opposed the resolution of his Presbyterian Council to forbid performances by English actors.

As early as May 17, 1603, he had granted the patent _Pro Laurentio Fletcher et Willielmo Shakespeare et aliis_, which promoted the Lord Chamberlain's company to be the King's own actors.

The fact that Lawrence Fletcher is named first gives us a clue to the reasons for this proceeding on the part of the King. In the records of the Town Council of Aberdeen for October 1601, there is an entry to the effect that, by special recommendation of the King, a gratuity was paid to a company of players for their performances in the town, and that the freedom of the city was conferred on one of these actors, Lawrence Fletcher. There can be hardly any doubt that Charles Knight, in spite of Elze's objections in his _Essays on Shakespeare_, is correct in his opinion that this Fletcher was an Englishman, and that he was closely connected with Shakespeare; for the actor Augustine Philipps, who, in 1605, bequeaths thirty shillings in gold to his "fellowe" William Shakespeare, likewise bequeaths twenty shillings to his "fellowe" Lawrence Fletcher.

James arrived in London on the 7th of May 1603, removed to Greenwich on account of the plague on the 13th, and, as already mentioned, dated the patent from there on the 17th. It can scarcely be supposed that, in so short a space of time, the Lord Chamberlain's men should not only have played before James, but so powerfully impressed him that he at once advanced them to be his own company. He must evidently have known them before; perhaps he already, as King of Scotland, had some of them in his service. This supposition is supported by the fact that, as we have seen, some members of Shakespeare's company were in Aberdeen in the autumn of 1601. It is even probable that Shakespeare himself was in Scotland with his comrades. In _Macbeth_, he has altered the meadow-land, which Holinshed represents as lying around Inverness, into the heath which is really characteristic of the district; and the whole play, with its numerous allusions to Scottish affairs, bears the impress of having been conceived on Scottish soil. Possibly Shakespeare's thoughts were hovering round the Scottish tragedy while he passed along in the procession with the royal arms on his red dress.[1]

[1] S. R. Gardiner: _History of England_, vol. i. Thomas Milner: _The History of England_. Alfred Stern: _Geschichte der Revolution in England_. Gosse: _Raleigh._ J. Nicols: _The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First_, vol. i. Disraeli: _An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James the First_. _Dictionary of National Biography: James, Anne_. Nathan Drake: _Shakespeare and his Times_.

XXII

_MACBETH--MACBETH AND HAMLET--DIFFICULTIES ARISING FROM THE STATE OF THE TEXT_

Dowden somewhere remarks that if Shakespeare had died at the age of forty, posterity would have said that this was certainly a great loss, but would have found comfort in the thought that _Hamlet_ marked the zenith of his productive power--he could hardly have written another such masterpiece.

And now follow in rapid succession _Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra_, and the rest. _Hamlet_ was not the conclusion of a career; _Hamlet_ was the spring-board from which Shakespeare leaped forth into a whole new world of mystery and awe. Dowden has happily compared the tragic figures that glide one after the other across his field of vision between 1604 and 1610 with the bloody and threatening apparitions that pass before Macbeth in the witches' cavern.

The natural tendency of his youth had been to see good everywhere. He had even felt, with his King Henry, that "there is some soul of goodness in things evil." Now, when the misery of life, the problem of evil, presented itself to his inward eye, it was especially the potency of wickedness that impressed him as strange and terrible. We have seen him brooding over it in _Hamlet_ and _Measure for Measure_. He had of course recognized it before, and represented it on the grandest scale; but in _Richard III_. the main emphasis is still laid on outward history; Richard is the same man from his first appearance to his last. What now fascinates Shakespeare is to show how the man into whose veins evil has injected some drops of its poison, becomes bloated, gangrened, foredoomed to self-destruction or annihilation, like Macbeth, Othello, Lear. Lady Macbeth's ambition, Iago's malice, the daughters' ingratitude, lead, step by step, to irresistible, ever-increasing calamity.

It is my conviction that _Macbeth_ was the first of these subjects which Shakespeare took in hand. All we know with certainty, indeed, is that the play was acted at the Globe Theatre in 1610. Dr. Simon Forman, in his _Booke of Plaies and Notes thereon_, gave a detailed account of a performance of it at which he was present on the 20th of April of this year. But in the comedy of _The Puritan_, dating from 1607, we find an unmistakable allusion to Banquo's ghost; and the lines in the play itself (iv. I)--

"And some I see That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry,"

--a reference to the union of England and Scotland, and their conjunction with Ireland under James--would have had little effect unless spoken from the stage shortly after the event. As James was proclaimed King of Great Britain and Ireland on the 20th of October 1604, we may conclude that _Macbeth_ was not produced later than 1604-1605.

At James's accession a breath of Scottish air blew over England; we feel it in _Macbeth_. The scene of the tragedy is laid in the country from which the new king came, and most true to nature is the reproduction in this dark drama of Scotland's forests and heaths and castles, her passions and her poetry.

There is much to indicate that an unbroken train of thought led Shakespeare from _Hamlet_ to _Macbeth_. The personality of Macbeth is a sort of counterpart to that of Hamlet. The Danish prince's nature is passionate, but refined and thoughtful. Before the deed of vengeance which is imposed upon him he is restless, self-reproachful, and self-tormenting; but he never betrays the slightest remorse for a murder once committed, though he kills four persons before he stabs the King. The Scottish thane is the rough, blunt soldier, the man of

## action. He takes little time for deliberation before he strikes; but

immediately after the murder he is attacked by hallucinations both of sight and hearing, and is hounded on, wild and vacillating and frenzied, from crime to crime. He stifles his self-reproaches and falls at last, after defending himself with the hopeless fury of the "bear tied to the stake."

Hamlet says:--

"And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

Macbeth, on the contrary, declares (iv. I)--

"From this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand."

They stand at opposite poles--Hamlet, the dreamer; Macbeth, the captain, "Bellona's bridegroom." Hamlet has a superabundance of culture and of intellectual power. His strength is of the kind that wears a mask; he is a master in the art of dissimulation. Macbeth is unsophisticated to the point of clumsiness, betraying himself when he tries to deceive. His wife has to beg him not to show a troubled countenance, but to "sleek o'er his rugged looks."

Hamlet is the born aristocrat: very proud, keenly alive to his worth, very self-critical--too self-critical to be ambitious in the common acceptation of the word. To Macbeth, on the contrary, a sounding title is honour, and a wreath on the head, a crown on the brow, greatness. When the Witches on the heath, and another witch, his wife in the castle, have held up before his eyes the glory of the crown and the power of the sceptre, he has found his great goal--a tangible prize in this life, for which he is willing to risk his welfare in "the life to come." Whilst Hamlet, with his hereditary right, hardly gives a thought to the throne of which he has been robbed, Macbeth murders his king, his benefactor, his guest, that he may plunder him and his sons of a chair with a purple canopy.

And yet there is a certain resemblance between Macbeth and Hamlet. One feels that the two tragedies must have been written close upon each other. In his first monologue (i. 7) Macbeth stands hesitating with Hamlet-like misgivings:--

"If it were done, when't is done, then't were well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,-- We'd jump the life to come.--But in these cases We still have judgment here."

Hamlet says: Were we sure that there is no future life, we should seek death. Macbeth thinks: Did we not know that judgment would come upon us here, we should care little about the life to come. There is a kinship in these contradictory reflections. But Macbeth is not hindered by his cogitations. He pricks the sides of his intent, as he says, with the spur of ambition, well knowing that it will o'erleap itself and fall. He cannot resist when he is goaded onward by a being superior to himself, a woman.

Like Hamlet, he has imagination, but of a more timorous and visionary cast. It is through no peculiar faculty in Hamlet that he sees his father's ghost; others had seen it before him and see it with him. Macbeth constantly sees apparitions that no one else sees, and hears voices that are inaudible to others.

When he has resolved on the king's death he sees a dagger in the air:--

"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:-- I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?"

Directly after the murder he has an illusion of hearing:--

"Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep.'"

And, very significantly, Macbeth hears this same voice give him the different titles which are his pride:--

"Still it cried, 'Sleep no more!' to all the house: 'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!'"

Yet another parallel shows the kinship between the Danish and the Scottish tragedy. It is in these dramas alone that the dead leave their graves and reappear on the scene of life; in them alone a breath from the spirit-world reaches the atmosphere of the living. There is no trace of the supernatural either in _Othello_ or in _King Lear_.

No more here than in _Hamlet_ are we to understand by the introduction of supernatural elements that an independently working superhuman power actively interferes in human life; these elements are transparent symbols. Nevertheless the supernatural beings that make their appearance are not to be taken as mere illusions; they are distinctly conceived as having a real existence outside the sphere of hallucination. As in _Hamlet_, the Ghost is not seen by the prince alone, so in _Macbeth_ it is not only Macbeth himself who sees the Witches; they even appear with their queen, Hecate, when there is no one to see them except the spectators of the play.

It must not be forgotten that this whole spirit--and witchworld meant something quite different to Shakespeare's contemporaries from what it means to us. We cannot even be absolutely certain that Shakespeare himself did not believe in the possible existence of such beings. Great poets have seldom been consistent in their incredulity--even Holberg believed that he had seen a ghost. But Shakespeare's own attitude of mind matters less than that of the public for whom he wrote.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century the English people still believed in a great variety of evil spirits, who disturbed the order of nature, produced storms by land and sea, foreboded calamities and death, disseminated plague and famine. They were for the most part pictured as old, wrinkled women, who brewed all kinds of frightful enormities in hellish cauldrons; and when such beldams were thought to have been detected, the law took vengeance on them with fire and sword. In a sermon preached in 1588, Bishop Jewel appealed to Elizabeth to take strong measures against wizards and witches. Some years later, one Mrs. Dyer was accused of witchcraft for no other reason than that toothache had for some nights prevented the Queen from sleeping. In the small town of St. Osees in Essex alone, seventy or eighty witches were burnt. In a book called "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," published in 1584, Reginald Scott refuted the doctrine of sorcery and magic with wonderful clearness and liberal-mindedness; but his voice was lost in the chorus of the superstitious. King James himself was one of the most prominent champions of superstition. He was present in person at the trial by torture of two hundred witches who were burnt for occasioning the storm which prevented his bride's crossing to Scotland. Many of them confessed to having ridden through the air on broomsticks or invisible chariots drawn by snails, and admitted that they were able to make themselves invisible--an art of which they, strangely enough, did not avail themselves to escape the law. In 1597 James himself produced in his _Dæmonologie_ a kind of handbook or textbook of witchcraft in all its developments, and in 1598 he caused no fewer than 600 old women to be burnt. In the Parliament of 1604 a bill against sorcery was brought in by the Government and passed.

Shakespeare produced wonderful effects in _Hamlet_ by drawing on this faith in spirits; the apparition on the castle platform is sublime in its way, though the speech of the Ghost is far too long. Now, in _Macbeth_, with the Witches' meeting, he strikes the keynote of the drama at the very outset, as surely as with a tuning-fork; and wherever the Witches reappear the same note recurs. But still more admirable, both psychologically and scenically, is the scene in which Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost sitting in his own seat at the banquet-table. The words run thus:--

"_Rosse_. Please it your highness To grace us with your royal company? _Macbeth_. The table's full. _Lennox_. Here is a place reserv'd, sir. _Macb_. Where? _Len_. Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness? _Macb_. Which of you have done this? _Lords_. What, my good lord? _Macb._ Thou canst not say I did it: never shake Thy gory locks at me."

The grandeur, depth, and extraordinary dramatic and theatrical effect of this passage are almost unequalled in the history of the drama.

The same may be said of well-nigh the whole outline of this tragedy--from a dramatic and theatrical point of view it is beyond all praise. The Witches on the heath, the scene before the murder of Duncan, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth--so potent is the effect of these and other episodes that they are burnt for ever on the spectator's memory.

No wonder that _Macbeth_ has become in later times Shakespeare's most popular tragedy--his typical one, appreciated even by those who, except in this instance, have not been able to value him as he deserves. Not one of his other dramas is so simple in composition as this, no other keeps like this to a single plane. There is no desultoriness or halting in the action as in _Hamlet_, no double action as in _King Lear_. All is quite simple and according to rule: the snowball is set rolling and becomes the avalanche. And although there are gaps in it on account of the defective text, and although there may here and there be ambiguities--in the character of Lady Macbeth, for instance--yet there is nothing enigmatic, there are no riddles to perplex us. Nothing lies concealed between the lines; all is grand and clear--grandeur and clearness itself.

And yet I confess that this play seems to me one of Shakespeare's less interesting efforts; not from the artistic, but from the purely human point of view. It is a rich, highly moral melodrama; but only at occasional points in it do I feel the beating of Shakespeare's heart.

My comparative coolness of feeling towards _Macbeth_ may possibly be due in a considerable degree to the shamefully mutilated form in which this tragedy has been handed down to us. Who knows what it may have been when it came from Shakespeare's own hand! The text we possess, which was not printed till long after the poet's death, is clipped, pruned, and compressed for acting purposes. We can feel distinctly where the gaps occur, but that is of no avail.

The abnormal shortness of the play is in itself an indication of what has happened. In spite of its wealth of incident, it is distinctly Shakespeare's shortest work. There are 3924 lines in _Hamlet_, 3599 in _Richard III_., &c., &c., while in _Macbeth_ there are only 1993.

It is plain, moreover, that the structure of the piece has been tampered with. The dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff (iv. 3), which, strictly speaking, must be called superfluous from the dramatic point of view, is so long as to form about an eighth part of the whole tragedy. It may be presumed that the other scenes originally stood in some sort of proportion to this; for there is no other instance in Shakespeare's work of a similar disproportion.

In certain places omissions are distinctly felt. Lady Macbeth (i. 5) proposes to her husband that he shall murder Duncan. He gives no answer to this. In the next scene the King arrives. In the next again, Macbeth's deliberations as to whether or not he is to commit the murder are all over, and he is only thinking how it can be done with impunity. When he wavers, and says to his wife, "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none," her answer shows how much is wanting here:--

"When you durst do it, then you were a man; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both."

We spectators or readers know nothing of all this. There has not even been time for the shortest conversation between husband and wife.

Shakespeare took the material for his tragedy from the same source on which he drew for all his English histories--Holinshed's Chronicle to wit. In this case Holinshed, at no time a trustworthy historian, simply reproduced a passage of Hector Boece's _Scotorum Historiæ_. Macdonwald's rebellion and Sweno's Viking invasion are fables; Banquo and Fleance, as founders of the race of Stuart, are inventions of the chroniclers. There was a blood-feud between the house of Duncan and the house of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, whose real name was Gruoch, was the grand-daughter of a king who had been killed by Malcolm II., Duncan's grandfather. Her first husband had been burnt in his castle with fifty friends. Her only brother was killed by Malcolm's order. Macbeth's father also, Finlegh or Finley, had been killed in a contest with Malcolm. Therefore they both had the right to a blood-revenge on Duncan. Nor did Macbeth sin against the laws of hospitality in taking Duncan's life. He attacked and killed him in the open field. It is further to be observed that by the Scottish laws of succession he had a better right to the throne than Duncan. After having seized the throne he ruled firmly and justly. There is a quite adequate psychological basis for the real facts of the year 1040, though it is much simpler than that underlying the imaginary events of Holinshed's Chronicle, which form the subject of the tragedy.

Shakespeare on the whole follows Holinshed with great exactitude, but diverges from him in one or two particulars. According to the Chronicle, Banquo was accessory to the murder of Duncan; Shakespeare alters this in order to give King James a progenitor of unblemished reputation. Instead of using the account of the murder which is given in the Chronicle, Shakespeare takes and applies to Duncan's case all the particulars of the murder of King Duffe, Lady Macbeth's grandfather, as committed by the captain of the castle of Forres, who "being the more kindled in wrath by the words of his wife, determined to follow her advice in the execution of so heinous an act." It is hardly necessary to remark that the finest parts of the drama, such as the appearance of Banquo's ghost and Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking scene, are due to Shakespeare alone.

Some sensation was made in the year 1778 by the discovery of the manuscript of _The Witch_, a play by Shakespeare's contemporary Middleton, containing in their entirety two songs which are only indicated in _Macbeth_ by the quotation of their first lines. These are "Come away, come away" (iii. 5), and "Black spirits, &c." (iv. I). A very idle dispute arose as to whether Shakespeare had here made use of Middleton or Middleton of Shakespeare. The latter is certainly the more probable assumption, if we must assume either to have borrowed from the other. It is likely enough, however, that single lines of the lesser poet have here and there been interpolated in the witch scenes of Shakespeare's text as contained in the Folio edition.

Shakespeare has employed in the treatment of this subject a style that suits it--vehement to violence, compressed to congestion--figures treading upon each other's heels, while general philosophic reflections occur but rarely. It is a style eminently fitted to express and to awaken terror; its tone is not altered, but only softened, even in the painfully touching conversation between Lady Macduff and her little son. It is sustained throughout with only one break--the excellent burlesque monologue of the Porter.

The play centres entirely round the two chief characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; in their minds the essential action takes place. The other personages are only outlined.

The Witches' song, with which the tragedy opens, ends with that admirable line, in which ugliness and beauty are confounded:--

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair."

And it is significant that Macbeth, who has not heard this refrain, recalls it in his very first speech:--

"So foul and fair a day I have not seen."

It seems as if these words were ringing in his ears; and this foreshadows the mysterious bond between him and the Witches. Many of these delicate consonances and contrasts may be noted in the speeches of this tragedy.

After Lady Macbeth, who is introduced to the spectator already perfected in wickedness, has said to herself (i. 5)--

"The raven himself is hoarse, That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements,"

the next scene opens serenely with the charming pictures of the following dialogue:--

"_Duncan_. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. _Banquo_. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd The air is delicate."

Then the poet immediately plunges anew into the study of this lean, slight, hard woman, consumed by lust of power and splendor. Though by no means the impassive murderess she fain would be, she yet goads her husband, by the force of her far stronger will, to commit the crime which she declares he has promised her:--

"I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from its boneless gums. And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this."

So coarsely callous is she! And yet she is less hardened than she would make herself out to be; for when, just after this, she has laid the daggers ready for her husband, she says:--

"Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't."

The absolutely masterly, thrilling scene between husband and wife after the murder, is followed, in horrible, humoristic contrast, by the fantastic interlude of the Porter. He conceives himself to be keeping watch at hell-gate, and admitting, amongst others, an equivocating Jesuit, with his casuistry and _reservatio mentalis_; and his soliloquy is followed by a dialogue with Macduff on the influence of drink upon erotic inclination and capacity. It is well known that Schiller, in accordance with classical prejudices, omitted the monologue in his translation, and replaced it by a pious morning-song. What seems more remarkable is that an English poet like Coleridge should have found its effect disturbing and considered it spurious. Without exactly ranking with Shakespeare's best low-comedy interludes, it affords a highly effective contrast to what goes before and what follows, and is really an invaluable and indispensable ingredient in the tragedy. A short break in the action was required at this point, to give Macbeth and his wife time to dress themselves in their nightclothes; and what interruption could be more effective than the knocking at the castle gate, which makes them both thrill with terror, and gives occasion to the Porter episode?

Another of the gems of the play is the scene (iv. 2) between Lady Macduff and her wise little son, before the murderers come and kill them both. All the witty child's sayings are interesting, and the mother's bitterly pessimistic speeches are not only wonderfully characteristic of her, but also of the poet's own present frame of mind:--

"Whither should I fly? I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where, to do harm, Is often laudable; to do good, sometime, Accounted dangerous folly: why then, alas! Do I put up that womanly defence, To say I have done no harm?"

Equally despairing is Macduff's ejaculation when he learns of the slaughter in his home: "Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?" The beginning of this lengthy scene (iv. 3), with its endless dialogue between Malcolm and Macduff, which Shakespeare has transcribed literally from his Holinshed, is weak and flagging. It presents hardly any point of interest except the far-fetched account of King Edward the Confessor's power of curing the king's evil, evidently dragged in for the sake of paying King James a compliment which the poet knew he would value, in the lines--

"'Tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction."

But the close of the scene is admirable, when Rosse breaks the news to Macduff of the attack on his castle and the massacre of his family:--

"_Macd_. My children too? _Rosse_. Wife, children, servants, all That could be found. _Macd_. And I must be from thence! My wife kill'd too? _Rosse_ I have said. _Mal_. Be comforted: Let's make us medicines of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief. _Macd_. He has no children.--All my pretty ones? Did you say, all?--O hell-kite!--All? What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam, At one fell swoop? _Mai_. Dispute it like a man. _Macd_. I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me.--_Did Heaven look on,_ _And would not take their part?_"

The voice of revolt makes itself heard in these words, the same voice that sounds later through the despairing philosophy of _King Lear_: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods: They kill us for their sport." But immediately afterwards Macduff falls back on the traditional sentiment:--

"Sinful Macduff! They are all struck for thee. Naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls."

Among these horror-stricken speeches there is one in particular that gives matter for reflection--Macduff's cry, "He has no children." At the close of the third part of _Henry VI._ there is a similar exclamation of quite different import. There, when King Edward, Gloucester, and Clarence have stabbed Margaret of Anjou's son before her eyes, she says:--

"You have no children, butchers! if you had, The thought of them would have stirr'd up remorse."

Many interpreters have attributed the same sense to Macduff's cry of agony; but their mistake is plain; for the context undeniably shows that the one thought of the now childless father is the impossibility of an adequate revenge.

But there is another noticeable point about this speech, "He has no children," which is, that elsewhere we are led to believe that he has children. Lady Macbeth says, "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;" and we have neither learned that these children are dead nor that they were born of an earlier marriage. Shakespeare never mentions the former marriage of the historical Lady Macbeth. Furthermore, not only does she talk of children, but Macbeth himself seems to allude to sons. He says (iii. I):--

"Upon my head they plac'd a fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding. If't be so, For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind."

If he had no children of his own, the last line is meaningless. Had Shakespeare forgotten these earlier speeches when he wrote that ejaculation of Macduff's? It is improbable; and, in any case, they must have been constantly brought to his mind again at rehearsals and performances of the play. We have here one of the difficulties which would be solved if we were in possession of a complete and authentic text.

The crown which the Witches promised to Macbeth soon becomes his fixed idea. He murders his king--and sleep. He slays, and sees the slain for ever before him. All that stand between him and his ambition are cut down, and afterwards raise their bloody heads as bodeful visions on his path. He turns Scotland into one great charnel-house. His mind is "full of scorpions;" he is sick with the smell of all the blood he has shed. At last life and death become indifferent to him. When, on the day of battle, the tidings of his wife's death are brought to him, he speaks those profound words in which Shakespeare has embodied a whole melancholy life-philosophy:--

"She should have died hereafter: There would have been a time for such a word.-- To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

This is the final result arrived at by Macbeth, the man who staked all to win power and glory. Without any underlining on the part of the poet, a speech like this embodies an absolute moral lesson. We feel its value all the more strongly, as Shakespeare's study of humanity in other parts of this play does not seem to have been totally unbiassed, but rather influenced by the moral impression which he desired to produce on the audience. The drama is even a little marred by the constant insistence on the _fabula docet_, the recurrent insinuation that "such is the consequence of grasping at power by the aid of crime." Macbeth, not by nature a bad man, might in the drama, as in real life, have tried to reconcile the people to that crime, which, after all, he had reluctantly committed, by making use of his power to rule well. The moral purport of the play excludes this possibility. The ice-cold, stony Lady Macbeth might be conceived as taking the consequences of her counsel and action as calmly as the high-born Locustas of the Renaissance, Catherine de' Medici, or the Countess of Somerset. But in this case we should have missed the moral lesson conveyed by her ruin, and, what would have been worse, the incomparable sleep-walking scene, which--whether it be perfectly motived or not--shows us in the most admirable manner how the sting of an evil conscience, even though it may be blunted by day, is sharpened again at night, and robs the guilty one of sleep and health.

In dealing with the plays immediately preceding _Macbeth_, we observed that Shakespeare at this period frequently gives a formal exposition of the moral to be drawn from his scenes. Possibly there is some connection between this tendency of his and the steadily-growing animosity of public opinion to the stage. In the year 1606, an edict was issued absolutely prohibiting the utterance of the name of God on the profane boards of the theatre. Not even a harmless oath was to be permitted. In view of the state of feeling which produced such an Act of Parliament, it must have been of vital importance to the tragic poet to prove as clearly as possible the strictly moral character of his works.

XXIII

_OTHELLO--THE CHARACTER AND SIGNIFICANCE OF IAGO_

When we consider how _Macbeth_ explains life's tragedy as the result of a union of brutality and malignity, or rather of brutality envenomed by malignity, we feel that the step from this to _Othello_ is not a long one. But in _Macbeth_ the treatment of life's tragedy as a whole, of wickedness as a factor in human affairs, lacks firmness, and is not in the great style.

In a very much grander and firmer style do we find the same subject treated in _Othello_.

_Othello_ is, in the popular conception, simply the tragedy of jealousy, as _Macbeth_ is simply the tragedy of ambition. Naïve readers and critics fancy in their innocence that Shakespeare, at a certain period of his life, determined to study one or two interesting and dangerous passions, and to put us on our guard against them. Following out this intention, he wrote a play on ambition and its dangers, and another of the same kind on jealousy and all the evils that attend it. But that is not how things happen in the inner life of a creative spirit. A poet does not write exercises on a given subject. His

## activity is not the result of determination or choice. A nerve in him

is touched, vibrates, and reacts.

What Shakespeare here attempts to realise is neither jealousy nor credulity, but simply and solely the tragedy of life; whence does it arise? what are its causes? what its laws?

He was deeply impressed with the power and significance of evil. _Othello_ is much less a study of jealousy than a new and more powerful study of wickedness in its might. The umbilical cord that connects the master with his work leads, not to the character of Othello, but to that of Iago.

Simple-minded critics have been of opinion that Shakespeare constructed Iago on the lines of the historic Richard III.--that is to say, found him in literature, in the pages of a chronicler.

Believe me, Shakespeare met Iago in his own life, saw portions and aspects of him on every hand throughout his manhood, encountered him piecemeal, as it were, on his daily path, till one fine day, when he thoroughly felt and understood what malignant cleverness and baseness can effect, he melted down all these fragments, and out of them cast this figure.

Iago--there is more of the grand manner in this figure than in the whole of _Macbeth_. Iago--there is more depth, more penetrating knowledge of human nature in this one character than in the whole of _Macbeth_. Iago is the very embodiment of the grand manner.

He is not the principle of evil, not an old-fashioned, stupid devil; nor a Miltonic devil, who loves independence and has invented firearms; nor a Goethe's Mephistopheles, who talks cynicism, makes himself indispensable, and is generally in the right. Neither has he the magnificently foolhardy wickedness of a Cæsar Borgia, who lives his life in open defiance and reckless atrocity.

Iago has no other aim than his own advantage. It is the circumstance that not he, but Cassio, has been appointed second in command to Othello, which first sets his craft to work on subtle combinations. He coveted this post, and he will stick at nothing in order to win it. In the meantime, he takes advantage of every opportunity of profit that offers itself; he does not hesitate to fool Roderigo out of his money and his jewels. He is always masked in falsehood and hypocrisy; and the mask he has chosen is the most impenetrable one, that of rough outspokenness, the straightforward, honest bluntness of the soldier who does not care what others think or say of him. He never flatters Othello or Desdemona, or even Roderigo. He is the free-spoken, honest friend.

He does not seek his own advantage without side-glances at others. He is mischievousness personified. He does evil for the pleasure of hurting, and takes active delight in the adversity and anguish of others. He is that eternal envy which merit or success in others never fails to irritate--not the petty envy which is content with coveting another's honours or possessions, or with holding itself more deserving of another's good fortune. No; he is an ideal personification. He is blear-eyed rancour itself, figuring as a great power--nay, as _the_ motive force--in human life. He embodies the detestation for others' excellences which shows itself in obstinate disbelief, suspicion, or contempt; the instinct of hatred for all that is open, beautiful, bright, good, and great.

Shakespeare not only knew that such wickedness exists; he seized it and set his stamp on it, to his eternal honour as a psychologist.

Every one has heard it said that this tragedy is magnificent in so far as the true and beautiful characters of Othello and Desdemona are concerned; but Iago--who knows him?--what motive underlies his conduct?--what can explain such wickedness? If only he had even been frankly in love with Desdemona and therefore hated Othello, or had had some other incentive of a like nature!

Yes, if he had been the ordinary amorous villain and slanderer, everything would undoubtedly have been much simpler; but, at the same time, everything would have sunk into banality, and Shakespeare would here have been unequal to himself.

No, no! precisely in this lack of apparent motive lies the profundity and greatness of the thing. Shakespeare understood this. Iago in his monologues is incessantly giving himself reasons for his hatred. Elsewhere, in reading Shakespeare's monologues, we learn what the person really is; he reveals himself directly to us; even a villain like Richard III. is quite honest in his monologues. Not so Iago. This demi-devil is always trying to give himself reason for his malignity, is always half fooling himself by dwelling on half motives, in which he partly believes, but disbelieves in the main. Coleridge has aptly designated this action of his mind: "The motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity." Again and again he expounds to himself that he believes Othello has been too familiar with his wife, and that he will avenge the dishonour. He now and then adds, to account for his hatred of Cassio, that he suspects him too of tampering with Emilia.[1] He even thinks it worth while to allege, as a secondary motive, that he himself is enamoured of Desdemona. His words are (ii. I):--

"Now, I do love her too; Not out of absolute lust, (though, peradventure, I stand accountant for as great a sin,) But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do suspect the lusty Moor Hath leap'd into my seat."

These are half-sincere attempts at self-understanding, sophistical self-justifications. Yellow-green, venomous envy has always a motive in its own eyes, and tries to make its malignity towards the better man pass muster as a desire for righteous vengeance. But Iago, who, a few lines before, has himself said of Othello that he is "of a constant, loving, noble nature," is a thousand times too clever to believe that he has been wronged by him. The Moor is, to his eyes, transparent as glass.

An ordinary human capacity for love or hatred springing from a definite cause would degrade and detract from Iago's supremacy in evil. In the end, he is sentenced to torture, because he will not vouchsafe a word of explanation or enlightenment. Hard and, in his way, proud as he is, he will certainly keep his lips tightly closed under the torture; but even if he wanted to speak, it would not be in his power to give any real explanation. He has slowly, steadily poisoned Othello's nature. We watch the working of the venom on the simple-hearted man, and we see how the very success of the poisoning process brutalises and intoxicates Iago more and more. But to ask whence the poison came into Iago's soul would be a foolish question, and one to which he himself could give no answer. The serpent is poisonous by nature; it gives forth poison as the silkworm does its thread and the violet its fragrance.

Towards the close of the tragedy (iv. 2) there occurs one of its profoundest passages, which shows us how Shakespeare must have dwelt upon and studied the potency of evil during these years. After Emilia has witnessed the breaking out of Othello's mad rage against Desdemona, she says--

"_Emil_. I will be hang'd, if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devis'd this slander; I'll be hang'd else. _Iago_. Fie! there is no such man: it is impossible. _Des_. If any such there be, Heaven pardon him! _Emil_. A halter pardon him, and hell gnaw his bones!"

All three characters stand out in clear relief in these short speeches. But Iago's is the most significant. His "Fie! there is no such man; it is impossible," expresses the thought under shelter of which he has lived and is living: other people do not believe that such a being exists.

Here we meet once more in Shakespeare the astonishment of Hamlet at the paradox of evil, and once more, too, the indirect appeal to the reader which formed the burden, as it were, of _Hamlet_ and _Measure for Measure_, the now thrice-repeated, "Say not, think not, that this is impossible!" The belief in the impossibility of utter turpitude is the very condition of existence of such a king as Claudius, such a magistrate as Angelo, such an officer as Iago. Hence Shakespeare's "Verily I say unto you, this highest degree of wickedness is possible in the world."

It is one of the two factors in life's tragedy. Stupidity is the other. On these two foundations rests the great mass of all this world's misery.

[1] He says (i. 3):--

"I hate the Moor, And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets 'Has done my office. I know not if 't be true; But I for mere suspicion in that kind Will do as if for surety."

He adds (ii. 7):--

"I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip, Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb, For fear Cassio with my night-cap too.

XXIV

_OTHELLO--THE THEME AND ITS TREATMENT--A MONOGRAPH IN THE GREAT STYLE_

A manuscript preserved in the Record Office, of doubtful date, but probably copied from an authentic document, contains the following entry:--

The plaiers 1605 The Poets wch By the Kings Hallamas Day being the mayd the plaies Maties plaiers First of November A play in the Banketing house Shaxberd. Att withal called the Moore of Venis

Thus _Othello_ was probably produced in the autumn of 1605. After this we have no proof of its performance till four and a half years later, when we hear of it again in the journal of Prince Ludwig Friedrich of Würtemberg, written by his secretary, Hans Wurmsser. The entry for the 30th of April 1610 runs thus:--

"Lundi, 30. S. E[minence] alla au Globe, lieu ordinaire ou l'on Joue les Commedies, y fut representé l'histoire du More de Venise."

In face of these data it matters nothing that there should appear in _Othello_, as we have it, a line that must have been written in or after 1611. The tragedy was printed for the first time in a quarto edition in 1622, for the second time in the Folio of 1623. The Folio text contains an additional 160 lines (proving that another manuscript has been made use of), and all oaths and mentions of the name of God are omitted. It is not only possible, but certain, that this line must have been a late interpolation. Its entire discordance with its position in the play shows this clearly enough, and seems to me to render it doubtful whether it is by Shakespeare at all.

In the scene where Othello bids Desdemona give him her hand, and loses himself in reflections upon it (iii. 4), he makes this speech:--

"A liberal hand: the hearts of old gave hands; But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts."

Here there is an allusion, which could only be understood by contemporaries, to the title of Baronet, created and sold by James, which gave its possessors the right of bearing in their coat-of-arms a bloody hand on a field argent. Most naturally Desdemona replies to this irrelevant remark: "I cannot speak of this."

In Cinthio's Italian collection of tales, where he had found the plot of _Measure for Measure_, Shakespeare at the same time (in Decade 3, Novella 7) came upon the material for _Othello_. The story in the _Hecatommithi_ runs as follows: A young Venetian lady named Disdemona falls in love with a Moor, a military commander--"not from feminine desire," but because of his great qualities--and marries him in spite of the opposition of her relatives. They live in Venice in complete happiness; "no word ever passed between them that was not loving." When the Moor is ordered to Cyprus to take command there, his one anxiety is about his wife; he is equally unwilling to expose her to the dangers of the sea voyage and to leave her alone. She settles the question by declaring that she will rather follow him anywhere, into any danger, than live in safety apart from him; whereupon he rapturously kisses her, with the ejaculation: "May God long preserve you so loving, my dearest wife!" Thus the perfect initial harmony between the pair which Shakespeare depicts is suggested by his original.

The Ensign undermines their happiness. He is described as remarkably handsome, but "as wicked by nature as any man that ever lived in the world." He was dear to the Moor, "who had no idea of his baseness." For although he was an arrant coward, he managed by means of proud and blusterous talk, aided by his fine appearance, so to conceal his cowardice that he passed for a Hector or Achilles. His wife, whom he had taken with him to Cyprus, was a fair and virtuous young woman, much beloved by Disdemona, who spent the greater part of the day in her company. The Lieutenant (_il capo di squadra_) came much to the Moor's house, and often supped with him and his wife.

The wicked Ensign is passionately in love with Disdemona, but all his attempts to win her love are entirely unsuccessful, as she has not a thought for any one but the Moor. The Ensign, however, imagines that the reason for her rejection of him must be that she is in love with the Lieutenant, and therefore determines to rid himself of this rival, while his love for Disdemona is changed into the bitterest hatred. From this time forward, his object is not only to bring about the death of the Lieutenant, but to prevent the Moor from finding the pleasure in Disdemona's love which is denied to himself. He goes to work as in the drama, though of course with some differences of detail. In the novel, for example, the Ensign steals Disdemona's handkerchief whilst she is visiting his wife, and playing with their little girl. Disdemona's death-scene is more horrible in the tale than in the tragedy. By command of the Moor, the Ensign hides himself in a room adjoining Othello's and Disdemona's bed-chamber. He makes a noise, and Disdemona rises to see what it is; whereupon the Ensign gives her a violent blow on the head with a stocking filled with sand. She calls to her husband for help, but he answers by accusing her of infidelity; she in vain protests her innocence, and dies at the third blow of the stocking. The murder is concealed, but the Moor now begins to hate his Ensign, and dismisses him. The Ensign is so exasperated by this, that he lets the Lieutenant know who is responsible for the night assault that has just been made upon him. The Lieutenant accuses the Moor before the council, and Othello is put to torture. He refuses to confess, and is sent into banishment. The wicked Ensign, who has brought a false accusation of murder against one of his comrades, is himself in turn accused by the innocent man, and subjected to torture until he dies.

To the characters in the novel, Shakespeare has added two, Brabantio and Roderigo. Only one of the names he uses is found in the original. Disdemona, which seems made to designate the victim of an evil destiny, Shakespeare has changed into the sweeter-sounding Desdemona. The other names are of Shakespeare's own choosing. Most of them are Italian (Othello itself is a Venetian noble name of the sixteenth century); others, such as Iago and Roderigo, are Spanish.

With his customary adherence to his original, Shakespeare, like Cinthio, calls his protagonist a Moor; but it is quite unreasonable to suppose from this that he thought of him as a negro. It was, of course, inconceivable that a negro should attain the rank of general and admiral in the service of the Venetian Republic; and Iago's mention of Mauritania as the country to which Othello intends to retire, shows plainly enough that the "Moor" ought to be represented as an Arab. It is no argument against this that men who hate and envy him apply to him epithets that would befit a negro. Thus Roderigo in the first scene of the play calls him "thick-lips," and Iago, speaking to Brabantio, calls him "an old black ram." But a little later Iago compares him with "a Barbary horse "--that is to say, an Arab from North Africa. It is always animosity and hate that exaggerate the darkness of his hue, as when Brabantio talks of his "sooty bosom". That Othello calls himself _black_ only means that he is dark. In this very play Iago says of dark women:

"If she be _black_, and thereto have a wit, She'll find a white that shall her _blackness_ fit."

And we have seen how, in the Sonnets and in _Love's Labours Lost_, "black" is constantly employed in the sense of dark-complexioned. As a Moor, Othello has a complexion sufficiently swarthy to form a striking contrast to the white and even blonde Desdemona, and there is also a sufficiently marked race-contrast between him, as a Semite, and the Aryan girl. It is quite conceivable, too, that a Christianised Moor should reach a high position in the army and fleet of the Republic.

It ought further to be noted that the whole tradition of the Venetian "Moor" has possibly arisen from a confusion of words. Rawdon Browne, in 1875, suggested the theory that Giraldi had founded his tale on the simple misunderstanding of a name. In the history of Venice we read of an eminent patrician, Christoforo Moro byname, who in 1498 was Podesta of Ravenna, and afterwards held similar office in Faenza, Ferrara, and the Romagna; then became Governor of Cyprus; in 1508 commanded fourteen ships; and later still was Proveditore of the army. When this man was returning from Cyprus to Venice in 1508, his wife (the third), who is said to have belonged to the family of Barbarigo (note the resemblance to Brabantio), died on the voyage, and there seems to have been some mystery connected with her death. In 1515 he took as his fourth wife a young girl, who is said to have been nicknamed _Demonio bianco_--the white demon. From this the name Desdemona may have been derived, in the same way as Moor from Moro.

The additions which Shakespeare made to the story as he found it in Cinthio--Desdemona's abduction, the hurried and secret marriage, the accusation, to us so strange, but in those days so natural and common, of the girl's heart having been won by witchcraft--these all occur in the history of Venetian families of the period.

Be this as it may, when Shakespeare proceeds to the treatment of the subject, he arranges all the conditions and circumstances, so that they present the most favourable field for Iago's operations, and he so fashions Othello as to render him more susceptible than any other man would be to the poison which Iago (like Lucianus in the play-scene in _Hamlet_) drops into his ear. Then he lets us trace the growth of the passion from its first germ, through every stage of its development, until it blasts and shatters the victim's whole character.

Othello's is an inartificial soul, a simple, straightforward, soldier nature. He has no worldly wisdom, for he has lived his whole life in camps:

"And little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle."

A good and true man himself, he believes in goodness in others, especially in those who make a show of outspokenness, bluffness, undaunted determination to blame where blame is due--like Iago, who characteristically says of himself to Desdemona:

"For I am nothing if not critical."

And Othello not only believes in Iago's honesty, but is inclined to take him for his guide, as being far superior to himself in knowledge of men and of the world.

Again, Othello belongs to the noble natures that are never preoccupied with the thought of their own worth. He is devoid of vanity. He has never said to himself that such exploits, such heroic deeds, as have won him his renown, must make a far deeper impression on the fancy of a young girl of Desdemona's disposition than the smooth face and pleasant manners of a Cassio. He is so little impressed with the idea of his greatness that it almost at once appears quite natural to him that he should be scorned.

Othello is the man of despised race, with the fiery African temperament. In comparison with Desdemona he is old--more of an age with her father than with herself. He tells himself that he has neither youth nor good looks to keep her love with, not even affinity of race to build upon. Iago exasperates Brabantio by crying:

"Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe."

Othello's race has a reputation for low sensuality, therefore Roderigo can inflame the rage of Desdemona's father by such expressions as "gross clasps of a lascivious Moor."

That she should feel attracted by him must have seemed to outsiders like madness or the effect of sorcery. For, far from being of an inviting, forward, or coquettish nature Desdemona is represented as more than ordinarily reserved and modest. Her father calls her (i. 3):

"A maiden never bold; Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion Blush'd at herself."

She has been brought up as a tenderly-nurtured patrician child in rich, happy Venice. The gilded youth of the city have fluttered around her daily, but she has shown favour to none of them, Therefore, her father says (i. 2):

"For I'll refer me to all things of sense, If she in chains of magic were not bound, Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, So opposite to marriage, that she shunn'd The wealthy curled darlings of our nation, Would ever have, to incur a general mock, Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom Of such a thing as thou."

Shakespeare, who knew everything about Italy, knew that the Venetian youth of that period had their hair curled, and wore a lock down on the forehead.

Othello, on his part, at once feels himself strongly drawn to Desdemona. And it is not merely the fair, delicate girl in her that allures him. Had he not loved her, her only, with burning passion, he would never have married her; for he has the fear of marriage that belongs to his wild, freedom-loving nature, and he in no wise considers himself honoured and exalted by this connection with a patrician family. He is descended from the princes of his country (i. 2):

"I fetch my life and being From men of royal siege;"

And he has shrunk from binding himself:

"But that I love the gentle Desdemona, I would not my unhoused free condition Put into circumscription and confine For the sea's worth."

Truly there is magic in it--not the gross and common sorcery which the others believe in and suppose to have been employed--not the "foul charms" and "drugs or minerals that weaken motion," to which her father alludes--but the sweet, alluring magic by which a man and a woman are mysteriously enchained.

Othello's speech of self-vindication in the council chamber, in which he explains to the Duke how he came to win Desdemona's sympathy and tenderness, has been universally admired.

Having gained her father's favour, he was often asked by him to tell the story of his life, of its dangers and adventures. He told of sufferings and hardships, of hairbreadth 'scapes from death, of imprisonment by cruel enemies, of far-off strange countries he had journeyed through. (The fantastic catalogue, it may be noted, is taken from the fabulous books of travel of the day.) Desdemona loved to listen, but was often called away by household cares, always returning when these were despatched to follow his story with a greedy ear. He "found means" to draw from her a request to tell her his history, not in fragments, but entire. He consented, and often her eyes were filled with tears when she heard of the distresses of his youth. With innocent candour she bade him at last, if ever he had a friend that loved her, to teach him how to tell her Othello's story--"and that would woo her."

In other words, she is not won through the eye, though we must take Othello to have been a stately figure, but through the ear--"I saw Othello's visage in his mind." She becomes his through her sympathy with him in all he has suffered and achieved:--

"She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I lov'd her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have us'd. _Duke_. I think, this tale would win my daughter too."

Such, then, is the relation in which the poet has decreed that these two shall stand to each other. This is no love between two of the same age and the same race, whom only family enmity keeps apart, as in _Romeo and Juliet_. Still less is it a union of hearts like that of Brutus and Portia, where the perfect harmony is the result of tenderest friendship in combination with closest kinship, added to the fact that the wife's father is her husband's hero and ideal. No, in direct contrast to this last, it is a union which rests on the attraction of opposites, and which has everything against it--difference of race, difference of age, and the strange, exotic aspect of the man, with the lack of self-confidence which it awakens in him.

Iago expounds to Roderigo how impossible it is that this alliance should last. Desdemona fell in love with the Moor because he bragged to her and told her fantastical lies; does any one believe that love can be kept alive by prating? To inflame the blood anew, "sympathy in years, manners, and beauties" is required, "all which the Moor is defective in."

The Moor himself is at first troubled by none of these reflections. And why not? Because Othello is not jealous.

This sounds paradoxical, yet it is the plain truth. Othello not jealous! It is as though one were to say water is not wet or fire does not burn. But Othello's is no jealous nature; jealous men and women think very differently and act very differently. He is unsuspicious, confiding, and in so far stupid--there lies the misfortune; but jealous, in the proper sense of the word, he is not. When Iago is preparing to insinuate his calumnies of Desdemona, he begins hypocritically (iii. 3):

"O beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster...."

Othello answers:

"'Tis not to make me jealous, To say--my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company, Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well; Where virtue is, these are more virtuous: Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw The smallest fear, or doubt of her revolt; For she had eyes, and chose me."

Thus not even his exceptional position causes him any uneasiness, so long as things take their natural course. But there is no escaping the steady pursuit of which he, all unwitting, is the object. He becomes as suspicious towards Desdemona as he is credulous towards Iago--"Brave Iago!" "Honest Iago!" Brabantio's malison recurs to his mind--"She has deceived her father, and may thee;" and close on it crowd Iago's reasons:

"Haply, for I am black, And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have; or, for I am declin'd Into the vale of years;--yet that's not much."

And the torment seizes him of feeling that one human being is a sealed book to the other--that it is impossible to control passion and appetite in a woman, though the law may have given her into one's hand--until at last he feels as if he were stretched on the rack, and Iago can exult in the thought that not all the drowsy syrups of the world can procure him the untroubled sleep of yesterday. Then follows the mournful farewell to all his previous life, and on this sadness once more follows doubt, and despair at the doubt:--

"I think my wife be honest and think she is not; I think that thou art just and think thou art not,"

--until all his thoughts are centred in the craving for revenge and blood.

Not naturally jealous, he has become so through the working of the base but devilishly subtle slander which he is too simple to penetrate and spurn.

In these masterly scenes (the third and fourth of the third act) there are more reminiscences of other poets than we find elsewhere in Shakespeare within such narrow compass; and they are of interest as showing us what he knew, and what his mind was dwelling upon in those days.

In Berni's _Orlando Innamorato_ (Canto 51, Stanza I), we come upon Iago's declaration:--

"Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name, Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."

The passage in Berni runs thus:--

"Chi ruba un corno, un cavallo, un anello, E simil cose, ha qualche discrezione, E potrebbe chiamarsi ladroncello; Ma quel che ruba la riputazione E de Paltrui fatiche si fa bello Si può chiamare assassino e ladrone."

A reminiscence also lies hidden in Othello's exquisite farewell to a soldier's life:--

"O now for ever Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! Farewell the plumed troops, and the big wars, That make ambition virtue! O, farewell! Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!"

It is clear that there must have lurked in Shakespeare's mind a reminiscence of an apostrophe contained in the old play, _A Pleasant Comedie called Common Conditions_, which he must, doubtless, have seen as a youth in Stratford. In it the hero says:--

"But farewell now, my coursers brave, attrapped to the ground. Farewell, adieu, all pleasures eke, with comely hawk and hound! Farewell, ye nobles all! Farewell, each martial knight! Farewell, ye famous ladies all, in whom I did delight!"

The study of Ariosto in Italian has also left its trace. It is where Othello, talking of the handkerchief, says:--

"A sibyl, that had number'd in the world The sun to course two hundred compasses, _In her prophetic fury_ sew'd the work."

In _Orlando Furioso_ (Canto 46, Stanza 80) we read:--

"Una donzella della terra d'Ilia, Ch'avea _il furor profetico_ congiunto Con studio di gran tempo, e con vigilia Lo fece di sua man di tutto punto."

The agreement here cannot possibly be accidental. And what makes it still more certain that Shakespeare had the Italian text before him is that the words _prophetic fury_, which are the same in _Othello_ as in the Italian, are not to be found in Harington's English translation, the only one then in existence. He must thus, whilst writing _Othello_, have been interested in Orlando, and had Berni's and Ariosto's poems lying on his table.

Desdemona's innocent simplicity in these scenes rivals the boundless and actually tragic simplicity of Othello. In the first place, she is convinced that the Moor, whom she sees wrought up to the verge of madness, cannot possibly suspect her, and is unassailable by jealousy.

"_Emilia_. Is he not jealous? _Desdemona_. Who? he! I think the sun where he was born Drew all such humours from him."

So she acts with foolish indiscretion, continuing to tease Othello about Cassio's reinstatement, although she ought to feel that it is her harping on this topic that enrages him.

Then follow Iago's still more monstrous lies: the confession he pretends to have heard Cassio make in his sleep; the story that she has presented the precious handkerchief to Cassio; and the pretence that Desdemona is the subject of the words which Othello, from his hiding-place, hears Cassio let fall as to his relations with the courtesan, Bianca. To hear his wife, his beloved, thus derided, stings the Moor to frenzy.

It is such a consistently sustained imposture that there is, perhaps, only one at all comparable to it in history--the intrigue of the diamond necklace, in which Cardinal de Rohan was as utterly duped and ruined as Othello is here.

And now Othello has reached the stage at which he can no longer think coherently, or speak except in ejaculations (iv. I):--

"_Iago_. Lie with her.

"_Othello_. With her?

"_Iago_. With her, on her, what you will.

"_Othello_. Lie with her! lie on her!--We say, lie on her when they belie her. Lie with her! that's fulsome.--Handkerchief,--confessions,--handkerchief.--To confess, and be hanged for his labour.--First, to be hanged, and then to confess. ... It is not words, that shakes me thus.--Pish!--Noses, ears, and lips.--Is it possible?--Confess!--Handkerchief!--O devil!"

With the mind's eye he sees them in each other's arms.[1] He is seized with an epileptic fit and falls.

This is not a representation of spontaneous but of artificially induced jealousy; in other words, of credulity poisoned by malignity. Hence the moral which Shakespeare, through the mouth of Iago, bids the audience take home with them:

"Thus credulous fools are caught; And many worthy and chaste dames even thus, All guiltless, meet reproach."

It is not Othello's jealousy, but his credulity that is the prime cause of the disaster; and even so must Desdemona's noble simplicity bear its share in the blame. Between them they render possible the complete success of a man like Iago.

When Othello bursts into tears before Desdemona's eyes, without her suspecting the reason (iv. 2), he says most touchingly that he could have borne affliction and shame, poverty and captivity--could even have endured to be made the butt of mockery and scorn--but that he cannot bear to see her whom he worshipped the object of his own contempt. He does not suffer most from jealousy, but from seeing "the fountain from the which his current runs" a dried-up swamp, or "a cistern for foul toads to knot and gender in." This is pure, deep sorrow at seeing his idol sullied, not mean frenzy at the idol's preferring another worshipper.

And with that grace which is an attribute of perfect strength, Shakespeare has introduced as a contrast, directly before the terrible catastrophe, Desdemona's delicate little ditty of the willowtree--of the maiden who weeps because her lover is untrue to her, but who loves him none the less. Desdemona is deeply touching when she pleads with her cruel lord for but a few moments' respite, but she is great in the instant of death, when she expires with the sublime lie, the one lie of her life, upon her lips, designed to shield her murderer from his punishment.

Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia--what a trefoil! Each has her characteristic features, but they resemble one another like sisters they all present the type which Shakespeare at this point loves and most affects. Had they a model? Had they perhaps one and the same model? Had he about this time encountered a young and charming woman, living, as it were, under a cloud of sorrow, injustice, misunderstanding, who was all heart and tenderness, without any claims to intellect or wit? We may suspect this, but we know nothing of it.

The figure of Desdemona is one of the most charming Shakespeare has drawn. She is more womanly than other women, as the noble Othello is more manly than other men. So that after all there is a very good reason for the attraction between them; the most womanly of women feels herself drawn to the manliest of men.

The subordinate figures are worked out with hardly less skill than the principal characters of the tragedy. Emilia especially is inimitable--good-hearted, honest, and not exactly light, but still sufficiently the daughter of Eve to be unable to understand Desdemona's naïve and innocent chastity.

At the end of Act iv. (in the bedroom scene) Desdemona asks Emilia if she believes that there really are women who do what Othello accuses her of. Emilia answers in the affirmative. Then her mistress asks again: "Would'st thou do such a deed for all the world?" and receives the jesting answer, "The world is a huge thing; 'tis a great price for a small vice:

"Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty exhibition; but, for the whole world! ... Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world; and, having the world for your labour, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right."

In passages like this a mildly playful note is struck in the very midst of the horror. And according to his habit and the custom of the times, Shakespeare also introduces, by means of the Clown, one or two deliberately comic passages; but the Clown's merriment is subdued, as Shakespeare's merriment at this period always is.

The composition of _Othello_ is closely akin to that of _Macbeth_. In these two tragedies alone there are no episodes; the action moves onward uninterrupted and undissipated. But the beautiful proportion of all its parts and articulations gives _Othello_ the advantage over the mutilated _Macbeth_ which we possess. Here the crescendo of the tragedy is executed with absolute _maestria_; the passion rises with a positively musical effect; Iago's devilish plan is realised step by step with consummate certainty; all details are knit together into one firm and well-nigh inextricable knot; and the carelessness with which Shakespeare has treated the necessary lapse of time between the different stages of the action, has, by compressing the events of months and years into a few days, heightened the effect of strict and firm cohesion which the play produces.

There are some inaccuracies in the text as we have it. At the close of the play there is a passage, to account for which we must almost assume that part of a vitiated text, adapted to some special performance, has been interpolated. In the full rush of the catastrophe, when only Othello's last speeches are wanting, Lodovico volunteers some information as to what has happened, which is not only superfluous for the spectator, but quite out of the general style and tone of the play:

"_Lodovico_. Sir, you shall understand what hath befall'n, Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter, Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo; And here another: the one of them imports The death of Cassio to be undertook By Roderigo. _Othello_. O villain! _Cassio_. Most heathenish and most gross! _Lod_. Now, here's another discontented paper, Found in his pocket too," &c., &c.

These speeches, and yet a third, are all aimed at making Othello understand how shamefully he has been deceived; but they are nerveless and feeble and detract from the effect of the scene. This passage ought to be expunged; it is not Shakespeare's, and it forms a little stain on his flawless work of art.

For flawless it is. I not only find several of Shakespeare's greatest qualities united in this work, but I see hardly a fault in it.

It is the only one of Shakespeare's tragedies which does not treat of national events, but is a family tragedy,--what was later known as _tragédie domestique or bourgeoise_. But the treatment is anything but bourgeois; the style is of the very grandest. One gets the best idea of the distance between it and the _tragédie bourgeoise_ of later times on comparing with it Schiller's _Kabale und Liebe_, which is in many ways an imitation of _Othello_.

We see here a great man who is at the same time a great child; a noble though impetuous nature, as unsuspicious as it is unworldly. We see a young woman, all gentleness and nobility of heart, who lives only for him she has chosen, and who dies with solicitude for her murderer on her lips. And we see these two elect natures ruined by the simplicity which makes them an easy prey to wickedness.

A great work _Othello_ undoubtedly is, but it is a monograph. It lacks the breadth which Shakespeare's plays as a rule possess. It is a sharply limited study of a single and very special form of passion, the growth of suspicion in the mind of a lover with African blood and temperament--a great example of the power of wickedness over unsuspecting nobility. Taken all in all, this is a restricted subject, which becomes monumental only by the grandeur of its treatment.

No other drama of Shakespeare's had been so much of a monograph. He assuredly felt this, and with the impulse of the great artist to make his new work a complement and contrast to the immediately preceding one, he now sought and found the subject for that one of his tragedies which is least of all a monograph, which grew into nothing less than the universal tragedy--all the great woes of human life concentrated in one mighty symbol.

He turned from _Othello_ to _Lear_.

[1] The development of this passage exactly corresponds to Spinoza's classic definition of jealousy, written seventy years later. See _Ethices, Pars III., Propositio XXXV., Scholium_: "Præterea hoc odium erga rem amatam majus erit pro ratione Lætitiæ, qua Zelotypus ex reciproco rei amatæ. Amore solebat affici, et etiam pro ratione affectus, quo erga illum, quem sibi rem amatam jungere imaginatur, affectus erat. Nam si eum oderat, eo ipso rem amatam odio habebit, quia ipsam id, quod ipse odio habet, Lætitia afficere imaginatur; et etiam ex eo, quod rei amatæ imaginem imagini ejus, quem odit, jungere cogitur, quæ ratio plerumque locum habet in Amore erga fœminam; qui enim imaginatur mulierem, quam amat, alteri sese prostituere, non solum ex eo, quod ipsius appetitus coercetur, contristabitur, sed etiam quia rei amatæ maginem pudendis et excrementis alterius jungere cogitur, eandem aversatur."

XXV

_KING LEAR--THE FEELING UNDERLYING IT--THE CHRONICLE--SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AND THE OLD PLAY_

In _King Lear_, Shakespeare's vision sounded the abyss of horror to its very depths, and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, nor faintness at the sight.

On the threshold of this work, a feeling of awe comes over one, as on the threshold of the Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling-frescoes by Michael Angelo--only that the suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, the harmonies of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of despair.

_Othello_ was a noble piece of chamber-music--simple and easily apprehended, powerfully affecting though it be. This work, on the other hand, is the symphony of an enormous orchestra--all earth's instruments sound in it, and every instrument has many stops.

_King Lear_ is the greatest task Shakespeare ever set himself, the most extensive and the most imposing;--all the suffering and horror that can arise from the relation between a father and his children expressed in five acts of moderate length.

No modern mind has dared to face such a subject; nor could any one have grappled with it. Shakespeare did so without even a trace of effort, by virtue of the overpowering mastery which he now, in the meridian of his genius, had attained over the whole of human life. He handles his theme with the easy vigour that belongs to spiritual health, though we have here scene upon scene of such intense pathos that we seem to hear the sobs of suffering humanity accompanying the action, much as one hears by the sea-shore the steady plash and sob of the waves.

Under what conditions did Shakespeare take hold of this subject? The drama tells plainly enough. He stood at the turning-point of human life; he had lived about forty-two years; ten years of life still lay before him, but of these certainly not more than seven were intellectually productive. He now brought that which makes life worse than death face to face with that which makes life worth living--the very breath of our lungs and Cordelia-like solace of our suffering--and swept them both forward to a catastrophe that appals us like the ruin of a world.

In what frame of mind did Shakespeare set himself to this work? What was seething in his brain, what was moaning in his breast, at the time he chanced upon this subject? The drama tells plainly enough. Of all the different forms of cruelty, coarseness, and baseness with which life had brought him into contact, of all the vices and infamies that embitter the existence of the nobler sort of men, one vice now seemed to him the worst--stood out before him as the most abominable and revolting of all--one of which he himself, no doubt, had again and again been the victim--to wit, ingratitude. He saw no baseness more widespread or more indulgently regarded.

Who can doubt that he, immoderately enriched by nature, he whose very existence was, like that of Shelley's cloud, a constant giving, an eternal beneficence, a perpetual bringing of "fresh showers to the thirsting flowers"--who can doubt that such a giver on the grandest scale must again and again have been rewarded with the blackest ingratitude? We see, for instance, how _Hamlet_, so far his greatest work, was received with instant attack, with what Swinburne has aptly called "the jeers, howls, hoots and hisses of which a careful ear may catch some far, faint echo even yet--the fearful and furtive yelp from beneath of the masked and writhing poeticule."[1] His life passed in the theatre. We can very well guess, where we do not know, how comrades to whom he gave example and assistance; stage poets, who envied while they admired him; actors whom he trained and who found in him a spiritual father; the older men whom he aided, the young men whom he befriended--how all these would now fall away from him, now fall upon him; and each new instance of ingratitude was a shock to his spiritual life. For years he kept silence, suppressed his indignation, locked it up in his own breast. But he hated and despised ingratitude above all vices, because it at once impoverished and belittled his soul.

His was certainly not one of those artist natures that are free-handed with money when they have it, and confer benefits with good-natured carelessness. He was a competent, energetic business man, who spared and saved in order to gain an independence and restore the fallen fortunes of his family. But none the less he was evidently a good comrade in practical, a benefactor in intellectual, life. And he felt that ingratitude impoverished and degraded him, by making it hard for him to be helpful again, and to give forth with both hands out of the royal treasure of his nature, when he had been disappointed and deceived so often, even by those for whom he had done most and in whom he believed most. He felt that if there were any baseness which could drive its victim to despair, to madness, it was the vice of black ingratitude.

In such a frame of mind he finds, one day, when he is as usual turning over the leaves of his Holinshed, the story of King Lear, the great giver. In the same temper he reads the old play on the subject, dating from 1593-4, and entitled _Chronicle History of King Leir_. Here he found what he needed, the half-worked clay out of which he could model figures and groups. Here, in this superficially dramatised chronicle of appalling ingratitude, was the very theme for him to develop. So he took it to his heart and brooded over it till it quickened and came to life.

We can determine without difficulty the period during which Shakespeare was working at _King Lear_. Were it not clear from other reasons that the play cannot have been written before 1603, we should know it from the fact that in this year was published Harsnet's _Declaration of Popish Impostures_, from which he took the names of some of the fiends mentioned by Edgar (iii. 4). And it cannot have been produced later than 1606, for on the 26th December of that year it was acted before King James. This we know from its being entered in the Stationers' Register on the 26th of November 1607, with the addition "as yt was played before the kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas last." But we can get still nearer than this to the time of its composition. When Gloucester (i. 2) speaks of "these late eclipses," he is doubtless alluding to the eclipse of the sun in October 1605. And the immediately following remarks about "machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders" prevailing at the time, refer in all probability to the great Gunpowder Plot of November 1605.

Thus it was towards the end of 1605 that Shakespeare began to work at _King Lear_.

The story was old and well known. It was told for the first time in Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his _Historia Britonum,_ for the first time in English by Layamon in his _Brut_ about 1205. It came originally from Wales and bears a distinctly Celtic impress, which Shakespeare, with his fine feeling for all national peculiarities, has succeeded in retaining and intensifying.

He found all the main features of the story in Holinshed. According to this authority, Leir, son of Baldud, rules in Britain "at what time Joash reigned as yet in Juda." His three daughters are named Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla. He asks them how great is their love for him, and they answer as in the tragedy. Cordeilla, repudiated and disinherited, marries one of the princes of Gaul. When the two elder daughters have shamefully ill-treated Leir, he flees to Cordeilla. She and her husband raise an army, sail to England, defeat the armies of the two sisters, and reinstate Leir on his throne. He reigns for two more years; then Cordeilla succeeds to the throne--and this happens "in the yeere of the world 3155, before the bylding of Rome 54, Uzia then reigning in Juda and Jeroboam over Israell." She rules the kingdom for five years. Then her husband dies, and her sisters' sons rise in rebellion against her, lay waste a great part of the country, take her prisoner, and keep her strictly guarded. This so enrages Cordeilla, who is of a masculine spirit, that she takes her own life.

The material Shakespeare found in this tradition did not suffice him. The thoughts and imaginings which the story set astir within him led him to seek for a supplement to the action in the tale of Gloucester and his sons, which he took from Sir Philip Sidney's _Arcadia_, a book not yet twenty years old. With the story of the great giver, who is recompensed with ingratitude by his wicked daughters after he has banished his good daughter, he entwined the story of the righteous duke, who, deceived by slander, repudiates his good son, and is hurled by the bad one into the depths of misery, until at last his eyes are torn out of his head.

According to Sidney, some princes are overtaken by a storm in the kingdom of Galacia. They take refuge in a cave, where they find an old blind man and a youth, whom the old man in vain entreats to lead him to the top of a rock, from which he may throw himself down, and thus put an end to his life. The old man had formerly been Prince of Paphlagonia, but the "hard-hearted ungratefulness" of his illegitimate son had deprived him not only of his kingdom but of his eyesight. This bastard had previously had a fatal influence over his father. By his permission the Prince had given orders to his servants to take his legitimate son out into a wood and there kill him. The young man, however, escaped, went into foreign military service, and distinguished himself; but when he heard of the evils that had befallen his father, he hastened back to be a support to his hapless age, and is now heaping coals of fire upon his head. The old man begs the foreign princes to make his story known, that it may bring honour to the pious son,--the only reward he can expect.

The old drama of _King Leir_ had kept strictly to Holinshed's chronicle. It is instructive reading for any one who is trying to mete out the compass of Shakespeare's genius. A childish work, in which the rough outlines of the principal action, as we know them from Shakespeare, are superficially reproduced, it compares with Shakespeare's tragedy as the melody of Schiller's "An die Freude," played with one finger, compares with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And even this comparison does rather too much honour to the old drama, in which the melody is barely suggested.

[1] Swinburne: _A Study of Shakespeare_, p. 164.

XXVI

_KING LEAR--THE TRAGEDY OF A WORLD-CATASTROPHE_

I imagine that Shakespeare must, as a rule, have worked early in the morning. The division of the day at that time would necessitate this. But it can scarcely have been in bright morning hours, scarcely in the daytime, that he conceived _King Lear_. No; it must have been on a night of storm and terror, one of those nights when a man, sitting at his desk at home, thinks of the wretches who are wandering in houseless poverty through the darkness, the blustering wind, and the soaking rain--when the rushing of the storm over the house-tops and its howling in the chimneys sound in his ears like shrieks of agony, the wail of all the misery of earth.

For in _King Lear,_ and _King Lear_ alone, we feel that what we in our day know by the awkward name of the social problem, in other words, the problem of extreme wretchedness and want, existed already for Shakespeare. On such a night he says with Lear (iii. 4):--

"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these?"

And he makes the King add:--

"O! I have ta'en Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just."

On such a night was _Lear_ conceived. Shakespeare, sitting at his writing-table, heard the voices of the King, the Fool, Edgar, and Kent on the heath, interwoven with each other, contrapuntally answering each to each, as in a fugue; and it was for the sake of the general effect, in all its sublimity, that he wrote large portions of the tragedy which, in themselves, cannot have interested him. The whole introduction, for instance, deficient as it is in any reasonable motive for the King's behaviour, he took, with his usual sovereign indifference in unessential matters, from the old play.

With Shakespeare we always find that each work is connected with the preceding one, as ring is linked with ring in a chain. In the story of Gloucester the theme of _Othello_ is taken up again and varied. The trusting Gloucester is spiritually poisoned by Edmund, exactly as Othello's mind is poisoned by Iago's lies. Edmund calumniates his brother Edgar, shows forged letters from him, wounds himself in a make-believe defence of his father's life against him--in short, upsets Gloucester's balance just as Iago did Othello's. And he employs the very same means as Schiller's Franz Moor employs, two centuries later, to blacken his brother Karl in their old father's estimation. _Die Räuber_ is a sort of imitation of this part of _King Lear_; even the father's final blindness is copied.

Shakespeare moves all this away back into primeval times, into the grey days of heathendom; and he welds the two originally independent stories together with such incomparable artistic dexterity that their interaction serves to bring out more forcibly the fundamental idea and feeling of the play. He skilfully contrives that Gloucester's compassion for Lear shall provide Edmund with means to bring about his father's utter ruin, and he ingeninously invents the double passion of Regan and Goneril for Edmund, which leads the two sisters to destroy each other. He fills the tame little play of the earlier writer with horrors such as he had not presented since his youthful days in _Titus Andronicus_, not even shrinking from the tearing out of Gloster's eyes on the stage. He means to show pitilessly what life is. "You see how this world goes," says Lear in the play.

Shakespeare has nowhere else shown evil and good in such immediate opposition--bad and good human beings in such direct conflict with each other; and nowhere else has he so deliberately shunned the customary and conventional issue of the struggle--the triumph of the good. In the catastrophe, blind and callous Fate blots out the good and the bad together.

Everything centres in the protagonist, poor old, stupid, great Lear, King every inch of him, and every inch human. Lear's is a passionate nature, irritably nervous, all too ready to act on the first impulse. At heart he is so lovable that he arouses the unalterable devotion of the best among those who surround him; and he is so framed to command and so accustomed to rule, that he misses every moment that power which, in an access of caprice, he has renounced. For a brief space at the beginning of the play the old man stands erect; then he begins to bend. And the weaker he grows the heavier load is heaped upon him, till at last, overburdened, he sinks. He wanders off, groping his way, with his crushing fate upon his back. Then the light of his mind is extinguished; madness seizes him.

And Shakespeare takes this theme of madness and sets it for three voices--divides it between Edgar, who is mad to serve a purpose, but speaks the language of real insanity; the Fool, who is mad by profession, and masks the soundest practical wisdom under the appearance of insanity; and the King, who is bewildered and infected by Edgar's insane talk--the King, who is mad with misery and suffering.

As already remarked, it is evident from the indifference with which Shakespeare takes up the old material to make a beginning and set the play going, that all he really cared about was the essential pathos of the theme, the deep seriousness of the fundamental emotion. The opening scenes are of course incredible. It is only in fairy-tales that a king divides the provinces of his kingdom among his daughters, on the principle that she gets the largest share who can assure him that she loves him most; and only a childish audience could find it conceivable that old Gloucester should instantly believe the most improbable calumnies against a son whose fine character he knew. Shakespeare's individuality does not make itself felt in such parts as these; but it certainly does in the view of life, its course and character, which bursts upon Lear when he goes mad, and which manifests itself here and there all through the play. And Shakespeare's intellect has now attained such mastery, every passion is rendered with such irresistible power, that the play, in spite of its fantastic, unreal basis, produces an effect of absolute _truth_.

"_Lear_. A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?--Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar?

"_Gloster_. Ay, sir.

"_Lear_. And the creature run from the cur? There thou might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obey'd in office."

And then follow outbursts to the effect that the punisher is generally worse than the punished; the beadle flogs the loose woman, but the rascally beadle is as lustful as she. The idea here answers to that in _Measure for Measure_: the beadle should flog himself, not the woman. And then come complaints that the rich are exempt from punishment: dress Sin in armour of goldplate, and the lance of Justice will shiver against it. Finally, he concentrates his indictment of life in the words:--

"When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools."

We hear a refrain from _Hamlet_ running through all this. But Hamlet's criticism of life is here taken up by many voices; it sounds louder, and awakens echo upon echo.

The Fool, the best of Shakespeare's Fools, made more conspicuous by coming after the insignificant Clown in _Othello_, is such an echo--mordantly witty, marvellously ingenious. He is the protest of sound common-sense against the foolishness of which Lear has been guilty, but a protest that is pure humour; he never complains, least of all on his own account. Yet all his foolery produces a tragic effect. And the words spoken by one of the knights, "Since my young lady's going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away," atone for all his sharp speeches to Lear. Amongst Shakespeare's other master-strokes in this play must be reckoned that of exalting the traditional clown, the buffoon, into so high a sphere that he becomes a tragic element of the first order.

In no other play of Shakespeare's has the Fool so many proverbial words of wisdom. Indeed, the whole piece teems with such words: Lear's "'Ay' and 'no,' too, was no good divinity;" Edgar's "Ripeness is all;" Kent's "To be acknowledged, madam, is o'erpaid."

Whilst the elder daughters have inherited and over-developed Lear's bad qualities, Cordelia has fallen heir to his goodness of heart; but he has also transmitted to her a certain obstinacy and pride, but for which the conflict would not have arisen. His first question to her, and her answer to it, are equally wanting in tact. But as the action proceeds, we find that her obstinacy has melted away; her whole being is goodness and charm.

How touching is the passage where Cordelia finds her brainsick sire, and tends him until, by aid of the healing art, and sleep, and music, he slowly regains his health. Everything is beautiful here, from the first kiss to the last word. Lear is borne sleeping on to the stage. The doctor orders music to sound, and Cordelia says (iv. 7):--

"_Cor_. O my dear father! Restoration hang Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made! _Kent_. Kind and dear princess! _Cor_. Had you not been their father, these white flakes Had challeng'd pity of them. Was this a face To be oppos'd against the warring winds? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire."

He awakes, and Cordelia says to him:--

_Cor_. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty? _Lear_. You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave. Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead."

Then he comes to himself, asks where he has been, and where he is; is surprised that it is "fair daylight;" remembers what he has suffered:--

"_Cor_. O look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in benediction o'er me.-- No, sir, you must not kneel."

Notice this last line. It has its history. In the old drama of _King Leir_ this kneeling was made a more prominent feature. There the King and his faithful Perillus (so Kent was called in the old play) are wandering about, perishing with hunger and thirst, when they fall in with the King of Gaul and Cordelia, who are spying out the land disguised as peasants. The daughter recognises her father, and gives the starving man food and drink; then, when he is satisfied, he tells her his story in deep anguish of spirit:--

"_Leir_. O no men's children are vnkind but mine. _Cordelia_. Condemne not all, because of others crime, But looke, deare father, looke, behold and see Thy louing daughter speaketh vnto thee. (_She kneeles_). _Leir_. O, stand thou vp, it is my part to kneele, And aske forgiueness for my former faults. (_He kneeles_)."

The scene is beautiful, and there is true filial feeling in it, but it would be impossible on the stage, where two persons kneeling to each other cannot but produce a comic effect. The incident, indeed, actually occurs in some of Molière's and Holberg's comedies. Shakespeare understood how to preserve and utilise this (with all other traits of any value in his predecessor's work) in such a manner that only its delicacy remains, while its external awkwardness disappears. Lear says to Cordelia, when they have fallen into the hands of their enemies:--

"Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: _When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness._ So we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news."

The old play ends naïvely and innocently with the triumph of the good. The King of Gaul and Cordelia conduct Leir home again, tell the wicked daughters sharp truths to their faces, and thereupon totally rout their armies. Leir thanks and rewards all who have been faithful to him, and passes the remainder of his days in agreeable leisure under the care of his daughter and son-in-law.

Shakespeare does not take such a bright view of life. According to him, Cordelia's army is defeated, and the old King and his daughter are thrown into prison. But no past and no present adversity can crush Lear's spirit now. In spite of everything, in spite of the loss of power, of self-reliance, and for a time of reason, in spite of defeat in the decisive battle, he is as happy as an old man can be. He has his lost daughter again. Age had already isolated him. In the peace that a prison affords he will live not much more lonely than great age is of necessity, shut in with the object, now the sole object, of his love. It seems for a moment as though Shakespeare would say: "Happy is that man, even though he may be in prison, who in the last years of his life has the darling of his heart beside him."

But this is not the conclusion to which Shakespeare leads us. Edmund commands that Cordelia shall be hanged in prison, and the murderer executes his order.

The tragedy does not culminate till Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms. After a wild outburst of grief, he asks for a looking-glass to see if she still breathes, and in the pause that ensues Kent says:--

"Is this the promised end?"

And Edgar:--

"Or image of that horror?"

Lear is given a feather. He utters a cry of joy--it moves--she is alive! Then he sees that he has been mistaken. Curses follow, and after them this exquisite touch of characterisation:--

"Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman."

Then the disguised Kent makes himself known, and Lear learns that the two criminal daughters are dead. But his capacity for receiving new impressions is almost gone. He can feel nothing but Cordelia's death: "And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!" He faints and dies.

"_Kent_ Vex not his ghost: O let him pass! He hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer."

That this old man should lose his youngest daughter--this is the catastrophe which Shakespeare has made so great that it is with reason Kent asks: "Is this the promised end? Is this the end of the world?" In the loss of this daughter he loses all; and the abyss that opens seems wide enough and deep enough to engulph a world.

The loss of a Cordelia--that is the great catastrophe. We all lose, or live under the dread of losing, our Cordelia. The loss of the dearest and the best, of that which alone makes life worth living--that is the tragedy of life. Hence the question: Is this the end of the world? Yes it is. Each of us has only his world and lives with the threat of its destruction hanging over him. And in the year 1606 Shakespeare was in no mood to write other than dramas on the doom of worlds.

For the end of all things seems to have come when we see the ruin of the moral world--when he who is noble and trustful like Lear is rewarded with ingratitude and hate; when he who is honest and brave like Kent is punished with dishonour; when he who is merciful like Gloucester, taking the suffering and injured under his roof, has the loss of his eyes for his reward; when he who is noble and faithful like Edgar must wander about in the semblance of a maniac, with a rag round his loins; when, finally, she who is the living emblem of womanly dignity and of filial tenderness towards an old father who has become as it were her child--when she meets her death before his eyes at the hands of assassins! What avails it that the guilty slaughter and poison, each other afterwards? None the less is this the titanic tragedy of human life; there rings forth from it a chorus of passionate, jeering, wildly yearning, and desperately wailing voices.

Sitting by his fire at night, Shakespeare heard them in the roar of the storm against the window-pane, in the howling of the wind in the chimneys--heard all these terrible voices contrapunctually inwoven one with another as in a fugue, and heard in them the torture-shriek of suffering humanity.

XXVII

_ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA--WHAT ATTRACTED SHAKESPEARE TO THE SUBJECT_

If it is the last titanic tragedy of human life that has now been written, what is there more to add? There is nothing left to write. Shakespeare may lay down his pen.

So it would seem to us. But what is the actual course of events? what do we see? That for years to come, work follows work in uninterrupted succession. It is with Shakespeare as with all other great, prolific geniuses; time and again we think, "Now he has done his best, now he has reached his zenith, now he has touched the limit of his power, exhausted his treasury, made his crowning effort, his highest bid,"--when behold! he takes up a new work the day after he has let go the old; takes it up as if nothing had happened, unexhausted, unwearied by the tremendous task he has accomplished, fresh as if he had just arisen from repose, indefatigable as though he were only now setting forth with his name and fame yet to be won.

_King Lear_ makes a sensation among Shakespeare's impressionable audience; crowds flock to the theatre to see it; the book is quickly sold out--two quarto editions in 1608; all minds are occupied with it; they have not nearly exhausted its treasures of profundity, of wit, of practical wisdom, of poetry--Shakespeare alone no longer gives a moment's thought to it; he has left it behind and is deep in his next work.

A world-catastrophe! He has no mind now to write of anything else. What is sounding in his ears, what is filling his thoughts, is the crash of a world falling to ruin.

For this music he seeks out a new text. He has not far to seek; he has found it already. Since the time when he wrote _Julius Cæsar_, Plutarch has never been out of his hands. In his first Roman drama he depicted the fall of the world-republic; but in that world, as a whole, fresh, strong forces were still at work. Cæsar's spirit dominated it. We heard more of his greatness than we saw of it; but we could infer his true significance from the effects of his disappearance from the scene. And the republic still lived in spirits proud like Brutus, or strong like Cassius, and did not expire with them. By Brutus's side stood Cato's daughter, delicate but steadfast, the tenderest and bravest of wives. In short, there were still many sound elements in the body politic. The republic fell by historical necessity, but there was no decadence of mind, no degeneracy, no ruin.

But Shakespeare read on in his Plutarch and came to the life of Marcus Antonius. This he read first out of curiosity, then with attention, then with eager emotion. For here, here was the real downfall of the Roman world. Not till now did he hear the final, fatal crash of the old world-republic. The might of Rome, stern and austere, shivered at the touch of Eastern voluptuousness. Everything sank, everything fell--character and will, dominions and principalities, men and women. Everything was worm-eaten, serpent-bitten, poisoned by sensuality--everything tottered and collapsed. Defeat in Asia, defeat in Europe, defeat in Africa, on the Egyptian coast; then self-abandonment and suicide.

Again a poisoning-story like that of _Macbeth_. In Macbeth's case the virus was ambition, in Antony's it was sensuality. But the story of Antony, with its far-reaching effects, was a very much weightier and more interesting subject than the story of the little barbarian Scottish king. Macbeth was spiritually poisoned by his wife, a woman ambitious to bloodthirstiness, an abnormal woman, more masculine than her husband, almost a virago. She speaks of dashing out the brains of babes as of one of those venial offences which one may commit on an emergency rather than break one's word, and she undertakes without a tremor to smear the faces of the murdered King's servants with his blood. What is Lady Macbeth to us? What's Hecuba to us? And what was this Hecuba now to Shakespeare!

In a very different and more personal way did he feel himself attracted by Cleopatra. She poisons slowly, half-involuntarily, and in wholly feminine fashion, the faculty of rule, the generalship, the courage, the greatness of Antony, ruler of half the world--and her, Cleopatra, he, Shakespeare, knew. He knew her as we all know her, the woman of women, quintessentiated Eve, or rather Eve and the serpent in one--"My serpent of old Nile," as Antony calls her. Cleopatra--the name meant beauty and fascination--it meant alluring sensuality combined with finished culture--it meant ruthless squandering of human life and happiness and the noblest powers. Here, indeed, was the woman who could intoxicate and undo a man, even the greatest; uplift him to such happiness as he had never known before, and then plunge him into perdition, and along with him that half of the world which it was his to rule.

Who knows! If he himself, William Shakespeare, had met her, who knows if he would have escaped with his life? And had he not met her? Was it not she whom in bygone days he had met and loved, and by whom he had been beloved and betrayed? It moved him strongly to find Cleopatra described as so dark, so tawny. His thoughts dwelt upon this. He too had stood in close relation to a dark, ensnaring woman--one whom in bitter moments he had been tempted to call a gipsy; "a right gipsy," as Cleopatra is called in this play, by those who are afraid of her or angry with her. She of whom he never thought without emotion, his black enchantress, his life's angel and fiend, whom he had hated and adored at the same time, whom he had despised even while he sued for her favour--what was she but a new incarnation of that dangerous, ensnaring serpent of the Nile! And how nearly had his whole inner world collapsed like a soap-bubble in his association with, and separation from, her! That would indeed have been the ruin of a world! How he had revelled and writhed, exulted and complained in those days! played ducks and drakes with his life, squandered his days and nights! Now he was a maturer man, a gentleman, a landed proprietor and tithe-farmer; but in him still lived the artist-Bohemian, fitted to mate with the gipsy queen.

Three times in Shakespeare (_Romeo and Juliet_, ii. 4, and _Antony and Cleopatra_, i. 1, and iv. 12) Cleopatra is slightingly called _gipsy_, probably from the word's resemblance in sound to _Egyptian_. But there was a certain significance in this word-play; for the high-mindedness of the princess and the fickleness of the gipsy were mysteriously combined in her nature. And how well he knew this combination! The model for the great Egyptian queen stood living before his eyes. With the same palette which he had used not many years before to sketch the "dark lady" of the Sonnets, he could now paint this monumental historical portrait.

This figure charmed him, attracted him strongly. He came fresh from Cordelia. He had built up that whole titanic tragedy of _King Lear_ as a pedestal for her. And what is Cordelia? The ideal which one's imagination reads on a young girl's white brow, and which the young girl herself hardly understands, much less realises. She was the ray of white light--the great, clear symbol of the purity and nobility of heart which were expressed in her very name. He believed in her; he had looked into her innocent eyes, whose expression inspired him with the idea of her character; he had chanced upon that obstinate, almost ungracious truthfulness in young women, which seems to augur a treasure of real feeling behind it; but he had not known or associated with Cordelia in daily life.

Cleopatra, on the contrary, O Cleopatra! He passed in succession before his eyes the most feminine, and therefore the most dangerous, women he had known since he gained a footing in London, and he gave her the grace of the one, the caprices of the other, the teasing humour of a third, a fourth's instability; but deep in his heart he was thinking of one only, who had been to him all women in one, a mistress in the art of love and of awakening love, inciting to it as no other incited, and faithlessly betraying as no other betrayed--true and false, daring and frail, actress and lover without peer!

There were several earlier English dramas on the subject of Antony and Cleopatra, but only one or two of them are worth mentioning. There was Daniel's _Cleopatra_ of 1594 founded partly on Plutarch's Lives of Antonius and Pompeius, partly on a French book called the "History of the Three Triumvirates." Then there was a play entitled _The Tragedie of Antonie_, translated from the French by the Countess of Pembroke, the mother of Shakespeare's friend, in the year 1595. Shakespeare does not seem to have been indebted to either of these works, nor to any of the numerous Italian plays on the subject. He had none of them before him when he sat down to write his drama, which appears to have been acted for the first time shortly before the 20th of May 1608, on which day it is entered in the Stationers' Register as "a booke called _Anthony and Cleopatra_" by Edward Blount, one of the publishers who afterwards brought out the First Folio. It is probable, therefore, that the play was written during the course of the year 1607.

The only source, probably, from which Shakespeare drew, and from which he drew largely, was the Life of Marcus Antonius, in North's translation of Plutarch. It was on the basis of what he read there that he planned and executed his work, even where, as in the first act, he writes without in every point adhering to Plutarch. The farther the drama progresses the more closely does he keep to Plutarch's narrative, ingeniously and carefully making use of every touch, great or small, that appears to him characteristic. It is evident, indeed, that several traits are included merely because they are true, or rather because Shakespeare thinks they are true. At times he introduces quite unnecessary personages, like Dolabella, simply because he will not put into the mouth of another the message which Plutarch assigns to him; and it is very seldom that he permits himself even the most trifling alteration.

Shakespeare ennobled the character of Antony to a certain extent. Plutarch depicts him as a Hercules in stature, and inclined to ape the demigod by certain affectations of dress; a hearty, rough soldier, given to praising himself and making game of others, but capable, too, of enduring banter as well as praise. His inclination to prodigality and luxurious living made him rapacious, but he was ignorant of most of the infamies that were committed in his name. There was no craft in his nature, but he was brutal, recklessly profligate, and devoid of all sense of decency. A popular, light-hearted, free-handed general, who sat far too many hours at table--indifferent whether it were with his own soldiers or with princes--who showed himself drunken on the public street, and would "sleepe out his drunkennesse" in the light of day, degraded himself by the lowest debauchery, exhausted whole treasuries on his journeys, travelled with priceless gold and silver plate for his table, had chariots drawn by lions, gave away tens of thousands of pounds in a single gift; but in defeat and misfortune rose to his full height as the inspiriting leader who uncomplainingly renounced all his own comforts and kept up the courage of his men. Calamity always raised him above himself--a sufficient proof that, in spite of everything, he was not without a strain of greatness. There was something of the stage-king in him, something of the Murat, a touch of Skobeloff, and a suggestion of the mediæval knight. What could be less antique than his twice challenging Octavius to single combat? And in the end, when misfortune overwhelmed him, and those on whom he had showered benefits ungratefully forsook him, there was something in him that recalled Timon of Athens nursing his melancholy and his bitterness. He himself recognised the affinity.

Women, according to Plutarch, were Antony's bane. After a youth in which many women had had a share, he married Fulvia, the widow of the notorious tribune, Clodius. She acquired the mastery over him, and bent him to all her wishes, so that from her hand he passed into Cleopatra's, ready broken-in to feminine dominion.

According to Plutarch, moreover, Antony was endowed with a considerable flexibility of character. He was fond of disguising himself, of playing practical jokes. Once, for instance, on returning from a campaign, he, dressed as a slave, delivered to his wife, Fulvia, a letter telling of his own death, and then suddenly embraced her as she stood terror-struck. This was only one of many manifestations of his power of self-metamorphosis. Sometimes he would seem nerveless, sometimes iron-nerved; sometimes effeminate, sometimes brave to foolhardiness; now avid of honour, now devoid of honour; now revengeful, now magnanimous. This undulant diversity and changeableness in Antony fascinated Shakespeare. Yet he did not accept the character exactly as he found it in Plutarch. He threw into relief the brighter sides of it, building upon the foundation of Antony's inborn magnificence, the superb prodigality of his nature, his kingly generosity, and that reckless determination to enjoy the passing moment, which is a not uncommon attribute both of great rulers and great artists.

There was a crevice in this antique figure through which Shakespeare's soul could creep in. He had no difficulty in imagining himself into Antony's moods; he was able to play him just as, in his capacity of actor, he could play a part that was quite in his line. Antony possessed that power of metamorphosis which is the essence of the artist nature. He was at one and the same time a master in the art of dissimulation--see his funeral oration in _Julius Cæsar_, and in this play the manner in which he takes Octavia to wife--and an open, honest character; he was in a way faithful, felt closely bound to his mistress and to his comrades-in-arms, and was yet alarmingly unstable. In other words, his was an artist-nature.

Among his many contradictory qualities two stood out preeminent: the bent towards action and the bent towards enjoyment. Octavius says in the play that these two propensities are equally strong in him, and this is perhaps just about the truth. If, with his immense bodily strength, he had been still more voluptuously inclined, he would have become what in later history Augustus the Strong became, and Cleopatra would have been his Aurora von Königsmarck. If energy had been more strongly developed in him, then generalship and love of drink and dissipation would have combined in him much as they did in Alexander the Great, and Antony in Alexandria would have presented a parallel to Alexander in Babylon. The scales hung evenly balanced for a long time, until Antony met his fate in Cleopatra.

Shakespeare has endowed them both with extreme personal beauty, though neither of them is young. Antony's followers see in him a Mars, in her a Venus. Even the gruff Enobarbus (ii. 2) declares that when he saw her for the first time, she "o'erpictured that Venus where we see the fancy outwork nature." She is the enchantress whom, according to Antony, "everything becomes"--chiding, laughing, weeping, as well as repose. She is "a wonderful piece of work." Antony can never leave her, for, as Enobarbus says (ii. 2; compare Sonnet lvi.):--

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies; for vilest things Become themselves in her."

What matters it that Shakespeare pictures her to himself dark as an African (she was in reality of the purest Greek blood), or that she, with some exaggeration, calls herself old? She can afford to jest on the subject of her complexion as on that of her age:--

"Think on me That am with Phœbus amorous pinches black, And wrinkled deep in time."

She is what Antony calls her when he (viii. 2) exclaims in ecstasy, "O thou day o' the world!"

In person and carriage Antony is as if created for her. It is not only Cleopatra's passion that speaks when she says of Antony (v. 2)

"I dream'd there was an Emperor Antony ... His face was as the heavens ..."

And to the beauty of his face answers that of his voice:--

"Propertied As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends; But when he meant to quail and shake the orb, He was as rattling thunder."

She prizes his rich, generous nature:--

"For his bounty, There was no winter in't; and autumn 'twas, That grew the more by reaping: . . . . . . . In his livery Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropped from his pocket."

And just as Enobarbus maintained that Cleopatra was more beautiful than that pictured Venus in which imagination had surpassed nature, Cleopatra, in her exaltation after Antony's death, maintains that his glorious humanity surpassed what fancy can invent:--

"_Cleopatra_. Think you there was or might be such a man As this I dreamt of? _Dolabella._ Gentle madam, no. _Cleopatra_. You lie, up to the hearing of the gods. But, if there be, or ever were, one such, It's past the size of dreaming: nature wants stuff To vie strange forms with fancy; yet, to imagine An Antony, were nature's piece 'gainst fancy, Condemning shadows quite."

Not of an Antony should we speak thus now-a-days, but of a Napoleon in the world of action, of a Michael Angelo, a Beethoven, or a Shakespeare in the world of art.

But the figure of Antony had to be one which made such a transfiguration possible in order that it might be worthy to stand by the side of hers who is the queen of beauty, the very genius of love.

Pascal says in his _Pensées_: "Si le nez de Cléopâtre eût été plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé." But her nose was, as the old coins show us, exactly what it ought to have been; and in Shakespeare we feel that she is not only beauty itself, but charm, except in one single scene, where the news of Antony's marriage throws her into a paroxysm of unbeautiful rage. Her charm is of the sense-intoxicating kind, and she has, by study and art, developed those powers of attraction which she possessed from the outset, till she has become inexhaustible in inventiveness and variety. She is the woman who has passed from hand to hand, from her husband and brother to Pompey, from Pompey to the great Cæsar, from Cæsar to countless others. She is the courtesan by temperament, but none the less does she possess the genius for a single, undivided love. She, like Antony, is complex, and being a woman, she is more so than he. _Vir duplex, femina triplex._

From the beginning and almost to the end of the tragedy she plays the part of the great coquette. What she says and does is for long only the outcome of the coquette's desire and power to captivate by incalculable caprices. She asks where Antony is, and sends for him (i. 2). He comes. She exclaims: "We will not look upon him," and goes. Presently his absence irks her, and again she sends a messenger to remind him of her and keep him in play (i. 3)--

"If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick ..."

He learns of his wife's death. She would have been beside herself if he had shown grief, but he speaks with coldness of the loss, and she attacks him because of this:--

"Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see In Fulvia's death how mine received shall be."

This incalculability, this capriciousness of hers extends to the smallest matters. She invites Mardian to play a game of billiards with her (an amusing anachronism), and, finding him ready, she turns him off with: "I'll none now."

But all this mutability does not exclude in her the most real, most passionate love for Antony. The best proof of its strength is the way in which she speaks of him when he is absent (i. 5):--

"O Charmian! Where think'st thou he is now? Stands he, or sits he? Or does he walk? or is he on his horse? O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony! Do bravely, horse, for wott'st thou whom thou mov'st? The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm And burgonet of men."

So it is but the truth she is speaking when she tells with what immovable certainty and trust, with what absolute assurance for the future, love filled both her and Antony when they saw each other for the first time (i. 3):--

"No going then; Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor, But was a race of heaven."

Nor is it irony when Enobarbus, in reply to Antony's complaint (i. 2), "She is cunning past man's thought," makes answer, "Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love." This is literally true--only that the love is not pure in the sense of being sublimated or unegoistic, but in the sense of being quintessential erotic emotion, chemically free from all the other elements usually combined with it.

And outward circumstances harmonise with the character and vehemence of this passion. He lays the kingdoms of the East at her feet; with reckless prodigality, she lavishes the wealth of Africa on the festivals she holds in his honour.

XXVIII

_THE DARK LADY AS A MODEL--THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC A WORLD-CATASTROPHE_

Assuming that it was Shakespeare's design in _Antony and Cleopatra_, as in _King Lear_, to evoke the conception of a world-catastrophe, we see that he could not in this play, as in _Macbeth_ or _Othello_, focus the entire action around the leading characters alone. He could not even make the other characters completely subordinate to them; that would have rendered it impossible for him to give the impression of majestic breadth, of an action embracing half of the then known world, which he wanted for the sake of the concluding effect.

He required in the group of figures surrounding Octavius Cæsar, and in the groups round Lepidus, Ventidius, and Sextus Pompeius, a counterpoise to Antony's group. He required the placid beauty and Roman rectitude of Octavia as a contrast to the volatile, intoxicating Egyptian. He required Enobarbus to serve as a sort of chorus and introduce an occasional touch of irony amid the highflown passion of the play. In short, he required a throng of personages, and (in order to make us feel that the action was not taking place in some narrow precinct in a corner of Europe, but upon the stage of the world) he required a constant coming and going, sending and receiving of messengers, whose communications are awaited with anxiety, heard with bated breath, and not infrequently alter at one blow the situation of the chief characters.

The ambition which characterised Antony's past is what determines his relation to this great world; the love which has now taken such entire possession of him determines his relation to the Egyptian queen, and the consequent loss of all that his ambition had won for him. Whilst in a tragedy like Goethe's _Clavigo_, ambition plays the part of the tempter, and love is conceived as the good, the legitimate power, here it is love that is reprehensible, ambition that is proclaimed to be the great man's vocation and duty.

Thus Antony says (i. 2):

"These strong Egyptian fetters I must break, Or lose myself in dotage."

We saw that one element of Shakespeare's artist-nature was of use to him in his modelling of the figure of Antony. He himself had ultimately broken his fetters, or rather life had broken them for him; but as he wrote this great drama, he lived through again those years in which he himself had felt and spoken as he now made Antony feel and speak:

"A thousand groans, but thinking on thy face, One on another's neck, do witness bear, Thy black is fairest in my judgment's place." --(_Sonnet_ cxxxi.)

Day after day that woman now stood before him as his model who had been his life's Cleopatra--she to whom he had written of "lust in action":

"Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof,--and prov'd, a very woe." --(_Sonnet_ cxxix.)

He had seen in her an irresistible and degrading Delilah, the Delilah whom De Vigny centuries later anathematised in a famous couplet.[1] He had bewailed, as Antony does now, that his beloved had belonged to many:

"If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks, Be anchor'd in the bay where all men ride, . . . . . . Why should my heart think that a several plot Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?'' --(_Sonnet_ cxxxvii.)

He had, like Antony, suffered agonies from the coquetry she would lavish on any one she wanted to win. He had then burst forth in complaint, as Antony in the drama breaks out into frenzy:

"Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere; but in my sight, Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside: What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might Is more than my o'er-pressed defence can 'bide?" --(_Sonnet_ cxxxix.)

Now he no longer upbraided her; now he crowned her with a queenly diadem, and placed her, living, breathing, and in the largest sense true to nature, on that stage which was his world.

As in _Othello_ he had made the lover-hero about as old as he was himself at the time he wrote the play, so now it interested him to represent this stately and splendid lover who was nolonger young. In the Sonnets he had already dwelt upon his age. He says, for instance, in Sonnet cxxxviii.:

"When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor'd youth, Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, Although she knows my days are past the best, Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue."

When Antony and Cleopatra perished with each other, she was in her thirty-ninth, he in his fifty-fourth year. She was thus almost three times as old as Juliet, he more than double the age of Romeo. This correspondence with his own age pleases Shakespeare's fancy, and the fact that time has had no power to sear or wither this pair seems to hold them still farther aloof from the ordinary lot of humanity. The traces years have left upon the two have only given them a deeper beauty. All that they themselves in sadness, or others in spite, say to the contrary, signifies nothing. The contrast between their age in years and that which their beauty and passion make for them merely enhances and adds piquancy to the situation. It is in sheer malice that Pompey exclaims (ii. I):

"But all the charms of love, Salt Cleopatra, soften thy _waned_ lip!"

This means no more than her own description of herself as "wrinkled." And it is on purpose to give the idea of Antony's age, of which in Plutarch there is no indication, that Shakespeare makes him dwell on the mixed colour of his own hair. He says (iii. 9):

"My very hairs do mutiny; for the white Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them For fear and doting."

In the moment of despair he uses the expression (iii. II): "To the boy Cæsar send this grizzled head." And again, after the last victory, he recurs to the idea in a tone of triumph. Exultingly he addresses Cleopatra (iv. 8):

"What, girl! though grey Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha' we A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can Get goal for goal of youth."

With a sure hand Shakespeare has depicted in Antony the mature man's fear of letting a moment pass unutilised: the vehement desire to enjoy before the hour strikes when all enjoyment must cease. Thus Antony says in one of his first speeches (i. I):

"Now, for the love of Love and her soft hours.... There's not a minute of our lives should stretch Without some pleasure now."

Then he feels the necessity of breaking his bonds. He makes Fulvia's death serve his purpose of gaining Cleopatra's consent to his departure; but even then he is not free. In order to bring out the contrast between Octavius the statesman and Antony the lover, Shakespeare emphasises the fact that Octavius has reports of the political situation brought to him every hour, whilst Antony receives no other daily communication than the regularly arriving letters from Cleopatra which foment the longing that draws him back to Egypt.

As a means of allaying the storm and gaining peace to love his queen at leisure, he agrees to marry his opponent's sister, knowing that, when it suits him, he will neglect and repudiate her. Then vengeance overtakes him for having so contemptuously thrown away the empire over more than a third of the civilised world--vengeance for having said as he embraced Cleopatra (i. I):

"Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space."

Rome melts through his fingers. Rome proclaims him a foe to her empire, and declares war against him. And he loses his power, his renown, his whole position, in the defeat which he so contemptibly brings upon himself at Actium. In Cleopatra flight was excusable. Her flight in the drama (which follows Plutarch and tradition) is due to cowardice; in reality it was prompted by tactical, judicious motives. But Antony was in honour bound to stay. He follows her in the tragedy (as in reality) from brainless, contemptible incapacity to remain when she has gone; leaving an army of 112,000 men and a fleet of 450 ships in the lurch, without leader or commander. Nine days did his troops await his return, rejecting every proposal of the enemy, incapable of believing in the desertion and flight of the general they admired and trusted. When at last they could no longer resist the conviction that he had sunk his soldier's honour in shame, they went over to Octavius.

After this everything turns on the mutual relation of Antony and Cleopatra, and Shakespeare has admirably depicted its ecstasies and its revulsions. Never before had they loved each other so wildly and so rapturously. Now it is not only he who openly calls her "Thou day o' the world!" She answers him with the cry, "Lord of lords! O infinite virtue!" (iv. 8).

Yet never before has their mutual distrust been so deep. She, who was at no time really great except in the arts of love and coquetry, has always felt distrustful of him, and yet never distrustful enough; for though she was prepared for a great deal, his marriage with Octavia overwhelmed her. He, knowing her past, knowing how often she has thrown herself away, and understanding her temperament, believes her false to him even when she is innocent, even when, as with Desdemona, only the vaguest of appearances are against her. In the end we sea Antony develop into an Othello.

Here and there we come upon something in his character which seems to indicate that Shakespeare had been lately occupied with Macbeth. Cleopatra stimulates Antony's voluptuousness, his sensuality, as Lady Macbeth spurred on her husband's ambition; and Antony fights his last battle with Macbeth's Berserk fury, facing with savage bravery what he knows to be invincibly superior force. But in his emotional life after the disaster of Actium it is Othello whom he more nearly resembles. He causes Octavius's messenger, Thyreus, to be whipped, simply because Cleopatra at parting has allowed him to kiss her hand. When some of her ships take to flight, he immediately believes in an alliance between her and the enemy, and heaps the coarsest invectives upon her, almost worse than those with which Othello overwhelms Desdemona. And in his monologue (iv. 10) he raves groundlessly like Othello:

"Betray'd I am. O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,-- Whose eye beck'd forth my wars, and call'd them home, Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,-- Like a right gipsy, hath, at fast and loose, Beguil'd me to the very heart of loss."

They both, though faithless to the rest of the world, meant to be true to each other, but in the hour of trial they place no trust in each other's faithfulness. And all these strong emotions have shaken Antony's judgment. The braver he becomes in his misfortune, the more incapable is he of seeing things as they really are. Enobarbus closes the third act most felicitously with the words:

"I see still A diminution in our captain's brain Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason It eats the sword it fights with."

To tranquillise Antony's jealous frenzy, Cleopatra, who always finds readiest aid in a lie, sends him the false tidings of her death. In grief over her loss, he falls on his sword and mortally wounds himself. He is carried to her, and dies. She bursts forth:

"Noblest of men, woo't die? Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide In this dull world, which in thy absence is No better than a sty?--O! see, my women, The crown o' the earth doth melt."

In Shakespeare, however, her first thought is not of dying herself. She endeavours to come to a compromise with Octavius, hands over to him an inventory of her treasures, and tries to trick him out of the larger half. It is only when she has ascertained that nothing, neither admiration for her beauty nor pity for her misfortunes, moves his cold sagacity, and that he is determined to exhibit her humiliation to the populace of Rome as one of the spectacles of his triumph, that she lets the worm of Nilus give her her death.

In these passages the poet has placed Cleopatra's behaviour in a much more unfavourable light than the Greek historian, whom he follows as far as details are concerned; and he has evidently done so wittingly and purposely, in order to complete his home-thrust at the type of woman whose dangerousness he has embodied in her. In Plutarch all these negotiations with Octavius were a feint to deceive the vigilance with which he thought to prevent her from killing herself. Suicide is her one thought, and he has baulked her in her first attempt. She pretends to cling to her treasures only to delude him into the belief that she still clings to life, and her heroic imposture is successful. Shakespeare, for whom she is ever the quintessence of the she-animal in woman, disparages her intentionally by suppressing the historical explanation of her behavior.[2].

The English critic, Arthur Symons, writes: "_Antony and Cleopatra_ is the most wonderful, I think, of all Shakespeare's plays, and it is so mainly because the figure of Cleopatra is the most wonderful of Shakespeare's women. And not of Shakespeare's women only, but perhaps the most wonderful of women."

This is carrying enthusiasm almost too far. But thus much is true: the great attraction of this masterpiece lies in the unique figure of Cleopatra, elaborated as it is with all Shakespeare's human experience and artistic enthusiasm. But the greatness of the world-historic drama proceeds from the genius with which he has entwined the private relations of the two lovers with the course of history and the fate of empires. Just as Antony's ruin results from his connection with Cleopatra, so does the fall of the Roman Republic result from the contact of the simple hardihood of the West with the luxury of the East. Antony is Rome, Cleopatra is the Orient. When he perishes, a prey to the voluptuousness of the East, it seems as though Roman greatness and the Roman Republic expired with him.

Not Cæsar's ambition, not Cæsar's assassination, but this crumbling to pieces of Roman greatness fourteen years later brings home to us the ultimate fall of the old world-republic, and impresses us with that sense of _universal annihilation_ which in this play, as in _King Lear_, Shakespeare aims at begetting.

This is no tragedy of a domestic, limited nature like the conclusion of _Othello_; there is no young Fortinbras here, as in _Hamlet_, giving the promise of brighter and better times to come; the victory of Octavius brings glory to no one and promises nothing. No; the final picture is that which Shakespeare was bent on painting from the moment he felt himself attracted by this great theme--the picture of a world-catastrophe.

[1]

"Toujours ce compagnon dont le cœur n'est pas sûr, La Femme--enfant malade et douze fois impur."

[2] Goethe has a marked imitation of Shakespeare's Cleopatra in the Adelheid of Götz von Berlichingen. And he has placed Weislingen between Adelheid and Maria as Antony stands between Cleopatra and Octavia bound to the former and marrying the latter.

BOOK THIRD

I

_DISCORD AND SCORN_

Out of tune--out of tune!

Out of tune the instrument whereon so many enthralling melodies had been played--glad and gay, plaintive or resentful, full of love and full of sorrow. Out of tune the mind which had felt so keenly, thought so deeply, spoken so temperately, and stood so firmly "midst passion's whirlpool, storm, and whirlwind." His life's philosophy has become a disgust of life, his melancholy seeks the darkest side of all things, his mirth is grown to bitter scorn, and his wit is without shame.

There was a time when all before his eyes was green--vernally green, life's own lush, unfaded colour. This was followed by a period of gloom, during which he watched the shadows of life spread over the bright and beautiful, blotting out their colours. Now it is black, and worse than black; he sees the base mire cover the earth with its filth, and heeds how it fills the air with its stench.

Shakespeare had come to the end of his first great circumnavigation of life and human nature: an immense disillusionment was the result. Expectation and disappointment, yearning and content, life's gladness and holiday-making, battle mood and triumph, inspired wrath and desperate vehemence--all that once had thrilled him is now fused and lost in contempt.

Disdain has become a persistent mood, and scorn of mankind flows with the blood in his veins. Scorn for princes and people; for heroes, who are but fellow-brawlers and braggarts after all; and for artists, who are but flatterers and parasites seeking possible patrons. Scorn for old age, in whose venerableness he sees only the unction or hypocrisy of an old twaddler. Scorn for youth, wherein he sees but profligacy, slackness, and gullibility, while all enthusiasts are impostors, and all idealists fools. Men are either coarse and unprincipled, or so weakly sentimental as to be under a woman's thumb; and woman's distinguishing qualities are feebleness, voluptuousness, fickleness, and falsehood; a fool he who trusts himself to them or lets his actions depend upon them.

This mood has been growing on Shakespeare for some time. We have felt it grow. It shows first in _Hamlet_, but is harmless as yet in comparison with the scathing bitterness of later times. There is a breath, a whisper, in the "Frailty, thy name is Woman!" addressed to Hamlet's mother. Ophelia is rather futile than specially weak; she is never false, still less faithless. Even the inconstant Queen Gertrude can scarcely be called false. There was malignity and temper in that challenge of moral hypocrisy, _Measure for Measure_, and enough earnestness to overpower the comic, although not sufficient bitterness to make the peaceful conclusion impossible. The tragedy of _Macbeth_ was brought to a consoling end; the powers of good triumphed at the last.

There was only one malign character in _Othello_, evil indeed, but solitary. Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, &c., are all good at heart. There is no bitterness in _Lear_, no scorn of mankind, but sympathy and a wonderful compassion pervading and dominating all. Shakespeare has divided his own Ego among the characters of this play, in order to share with them the miseries and suffering of life on this earth; he has not gathered himself up to judge and despise.

It is from thenceforward that the undertone of contempt first begins to be felt. A period of some years follows, in which his being narrows and concentrates itself upon an abhorrence of human nature, accompanied, so far as we can judge, by a correspondingly enormous self-esteem. It is as though he had for a moment felt such a scorn for his surroundings of court and people, friends and rivals, men and women, as had nearly driven him wild.

We see the germs of it in _Antony and Cleopatra_. What a fool is this Antony, who puts his reputation and a world-wide dominion in jeopardy in order to be near a cold-blooded coquette, who has passed from hand to hand, and whose caprice puts on all the colours of the rainbow. We find it in full bloom in _Troilus and Cressida_. What a simpleton this Troilus, who, credulous as a child, devotes himself body and soul to a Cressida; a typical classic she, treachery in woman's form, as false and flighty as foam upon the waves, whose fickleness has become a by-word.

Shakespeare has now reached that point of departure where man feels the need of stripping woman of the glamour with which romantic naïveté and sensual attraction have surrounded her, and finds a gratification in seeing merely the sex in her. Sympathy with love, and a conception of woman as an object worthy of love, goes the way of all other sympathies and illusions at this stage. "All is vanity," says Kohélet, and Shakespeare with him. As in all artist souls, there was in his a peculiar blending of enthusiast and cynic. He has now parted with enthusiasm for a time, and cynicism is paramount.

Such an all-pervading change in the disposition and temper of a great personality was not without its reasons, possibly its one first cause. We can trace its workings without divining its origin, but we may seek to orient ourselves with regard to its conditions. Leverier came to the conclusion in 1846 that the disturbances in the path of Uranus were caused by something behind the planet which neither he nor anybody else had ever seen. He indicated its probable position, and three weeks afterwards Galle found Neptune on the very spot. Unfortunately, Shakespeare's history is so very obscure, and such fruitless search in every direction has been made after fresh documents, that we have no great hope of finding any new light.

We can but glance around the horizon of his life, and note how English circumstances and conditions grouped themselves about him. Material for cheering or depressing reflections can be found at all times, but the mind is not always equally prone to assimilate the cheering or depressing. Certain it is that Shakespeare has now elected to seek out and dwell upon the ugly and sorrowful, the unclean and the repulsive. His melancholy finds its nourishment therein, and his bitterness has learned to suck poison from every noxious plant which borders his path through life. His contempt of mankind and his weariness of existence swell and grow with each experience, and in the events and conditions of those years there was surely matter enough for abhorrence, rancour, and scorn.

II

_THE COURT--THE KING'S FAVOURITES AND RALEIGH_

Under the circumstances Shakespeare could do nothing but keep as close to King and Court as possible, even though the King's dreary, and the Court's profligate qualities grew year by year. James aspired to a comparison with Solomon for wisdom; he certainly resembled him in prodigality, and Henry III. of France in his susceptibility to manly beauty. His passion for his various favourites recalls that of Edward II. for Gaveston in Marlowe's drama. He was, says a chronicle of the time, as susceptible as any schoolgirl to handsome features and well-formed limbs in a man. The parallels his contemporaries drew between him and his predecessor on this score did not work out to his advantage. Elizabeth, they said, who was unmarried, loved only individuals of the opposite sex, all eminent men, whom, even then, she never allowed to rule her. James, on the contrary, was married, and yet entertained a passion for one _mignon_ after another, giving the most exalted positions in the country to these men, who were worthless and arrogant, and by whom he was entirely led. In our day Swinburne has characterised James as combining with "northern virulence and pedantry ... a savour of the worst qualities of the worst Italians of the worst period of Italian decadence." Was he, in truth, of Scotch descent on both sides? His exterior recalled little of his mother's charms, and still less those of the handsome Darnley. His contemporaries doubted. They neither believed that Darnley's jealousy was groundless, nor the modern embellishment that the Italian singer and private secretary's ugly face made any tender feeling on Mary Stuart's side quite impossible. The Scottish Solomon was invariably alluded to by the outspoken, jest-loving Henry IV. of France as "Solomon, the son of David" (Rizzio).

The general enthusiasm which greeted King James on his accession speedily gave way to a very decided unpopularity. Again and again, upon a score of different points, did he offend English national pride, sense of justice, and decency.

The lively Queen, who romped through the court festivities, and spent her days in dressing herself out for masquerades, had her favourites, much as the King had his. At one time, indeed, the same family served them both. The Queen set her affection on the elder brother, the Earl of Pembroke, and the King bestowed his upon the younger, whom he made Earl of Montgomery and Knight of the Garter. Whether he did not find the harmony of disposition for which he had looked, or whether the impression Montgomery made upon him was displaced by another and stronger, certain it is that no later than 1603 he was already violently infatuated with a youth of twenty, who afterwards became the most powerful man in Great Britain.

This was a young Scot, Robert Carr, who first attracted the King's attention by breaking his leg in a tourney at which James was present. He had as a lad been one of the King's pages at home in Scotland, had since pursued his fortunes in France, and was now in service with Lord Hay. The King gave special orders that he should be nursed at the castle, sent his own doctor to him, visited him frequently during his illness, and made him Knight and Gentleman of the Bedchamber as soon as he was convalescent. He kept him constantly about his person, and even took the trouble to teach him Latin. Step by step the young man was advanced until he stood among the foremost ranks of the country.

It was his nationality which specially offended the people, for Scottish adventurers swarmed about the King, and the Scots were still regarded as stranger-folk in England. The new title of Great Britain had also caused great discontent. Was the glorious name of England no longer to distinguish them? Scotch moneys were made current on English soil, and English ships were compelled to carry the cross of St. Andrew, with that of St. George upon their flags. Englishmen found themselves slighted, and were fearful that the Scot would creep into English lordships and English ladies' beds, as a contemporary writing expresses it. The conflicts in Parliament concerning the extension of national privileges to the Scotch were incessant. Bacon undertook the King's cause, and discreet and biblical objections were made that things would fall out as they did with Lot and Abraham. Families combined together, or were set at variance among themselves; and it grew to a case of, "Go you to the right? I go to the left."

In 1607 James observed that he intended to "give England the labour and the sweat, Scotland the fruit and the sweet;" and it was a notorious fact, that where his passions were concerned, the Scotch were persistently preferred to the English.

James, having meanwhile found it necessary to provide his favourite with estates, procured them in the following manner. When Raleigh came to grief, he had secured the revenues of his estate, Sherborne, to Lady Raleigh, and his son as heir to it after his death. A few months later the King's lawyers discovered a technical error in the deed of conveyance which rendered it invalid. Raleigh wrote from his prison to Salisbury, entreating the King not to deprive his family of their subsistence for the sake of a copyist's blunder. The King made many promises, and assured Raleigh that a new and correct deed should be drawn up. The imprisoned hero had begun, at about this time, to entertain renewed hope of freedom, for he believed that Christian IV., then on a visit to England, 1606, would intercede for him. But when Lady Raleigh, under this impression, threw herself on her knees before James at Hampton Court, the King passed her by without a word. From the year 1607 the King had resolved upon seizing Sherborne for his favourite. In 1608 Raleigh was required to prove right and title thereunto, and he possessed only the faulty document. At Christmastide, taking her two little sons by the hand, Lady Raleigh cast herself a second time before James, and implored him for a new and accurate deed. The only reply she obtained was a broad Scotch, "I maun hae the lond--I maun hae it for Carr." It is said that the high-spirited woman lost all patience upon this, and springing to her feet called upon God to punish the despoiler of her property. Raleigh, on the 2nd of January 1609, tried the more politic method of writing to Carr, entreating him not to aspire to the possession of Sherborne. He received no answer, and upon the 10th of the same month the estate was handed over to the favourite as a gift. It is to be regretted that Raleigh, who had never concealed his opinion of the King's favourites, should have lowered himself by writing to Carr as "one whom I know not, but by honourable fame."

Lady Raleigh accepted a sum of money in compensation, which bore no relation to the real value of Sherborne, and Raleigh was left in the Tower. It is a highly characteristic feature that he remained there year after year until he succeeded (in 1616) in arousing his kingly gaoler's cupidity afresh. In the hope of his finding the anticipated gold-mines in Guiana his prison doors were opened for a while (1616-17), and his failure to discover them was made a pretext for his execution.[1]

[1] "Sir Walter Raleigh was freed out of the Tower the last week, and goes up and down, seeing sights and places built or bettered since his imprisonment,"--Letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, 27th March 1616 ("The Court and Times of James the First"). Gardiner's "History of England," ii. 43; Gosse, "Raleigh," 172.

III

_THE KING'S THEOLOGY AND IMPECUNIOSITY--HIS DISPUTES WITH THE HOUSE OF COMMONS_

The King's interest in parsons and theological discussions was not a whit inferior to his passion for his favourites. He constantly gave public expression to a superstition which diverted even contemporary culture. It is jestingly alluded to in a letter from Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, dated Nov. 19, 1605. "His Majesty in his speech observed one principal point, that most of all his best fortunes had happened unto him upon the Tuesday; and particularly he repeated his deliverance from Gowry [the brothers Ruthven] and this [Gunpowder Plot], in which he noted precisely that both fell upon the fifth day of the month: and therefore concluded that he made choice that the next sitting of Parliament might begin upon a Tuesday." If James supported the claims of the clergy, it was less on religious grounds than because his own kingly power was thereby strengthened, and he disseminated, to the best of his ability, the doctrine that all questions must finally be referred to his personal wisdom and insight. Relations between the temporal and the spiritual jurisdictions were already strained. The secular judges frequently objected that the Spiritual Court entered into certain lawsuits before making sure that the case appertained to them. The clergy resisted, asserting that the two courts were independent of one another, and that their spiritual prerogatives emanated direct from the Crown. In 1605 the Archbishop of Canterbury complained of the secular judges to the King, and they, in their turn, appealed to Parliament. Fuller, a member of Parliament, and one of the principal advocates of the Puritan party, defended two of the accused who had been shamefully mishandled by the Spiritual Court (the High Commission), and he denied this "Popish authority," as he called it, any right to impose fines or inflict imprisonment. For these reckless utterances he was sent to gaol, and kept there until he retracted. The question of the supremacy of temporal jurisdiction over the spiritual began to ferment in the public mind. The King held by the latter, because it exercised an authority which Parliament was powerless to control, while Lord Chief Justice Coke stood by the former. On the latter giving vent, however, to the opinion, in the King's presence, that the sovereign was bound to respect the law of the land, and to remember that spiritual jurisdiction was extraneous, James clenched angry fists in his face, and would have struck him, had not Coke, alarmed, fallen on his knees and entreated pardon.

The King's ardent orthodoxy prompted him next to appear as a theological polemist. A certain professor of theology at Leyden, Conrad Vorstius by name, had, according to James's ideas, been guilty of heresy. It was of so slight a nature that, in spite of the rigid orthodoxy of the greater part of the Dutch theologians, it had raised no protest in Holland, since statesmen, nobles, and merchants were all agreed upon tolerance in matters of religion. James, however, made such a vindictive assault upon them, that, for fear of forfeiting their English alliance, they were compelled to give Vorstius his dismissal.

At the precise moment of James's full polemical heat against Vorstius, two unlucky Englishmen, Edward Wrightman and Bartholomew Legate, were convicted of holding heretical opinions. The latter admitted that he was an Aryan, and had not prayed to Jesus for many years. James was fire and flame. Elizabeth had burnt two heretics. Why shouldn't he? Public opinion saw no cruelty, but merely righteousness in such a proceeding, and they were both accordingly burned alive in March 1612.

It was one of the clerkly James's customs to issue proclamations. Among the first of these was a warning issued against the encroachments of the Jesuits, advising them of a date by which they must have decamped from his kingdom and country. Another very forcibly recommended unanimity of religion--that is to say, complete uniformity of ceremony. A bold priest, Burgess by name, preached a sermon in the King's presence, soon after this, on the insignificance of ceremonies. They resembled, he said, the glass of the Roman Senator, which was not worth a man's life or subsistence. Augustus, having been invited to a feast by this Senator, was greeted on his arrival by terrible cries. A slave, who had broken some costly glass, was about to be thrown into the fishpond. The Emperor bade them defer the punishment until he had inquired of his host whether he had glass worth a man's life. Upon the Senator answering that he possessed glass worth a province, Augustus asked to see it, and smashing it into fragments, remarked, "Better that it should all perish than that one man should die." "I leave the application to your Majesty."

The proclamations continued undiminished, however, and it became a favourite amusement of James to issue edicts forbidding lawful trades. This was the cause of much discontent, and appeal was made to the Lord Chief Justice. In 1610 two questions were, laid before Coke: whether the King could prohibit the erection of new houses in London by proclamation (a naïve notification had been issued with a view to preventing the "overdevelopment" of the capital), or forbid the manufacture of starch (in allusion to a manifesto limiting the uses of wheat to purposes of food). The answer was, returned that the King had neither power to create offences by proclamation, nor make trades, which did not legally subject themselves to judicial control, liable to punishment by the Star Chamber. After this ensued a temporary respite from edicts levying fines or threatening imprisonment.

The dissensions between King and People became so violent that they soon led to a complete rupture between James and the House of Commons, which would not submit to his highhanded levying and collecting of taxes in order to squander the money on his own pleasures and caprices. James, who required £500,000 to pay his debts, was made to endure a speech in Parliament concerning the prodigality of himself and favourites. An insulting rumour added that it had been said in the House that the King must pack all the Scots in his household back to the country whence they came. James, losing all patience, prorogued Parliament, and finally dissolved it in February 1611.

This was the beginning of a conflict between the Crown and the People which lasted throughout James's lifetime, causing the Great Revolution under his son, and being only finally extinguished seventy-eight years afterwards by the offer from both Houses of the Crown to William of Orange.

It was to no purpose that the King's revenues were increased year by year, by illegal taxation too: nothing sufficed. In February 1611 he divided £34,000 among six favourites, five of whom were Scotch. In the March of the same year he made Carr Viscount Rochester and a peer of England. For the first time in English history a Scot took his seat in the House of Lords, and a Scot, moreover, who had done his best to inflame the King against the Commons.

To relieve its pecuniary distress the Court hit upon the expedient of selling baronetcies. Every knight or squire possessed of money or estates to the value of a hundred a year could become a baronet, provided he were willing to disburse £1080 (a sum sufficient to support thirty infantry-men in Ireland for three years) in three yearly payments to the State coffers. This contrivance brought no very great relief, however. Either the extravagance was too reckless, or the seekers after titles were not sufficiently numerous.

Things had gone so far in 1614, that, in spite of the hitherto unheard-of sale of Crown property, James was at his wits' end for want of money. He owed £680,000, not to mention a yearly deficit of £200,000. The garrisons in Holland were on the point of mutinying for their pay, and the fleet was in much the same condition. Fortresses were falling into ruins for want of repair, and English Ambassadors abroad were fruitlessly writing home for money. It was once more decided to summon Parliament. In spite of the most shameless packing, however, the Commons came in with a strong Opposition; and they had much to complain of. The King, among other things, had given Lord Harrington the exclusive right of coining copper money, in return for his having lent him £300,000 at his daughter's wedding. He had also granted a monopoly of the manufacture of glass, and had given the sole right of trade with France to a single company.

The Upper House declined to meet the Lower on a common ground of procedure, and when Bishop Neile, one of the greatest sycophants the royal influence possessed in the Lords, permitted himself some offensive strictures on the Commons, such a storm broke loose among the latter that one member (an aristocrat), abused the courtiers as "spaniels" towards the King and "wolves" towards the people, and another went so far as to warn the Scotch favourites that the Sicilian Vespers might find a parallel in England.

James, who, in a lengthy peroration, had attempted to influence the Commons in his favour, saw that he had nothing to hope from them and dissolved Parliament in the following year.

In order to free him from debt, and to contrive, if possible, some means of supplying the sums swallowed up by the Government and Court, a scheme was devised of inducing private citizens to send money to the King, apparently of their own free will. The bishops inaugurated it by offering James their Church plate and other valuables. This example was followed by all who hoped or expected favours from the court; and a great number of people sent money to the Treasury at Whitehall. Thus the idea obtained that James should issue a summons for all England to follow this example. It seemed, at first, as if this self-taxation would bring in a good round sum. The King asked the city for a loan of £100,000, and it replied (very differently to the response it had made to Elizabeth) that they would rather give £10,000 than lend £100,000. In the course of little over a month £34,000 came in, but with that the stream ceased. Government wrote fruitlessly to all the counties and their officials, &c., to renew the summons. The sheriffs unanimously replied that if the King were to summon Parliament he would experience no difficulty in getting money. During two whole months only £500 came in. Fresh appeals were made and renewed pressure attempted without obtaining the desired results.

The luckless Raleigh, who had heard of these things in his prison, but was without adequate information from the outside world, wrote a pamphlet on the prerogatives of Parliament, full of good advice to the King, whom he assumed to be personally guiltless of the abuses his ministers practised in his name. He naïvely looked for his freedom in return for the tract, which naturally was suppressed.

The notorious Peckham case was another cause of popular ill-humour. In the course of this trial, a man who had been greatly exasperated by clerical and official demeanour, and had expressed himself indiscreetly thereon, was subjected to repeated torture on the pretext of a sermon which had never been preached or printed, but which an examination of his house had brought to light. Bacon degraded himself by urging on the executioners at the rack--a form of torture which had been abolished in common law, but was still considered legitimately applicable in political cases.

That James was personally cruel is shown, amongst other things, by his frequent pardons on the scaffold. He kept such men as Cobham, Grey, and Markham waiting two hours with the axe hanging over their heads, undergoing all the tortures of death, before they were informed that their execution had been deferred. The times, however, were as cruel as he. Through all the published letters of that period runs incessant mention of hanging, racking, breaking on the wheel, half hanging, and executions, without the least emotion being expressed. Any death gave invariable rise to suspicions of poison. Even when the King lost his eldest son, it was stubbornly believed that he had rid himself of him from jealousy of his popularity. As every death was attributed to foul play, so every disease or sickness was assigned to witchcraft. Sorcerers and witches were condemned and despised, but believed in, nevertheless, even by such men as Philip Sidney's friend, Fulk Greville, Lord Brook and Chancellor of the Exchequer under James. He obviously fully credits the witchcraft of which he speaks so disdainfully in his work, "Five Years of King James's Government."

IV

_THE CUSTOMS OF THE COURT_

The tone of the Court was vicious throughout. Relations between the sexes were much looser than would have been expected under a king who, in general, troubled himself little about women. We find a description in Sir Dudley Carleton's letters of a bridal adventure, which ended in the King going in night-gear to awaken the bride next morning and remaining with her some time, "in or upon the bed, chuse which you will believe." James spoke of the Queen in public notices as "Our dearest bedfellow." In the half-imbecile, half-obscene correspondence between James and Carr's successor, Buckingham, the latter signs himself, "Your dog," while James addresses him as "Dog Steenie." The King even calls the solemn Cecil, "little beagle;" and the Queen, writing to Buckingham to beg him intercede with the King for Raleigh's life, addresses him as "my kind dog."

With personal dignity, all decency also was set aside. Even the elder Disraeli, James's principal admirer and apologist, acknowledges that the morals of the Court were appalling, and that these courtiers, who passed their days in absolute idleness and preposterous luxury, were stained by infamous vices. He quotes Drayton's lines from the "Mooncalf," descriptive of a lady and gentleman of this circle--

"He's too much woman, and she's too much man."

Neither does he deny the contemporary Arthur Wilson's account of many young girls of good family, who, reduced to poverty by their parents' luxurious lives, looked upon their beauty as so much capital. They came up to London in order to put themselves up for sale, obtained large pensions for life, and ultimately married prominent and wealthy men. They were considered sensible, well-bred women, and were even looked upon as _esprits forts_. The conversation of the men was so profligate, that the following sentiment, less decently expressed, must have been frequently heard: "I would rather that one should believe I possessed a lady's favours, though I did not, than really possess them when none knew thereof."

Gondomar, the Spanish envoy, played an important part at the Court of King James. Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, Count of Gondomar, was one of the first diplomatists of Spain. He must have lacked the intuitions of a statesman, in so far as he flattered himself that England could be brought back to Roman Catholicism, but he was a past-master in the art of managing men. He knew how to awe by rare firmness of decision and how to win by exemplary suppleness; he knew when to speak and when to be silent; and, finally, he understood how to further his master's aims by the most intelligent means. He had as free access to James as any English courtier, having acquired it by lively sallies and by talking bad Latin, in order to give the King an opportunity of correcting him.

Ladies of rank crowded on to their balconies to attract this man's attention as he rode or drove to his house; and it appears, says Disraeli, that any one of them would have sold her favours for a good round sum. Noticeable among these ladies of title, says Wilson, were many who owned some pretensions to wit, or had charming daughters or pretty nieces, whose presence attracted many men to their houses. The following anecdote made considerable noise at the time, and has been variously repeated. In Drury Lane, Gondomar, one day, passed the house of a charming widow, a certain Lady Jacob. He saluted her, and was amazed to find that in return to his greeting she merely moved her mouth, which she opened, indeed, to a very great extent. He was profoundly astonished by this lack of courtesy, but reflected that she had probably been overtaken by a fit of the gapes. The same thing occurring, however, on the following day, he sent one of his retinue to inform her that English ladies were usually more gracious than to return his greeting in such an outrageous manner. She replied, that being aware that he had acquired several good graces for a handsome sum, she had wished to prove to him that she also had a mouth which could be stopped in the same fashion. Whereupon he took the hint, and immediately despatched her a present.

In all this, however, the women merely followed the example of the men. The English Ambassador at Madrid had long been aware of, and profited by, the possibility of buying the secrets of the Spanish Government at comparatively reasonable prices. In May 1613, however, he discovered that Spain, in the same manner, annually paid large sums to a whole series of eminent persons in England. He saw, to his disgust, the name of the English Admiral, Sir William Monson, among the pensioners of Spain, and learned, to his consternation, that the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Salisbury, had been in her pay up to the moment of his death. In the following December he obtained a complete list of men enjoying Spanish pay, and was thunderstruck on reading the names of men whose integrity he had never doubted, and who were filling the highest offices of state. Not daring to trust the secret to paper, correspondence by no means being considered inviolable in those days, he applied for permission to bring the disgraceful information to James in person.

V

_ARABELLA STUART AND WILLIAM SEYMOUR_

An event occurring in the royal family (concerning which Gardiner observes that, in our day, such a thing would rouse the wrath of the British people from one end of the kingdom to the other) serves to illustrate both the heartlessness of the King and the lawless condition of the people.

Arabella Stuart, who was King James's cousin, had possessed her own appanage from the time of Queen Elizabeth. She had her apartments in the Palace, and associated with the Queen's ladies. Her letters show a refined and lovable woman's soul, absolutely untroubled by any political ambition. She says in a letter to her uncle Shrewsbury that she wishes to refute the apparent impossibility of a young woman's being able to preserve her purity and innocence among the follies with which a court surrounds her. She is alluding, amongst other things, to one of the eternal masquerades through which the Queen and her ladies racketed, attired, upon this occasion, "as sea nymphs or nereids, to the great delight of all beholders" (Arthur Wilson's "History of Great Britain," 1633). She kept apart as much as possible from this whirl of gaiety, and the various foreign potentates who applied for her hand were all dismissed. She would not, she said, wed a man whom she did not know. Nevertheless it was rumoured that she intended to marry some foreign prince who would enforce her rights to the English throne. James sent her to the Tower at Christmas 1609 on account of this report, and summoned the Council. The misunderstanding was cleared up, and she was hastily set at liberty, James expressly assuring her that he would have no objection to her marrying a subject.

A few weeks after she learned to know and love the man to whom she devoted herself with a passion and fidelity which recalls that of Imogen for Posthumus in Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_. This was young William Seymour, a son of Lord Beauchamp, one of the first noblemen in England. He was received in her apartments, and obtained her promise in February, the King's assurance to Arabella giving them every security for the future. Nevertheless, the young Princess's choice could not have fallen more unfortunately. Lord Beauchamp was the son of the Earl of Hertford and Catherine Grey, the inheritress of the Suffolk rights to the throne. The Earl's eldest son was still alive, and William Seymour had no claim to the crown at the moment; but the fact that his brother might die childless made him an always possible pretender. The Suffolk claims had been recognised by Act of Parliament, and the Parliament which had acknowledged James was powerless to change the succession. In the face of this notorious fact, James ignored the consideration that neither Seymour and Arabella, nor any one else, wanted to deprive him of the throne in favour of the young pair. Both were summoned before the Council and examined.

Seymour was made to renounce all thought of marriage with Arabella, and the young couple did not see each other for three months. In May 1610, however, they were secretly married.

When the news reached James's ears in July, he was furious. Arabella was detained in custody at Lambeth, and Seymour was sent to the Tower.

Arabella strove in vain to touch the King's heart. Great sympathy was felt in London, however, for the young couple, and secret meetings were permitted them by their gaolers. When the correspondence between them was discovered, Arabella was commanded to travel to Durham and put herself under the care of its Bishop. On her refusal to quit her apartments, she was carried away by force. Falling ill on the journey, she was given permission to pause by the way, and, attiring herself like one of Shakespeare's heroines, she seized the opportunity to escape. She drew on a pair of French trousers over her skirt, put on a man's coat and high boots, wore a manly wig with long curls over her hair, set a low-flapped black hat upon her head, threw a short cloak, around her, and fastened a small sword at her side. Thus disguised, she fled by horse to Blackwall, where a French ship awaited her and Lord Seymour, the latter having arranged his escape for the same time. An accident prevented their meeting, and Arabella's friends, growing impatient, insisted, in spite of her protests, on setting out at once. When Seymour arrived next day, he learned to his disappointment, that the ship had set sail. He succeeded, however, in getting put over to Ostend. Meanwhile, Arabella, a few miles from Calais, induced the captain to lay-to for an hour or so to give Seymour an opportunity of overtaking them. They were here surprised by an English cruiser, which had been sent from Dover to capture the fugitives, and Arabella was brought back to the Tower. When she implored pardon, James brutally replied that she had eaten forbidden fruit, and must pay the price of her disobedience. Despair deprived her of her reason, and she died miserably, after five years of imprisonment. Not until after her death was her husband permitted to return to England.

VI

_ROCHESTER AND LADY ESSEX_

It was Rochester who was the real ruler of England all this time. He was the acknowledged favourite; to him every suitor applied and from him came every reward. He was made head of the Privy Council after the death of Lord Dunbar, and was nominated Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, a title which gave him great prestige in his native country. He was also made Baron Brandspech, and, in accordance with the general expectation, Viscount Rochester and Knight of the Garter. The only decided opposition he had to encounter was that of young Prince Henry, the nation's darling, who could not endure his arrogant way, and was, moreover, his rival in fair ladies' favours. After the death of the Prince, Rochester was more powerful than ever. As principal Secretary, Carr managed all the King's correspondence, and on more than one occasion he answered letters without consulting either King or Council. The King, if he was aware of this, had reached such a pitch of infatuation that he submitted to everything. Carr was given a new title in 1613 and the Viscount Rochester was made Earl of Somerset. In 1614 the King made him Lord Chamberlain "because he loved him better than all men living." In the interim he had been appointed Keeper of the Seals and Warden of the Cinque Ports.

It was from such a height as this that he fell, and the circumstances of his overthrow form perhaps the most interesting events, from a psychological point of view, of James' reign. They made a great impression on contemporary minds, and occupy a large space in the letters of the period--letters in which Shakespeare's name is never mentioned and of whose very existence their historico-polemical writers do not seem to have been aware.

It was one of James's ambitions on his coming to England to put an end to the feuds and dissensions which were rife among the great families. To this end he arranged a match between Essex's son, and a daughter of the house which had ruined his father and driven him to death. In January 1608, accordingly, the fourteen-year-old Earl was married to the Lady Frances Howard, just thirteen years of age, and he thus became allied with the powerful houses of Howard and Cecil. Mr. Pory wrote to Sir Robert Cotton on the occasion of the marriage, "The bridegroom carried himself as gravely and as gracefully as if he were of his father's age."

The Church in those times sanctioned these marriages between children, but every sense of fitness demanded that they should be immediately parted. Young Essex was sent on foreign travel, and did not return to claim his bride until he was eighteen. He was a solidly built youth, possessed of a heavy and imperturbably calm disposition. Frances, on the other hand, was obstinately and stormily passionate in both her likes and dislikes. She had been brought up by a coarse and covetous mother, and early corrupted by contact with the vices of the Court. She took a deep dislike to her youthful bridegroom from the first and refused to live with him. Her relations, however, compelled her to accompany him to his estate, Chartley.

She had previously attracted the attention of both Prince Henry and the favourite Rochester. Expecting more from Rochester, as a contemporary document explains, than from the unprofitable attentions of the Prince, she chose the former, a fact which can hardly have failed to augment the ill-will already existing between the King's son and the King's friend. From the moment of her choice all the passionate intensity of her nature was concentrated upon avoiding any intercourse with her husband and in assuring Rochester that his jealousy on that score was groundless.

She chose for her confidante a certain Mrs. Turner, a doctor's widow, who, after leading a dissipated life, was settling down to a reputation for witchcraft. Lady Essex begged some potion of her which should chill the Earl's ardour, and this not working to her satisfaction, she wrote the following letter to her priestess, which was later produced at the trial and made public by Fulk Greville:--

"Sweet Turner, as thou hast been hitherto, so art thou all my hopes of good in this world. My Lord is lusty as ever he was, and hath complained to my brother Howard, that hee hath not layne with mee, nor used mee as his wife. This makes me mad, since of all men I loath him, because he is the only obstacle and hindrance, that I shall never enjoy him whom I love."

Upon the Earl's complaining a second time, the two applied to a Dr. Forman, quack and reputed sorcerer, for some means of causing an aversion (frigidity _quoad hanc_) in the Earl. The mountebank obligingly performed all manner of hocus-pocus with wax dolls, &c., and these in their turn failing, Lady Essex wrote to him:--

"Sweet Father, although I have found you ready at all times to further mee, yet must I still crave your helpe; wherefore I beseech you to remember that you keepe the doores close, and that you still retaine the Lord with mee and his affection towards mee. I have no cause but to be confident in you, though the world be against mee; yet heaven failes mee not; many are the troubles I sustaine, the doggednesse of my Lord, the crossenesse of my enemies, and the subversion of my fortunes, unlesse you by your wisdome doe deliver mee out of the midst of this wildernesse, which I entreat for God's sake. From Chartley.--Your affectionate loving daughter, FRANCES ESSEX."

In the beginning of the year 1613, a woman named Mary Woods accused Lady Essex of attempting to bribe her to poison the Earl. The accusation came to nothing, however, and the Countess soon afterwards tried a new tack. It was now three years since her husband's return from abroad, and if she could succeed in convincing the Court that the marriage had never been consummated there was some chance of its being declared void. Having won her father and her utterly unscrupulous uncle, the powerful Lord Northampton, to her side, she induced the latter, who played Pandarus to this Cressida, to represent the situation to the King. James, loving Rochester as much as ever, and taking a pleasure in completing the happiness of those he loved, lent a willing ear. Northampton and Suffolk both took the matter up warmly, clearly seeing how advantageous an alliance with Carr, whom they had hitherto regarded as an enemy, would be to their plans. A meeting between the relatives of both parties was arranged. It consisted of the Earls of Northampton and Suffolk on Lady Essex's side, and the Earl of Southampton and Lord Knollys on her husband's. Essex, while resolved not to make any declaration which might prove an obstacle to his marrying again, fully conceded that he was not qualified to be this particular lady's husband. A commission of clergy and lawyers was therefore appointed to inquire into the matter.

A committee was nominated of six midwives and ten Godfearing matrons of rank, who had all borne children, to ascertain if Lady Essex was, as she asserted, a virgin. The lady's modesty insisted upon being closely veiled during the examination, which naturally gave rise to a rumour that another woman had been substituted.

The examination, which terminated in favour of the plaintiff, convinced none but those who had undertaken it, and was the occasion of much coarse-grained jesting.

With considerable impudence, Lady Essex maintained that her husband had been deprived of his manhood by witchcraft; but she was careful not to mention either Dr. Forman or herself as the instigators of this sorcery. Several members of the commission were prepared beforehand to declare the marriage void, it having been made worth their while to fall in with the wishes of the King and his favourite. Archbishop Abbot, however, an independent spirit, insisted from the first that it was utterly improbable that witchcraft could produce the assigned result, and urged that in accommodating the Countess they were establishing a precedent of which any childless wife could take advantage. The votes being equal, Abbot petitioned the King to allow his withdrawal. James, however, appointed two new members, both bishops, instead, and thus made the votes 7 to 5 in favour of "nullity." Abbot, as the result of his protest, became for a while the most popular man in England. Bishop Neile, who had always been despised, sank still lower in the public esteem, and Bishop Bilson of Winchester, of whom better things had been expected, was overwhelmed with ridicule. His son, whom the King knighted in order to reward his father, was acclaimed by general consent, Sir Nullity Bilson.

Throughout his whole career, and in his late relations with Lady Essex, Rochester had been guided by an intimate and capable adviser, Sir Thomas Overbury. He had assisted Rochester in the composition of his love-letters to the Countess, and he knew a great deal too much about the secret meetings, which he had himself arranged, between the lovers at Paternoster Row, Hammersmith, &c. When he learned that Rochester intended to supplement the connection by marriage, he strove by every means in his power to prevent it. He had been accustomed to dictate to his master in everything, but Rochester had now grown restive, and was resolved, by fair means or foul, on freeing himself from this control. To this end the King was given to understand that it was a common jest that Rochester managed the King, but Overbury ruled Rochester. In order to get rid of him in an honourable manner, he was appointed to some official post abroad. Overbury, however, whose ambition bound him to England, detected that this was but a mild form of banishment, and strove to excuse himself, finally declining outright. This was considered a breach of a subject's duty by James, and, upon the advice of the favourite, Overbury was sent to the Tower. Rochester now began to play a double game, and while assuring the prisoner that he was doing his utmost to obtain his release, he was, in reality, concentrating all his influence upon keeping him where he was. It was necessary to befool Overbury into thinking he had reason to be grateful to him, in case the prisoner should one day be released, and should wish to reveal all that Rochester was most anxious to keep concealed.

It was commanded from the first that Overbury should have no contact whatever with the outside world, an order which speaks for itself. When, however, the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir William Wood, interpreted these directions so literally that he refused Rochester's own messengers access, it became necessary to replace him by the more amenable Sir Gervase Helwys.

Lady Essex, who was not the woman for half measures, preferred to make certain of Overbury once for all, and was determined that he should never leave the Tower alive. For this purpose she again applied to Mrs. Turner, who was well supplied with means serviceable to the occasion. The first thing necessary was to assure themselves of the man to whose immediate care the prisoner was intrusted. Lady Essex applied to Sir Thomas Monson, Master of the Tower Armoury, and through his influence Helwys was induced to dismiss Overbury's attendant and supply his place with Richard Weston, a former servant of Anne Turner.

This man was instructed by Mrs. Turner to meet Lady Essex at Whitehall, and to receive from her a little phial whose contents were to be mixed with the prisoner's food. Meeting Helwys on his way to Overbury's cell, and supposing him to be initiated into the secret, Weston consulted him as to the best way of administering the poison. Helwys, horror-stricken, prevailed upon him to throw away the contents of the phial. He was in too much awe of the Howard family to venture an accusation, and Weston at his instigation told Lady Essex that the poison had been duly administered, and that the prisoner's health was failing in consequence. Overbury was, in truth, suffering greatly from the frustration of his hopes of release, and he naïvely requested Rochester to send him an emetic in order that the King, hearing of his sickness, might be moved to compassion. It is not known what kind of medicament Rochester sent, nor whether he was aware of Lady Essex's attempt, but he seems to have played his own hand on this occasion.

On finding that Overbury, in spite of his steadily failing health, still continued to live, Lady Frances renewed her activity. Rochester was sending sweetmeats, jellies, and wines to the prisoner, and Lady Essex mixed poison with all these condiments, quite unconscious of the fact that Helwys, now upon the alert, took care that none of them should reach the prisoner. Losing all patience, she looked round for some more certain means than this poison, which worked with such astonishing and irritating deliberation. Learning that the apothecary Franklin was attending Overbury, she bribed his boy to give the sick man a poisoned injection. This was done, and the prisoner died in the Tower on the following day. Northampton immediately spread about a report that Sir Thomas Overbury had by no means led such a secluded life in the Tower as was generally supposed, but had by his dissolute life there contracted a disease of which he died. The rumour was generally believed, but that some suspicions were entertained can be seen in the letters of the times. John Chamberlain, writing to Sir Dudley Carleton on the 14th October 1613, speaks of Overbury's death as being caused by this disease, "or something worse."

Thus the last obstacle was cleared from the path which led this brilliant pair to the altar. Lady Frances was happy, and much farther removed from any feeling of remorse than Lady Macbeth. The King was full of affection for her, and, in order that she might not be wanting her title of Countess, Rochester was made Earl of Somerset. The wedding was celebrated with inordinate pomp on the 26th December 1613. The bride had the assurance to appear with maidenly hair unbound upon her shoulders. John Chamberlain, writing to Mrs. Alice Carleton, December 30th, says, "She was married in her hair, and led to the chapel by her bridemen, a Duke of Saxony that is here, and the Earl of Northampton, her great-uncle." The wedding was celebrated in the Chapel Royal, in the same place and by the same bishop who had solemnised the previous marriage. King, Queen, and Archbishop were all present, not to mention those of the nobility who wished to stand well with the King and his favourite, and rich gifts were brought by all. Gondomar, wishing to show himself attentive to so highly favoured a pair, sent them some magnificent jewels. The City of London, the Merchant Adventurers, the East India Company, and the Customs sent each their present of precious metals of great value. Gold, silver, and jewels were showered upon them throughout the first half of January 1614. Bacon, though personally no admirer of Somerset, naturally did not hold back. It is very significantly remarked in a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, December 23, 1613, "Sir Francis Bacon prepares a masque to honour the marriage, which will stand him in about £2000, and though he have been offered some help by the House, and especially by Mr. Solicitor, Sir Henry Yelverton, who would have sent him £500, yet he would not accept it, but offers them the whole charge with the honour." A few years later it is Bacon who conducts the poisoning case against Rochester.

The day following the wedding the King sent a message to the Lord Mayor, inviting him to arrange a fête for Lord and Lady Somerset. The City vainly endeavoured to excuse itself on the ground of insufficient space, but the King himself suggested a remedy, and it was arranged that the guests should go in procession from Westminster to the City, the gentlemen on horseback and the ladies in carriages. The bride was pleased to consider her carriage suitable to the occasion, but not being satisfied with her horses, she sent to borrow Lord Winwood's. He, replying that it did not beseem so great a lady to borrow, gallantly begged her acceptance of the horses as a gift.

Macaulay has likened this Court to that of Nero, and Swinburne has added that these celebrations recall the bridals of Sporus and Locusta. Chapman had already inscribed to Rochester two of the dedicatory sonnets which accompanied the last books of his translation of the Iliad, and filled them with absurdly exaggerated praise of the Viscount's "heroic virtues." He now wrote his "Andromeda Liberata" in glorification of the nuptials, and on his being attacked on that score, he retorted with his exceedingly naïve "Defence of Perseus and Andromeda."

Life with Lady Frances could have no beneficial effect upon Somerset's character. Nothing was magnificent enough for him, and he was constantly importing new fashions in order to please his master and his wife. That ingenuously moralising historian, Arthur Wilson, complains bitterly of his appearance, his curled and perfumed locks, smooth shaven face and bare neck, and the golden embroideries lavished upon his attire. His only occupation was to solicit estates and money of the King. The subjects supplied him handsomely, for every petitioner paid tribute to Somerset. How much he received in this manner is uncertain, but he spent not less than £90,000 a year. It may be said to his credit, that he never, as did the later favourites, sought to tamper with the law, and he now and then displayed some generosity, but it was the exactions of his Howard connections which ruined him. The Council's most honourable members, amongst whom was Shakespeare's patron, Pembroke, saw with indignation that he predisposed the King in favour of their rivals.

His successor appeared in 1614. George Villiers, a young, handsome man of lively disposition, was promoted step by step, yet not too hastily, for fear of wounding Somerset's feelings. His presence at Court, however, was exceedingly disagreeable to the latter, who treated his rival with cold insolence, and seized every opportunity of humbling him. Somerset's passionate temper and arrogant disposition soon betrayed him into treating the King with similar superciliousness. He was rebuked by James, and a temporary reconciliation was effected; but how far Carr was from the enjoyment of a clear conscience is shown by his soliciting a general pardon, such as Wolsey had received from Henry VIII., from the King at this time, which was to include every possible offence, not forgetting murder. This, he pointed out to James, was in case his enemies should attempt to destroy him by false accusations after the King's death. James was willing, but Lord Ellesmere refused to apply the great seal to the document in question. The King's wrath was great but unavailing. Ellesmere fell upon his knees, but refused to affix the seal.

Soon after this Somerset experienced the need of this comprehensive absolution which he had failed to secure. The apothecary's boy, who had administered the injection to Overbury, fell dangerously ill at Flushing, and, wishing to ease his burdened soul, confessed the murder to Lord Winwood. Helwys was examined, Weston was examined, and Lord and Lady Somerset were soon implicated in the case. As soon as Somerset heard that he was accused, he quitted the King, with whom he was staying at Royston, and started for London in order to clear himself. The King, by this time, was profoundly weary of his old favourite, and entirely taken up by his new. To give some idea of James's dissimulation, we will quote Sir Anthony Weldon's account, as an eye-witness, of the parting between the King and Somerset. "The Earle when he kissed his hand, the King hung about his neck, slabbering his cheeks, saying, 'For God's sake, when shall I see thee again? On my soul, I shall neither eat nor sleep until you come again.' The Earle told him, on Monday (this being on the Friday). 'For God's sake, let me,' said the King. 'Shall I, shall I;' then lolled about his neck. 'Then, for God's sake, give thy lady this kiss for me.' In the same manner at the stayres' head, at the middle of the stayres, and at the stayres' foot. The Earl was not in his coach when the King used these very words, 'I shall never see his face more.'"

Short work was made of the subordinate culprits. Mrs. Turner, Weston, Helwys, and the apothecary Franklin, were all declared guilty and hanged. The Countess bore testimony to her husband's innocence, and he went to the Tower with the collar of the Garter and the George about his neck. He threatened that if he were brought to trial he would betray secrets which contained an accusation against the King--contemporary letters show that this was understood to mean that he would confess to having poisoned Prince Henry at the King's instigation; but he abandoned this accusation later, and conducted his defence with dignity, denying all complicity in the murder. The Countess was less self-possessed. The judgment hall was filled with spectators, and the Earl of Essex amongst them was seated exactly opposite her. As the accusation was read, she trembled and turned pale, and when Weston's name was reached, she covered her face with her fan. When, according to custom, she was asked if she acknowledged herself guilty, she could but answer, Yes. She was condemned to death, and to the question whether she had anything further to add, replied that she would say nothing to palliate her guilt, but prayed the King's mercy. Somerset was also unanimously declared guilty.

The King pardoned them both. He could hardly send to the scaffold the man who had so long been his most intimate friend, neither could he well despatch thither the daughter of his Chancellor of the Exchequer. But although Somerset steadily maintained his innocence, both he and his wife were sent to the Tower.

In the letters written at the time of the trial, as much mention is made of Sir George Villiers as of Somerset. The new favourite has been ill for some time, "not without suspicion of smallpox, which if it had fallen out _actum erat de amicitia_. But it proves otherwise, and we say there is much casting about how to make him a great man, and that he shall now be made of the Garter," &c.

He was soon made Cupbearer, Chamberlain, Master of the Horse, Marquis of Buckingham, and Keeper of the Great Seal, and he retained his pernicious influence well into the reign of Charles the First. It is highly characteristic of James that he was now as anxious to procure Villiers Raleigh's old estate, Sherborne, from the imprisoned Somerset as he had been to wrest it from the imprisoned Raleigh for Somerset. He must have regarded it as a lawful "morrowing gift," so inextricably had it become associated with a rising favourite in his mind. Somerset was given to understand that he would obtain a free pardon, together with the restitution of the rest of his properties, if he would secure the now all-powerful Villiers' protection by relinquishing Sherborne in his favour. On his obstinately refusing, he and Lady Somerset were left to languish for six long years in the Tower.[1]

[1] Arthur Wilson: "The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of James the First," 1653. Sir A. Weldon: "A Cat may look upon a King," London, 1652. The author of "Memoirs of Sophia Dorothea": "The Court and Times of James the First, illustrated by Authentic Letters," 2 vols., London, 1848. Fulk Greville: "The Five Years of King James." "Secret History of the Court of James the First," edited by Sir Walter Scott, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1811. "An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James the First," by the author of "Curiosities of Literature," London, 1816. Samuel R. Gardiner: "History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War," vol. ii., London, 1883. Edmond Gosse: "Raleigh," London, 1886. "The Court and Character of King James, Written and taken by Sir A. W(eldon), being an Eye and Ear Witness," London, 1650. Aulicus Coquinariæ: "A Vindication in Answer to a Pamphlet entitled 'The Court and Character of King James,'" London, 1650.

VII

_CONTEMPT OF WOMEN--TROILUS AND CRESSIDA_

In order to give a complete picture, it was necessary to trace events down to the years in which external happenings ceased to work upon Shakespeare's mind. He died in the same year that the Lady Arabella perished in the Tower, and when the scandal of the Somerset trial was beginning to fade from the public mind. It is obviously impossible to point to any one cause which could have made an especially deep impression on his inner life. All we can say with certainty is, that the general atmosphere of the times, of the corrupt condition of morals here described, could hardly fail to leave some mark on a disposition which, just at this time, was susceptible and irritable to the highest degree. If, as we maintain, there now ensued a period during which his melancholy was prone to dwell upon the darkest side of life; if he shows, in these years, a sickly tendency to imbibe poison from everything; and if all his observation and experience seem to result in a contempt of mankind, so did the general condition of society afford ample nourishment for the mood of scorn for human nature.

In the merely external, Shakespeare's life cannot at this time have undergone any great catastrophe. He was now (1607) forty-three years of age. As soon as the play was over, between five and six of an afternoon, he stepped into one of the Thames boats and was set across the river to his house, where his books and work awaited him. He studied much, making himself familiar with the works of his contemporaries, plunging anew into Plutarch, reading Chaucer and Gower, and pondering over More's _Utopia_. He worked as hard as ever. Neither the rehearsal in the morning nor the play at mid-day had power to weary him. He read through old dramatic manuscripts to see if new treatment could revive them into use, and returned to long-laid-by manuscripts of his own to work upon them afresh.

He attended to business at the same time, received the rents of his houses at Stratford, collected his tithes from the same place, and watched the lawsuits in which the purchase of these tithes had involved him. He had obtained the object of his existence, so far as the possession of property was concerned; but never had he been so downcast and dispirited, never had he felt so keenly the emptiness of life.

So long as Shakespeare was young, the general condition of society and the ways and worth of men had troubled him less. Then, except for the feeling of belonging to a despised caste and the increasing spread of Puritanism, he was at peace with his surroundings. Now he saw more sharply the true outlines of his times and his world, and perceived more clearly that eternal infirmity of human nature, which at all times only waits for a propitious climate in order to develop itself.

The last work which had lain ready on his table was _Antony and Cleopatra_. He had there, for the second time, given his impression of the subversion of a world.

There was a pendant to this war of the East (which was in reality waged for Cleopatra's sake), a war fought by all the countries of the Mediterranean for the possession of a loose woman; the most famous of all wars, the old Trojan war, set going by a "cuckold and carried on for a whore," so it will shortly be described by a scandalous buffoon, whom Shakespeare uses, so to speak, in his own name. Here was stuff for a tragicomedy of right bitter sort.

From childhood he, and every one else, had been filled with the fame and glory of this war. All its heroes were models of bravery, magnanimity, wisdom, friendship, and fidelity, as if such things existed! For the first time in his life he feels a desire to mock--to shout "Bah!" straight out of his heart--to turn the wrong side out, the true side.

Menelaus and Helen--what a ridiculous couple! The wretched head of horned cattle moves heaven and earth, causes thousands of men to be slain, and all that he may have his damaged beauty back again.[1] Menelaus stood too low for his satire, however. Shakespeare himself had never felt thus. Neither was it in his humour to portray a woman who, like Helen, had openly left one man for another, a husband for a lover--there was none of woman's special duplicity in that. The transfer from one to another, which alone was of interest to him, in her case was already past and gone. Helen's destiny is settled before the drama begins. There is no play, no inner variety in her character, no dramatic situation between her in Troy and Menelaus without.

But in the old legends of Troy which sagas and folk-tales had handed down to him, he found, in miniature, the plot whereon the whole war turned. Cressida, a rejuvenated Helen; Troilus, the simpleton who loved her, and whom she betrayed; and round about them grouped all those archetypes of subtlety, wisdom, and strength--that venerable old twaddler Nestor, and that sly fox Ulysses, &c. Here was something which urged him on to representation. Here was a plot which chimed in with his mood.

Shakespeare had no interest in delineating that _bellâtre_, Prince Paris; he had felt him as little as he had Menelaus. But he had many a time felt as Troilus did--the honest soul, the honourable fool, who was simple enough to believe in a woman's constancy. And he knew well, too well, that Lady Cressida, with the alluring ways, the nimble wit, the warm blood, speaking lawful passion with (to not too true an ear) the lawful modesty of speech. She would rather be desired than confer, would rather be loved than love, says "yes" with a "no" yet upon her lips, and flames up at the least suspicion of her truth. Not that she is false. Oh, no! why false? We believe in her as her lover believes in her, and as she believes in herself--until she leaves him for the Greek camp. Then she has scarcely turned her back upon him than she loses her heart to the first she meets, and her constancy fails at the first proof to which it is put.

All his life through these two forms had preoccupied his imagination. In _Lucretia,_ he coupled Troilus with Hector among Trojan heroes. In the fourth act of the _Merchant of Venice_, he made Lorenzo say:

"In such a night. Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tents Where Cressid lay."

In _Henry V._, Pistol included Doll Tearsheet among "Cressid's kind," making Doll doubly ridiculous by classing her with the Trojan maid of far-famed charm. In _Much Ado About Nothing_; (Act v.), Benedict called Troilus "the first employer of Pandars." In _As You Like It_ (Act iv.), Rosalind jested about him, and yet yielded him a certain recognition. Protesting that no man ever yet died for love, she said, "Troilus had his brains dashed out with a Grecian club, yet did what he could to die before, _and he is one of the patterns of love_." In _Twelfth Night_ and in _All's Well' that Ends Well_, the Fool and Lafeu both jested about Pandarus and his ill-famed zeal in bringing Troilus and Cressida together.

Slowly, like the Hamlet tradition, this subject had been growing ripe in Shakespeare's mind. It had hitherto lived in his imagination in much the same form in which it had been handled by his compatriots. By Chaucer, first and foremost, who in his _Troilus and Cressida_ (about 1360) had translated, elaborated, and enlarged Boccaccio's beautiful poem, _Filostrato_. But neither Chaucer nor any other Englishman who had translated or reproduced the subject (such as Lydgate, 1460, who restored Guido delle Columne's _Historia Trojana,_ or Caxton, who in 1471 published a translation of Raoul le Fevre's _Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_) had found in it any material for satire. Especially had none of its earlier elaborators found any fault with the character of Cressida. Not the poets once. Chaucer founded his heroine in all essentials upon Boccaccio's. He, who was the first to gather the material into a poetic whole, had no intention of presenting his heroine in an unfavourable light. He wished to give expression, as he openly declares, to his own devotion to his lady-love in his description of Troilus's passion for Cressida. The old Trouvere, Benoit de St. Maure, and his _Histoire de la Guerre de Troie_ (about 1160), was undoubtedly his model. It is from him he received the impression that Griseida (into whom he transforms Benoit's Briseida) gradually falls a victim to the seductions of Diomedes, in whose company she leaves Troy, and little by little grows untrue to Troilus. He adds a stanza to this effect, on the inconstancy of women.[2] It was not to be expected that Boccaccio should kneel before women with the platonic love and devout worship of Dante and Petrarch. Beatrice is a mystical, Laura an earthly ideal. Griseida is a young lady from the Court of Naples, such as it was then. A young, lovable, and frail woman of flesh and blood. But only frail, never base, and very far from being a coquette. Boccaccio never forgets that he has dedicated the poem to his love and that she also left the place where they had dwelt together, for one where he durst not follow her. He says clearly that in the portrayal of Griseida's charms he has drawn a picture of his love, but he refrains with consummate tact from driving the comparison further.

Chaucer, as little as Boccaccio, found anything in the relations of the lovers to satirise. He intends, to the best of his abilities, to prove their love as innocent and lawful as possible. He paints it with a naïve and enraptured simplicity, which proves how far he is from mockery.[3] He does not even rave over Cressida's faithlessness to Troilus; she is excused, she trembles and hesitates before she falls. Inconstancy is forced upon her by the overwhelming might of hard circumstance.

There is nothing in these two poets that can compare with the passionate heat and hatred, the boundless bitterness with which Shakespeare delineates and pursues his Cressida. His mood is the more remarkable that he in no wise paints her as unlovableor corrupt; she is merely a shallow, frivolous, sensual, pleasure-loving coquette.

She does little, on the whole, to call for such severity of judgment. She is a mere child and beginner in comparison with Cleopatra, for instance, who, for all that, is not so unmercifully condemned. But Shakespeare has aggravated and pointed every circumstance until Cressida becomes odious, and rouses only aversion. The change from love to treachery, from Troilus to Diomedes, is in no earlier poet effected with such rapidity. Whenever Shakespeare expresses by the mouth of one or another of his characters the estimate in which he intends his audience to hold her, one is astounded by the bitterness of the hatred he discloses. It is especially noticeable in the scene (Act iv.) in which Cressida comes to the Greek camp and is greeted by the kings with a kiss.

At this point Cressida has as yet offended in nothing. She has, out of pure, vehement love for him, passed such a night with Troilus as Juliet did with Romeo, persuaded to it by Pandarus, as Juliet was by her nurse. Now she accepts and returns the kiss wherewith the Greek chieftains bid her welcome. We may remark, in parenthesis, that at that time there was no impropriety in such a greeting. In William Brenchley Rye's "England as seen by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First," are found, under the heading "England and Englishmen," the following notes by Samuel Riechel, a merchant from Ulm:--"Item, when a foreigner or an inhabitant goes to a citizen's house on business, or is invited as a guest, and having entered therein, he is received by the master of the house, the lady, or the daughter, and by them welcomed; he has even the right to take them by the arm and kiss them, which is the custom of the country; and if any one does not do so, it is regarded and imputed as ignorance and ill-breeding on his part."

For all that, Ulysses, who sees through her at the first glance, breaks out on occasion of this kiss which Cressida returns:

"Fie, fie upon her, There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lips, Nay, her foot speaks, her wanton spirit looks out At every joint and motive of her body. Oh, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give occasion welcome ere it comes, And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts To every ticklish reader! Set them down For sluttish spoils of opportunity, And daughters of the game."

So Shakespeare causes his heroine to be described, and doubtless it is his own last word about her. Immediately before her he had portrayed Cleopatra. When we remember the position occupied in his drama by the Egyptian queen, whom he, for all that, has stamped as the most dangerous of all dangerous coquettes, we can only marvel at the distance his spiritual nature has traversed since then.

There was in Shakespeare's disposition, as we have already remarked, a deep and extraordinary tendency to submissive admiration and worship. Many of his flowing lyrics spring from this source. Recall his humility of attitude before the objects of this admiration, before Henry V., for example, and his adoration for the friend in the Sonnets. We still find this need of giving lyrical and ecstatic expression to his hero-worship in _Antony and Cleopatra_. He by no means undertakes a defence of the desolating temptress, but with what glamour he surrounds her! What eulogies he lavishes upon her! She stands in an aureole of the adulation of all the other characters in the drama. At the time Shakespeare wrote this great tragedy, he had still so much of romantic enthusiasm remaining to him that he found it natural to let her live and die gloriously. Let be that she was a sorceress, still she fascinates.

What a change! Shakespeare, who had hitherto worshipped women, has become a misogamist. This mood, forgotten since his early youth, rises up again in hundredfold strength, and his very soul overflows in scorn for the sex.

What is the cause? Has anything befallen him--anything new? Upon what and whom does he think? Does he speak out of new and recent experience, or is it the old sorrow from the time of the Sonnets, of which he made use in the construction of Cleopatra's character, and is this the same grief which has taken new shape in his mind and is turning sour? is it this which has grown increasingly bitter until it corrodes?

There are two types of artist soul. There is the one which needs many varying experiences and constantly changing models, and which instantly gives a poetic form to every fresh incident. There is the other which requires amazingly few outside elements to fertilise it, and for which a single life circumstance, inscribed with sufficient force, can furnish a whole wealth of ever-changing thought and modes of expression. Sören Kierkegaard among writers, and Max Klinger among painters, are both great examples of the latter type.

To which did Shakespeare belong? His many-sidedness and fertility is incontrovertible, and every particular points to the use of a multiplicity of models. But for all that, his groups of feminine characters can frequently be traced back to an original type, and therefore, most likely, to a single model. When one momentous incident of a poet's life is known, we are very apt to relate to it everything in his works which could possibly have any connection with it. In this manner the French literary and critical world most obstinately found traces of Alfred de Musset's life with George Sand in every expression of melancholy or complaint of desolation in his poems. In his biography of his brother, however, Paul de Musset has revealed the fact that the "December Night," which seems so obvious a supplement to the "May Night" that turns upon George Sand, was really written in quite another spirit, to a totally different woman. Also, the character delineated in the "Letter to Lamartine," which was generally believed to be that of the famous poetess, had in reality nothing whatever to do with her.

It is quite possible, therefore, that this last woman's character, instead of being only a variant of the Cleopatra type, was a product of a new, fiery, and scorching impression of feminine inconstancy and worthlessness. We are too entirely ignorant of the circumstances of the poet's life to venture any decided opinion, all we can say is, that incidents and novel experiences are not absolutely necessary as an explanation. There is a remote possibility that the first sketch of the play was already written in 1603, in which case it would be more than likely that the dark lady was once more his prototype. On the other hand, it may be, as already suggested, that in a productive soul one circumstance will take the place of many, and an experience which at first seemed wholly tragic may, in the rapid inner development of genius, come to wholly change its character. He has suffered under it; it has sucked his heart's blood and left him a beaten man on his path through life. He has sought to embody it in serious and worthy forms, until suddenly it stands before him as a burlesque. His misery no longer seems a cruel destiny, but a well-merited punishment for immoderate stupidity, and this bitter mood has sought relief in such scornful laughter as that whose discord strikes so harshly in _Troilus and Cressida_.

We can imagine that Shakespeare began by worshipping his lady-love, complaining of her coldness and hardness, celebrating her fingers in song, cursing her faithlessness, and feeling himself driven nearly wild with grief at the false position in which she had placed him; this is the standpoint of the Sonnets. In the course of years the fever had stormed itself out, but the memory of the enchantment was still visibly fresh, and his mind pictured the loved one as a marvellous phenomenon, half queen, half gipsy, alluring and repellant, true and false, strong and weak, a siren and a mystery; this is the standpoint of _Antony and Cleopatra_. Then, possibly, when life had sobered him down, when he had cooled, as we all do cool in the hardening ice of experience, he suddenly and sharply realised the insanity of an exotic enthusiasm for so worthless an object. He looks upon this condition, which invariably begins with self-deception and must of necessity end in disillusionment, as a disgraceful and tremendous absurdity; and his wrath over wasted feelings and wasted time and suffering, over the degradation and humiliation of its self-deception, and ultimately the treason itself, seeks final and supreme relief in the outburst, "What a farce!" which is in itself the germ of _Troilus and Cressida_.

[1] Heine, some hundreds of years later, expresses the same feeling in his

"O König Wiswamatra, O welch ein Ochs bist du, Dass du so viel kämpfest und brüssest Und Alles für eine Kuh!"

[2]

Giovine donna è mobile, e vogliosa E negli amanti molti, e sua bellezza Estima più che allo specchio, e pomposa Ha vanagloria di sua giovinezza; La qual quanto piacevole e vezzosa E più, cotanto più seco l'apprezza Virtù non sente, nè conoscimento, Volubil sempre come foglia al vento."

[3]

"Her armes smale, her streghte bak and softe, Her sides long, fleshly, smothe, and white, He gan to stroke; and good thrift bad ful oft. Her snowish throte, her brestes round and lite: Thus in this hevene he gan him to delite, And then withal a thousand times her kiste That what to dou for joie unnethe he wiste."

VIII

_TROILUS AND CRESSIDA--THE HISTORICAL MATERIAL_.

In the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad Homer makes his solitary mention of Troilus as a son whom Priam had lost before the opening of the poem. The old King says:

"O me, accursed man, All my good sons are gone, my light the shades Cimmerian Have swallowed from me. I have lost Mestor, surnamed the Fair, Troilus, that ready knight at arms, that made his field repair Ever so prompt and joyfully."

This is all the great old world poet says of the king's son, whose fame in the Middle Ages outshone Hector's own. This brief mention of an early death stirred the imagination and set fancy at work. The cyclic poets expanded the hint and developed Troilus into a handsome youth who fell by Achilles' lance. It had become the custom under Imperial Rome to derive the empire from the Trojans, and the theory gave birth to many fabrications, professing to emanate from eye-witnesses of the war.

Yet it was not before the time of Constantine the Great, that a description was given which quite displaced Homer during the Middle Ages. This was Dictys Cretensis' book, _De Bello Trojano,_ translated from the original Greek into Latin. The translator, a certain Quintus Septimius, informs us that Dictys was a brother in arms of Idomeneus, and at his prince's suggestion wrote this book in Phœnician characters, and afterwards caused it to be buried with him. An earthquake in the time of Nero brought it to light. The translator is evidently simple enough to believe in the truth of this account. A more daring forgery was issued about 635, after the fall of the Western Empire of Rome. The author is supposed to be a certain Dares Phrygius, who was one of Hector's counsellors, and who wrote the Iliad before Homer. The title of this book also is _De Bello Trojano_, and it professes to have been translated into Latin by Cornelius Nepos, who is said to have found the manuscript at Athens, "where, in his day, Homer was considered half mad" because he had depicted gods and men as carrying on a war with one another. Troilus is the most prominent hero of the book, which is a wretched compilation of far-fetched reminiscences.

Dares, however, became the fountain-head for all mediæval story-tellers, first and foremost among them being Benoit de St. Maure, troubadour to Henry II. of England. Of his poem, containing 30,000 verses, only fragments have ever been printed. As a genuine Trouvere of the early half of the twelfth century, he has adorned his ancient material with sumptuous descriptions of towns, palaces, and accoutrements. He enters, so far as he is able, into the spiritual life of his hero, and supplies him with what, according to the notions of his times, he could not possibly lack--a love motive. He represents Briseis, Achilles' vaunted love, as the daughter of Kalchas, whom, following the example of Dares, he makes a Trojan. Briseida, who is beloved by Troilus, returns to Troy after her father goes over to the Greeks. When Kalchas wishes to regain his daughter, she is exchanged, as in Shakespeare's drama, for the prisoner Antenor. Diomedes is sent by the Greeks to escort her, and Briseida falls a victim to his seductive arts. Many of the incidents in Shakespeare's play are to be found in Benoit--that Diomedes is experienced in women, for example; that Briseis gives him a favour wherewith to adorn his lance; that he dismounts Troilus and sends his horse to his lady-love, and that Troilus inveighs against her broken faith, &c.

Now it can be traced how, in the further development of the theme, one writer after another adds some feature which Shakespeare in his turn still further elaborates. Guido de Colonna (or delle Columne), a judge at Messina in 1287, retranslates Benoit de St. Maure into barbarous Latin, making no acknowledgment of his source, and transforming Achilles into a raw, bloodthirsty barbarian.

Boccaccio, who prefers significant names, and the title of whose poem, _Filostrato_, signifies "one struck to earth by love," changes Briseida into Cryseida (thus in old editions), in order that her name may mean "the golden," and he it is who adds Pandarus, the "all-giver," who aids Troilus in his love affairs. He is Cryseida's kinsman and is evidently sympathetic all through.[1]

It is Chaucer who first submits the character of Pandarus to an important change, and makes it the transition point of the Pandarus we find in Shakespeare. In his poem Troilus's young friend has become the elderly kinsman of Creseyde, and he brings the young pair together, mostly out of looseness. It is he who persuades the young maiden and leads her astray by means of lying impostures. It was not Chaucer's intention, as it was Shakespeare's, to make the old fellow odious. His _rôle_ is not carried out with the cynical and repulsive lowness of Shakespeare's character. Chaucer endeavours to ward off any painful impression by making the shameless old rascal the wit of his poem. He did not achieve his object; his readers saw only the procurer in Pandarus, whose name became thenceforward a by-word in the English language, and it was as such that Shakespeare drew the character in downright, unmistakable disgust.[2]

We have yet other sources, Latin, French, and English, for the details of the drama. From Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, for example (which Shakespeare must have known from childhood), he took the idea of making Ajax almost an idiot in his conceited stupidity. It is in the third book of the _Metamorphoses_ that Ulysses, fighting with Ajax for Achilles' weapon, overwhelms his opponent with biting sarcasms.[3] Shakespeare found the name of Thersites in the same book, with a word concerning his _rôle_ as lampooner of princes.

We may doubt whether Shakespeare knew Lydgate's _Book of Troy_. Most of his details with regard to the siege are taken from an old writing translated from the French and published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1503. Here, for example, is the parade of heroes, the talk of King Neoptolemus being no son of Achilles, and the corrupted names of the six gates of Troy--Dardane, Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troyen, and Antenorides. Here also he would find the name of Hectors horse, Galathea, the archer who calls upon the Greeks, the bastard Margarelon, Cassandra's warning to Hector, the glove Cressida gives away, and Troilus's idea that a man is not called upon to be merciful in war, but should take a victory as he may.[4]

We cannot tell if Shakespeare was further indebted to some old dramatic writings, whereof only the names have survived to us. In 1515, a "Komedy" called the _Story of Troylus and Pandor_ was played before Henry VIII. On New Year's Day, 1572, a play about Ajax and Ulisses was performed at Windsor Castle, and another in 1584 concerning Agamemnon and Ulisses.[5] In Henslowe's Daybook for April and May 1599 we see that the poets Dekker and Henry Chettle (Dickers and Harey Cheattel, in his amusing orthography) wrote a piece, at his invitation, for the Lord Admiral's troupe, _Troeyles and creasseday_. In May he lends them a sum of money on it, changing its title to _A tragedy about Agamemnon_. It is finally entered at the Stationers' Hall in February 1603 as a piece entitled _Troilus and Cresseda_, "as it was played by the Lord Chamberlain's men"[6] (Shakespeare's company). The fact that in Shakespeare's drama, as we have it, rhyme is introduced in various parts of the dialogue, and several other details of versification, seems to point to the possibility that the so-called piece was in reality Shakespeare's first sketch of the play. It is one of Fleay's tediously worked out theories that the drama was produced in three different parts, with an interval of from twelve to thirteen years between each. He is quite regardless of the fact that the parts are absolutely inseparable, and is evidently entirely innocent of the manner of growth of poems. He also totally ignores such important evidence as that of the preface to the oldest edition, 1609, which positively asserts that the piece has never hitherto been played. It is, of course, possible that this edition, like most of its kind, was unauthorised, but even then the writer of the preface would scarcely lie about a fact which could be so easily verified, and which, moreover, he was not in the least interested in falsifying.

[1] Troilus says to him:

"Non m'hai piccola cosa tu donata Ne me a piccola cosa donato hai La vita mia ti fia sempre obligata In l'hai da morte in via suscitata."

[2] _Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft_, iii, 252, and vi. 169. Francesco de Sanctis: _Historia della letterature italiana_, i. 308.

[3]

"Huic modo ne prosit, quod, uti est, hebes esse, videtur. Artis opus tantæ rudis et sine pectore miles Indueret? Ajacis stolidi Danais Sollertia prosit Tu vires sine mente geris, mihi cura futuri Tu pugnare potes, pugnandi tempora mecum Eligit Atrides. In tantum corpore prodes." Met. xiii. 135, 290, 327, 360.

[4] Halliwell-Phillips: _Memoranda on Troilus and Cressida._ 1880. (Only twenty copies).

[5] "Ajax and Ulisses shoven on New Yeares day at nights by the children of Wynsor. The history of Agamemnon and Ulisses presented and enacted before her Majestie by the Earle of Oxenford his boyes on St. John daie at night at Greenwiche. 1584.

[6] "Entered for his (Master Robertes') copie in full court holden this day to print when he hath gotten sufficient aucthority for yt the Booke of Troilus and Cressida, as it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain's men."

IX

_SHAKESPEARE AND CHAPMAN--SHAKESPEARE AND HOMER_

We have now apparently exhausted the literary sources of this mysterious and so little understood work. But we have not, for all that, solved the fundamental question which has occupied so many brains and pens. Was it Shakespeare's intention to ridicule Homer? Did he know Homer?

To a Dane, _Troilus and Cressida_ recalls the mockery Holberg's _Ulysses von Ithacia_ makes of the Homeric material, just as the _Ulysses_ reminds us of Shakespeare's play. _Troilus and Cressida_ seems to have represented to the English poet much what Holberg's play did to him, a satire, namely, on the absurdities the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon understanding (_i.e._ narrow-mindedness) found in Homer. It is sufficiently remarkable that Shakespeare should have written a travesty which could, in spite of many reservations, be classed with _Ulysses von Ithacia_. As far as Holberg is concerned, the explanation is simple enough. His is the taste of the enlightened age, and the ancient civilisation's noble naïveté viewed in the light of dry rationalism, filled him with amazement and laughter. But what has Shakespeare to do with rationalism? His was the very time of the renaissance of that old world civilisation, the moment of its resurrection. How came he to scorn it?

The general working of the public mind towards the ancient Greeks had prompted Elizabeth to write a commentary on Plato and to translate the Dialogues of Socrates; but Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek was defective, and thus it was that he, as playwright, represented the popular trend, in contradistinction to the numerous other poets, who, like Ben Jonson, prided themselves on their erudition.

Moreover, like the Romans, and subsequently the Italians and French, the Englishmen of his day believed themselves to be descended from those ancient Trojans, whom Virgil, as true Roman, had glorified at the expense of the Greeks. The England of Shakespeare's time took a pride in her Trojan forefathers, and we find evidence in other of his works that he, as English patriot, sided with the Trojans in the old battles of Ilion, and was, consequently, prejudiced against the Greek heroes. In my opinion, however, all this has little to do with the point at issue. We have already found it probable that Chapman was the poet whose intimacy with Pembroke roused Shakespeare's jealousy, making him feel slighted and neglected, and causing him so much melancholy suffering. I am not ignorant of the arguments which have been brought forward in support of the theory that the rival poet was not Chapman but Daniel, nor of what Miss Charlotte Stopes and G. A. Leigh have to say on the subject of Minto and Tyler.[1]. I do not, however, consider that they have been able to refute the strong evidence in favour of its being no other than Chapman who was the poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets 78-86.

In the year 1598 Chapman had just published the first seven books of his _Iliad_, namely, the first, second, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh of Homer. The remaining books, followed by a complete _Odyssey_, were not published until 1611, two years after the first appearance of _Troilus and Cressida_. To render the comparatively unknown Homer into good English verse was an achievement worthy of the acknowledgments Chapman received. His translation is to this day, in spite of its faults, the best that England possesses. Keats himself has written a sonnet in praise of it.

How great a reputation Chapman enjoyed as a dramatist may be seen in the dedication of John Webster's tragedy _The White Divel_ (1612), at the close of which he says: "Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance. For mine owne part, I have ever truly cherisht my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and haightened stile of Maister Chapman. The labour'd and understanding workes of Maister Johnson: The no less worthy composures of the both worthy and excellent Maister Beamont and Maister Fletcher: and lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Decker and Mr. Heywood." As will have been noticed, Chapman's name heads the list, while Shakespeare's comes at the bottom in conjunction with such insignificant men as Decker and Heywood!

Nevertheless (or possibly on that account) there is little doubt that Shakespeare found Chapman personally antipathetic. His style was unequalled for arrogance and pedantry; he was insufferably vain of his learning, and not a whit less conceited of the divine inspiration he, as poet, must necessarily possess. Even the most ardent of his modern admirers admits that his own poems are both grotesque and wearisome, and Shakespeare must certainly have suffered under the miserable conclusion Chapman added to Marlowe's beautiful _Hero and Leander_, a poem that Shakespeare himself so greatly admired. Take only the fragment of introductory prose which prefaces his translation of Homer, and try to wade through it. Short as it is, it is impossible. Read but the confused garrulity and impossible imagery of the dedication in 1598, and could a more shocking collection of mediæval philology be found outside the two pages he writes about Homer?

Swinburne, who loves him, says of his style: "Demosthenes, according to report, taught himself to speak with pebbles in his mouth; but it is presumable that he also learnt to dispense with their aid before he stood up against Eschines or Hyperides on any great occasion of public oratory. Our philosophic poet, on the other hand, before addressing such audience as he may find, is careful always to fill his mouth till the jaws are stretched well-nigh to bursting with the largest, roughest, and most angular of polygonal flintstones that can be hewn or dug out of the mine of language; and as fast as one voluminous sentence or unwieldy paragraph has emptied his mouth of the first batch of barbarisms, he is no less careful to refill it before proceeding to a fresh delivery."[2] The comparison is strikingly exact.

It is this incomprehensible style which made Chapman's readers so few in number, and caused his frequent complaints of being slighted and neglected. As Swinburne jestingly says of him:

"We understand a fury in his words, But not his words."

Even in his fine translation of Homer, he is unable to forego his tendency to obscurity, and constrained and inflated expression. It is universally admitted that even a translation must take some colouring from its translator, and no man in England was less Hellenic than Chapman. Swinburne has rightly observed that his temperament was more Icelandic than Greek, that he handled the sacred vessels of Greek art with the substantial grasp of the barbarian, and when he would reproduce Homer he gave rather the stride of a giant than the step of a god.

In all probability it was the grief Shakespeare felt at seeing Chapman selected by Pembroke, added to the ill-humour caused by the elder poet's arrogance and clumsy pedantry, which goaded him into wanton opposition to the inevitable enthusiasm for the Homeric world and its heroes.

And so he gave his bitter mood full play.

He touches upon the _Iliad's_ most beautiful and most powerful elements, Achilles' wrath, the friendship between Achilles and Patroclus, the question of Helen being delivered to the Greeks, the attempt to goad Achilles into renewing the conflict, Hector and Andromache's farewell, and Hector's death, but only to profane and ridicule all.

It was a curious coincidence that Shakespeare should lay hands on this material just at the most despondent period of his life; for nowhere could we well receive a deeper impression of modern crudeness and decadence, and never could we meet with a fuller expression of German-Gothic innate barbarism in relation to Hellenism than when we see this great poet of the Northern Renaissance make free with the poetry of the old world.

Let us recall, for instance, the friendship, the brotherhood, existing between Achilles and Patroclus as it is drawn by Homer, and then see what an abomination Shakespeare, under the influence of his own times, makes of it.[3] He causes Thersites to spit upon the connection, and by not allowing any one to protest, so full of loathing for humanity has he become, leaves us to suppose his version to be correct.

How refined and Greek is Homer's treatment of Helen's position. There is no hint there of the modern ridicule of Menelaus; he is equally worthy, equally "beloved by the gods," and still the same mighty hero, if his wife has been abducted. Nor is there any scorn for Helen, only worship for her marvellous beauty, which even the old men upon the walls turn their heads to watch, only compassion for her fate and sympathy with her sufferings. And now, here, this eternal mockery of Menelaus as a deserted husband, these endless good and bad jests on his lot, this barbaric laughter over Helen as unchaste!

Thersites is made the mouthpiece of most of it. Shakespeare found his name in Ovid, and a description of his person in Homer, in one of the books first translated by Chapman:--

"----All sate, and audience gave, Thersites only would speak all. A most disordered store Of words he foolishly poured out, of which his mind held more Than it could manage; anything with which he could procure Laughter, he never could contain. He should have yet been sure To touch no kings; t' oppose their states becomes not jesters' parts, But he the filthiest fellow was of all that had deserts In Troy's brave siege. He was squint-eyed, and lame of either foot; So crook-backed that he had no breast; sharp-headed where did shoot (Here and there spersed) thin mossy hair. He most of all envied Ulysses and Æacides, whom yet his spleen would chide."

The argument which has been brought forward to prove that Shakespeare could not have known this description creating the character of Thersites is worthless. It has been considered impossible that he, who knew so well how to turn all material to account, should not have profited, in that case, by the famous scene where Odysseus beats Thersites. As a matter of fact, Shakespeare did so, and with much humour, only it is Ajax who is the chastiser, while Thersites exclaims (Act ii. sc. 3): "He beats me, and I rail at him. O worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise; that I could beat him, while he railed at me."

Clearly enough, the character of the witty, malicious lampooner made an impression upon Shakespeare, and he, probably following the example of earlier plays, transformed him into a clown, and made him act as chorus accompanying the action of the play. Such, obviously, was the Fool in _Lear_; but how different is the melancholy, emotional satire to which King Lear's faithful companion in distress gives vent from the flaying, scorching scorn, the stream of fierce invective wherewith Thersites overwhelms every one and everything.

One cannot but see that these lampoons of Menelaus and Helen represent Shakespeare's own feeling, partly because Thersites is undoubtedly used as a kind of Satyr-chorus, and partly because the dispassionate and unprejudiced characters of the drama express themselves in harmony with him.

Notice, for instance, this reply of Thersites (Act ii. sc. 3):

"After this, the vengeance upon the whole camp! or, rather, the bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse upon those that war for a placket"

"Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery! all the argument is a cuckold and a whore; a good quarrel to draw emulous factions and bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on the subject! and war and lechery confound all!"

Or read this description of Menelaus (Act v. sc. I):

"And the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his brother the bull, the primitive statue and oblique memorial of cuckolds; a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his brother's leg--to what form but that he is, should wit larded with malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to? To an ass, were nothing; he is both ass and ox; to an ox, were nothing; he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a puttock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus! I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus."

One can by no means accept this as merely the outburst of a brawling slave's hatred of his superiors, for the entirely unprejudiced Diomedes expresses himself in the same spirit to Paris (Act iv. sc. I):

"_Paris_. And tell me, noble Diomede, faith, tell me true, Even in the soul of sound good fellowship, Who, in your thoughts, merits fair Helen best, Myself or Menelaus. _Diomedes_. Both alike: He merits well to have her that doth seek her, Not making any scruple of her soilure, With such a hell of pain and world of charge; And you as well to keep her, that defend her, Not palating her dishonour, With such a costly load of wealth and friends: He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece; You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins Are pleased to breed out your inheritors: Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more; But he as he, the heavier for a whore. _Paris_. You are too bitter to your countrywoman. _Diomedes_. She's bitter to her country: hear me, Paris: For every false drop in her bawdy veins A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple Of her contaminated carrion weight A Trojan hath been slain: since she could speak She hath not given so many good words breath As for her Greeks and Trojans have suffered death."

In the _Iliad_ these forms represent the outcome of the imagination of the noblest people of the Mediterranean shores, unaffected by religious terrors and alcohol; they are bright, glad, reverential fantasies, born in a warm sun under a deep blue sky. From Shakespeare they step forth travestied by the gloom and bitterness of a great poet of a Northern race, of a stock civilised by Christianity, not by culture; a stock which, despite all the efforts of the Renaissance to give new birth to heathendom, has become, once for all, disciplined and habituated to look upon the senses as tempters which lead down into the mire; to which the pleasurable is the forbidden and sexual attraction a disgrace.

How significant it is that Shakespeare only sees Greek love as scourged by the lash of venereal diseases. Throughout the entire play a pestilential breath of innuendo is blown with outbursts of cursing, all centering on a contagion which first showed itself some thousand years after the Homeric times. As Homeric friendships are bestialised, so is Greek love profaned to suit modern circumstances. To Thersites, the Greek princes are, every one of them, scandalous rakes. "Here's Agamemnon, an honest fellow enough, and one that loves quails, but he has not as much brain as earwax" (Act v. sc. I). "That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave.... They say he keeps a Trojan drab and uses the traitor Calchas' tent.--Nothing but lechery; all incontinent varlets" (Act v. sc. I). Achilles, that "idol of idiot worshippers," that "full dish of fool," has Queen Hecuba's daughter as a concubine, and has treacherously promised her to leave his fellow-countrymen in the lurch. "Patroclus will give me anything for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery, lechery still, nothing else holds fashion." Of Menelaus and Paris, "cuckold and cuckold-maker," enough has already been said. Helen has been sternly condemned, and of Cressida with her two adorers, Troilus and Diomedes, "How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato-fingers, tickles these two together! Fry lechery, fry" (Act v. sc. 2).

It is clear that the Christian conception of faithlessness in love has displaced the old Hellenic innocence and naïveté. How fervent is Achilles' love for Briseis in Homer; how honest, warm, and indignant he is when he asks Agamemnon's messengers if among the children of men only the Atrides love their wives, and he himself answers that every man who is brave and of good understanding loves and shelters his wife, as he of his inmost heart loved and would shelter Briseis, prisoner of war though she was. None the less does Homer tell us how immediately after Achilles has ended his speech and dismissed his guests, he stretches himself upon his couch, "in the inner room of his tent, richly wrought, and that fair lady by his side that he from Lesbos brought, bright Diomeda." It never occurs to the Greek poet that this implies any faithlessness to the absent Briseis, but Shakespeare's standard is thoroughly and mediævally rigorous.

On two points the comparison between Homer and Shakespeare is inevitable. The first is the farewell between Hector and Andromache. There is nothing finer in Greek poetry (which is to say, any poetry) than this tragic idyl, so profoundly human and movingly beautiful as it is. The pure womanliness which out of deep grief and pain utters a complaint without weakness, and expresses without sentimentality a boundless love poured out upon this one object: "Thy life makes still my father be, my mother, brother, and besides thou art my husband too. Most loved, most worthy."

In contrast to this womanliness stands the man's strength, untouched by harshness, stirred by the deepest tenderness, but fixed in immovable determination. The picture of the child, too, frightened by the nodding plumes upon his father's helm, until Hector sets the casque upon the ground and kisses the tears from the eyes of his boy. The scene takes place in the sixth book of the _Iliad;_ and could not have been known to Shakespeare, inasmuch much as it was as yet untranslated by Chapman. See what he sets in its place:

"_Andromache_. Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.

_Hector_. You train me to offend you: get you in: By all the everlasting gods I'll go!

_Andromache_. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.

_Hector_. No more, I say."

This is the harshness of a mediæval duke; the golden dust is brushed from the wings of the Greek Psychè. If Harald Hardrada, as chieftain of the Varangians, ever gave a thought to the spirit of Greek art, as he passed with his troops through the streets of Constantinople, he must have looked upon it thus, despising the ancient Hellenes because he found the modern cowardly and effeminate.

Shakespeare had no particular place and no particular people in his mind when he wrote this play; he simply robbed the finest scenes of their beauty, because his mind, at that time, had elected to dwell upon the lowest and basest side of human nature.

The second point is the mission to Achilles, told in the ninth book of the _Iliad_. It was translated and published by Chapman in 1598, and must certainly have been known to Shakespeare.[4] This book is one of the few finished works of art which have been produced upon this earth. The Greek Epos itself contains nothing more consummate than its delineation of character, the contrast between the arrogant and the intellectual, the polished and the humorous, the interplay of personality from the highest pathos to the reiterated twaddle of the old man. Achilles' wrath, Nestor's experience, Odysseus' subtle tact, Phœnix's good-natured rambling, the wounded pride of the Hellenic emissaries, are all gathered together in the endeavour to induce Achilles to quit his tent.

Contrast this with the burlesque attempt to provoke that cowardly snob and raw dunce, of an Achilles out of his exclusiveness, by passing him by without returning his greeting or seeming conscious of his existence; this same Achilles, who falls upon Hector with his myrmidons and scoundrelly murders him, just as the hero, wearied by battle, has taken off his helmet and laid aside his sword. It reads like the invention of a mediæval barbarian. But Shakespeare is neither mediæval nor a barbarian. No, he has written it down out of a bitterness so deep that he has felt hero-worship, like love, to be an illusion of the senses. As the phantasy of first love is absurd, and Troilus's loyalty towards its object ridiculous, so is the honour of our forefathers and of war in general a delusion. Shakespeare now suspects the most assured reputations; he believes that if Achilles really lived at all, he was most probably a stupid and vainglorious boaster, just as Helen must have been a hussy by no means worthy of the turmoil which was made about her.

As he distorted Achilles into an absurdity, so he wrenched all other personalities into caricatures. Gervinus has justly remarked that Shakespeare here acts very much as his Patroclus does when he mimics Agamemnon's loftiness and Nestor's weakness, for Achilles' delectation (Act i. sc. 3). We feel in the delineation of Nestor that Anglo-Saxon master-hand which seizes upon the unsightly details which the Greek ignores:

"He coughs and spits, And with a palsy fumbling on his gorget, Shakes in and out the rivet."

And we recognise in the allusion to the mimicry of Agamemnon that cheap estimate of an actor's profession, which, with a contempt for the whole guild of poets, is discernible throughout Shakespeare's works, in spite of his efforts to raise both callings in the eyes of the public.[5]

Nestor is overwhelmed with ridicule, and is made to declare, at the close of the first act, that he will hide his silver beard in a golden beaver, and will maintain in duel with Hector that his own long-dead wife was as great a beauty and as chaste a wife as Hector's--grandmother.

Ulysses, who is intended to represent the wise man of the play, is as trivial of mind as the rest. There was a certain amount of grandeur in the way Iago handled Othello, Rodrigo, and Cassio, as though they were mere puppets in his hands; but there is none in the sport Ulysses makes of those swaggering numskulls, Achilles and Ajax. The bitterness which breathes out of all that Shakespeare writes at this period has found gratification in making Ulysses not one whit more sublime than the fools with whom he plays.

Amongst German critics, Gervinus has characterised _Troilus and Cressida_ as a good-naturedly humorous play. No description could be more unlikely. Seldom has a poet been less good-natured than Shakespeare here. No less impossible is the theory (also nourished in Gervinus' imagination) that the poet of the English Renaissance was offended by the loose ethics of Homeric poetry. Shakespeare most certainly was never so moral as this moralising German critic (and what German critic is not moralising) would have him to be. It is not a sense of the ethics of Homer, but a feeling for his poetry that is lacking. In Shakespeare's time men took too much pleasure in classical culture to appreciate the antique naïveté. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when popular poetry once more began to be universally honoured, that Homer displaced Virgil in the popular estimation. Even Goethe preferred Virgil to Homer. Gervinus is equally wide of the mark when, in his anxiety to prove _Troilus and Cressida_ a purely literary satire, he hazards the assertion that Shakespeare never intended here to "hold up a mirror to his times;"[6] for it is precisely his own times, and no other, that were in his mind when he wrote this play.

[1] _Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft_, xxv. p. 196; _Westminster Review_, Feb. 1897.

[2] A. C. Swinburne: _Essay on Chapman_.

[3]

"_Patroclus_. No more words, Thersites; peace!

"_Thersites_. I will hold my peace when Achilles' brach bids me, shall I?" (Act ii. sc. i.)

"_Thersites_. Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk: thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.

"_Patroclus_. Male varlet, you rogue! What's that?

"_Thersites_. Why, his masculine whore. Now the rotten diseases of the South, the guts-griping, ruptures, catarrhs, loads o' gravel i' the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of impostume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivalled fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again all such preposterous discoveries." (Act v. sc. 2.)

[4] The expression "by Jove multi potent," Act iv., sc. 5, is taken from Chapman. This is the only time it is used by Shakespeare.

[5]

And, like a strutting player, whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound Twixt his stretched footing and the scaffoldage, Such to be pitied and o'er-wrested seeming He acts thy greatness in."

And the passage previously quoted from Macbeth:

"Life's but . . . . . a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more."

Also the 110th Sonnet.

[6] "Sein gutmüthiges humoristisches Spiel."--"So kann allerdings aus der ganzen Darstellung die naheliegende Wahrzeit gezogen werden: dass die erhabenste Dichtung ohne streng sittlichen Grundlagen nicht das sei, wozu sie befähigt und berufen ist."--"Gewiss würde er dies Stück nicht unter die rechnen wollen, die der Zeit einen Spiegel vorhalten."--Gervinus: _Shakespeare_, iv. 22, 31, 32.

X

_SCORN OF WOMAN'S GUILE AND PUBLIC STUPIDITY_

Troilus and Cressida first appeared in 1609 in two editions, one of which is introduced by a remarkable and diverting preface, entitled "A never writer to an ever reader, News." It says:--

"Eternall reader, you have heere a new play, never stal'd with the stage, never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the Vulgar, and yet passing full of the palme comicall; for it is a birth of your brain, that never undertooke anything comicall, vainely: And were but the vaine names of commedies changde for the titles of Commodities, or of Playes for Pleas; you should see all those grand censors, that now stile them such vanities, flocke to them for the maine grace of their gravities: especially this author's Commedies, that are so framed to the life, that they serve for the most common Commentaries, of all the actions of our lives, shewing such a dexteritie, and power of witte, that the most displeased with playes are pleased with his comedies. And all such dull and heavy-witted worldlings, as were never capable of the witte of a commedie, coming by report of them to his representations, have found that witte there, that they never found in themselves, and have parted better witted than they came: feeling an edge of witte set upon them, more than ever they dreamed they had brain to grind it on. So much and such sauvred salt of witte is in his Commedies, that they seem (for their height of pleasure) to be borne in that sea that brought forth Venus. Amongst all there is none more witty than this. And had I time I would comment upon it, though I know it needs it not (for so much as will make you think your testerne well bestowed), but for so much worth, as ever poore I know to be stuft in it. It deserves such a labour, as well as the best Commedy in Terence or Plautus. And believe this, that when he is gone, and his Commedies out of sale, you will scramble for them and set up a new English inquisition. Take this for a warning, and at the perrill of your pleasures losse, and judgements, refuse not nor like this the less for not being sullied with the smoaky breath of the multitude; but thanke fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you. Since by the grand possessors wills I believe you should have prayed for them rather than been prayed. And so I leave all such to be prayed for (for the state of their witte's health) that will not praise it. VALE."

How remarkable a comprehension of Shakespeare's work this old-time preface shows, how clear-sighted an enthusiasm, and how just a perception of his position in the future.

The play was again published in 1623 in folio, and under conditions which betray the publisher's perplexity as to its classification. It is altogether missing from the list of contents, in which the plays are arranged under three headings, comedies, histories, and tragedies. It is thrust, unpaged, into the middle of the book, between the histories and the tragedies, between _Henry VIII._ and _Coriolanus_, probably because the editor mistakenly deemed it to contain more of history and of tragedy than of comedy. Of all Shakespeare's works, it is _Troilus and Cressida_ which most nearly approaches the _Don Quixote_ of Cervantes.

It is a proof of the stultifying effect of the too close attention of philological critics to metrical peculiarities (peculiarities which a poet can always accommodate as he thinks proper) upon the finer psychological sense, that either the whole or a greater part of _Troilus and Cressida_ has been taken for the work of Shakespeare's youth, and has been attributed to the _Romeo and Juliet_ period. This view has been taken by L. Moland and C. d'Hericault in their _Nouvelles Françaises du 14me Siècle_, and not a few undiscerning biographers of Shakespeare.

The contrast between the two plays is remarkable and instructive. _Romeo and Juliet_ is a genuine work of youth, a product of truth and faith. _Troilus and Cressida_ is the outcome of the disillusionment, suspicion, and bitterness of ripe manhood. The critics have been deceived by the apparently astonishing youthfulness of parts of _Troilus and Cressida_, some upon the ground of its occasional euphuisms and bombast (evidently satirical), others by the enthusiasm of youth and absorption in love which some of Troilus's replies express; for instance:

"I tell thee I am mad In Cressid's love: thou answer'st 'She is fair,' Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice," &c.

In his most ardent raptures there sounds a note of ridicule.[1].

All this is a complete inversion of _Romeo and Juliet_. His youthful tragedy portrayed a woman so staunchly true in love that she is driven thereby to a bitter death. _Troilus and Cressida_ deals with a woman whose constancy fails at the first proof. There is no abyss between the soul and the senses in _Romeo and Juliet_; the two melt into one in fullest harmony. But it is the lower side of love's ideal nature which is parodied in _Troilus and Cressida,_ and causes it to resemble the flippant accompaniment to the serenade in Mozart's _Don Juan_, which caricatures the sentimentality of the text.

It is true that there is a chivalrous fine feeling and sensual tenderness in Troilus's love, which seems to foreshadow, as it were, that which some centuries later found such full expression in Keats. But the melancholy of Shakespeare's matured perception sets its iron tooth in everything at this period of his life, and he looks upon absorption in love as senseless and laughable. He shows us how blindly Troilus runs into the snare, giddy with happiness and uplifted to the heavens, and how the next moment he awakes from his intoxication, betrayed; but he shows it without sympathy, coldly. Therefore, the play never once arouses any true emotion, since Troilus himself never really interests. The piece blazes out, but imparts no warmth. Shakespeare wrote it thus, and therefore, while _Troilus and Cressida_ will find many readers who will admire it, few will love it.

Shakespeare deliberately made Cressida sensually attractive, but spiritually repulsive and unclean. She has desire for Troilus, but no love. She is among those who are born experienced; she knows how to inflame, win, and keep men enchained, but the honourable love of a man is useless to her. At the same time she is one of those who easily find their master. Any man who is not imposed upon by her airs, who sees through her mock-prudish rebuffs, subdues her without difficulty. All her sagacity amounted to, after all, was that Troilus would continue ardent so long as she said "No;" that men, in short, value the unattainable and what is won with difficulty,--the wisdom of any commonplace coquette. Never has Shakespeare represented coquetry as so void of charming qualities.

Cressida is never modest even when she is most prudish; she understands a jest, even bold and libertine ones, and she will bandy them with enjoyment. With all her kittenish charm she is uninteresting, and, in spite of her hot blood, she betrays the coldest selfishness. She is neither ridiculous nor unlovely, but as little is she beautiful; in no other of Shakespeare's characters is the sensual attraction exercised by a woman so completely shorn of its poetry.

Her uncle Pandarus is as experienced as she is in the art of exciting by alternately thrusting forward and holding back. He has been named a demoralised Polonius, and the epithet is good. He is an old voluptuary, who finds his amusement in playing the spy and go-between, now that more active pleasures are denied to him. The cynical enjoyment with which Shakespeare (in spite of his contempt for him) has drawn him is very characteristic of this period of his life. Pandarus is clever enough, and often witty, but there is no enjoyment of his wit; he is as comical, base, and shameless as Falstaff himself, but he never calls forth the abstract sympathy we feel for the latter. Nothing makes amends for his vileness, nor for that of Thersites, nor for that of any other character in the whole play. Here, as in other plays, _Timon of Athens_ in particular, is shown that deep-seated Anglo-Saxon vein which, according to the popular estimate, Shakespeare entirely lacked,--that vein in which flows the life-blood of Swift's, Hogarth's, and even some of Byron's principal works, and it shows how, after all, there was some sympathy between the Merrie England of those days and the later Land of Spleen.

We have noticed the harsh strength of Ulysses' judgment of Cressida, and in the decisive scene, in which Troilus is the unseen witness of Cressida's perfidy, are written words so weighty and so full of emotion that we feel Shakespeare's very soul speaks in them.

Diomedes begs Cressida for the scarf which Troilus has given her.

"_Diomedes_. I had your heart before, this follows it.

_Troilus (aside)_. I did swear patience.

_Cressida_. You shall not have it, Diomed, faith you shall not: I'll give you something else.

_Diomedes_. I will have this: whose was it?

_Cressida_. It is no matter.

_Diomedes_. _Come, tell me whose it was?_

_Cressida_. _'Twas one that loved me better than you will'_ _But, now you have it, take it._"

And the bit of feminine psychology which Shakespeare has given in Cressida's farewell to Diomedes:

"Good-night: I prithee, come. Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee, _But with my heart the other eye doth see_. Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find, The error of our eye directs our mind."

And the terrible words Shakespeare puts into Troilus's mouth when he tries so desperately to shake off the impression, and deny the possibility of what he has seen:

"_Ulysses_. Why stay we, then?' _Troilus_. To make a recordation to my soul Of every syllable that here was spoken. But if I tell how these two did co-act, Shall I not lie in publishing this truth? Sith yet there is a credence in my heart An esperance so obstinately strong, That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears, As if those organs had deceptious functions Created only to calumniate. Was Cressid here? _Ulysses_. I cannot conjure, Trojan. _Troilus_. She was not, sure. _Ulysses_. Most sure she was. _Troilus_. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness. _Ulysses_. Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now. _Troilus_. Let it not be believed for womanhood! _Think, we had mothers_: do not give advantage To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, For depravation, to square this general sex By Cressid's rule; rather think this not Cressid. _Ulysses_. What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers? _Troilus_. Nothing at all, unless that that were she."

Not only Troilus, but the whole play has here become permeated by Ulysses' conception of Cressida, and in this despairing outburst, "Think, we had mothers," is the pith of the piece uttered forth with terrible clearness.

Yet Troilus and Cressida by no means represent the whole of the play. In order to counterbalance the slightness of the action, the bombastic speech, the railing abuse, and the heavy bitter Juvenal-like satire of his drama, Shakespeare has interpolated some serious and thoughtful utterances in which some of the fruits of his abundant experience are expressed in weighty and concise form.

Achilles, and more especially Ulysses, give vent to profound political and psychological reflections, entirely regardless of the fact that the one is a thoughtless blockhead, and the other is a crafty and unsympathetic nature, the mere negative pole of Troilus, cold as he is warm, cunning as he is naïve. These remarkable and thoughtful utterances, not in the least in harmony with their characters, stand in direct contradiction to the whole play and its farcical treatment, but they are none the less notable for that. This singular inconsistency is one of the many in which this incongruous play is so rich, and it is these very contradictions which make it attractive, insomuch as they reveal the conflicting moods from which it sprang. They arrest the attention like the irregular features of a face whose expression varies between irony, satire, melancholy, and profundity.

Ulysses, who is represented as the sole statesman among the Greeks, degrades himself by low flattery of the idiotic Ajax, servilely referring to him as "this thrice worthy and right valiant lord," who should not soil the victory he has won by going as messenger to Achilles' tent, and he persuades the princes to pass Achilles by without greeting him. On this occasion Achilles, who is otherwise but a braggart, dolt, coward, and scoundrel, surprises us by a succession of outbursts, in each of which he gives voice to as deep and bitter knowledge of human nature as does Timon of Athens himself.

"What, am I poor of late? 'Tis certain greatness once fall'n out with Fortune Must fall out with men too: what the declined is He shall as soon read in the eyes of others, As feel in his own fall. . . . . . . . And not a man, for being simply man, Hath any honour, but honour for those honours That are without him, as place, riches, favour, Prizes of accident as oft as merit: Which when they fall, as being slippery standers, The love that leaned on them is slippery too, Do one pluck down another, and together Die in the fall."

Ulysses now enters upon a thoughtful conversation with Achilles, calling his attention to the fact that no man, however highly advanced he may be, has any real knowledge of his worth until he has received the judgment of others and observed their attitude towards him. Achilles answers him a happy and pertinent analogy on principles of pure philosophical reasonings, and Ulysses continues:

"That no man is the lord of anything Till he communicate his parts to others; Nor doth he of himself know them for aught Till he behold them formed in the applause Where they're extended: who like an arch reverberates The voice again, or, like a gate of steel Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heart."

Achilles interrupts a long discourse, ending with a thrust at Ajax, with the question "What, are my deeds forgot?" and the remarkable answer he receives reveals, to an observant reader, one of the sources of the bitterness and pessimism of the play. It can scarcely be doubted that Shakespeare at this time felt himself ousted from the popular favour by younger and less worthy men: we know that immediately after his death he was eclipsed by Fletcher. He is absorbed by a feeling of the ingratitude of man and the injustice of what is called the way of the world. We found the first traces of this feeling in the words of Bertram's dead father, quoted by the King in _All's Well that Ends Well_, and here it breaks out in full force in a reply whose very weak pretext is that of showing Achilles how ill advised he is to rest upon his laurels:

"Time hath, my lord, a wallet on his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance dear, my lord, Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; For honour travels in a strait so narrow, Where but one goes abreast: keep then the path; For emulation hath a thousand sons That one by one pursue: if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an entered tide, they all rush by And leave you hindmost; Or like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O'errun and trampled on: then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours; For time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer; welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. Oh, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, Though they are made and moulded of things past; And give to dust that is a little gilt More land than gilt o'erdusted."

How plainly is one of the sources betrayed here of the black waters of bitterness which bubble up in _Troilus and Cressida_, a bitterness which spares neither man nor woman, war nor love, hero nor lover, and which springs in part from woman's guile, in part from the undoubted stupidity of the English public. In the latter part of the conversation between Ulysses and Achilles the former has some renowned words on the direction of the state--its ideal government, that is to say. The incongruity between the circumstance of utterance and the utterance itself is nowhere more striking in this play than here. Ulysses tells Achilles that they all know why he refuses to take part in the battle; every one is well aware that he is in love with Priam's daughter; and when Achilles exclaims in amazement at finding the secrets of his private life disclosed, Ulysses, with a solemnity inconsistent with the triviality of the subject and the grim ways of espionage, gives the almost mystical and too profound answer:

"Is that a wonder? The providence that's in a watchful state Knows almost every grain of Pluto's gold, Finds bottom in the uncomprehensive deeps, Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods, Does thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles. There is a mystery--with whom relation Durst never meddle--in the soul of state; Which hath an operation more divine Than breath or pen can give expression to."

He then turns abruptly to the subject of Achilles's amours with Polyxena being common talk, and seeks to provoke the lover into joining the combat by telling him that it has become a common jest that Achilles has conquered Hector's sister, but that Ajax has subdued Hector himself, and then ends his speech with the following obscure allusion to the relation between Achilles and Ajax:--

"Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak: The fool slides o'er the ice that you should break."[2]

In spite of the strange inconsistency of all these political allusions, they are of the greatest interest to us, inasmuch as they so clearly indicate Shakespeare's next great work, the Roman tragedy of _Coriolanus_ (1608).

Ulysses makes steady protest against the vulgar error that it is the gross work, and not the guiding spirit, which is decisive in war and politics. He complains of the abuse Achilles and Thersites heap upon the leaders of the campaign (Act i. sc. 3):

"They tax our policy and call it cowardice, Count wisdom as no member of the war, Forestall prescience, and esteem no act But that of hand: the still and mental parts That do contrive how many hands shall strike When fitness calls them on, and know by measure Of their observant toil the enemies' weight-- Why, 'this hath not a finger's dignity," &c.

It is, of course, Thersites who has taken the lead; the light wit and deep humour of the earlier clowns is displaced in him by the frantic outbursts of a contemptible scamp. Throughout, Thersites is intended as a caricature of the envious and worthless (if sharpsighted) plebeian, of whose wit Shakespeare has need for the complete scourging of an arrogant and corrupt aristocracy, but whose politics are the subject of his utter disgust and scorn. As the haughty intelligence of Ulysses seems to foreshadow Prospero, but without his bright supernatural clearness, so does Thersites seem to be a preliminary sketch for Caliban, barring his heavy, earthy, grotesque clumsiness. The character more immediately allied to that of Thersites, however, is not Caliban, but that grim cynic Apemantus in _Timon of Athens_.

Still more significant than the previously quoted lines is the speech in which Ulysses (Act i. sc. 3) develops a political view which was obviously Shakespeare's own, and which is soon to be proclaimed in _Coriolanus_. Its point of view proceeds from the conviction, expressed in our day by Nietzsche, that the distance between man and man must on no account be bridged over, and is introduced by a half-astronomical, half-astrological explanation of the Ptolemaic system:

"The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office and custom, in all line of order; And therefore is the glorious planet Sol In noble eminence enthroned and sphered Amidst the others; whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check to good and bad: but when the planets In evil mixture to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents! what mutiny! What raging of the sea! frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture."

The remainder of the passage has become a fixed ingredient of English Shakespearian anthologies, and carries us on directly into _Coriolanus_:

"Oh, when degree is shaked, Which is the ladder to all high designs, Then enterprise is sick.... Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike the father dead. Force should be right; or rather right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. . . . . . . . . This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking. And this neglection of degree it is That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose It hath to climb. The general's disdained By him one step below, he by the next, That next by him beneath... ... It grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation."

Shakespeare has so often emphasised the superiority of real merit to outside show, that he needs no vindication from a charge of worship of mere rank and station. What he here expresses is merely that inherently aristocratic point of view which we recognized in his early works, and which has intensified with increasing years. It was from the first founded upon a conviction that only among an hereditary aristocracy, under a well-established monarchy, was any patronage of his art and profession possible, and the opinion, steadily nourished by the enmity of the middle classes, will soon be expressed with extraordinary vehemence in _Coriolanus_.

_Troilus and Cressida_, then, which seems at first sight to be a romantic play founded on an old world subject, is in reality, despite its embellishments, a satire on the ancient material, and a parody of romanticism itself. It cannot therefore be classed with the attempts made by other great poets to resuscitate the old Greek personalities. Racine's _Iphigenia in Aulis_ and Goethe's _Iphigenia in Tauris_, were written in serious earnestness, although neither of them approximated closely to the old world of tradition. Racine's Greeks are courtly Frenchmen from the salons, and Goethe's are German princes and princesses, of humane and classic culture, who attitudinise like the figures in a painting by Raphael Mengs. It may be said that Shakespeare's Hector, who quotes Aristotle, and his Lord Achilles, with his spurs and long sword, are as much noblemen of the Renaissance as Racine's Seigneur Achilles is a courtier in periwig and red-heeled shoes. But Racine meant no satire, while Shakespeare most deliberately caricatured. All turns to discord under his touch; love is betrayed, heroes are murdered, constancy ridiculed, levity and coarseness triumph, and no gleam of better things shines out at the end. The play closes with an indecent jest of the loathsome Pandar's.

[1] Troilus's euphuisms:--

"I was about to tell thee: when my heart As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain, Lest Hector or my father should perceive me, I have, as when the sun doth light a storm, Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile" (Act i. sc. I). "----O gentle Pandarus, From Cupid's shoulder pluck his painted wings, And fly with me to Cressid" (Act iii. sc. 2).

[2] F. Halliwell-Phillips has published, concerning these last two lines, a miniature book, _The Fool and the Ice_, London, 1883. He explains that a whole little history lies behind this curious simile. When Lord Chandos's Company played at Evesham, near Stratford (before 1600), a country fool there, Jack Miller by name, became so infatuated with their clown that he wanted to run away with them, and had, consequently, to be locked up. He saw from the window, however, that the company was preparing to depart, and springing out, sped, in spite of the danger, over forty yards of ice so thin that it would not bear a piece of brick which was laid upon it. (First told in a little book by the player Robert Arnim, afterwards one of Shakespeare's colleagues. It was published in 1603 under the title "Foole upon Foole, or Sixe Sortes of Sottes, by Colonnico del Mondo Snuffe," clown at the Globe Theatre.)

XI

_DEATH OF SHAKESPEARE'S MOTHER--CORIOLANUS--HATRED OF THE MASSES_

Shakespeare's mother was buried on the 9th of September 1608. He had travelled about the country of late, playing with his company, from the middle of May until far into the autumn, during which period court and aristocracy were absent from the capital. It is not certain whether he had returned to London at this time or not, but he hastened to Stratford on hearing of his mother's death, and must have stayed some time on his property, "New Place," after attending her funeral; for we find him still at Stratford on the 16th of October. On that day he stands godfather to the son of a friend of his youth, Henry Walker, an alderman of the borough, who is mentioned in Shakespeare's will.

The death of a mother is always a mournfully irreparable loss, often the saddest a man can sustain. We can realise how deeply it would go to Shakespeare's heart when we remember the capacity for profound and passionate feeling with which nature had blessed and cursed him. We know little of his mother; but judging from that affinity which generally exists between famous sons and their mothers, we may suppose that she was no ordinary woman. Mary Arden, who belonged to an old and honourable family, which traced its descent (perhaps justly) back to the days of Edward the Confessor, represented the haughty patrician element of the Shakespeare family. Her ancestors had borne their coat of arms for centuries, and the son would be proud of his mother for this among other reasons, just as the mother would be proud of her son.

In the midst of the prevailing gloom and bitterness of his spirit, this fresh blow fell upon him, and, out of his weariness of life as his surroundings and experiences showed it to him, recalled this one mainstay to him--his mother. He remembered all she had been to him for forty-four years, and the thoughts of the man and the dreams of the poet were thus led to dwell upon the significance in a man's life of this unique form, comparable to no other--his mother.

Thus it was that, although his genius must follow the path it had entered upon and pursue it to the end, we find, in the midst of all that was low and base in his next work, this one sublime mother-form, the proudest and most highly-wrought that he has drawn, Volumnia.

The _Tragedy of Coriolanus_ was first published in 1623, in folio edition, but 1608 is the generally accepted date of its production,

## partly because a speech in Ben Jonson's _The Silent Woman_ (1609)

seems to indicate a reminiscence of _Coriolanus_, and partly because many different critics concur in the opinion that its style and versification point to that year.

How came this work to emerge from the depths of all the discontent, despondency, hatred of life, and contempt for humanity which went at this time to make up Shakespeare's soul? He was angry and soured, and the sources of his embittered feelings are embodied in his plays, seeking outlet, now under one, now under another form. In _Troilus and Cressida_ it was the relation of the sexes; here it is social conditions and politics.

His point of view is as personal as it well could be. Shakespeare's aversion to the mob was based upon his contempt for their discrimination, but it had its deepest roots in the purely physical repugnance of his artist nerves to their plebeian atmosphere. It was obvious in _Troilus and Cressida_ that the irritation with public stupidity was at its height. He now, for the third time, finds in his Plutarch a subject which not only responds to the mood of the moment, but also gives him an opportunity for portraying a notable mother; and he is irresistibly drawn to give his material dramatic style.

It is the old traditional story of Coriolanus, great man and great general, who, in the remote days of Roman antiquity, became involved in such hopeless conflict with the populace of his native city, and was so roughly dealt with by them in return, that he was driven, in his bitterness, to reckless deeds.

Plutarch, however, was by no means prejudiced against the people, and the subject had to be entirely re-fashioned by Shakespeare before it would harmonise with his mood. The historian may be guilty of serious contradictions in matters of detail, but he endeavours, to the best of his ability, to enter into the circumstances of times which were of hoary antiquity, even to him. The main drift of his narrative is to the effect that Coriolanus had already attained to great authority and influence in the city, when the Senate, which represented the wealth of the community, came into collision with the masses. The people were overridden by usurers, the law was terribly severe upon debtors, and the poor were subjected to incessant distraint; their few possessions were sold, and men who had fought bravely for their country and were covered with honourable scars were frequently imprisoned. In the recent war with the Sabines the patricians had been forced to promise the people better treatment in the future, but the moment the war was over they broke their word, and distraint and imprisonment went on as before. After this the plebeians refused to come forward at the conscription, and the patricians, in spite of the opposition of Coriolanus, were compelled to yield.

Shakespeare was evidently incapable of forming any idea of the free citizenship of olden days, still less of that period of ferment during which the Roman people united to form a vigorous political party, a civic and military power combined, which proved the nucleus round which the great Roman Empire eventually shaped itself--a power of which J. L. Heiberg's words on thought might have been predicted: "It will conquer the world, nothing less."

Much the same thing was occurring in Shakespeare's own time, and, under his very eyes, as it were, the English people were initiating their struggle for self-government. But they who constituted the Opposition were antagonistic to him and his art, and he looked without sympathy upon their conflict. Thus it was that those proud and self-reliant plebeians, who exiled themselves to Mons Sacer sooner than submit to the yoke of the patricians, represented no more to him than did that London mob which was daily before his eyes. To him the Tribunes of the People were but political agitators of the lowest type, mere personifications of the envy of the masses, and representatives of their stupidity and their brute force of numbers. Ignoring every incident which shed a favourable light upon the plebeians, he seized upon every instance of popular folly which could be found in Plutarch's account of a later revolt, in order to incorporate it in his scornful delineation. Again and again he insists, by means of his hero's passionate invective, on the cowardice of the people, and that in the face of Plutarch's explicit testimony to their bravery. His detestation of the mass thrived upon this reiterated accentuation of the wretched pusillanimity of the plebeians, which went hand-in-hand with a rebellious hatred for their benefactors.

Was it Shakespeare's intention to allude to the strained relations existing between James and his Parliament? Does Coriolanus represent an aristocratically-minded poet's side-glance at the political situation in England? I fancy it does. Heaven knows there was little resemblance between the amazingly craven and vacillating James and the haughty, resolute hero of Roman tradition, who fought a whole garrison single-handed. Nor was it personal resemblance which suggested the comparison, but a general conception of the situation as between a beneficent power on the one hand and the people on the other. He regarded the latter wholly as mob, and looked upon their struggle for freedom as mutiny, pure and simple.

It is hard to have to say it, but the more one studies Shakespeare with reference to contemporary history, the more is one struck by the evident necessity he felt, in spite of the undoubted disgust with which King and Court inspired him, for seeking the support of the kingly power against his adversaries. Many are the unmistakable, though discreet and delicate, compliments he addresses to the monarch.

It was even before his accession that we detected, in _Hamlet_, the first glance in the direction of James. The accentuation of Hamlet's relations with the players is not without its acknowledgments and appeal to the Scottish monarch. In _Measure for Measure_ the stress laid upon the Duke's doubly careful watch over all that transpires in Vienna during the apparent neglect of his absence was undoubtedly intended to excuse James's somewhat cowardly desertion of London, immediately after his coronation, for the whole time the plague raged there. We find this feeling again in _Coriolanus_, and again in _The Tempest_, which was written for the wedding festivities of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, and which contains, under cover of the sagacious Prospero, many subtle and dainty, but utterly undeserved, compliments to the wise and learned King James. There is a striking analogy between the relations of Molière to Louis XIV. and those of Shakespeare to his king. Both great men had the religious prejudices of the people against them; both, as poets of the royal theatre, had to make some show of subservience, but Molière could feel a more sincere admiration for his Louis than could Shakespeare for his James.

In an otherwise masterly review of _The Tempest_ in the _Universal Review_ for 1889, Richard Garnett has called _Coriolanus_ a reflection of a Conservative's view of James's struggle with the Parliament. This is an exaggeration, which leads him to raise the question as to whether the play owed its origin to the first conflict with the House, or the second in 1614. He pronounces for the latter, and thus arrives at an opinion, held by himself alone, that _Coriolanus_ was Shakespeare's last work.

The argument on which he bases this view proves, on closer inspection, to be entirely worthless. Some lines in the fifth Act (sc. 5) run as follows:

"Think with thyself How much more unfortunate than all living women Are we come thither."

In the older editions of North's translations of Plutarch (1595 and 1603) it stands thus: "How much more _unfortunately_ than all the women living," the form _unfortunate_ of the tragedy not appearing until the edition of 1612. This circumstance was detected by Halliwell-Phillips, and led him and Garnett to the conclusion that Shakespeare used the edition of 1612, and cannot therefore have written his drama before that year. When we consider how very slight the deviation is, and how it was practically necessitated by the metre, we see what a poor criterion it is of the date of production. Moreover, precisely the opposite conclusion might be drawn from a comparison of North's translation with other details of the play. In the fourth Act (sc. 5) we find, for example:

"----For if I had feared death, of all men i' the world I would have Voided thee; but _in mere spite_ To be quit of those my banishers Stand I before thee here."

In the 1579 and 1595 editions of North it stands thus: "For if I had feared death, I would not have come thither to have put myself in hazard, but prickt forward _with spite_"

In all later editions the italicised words are omitted, "with desire to be revenged" being substituted in their stead. According to this method, a very much earlier date might be assumed for _Coriolanus_, but both arguments are equally worthless.

We have, therefore, no occasion to abandon 1608 on that ground, and we have certainly no need to do so for the sake of a fanciful approximation of the position of Coriolanus to that of James at the dissolution of Parliament in 1614.

Thus much, at any rate, can be declared with absolute certainty, that the anti-democratic spirit and passion of the play sprang from no momentary political situation, but from Shakespeare's heart of hearts. We have watched its growth with the passing of years. A detestation of the mob, a positive hatred of the mass as mass, can be traced in the faltering efforts of his early youth. We may see its workings in what is undoubtedly Shakespeare's own description of Jack Cade's rebellion in the _Second Part of Henry VI_, and we divine it again in the conspicuous absence of all allusion to Magna Charta displayed in _King John_.

We have already stated that Shakespeare's aristocratic contempt for the mob had its root in a purely physical aversion for the atmosphere of the "people." We need but to glance through his works to find the proof of it. In the _Second Part of Henry VI_. (Act iv. sc. 7) Dick entreats Cade "that the laws of England may come out of his mouth;" whereupon Smith remarks aside: "It will be stinking law; for his breath stinks with eating toasted cheese." And again in Casca's description of Cæsar's demeanour when he refuses the crown at the Lupercalian festival: "He put it the third time by, and still he refused it; the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps, and _uttered such a deal of stinking breath_ because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he swooned 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" (_Julius Cæsar_,

## Act i. sc. 2).

Also the words in which Cleopatra (in the last scene of the play) expresses her horror of being taken in Octavius Cæsar's triumph to Rome:

"Now, Iras, what thinkest thou? Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown In Rome as well as I: mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view; _in their thick breaths,"_ _Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclosed_ _And forced to drink their vapour._"

All Shakespeare's principal characters display this shrinking from the mob, although motives of interest may induce them to keep it concealed. When Richard II., having banished Bolingbroke, describes the latter's farewell to the people, he says (_Richard II_., Act i. sc. 4):

"Ourself and Bushy, Bagot here and Green, Observed his courtship to the common people; How did he seem to dive into their hearts With humble and familiar courtesy, Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smile And patient underbearing of his fortune, As 'twere to banish their effects with him. Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench, A brace of draymen bid God-speed him well, And had the tribute of his supple knee, With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends.'"

The number of these passages proves that it was, in plain words, their evil smell which repelled Shakespeare. He was the true artist in this respect too, and more sensitive to noxious fumes than any woman. At the present period of his life this particular distaste has grown to a violent aversion. The good qualities and virtues of the people do not exist for him; he believes their sufferings to be either imaginary or induced by their own faults. Their struggles are ridiculous to him, and their rights a fiction; their true characteristics are accessibility to flattery and ingratitude towards their benefactors; and their only real passion is an innate, deep, and concentrated hatred of their superiors; but all these qualities are merged in this chief crime: they _stink_.

"_Cor_. For the mutable _rank-scented_ many, let them Regard me as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves" (Act iii. sc. I). "_Brutus_. I heard him swear, Were he to stand for consul, never would he Appear i' the market-place, nor on him put The napless vesture of humility; Nor, showing as the manner is, his wounds To the people, beg their _stinking breaths"_ (Act ii. sc. I).

When Coriolanus is banished by the people, he turns upon them with the outburst:

"You common cry of curs! _whose breath I hate_ As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcases of unburied men That do corrupt my air" (Act iii. sc. 3)

When old Menenius, Coriolanus's enthusiastic admirer, hears that the banished man has gone over to the Volscians, he says to the People's Tribunes:

"You have made good work, You and your apron-men: you that stood so much Upon the voice of occupation and The breath of _garlic-eaters!_" (Act iv. sc. 6).

And a little farther on:

"Here come the clusters. And is Aufidius with him? You are they That made the air unwholesome when you cast Your _stinking_ greasy caps up, hooting at Coriolanus' exile."

If we seek to know how Shakespeare came by this non-political but purely sensuous contempt for the people, we must search for the reason among the experiences of his own daily life. Where but in the course of his connection with the theatre would he come into contact with those whom he looked upon as human vermin? He suffered under the perpetual obligation of writing, staging, and acting his dramas with a view to pleasing the Great Public. His finest and best had always most difficulty in making its way, and hence the bitter words in _Hamlet_ about the "excellent play" which "was never acted, or, if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not the _million_."

Into this epithet, "the million," Shakespeare has condensed his contempt for the masses as art critics. Even the poets, and they are many, who have been honest and ardent political democrats, have seldom extended their belief in the majority to a faith in its capacity for appraising their art. The most liberal-minded of them all well know that the opinion of a connoisseur is worth more than the judgment of a hundred thousand ignoramuses. With Shakespeare, however, his artist's scorn for the capacity of the many did not confine itself to the sphere of Art, but included the world beyond. As, year after year, his glance fell from the stage upon the flat caps covering the unkempt hair of the crowding heads down there in the open yard which constituted the pit, his sentiments grew increasingly contemptous towards "the groundlings." These unwashed citizens, "the understanding gentlemen of the ground," as Ben Jonson nicknamed them, were attired in unlovely black smocks and goatskin jerkins, which had none too pleasant an odour. They were called "nutcrackers" from their habit of everlastingly cracking nuts and throwing the shells upon the stage. Tossing about apple-peel, corks, sausage ends, and small pebbles was another of their amusements. Tobacco, ale, and apple vendors forced their way among them, and even before the curtain was lifted a reek of tobacco-smoke and beer rose from the crowd impatiently waiting for the prima donna to be shaved. The fashionable folk of the stage and boxes, whom they hated, and with whom they were ever seeking occasion to brawl, called them _stinkards_. Abuse was flung backwards and forwards between them, and the pit threw apples and dirt, and even went so far as to spit on to the stage. In the _Gull's Hornebooke_ (1609) Dekker says: "The stage, like time, will bring you to most perfect light and lay you open: neither are you to be hunted from thence, though the _scarecrows_ in the _yard_ hoot at you, hiss at you, spit on you." As late as 1614 the prologue to an old comedy, _The Hog has lost his Pearl_, says:

"We may be pelted off for what we know, With apples, eggs, or stones, from _those below_."

Who knows if Shakespeare was better satisfied with the less rowdy portion of his audience? Art was not the sole attraction of the theatre. We read in an old book on English plays:--

"In the play-houses at London it is the fashion of youthes to go first into the _yarde_ and carry their eye through every gallery; then, like unto ravens, when they spy the carrion, thither they fly and press as near to the fairest as they can."[1] These fine gentlemen, who sat or reclined at full length on the stage, were probably as much occupied with their ladies as the less well- to-do theatre-goers. We know that they occasionally watched the play as Hamlet did, with their heads in their mistresses' laps, for the position is described in Fletcher's _Queen of Corinth_ (Act i. sc. 2):

"For the fair courtier, the woman's man, That tells my lady stories, dissolves riddles, Ushers her to her coach, _lies at her feet_ _At solemn masques, applauding what she laughs at._"

Dekker (_Gulfs Hornebooke_) informs us that keen card-playing went on amongst some of the spectators, while others read, drank, or smoked tobacco. Christopher Marlowe has an epigram on this last practice, and Ben Jonson complains in his _Bartholomew Fair_ of "those who accommodate gentlemen with tobacco at our theatres." He gives an elaborate description in his play, _The Case is Altered_ of the manner in which capricious lordlings conducted themselves at the performance of a new piece:--

"And they have such a habit of dislike in all things, that they will approve nothing, be it never so conceited or elaborate; but sit dispersed, making faces and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and cry, filthy, filthy; simply uttering their own condition, and using their wryed countenances instead of a vice, to turn the good aspects of all that shall sit near them, from what they behold" (Act ii. sc. 6).

The fact that women's parts were invariably played by young men may have contributed to the general rowdyism of the play-going public, although, on the other hand, it must have been conducive to greater morality on the part of those directly connected with the theatre. It was surely a real amelioration of Shakespeare's fate that the difficulties with which he had to struggle were not increased by that enthralling and ravishing evil which bears the name of actress.[2].

The notion of feminine characters being taken by a woman was so foreign to England that the individual who ascertained the use of forks in Italy, discovered the existence of actresses at the same time and in the same place. Coryate writes from Venice in July 1608:--"Here I observed certaine things that I never saw before; for I saw women act, a thing I never saw before, though I have heard that it hath been sometimes used in London; and they performed it with as good a grace,

## action, gestures, and whatsoever convenient for a player, as I ever

saw any masculine actor." It was not until forty-four years after Shakespeare's death that a woman stepped on to the English stage. We know precisely when and in what play she appeared. On the 8th of December 1660 the part of Desdemona was taken by an Englishwoman. The prologue read upon this occasion is still in existence.[3]

A theatrical audience of those days was, to Shakespeare's eyes at any rate, an uncultivated horde, and it was this crowd] which represented to him "the people." He may have looked upon them in his youth with a certain amount of goodwill and forbearance, but they had become entirely odious to him now. It was undoubtedly the constant spectacle of the "_understanders_" and the atmosphere of their exhalations, which caused his scorn to flame so fiercely over democratic movements and their leaders, and all that ingratitude and lack of perception which, to him, represented "the people."

With his necessarily slight historical knowledge and insight, Shakespeare would look upon the old days of both Rome and England in precisely the same light in which he saw his own times. His first Roman drama testifies to his innately anti-democratic tendencies. He seized with avidity upon every instance in Plutarch of the stupidity and brutality of the masses. Recall, for example, the scene in which the mob murders Cinna, the poet, for no better reason than its fury against Cinna, the conspirator (_Julius Cæsar_, Act iii. sc. 3):

"_Third Citizen_. Your name, sir, truly.

"_Cinna_. Truly my name is Cinna.

"_First Citizen_. Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.

"_Cinna_. I am Cinna the poet. I am Cinna the poet.

"_Fourth Citizen_. Tear him for his bad verses. Tear him for his bad verses.

"_Cinna_. I am not Cinna the conspirator.

"_Fourth Citizen_. It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.

"_Third Citizen_. Tear him, tear him!"

All four citizens are alike in their bloodthirsty fury. Shakespeare displays the same aristocratic contempt for the fickle crowd, whose opinion wavers with every speaker; witness its complete change of front immediately after Antony's oration. It was this feeling, possibly, which was at the bottom of his want of success in dealing with Cæsar. He probably found Cæsar antipathetic, not on the ground of his subversion of a republican form of government, but as leader of the Roman democracy. Shakespeare sympathised with the conspiracy of the nobles against him because all popular rule--even that which was guided by genius--was repugnant to him, inasmuch as it was power exercised, directly or indirectly, by an ignorant herd.

This point of view meets us again and again in _Coriolanus_; and whereas, in his earlier plays, it was only occasionally and, as it were, accidentally expressed, it has now grown and strengthened into deliberate utterance.

I am aware that, generally speaking, neither English nor German critics will agree with me in this. Englishmen, to whom Shakespeare is not only their national poet, but the voice of wisdom itself, will, as a rule, see nothing in his poetry but a love of all that is simple, just, and true. They consider that due attention, on the whole, has been paid to the rights of the people in this play; that it contains the essence, as it were, of all that can be urged in favour of either democracy or aristocracy, and that Shakespeare himself was impartial. His hero is by no means, they say, represented in a favourable light; he is ruined by his pride, which, degenerating into unbearable arrogance, causes him to commit the crime of turning his arms against his country, and brings him to a miserable end. His relations with his mother represent the sole instance in which the inhuman, anti-social intractability of Coriolanus' character relaxes and softens; otherwise he is hard and unlovable throughout. The Roman people, on the other hand, are represented as good and amiable in the main; they are certainly somewhat inconstant, but Coriolanus is no less fickle than they, and certainly less excusable. That plebeian greed of plunder which so exasperated Marcius at Corioli is common to the private soldier of all times. No, they say, Shakespeare was totally unprejudiced, or, if he had a preference, it was for old Menenius, the free-spoken, patriotic soul who always turns a cheerfully humorous side to the people, even when he sees their faults most plainly.

I am simply repeating here a view of the matter actually expressed by eminent English and American critics--a view which, presumably therefore, represents that of the English-speaking public in general.[4]

In Germany also--more particularly at the time when Shakespeare's dramas were interpreted by liberal professors, who involuntarily brought them into harmony with their own ideas and those of the period--many attempts were made to prove that Shakespeare was absolutely impartial in political matters. Some even sought to make him a Liberal after the fashion of those who, early in this century, went by that name in Central Europe.

We have no interest, however, in re-fashioning Shakespeare. It is enough for us if our perception is fine and keen enough to recognise him in his works, and we must actually put on blinders not to see on which side Shakespeare's sympathies lie here. He is only too much of one mind with the senators who say that "poor suitors have strong breaths," and Coriolanus, who is never refuted or contradicted, says no more than what the poet in his own person would endorse.

In the first scene of the play, immediately following Menenius' well-known parable of the belly and the other members of the body, Marcius appears and fiercely advocates the view Menenius has humorously expressed:

"He that will give good words to thee will flatter Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs, That like not peace nor war? He that trusts to you, Where he should find you lions, finds you hares; Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no, Than is the coal of fire upon the ice, Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is To make him worthy whose offence subdues him, And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness, Deserves your hate; and your affections are A sick man's appetite, who desires most that Which would increase his coil ... ... Hang ye! Trust ye! With every minute you do change a mind; And call him noble that was now your hate, Him vile that was your garland."

The facts of the play bear out every statement here made by Coriolanus, including the one that the plebeians are only brave with their tongues, and run as soon as it comes to blows. They turn tail on the first encounter with the Volscians.

"_Marcius_. All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! You herd of--Boils and plagues' Plaster you o'er! that you may be abhorred Farther than seen, and one infest another Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese, That bear the shapes of men, how have you run From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell! All hurt behind; backs red and faces pale With flight and agu'd fear!" (Act i. sc. 4).

By dint of threatening to draw his sword upon the runaways, he succeeds in driving them back to the attack, compels the enemy to retreat, and forces himself single-handed, like a demigod or very god of war, through the gates of the town, which close upon him before his comrades can follow. When he comes forth again, bleeding, and the town is taken, his wrath thunders afresh on finding that the only idea of the soldiery is to secure as much booty as possible:

"See here these movers, that do prize their hours At a crack'd drachm! Cushions, leaden spoons, Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves, Ere yet the fight be done, pack up:--Down with them!"

As far as Coriolanus is concerned the popular party is simply the body of those who "cannot rule nor ever will be ruled" (Act iii. sc. I). The majority of nobles are too weak to venture to oppose the people's tribunes as they should, but Coriolanus, perceiving the danger of allowing these men to gain influence in the government of the city, courageously, if imprudently, braves their hatred in order to thwart and repress them (Act iii. sc. I).

"_First Senator_. No more words, we beseech you. _Coriolanus_. How! no more? As for my country I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay, against those measels, Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them."

He further asserts that the people had not deserved the recent distribution of corn, for they had attempted to evade the summons to arms, and during the war they chiefly displayed their courage in mutinying. They had brought groundless accusations against the senate, and it was contemptible to allow them, out of fear of their numbers, any share in the government. His last words upon the subject are:

"... This double worship, Where one part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance,--it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness: purpose so barr'd it follows, Nothing is done to purpose. ..."

So, in _Troilus and Cressida_, would Ulysses, who represents all that is truly wise in statesmanship, have spoken. There is no humane consideration for the oppressed condition of the poor, no just recognition of the right of those who bear the burden to have a voice in its distribution. That Shakespeare held the same political views as Coriolanus is amply shown by the fact that the most dissimilar characters approve of them in every particular, excepting only the violent and defiant manner in which they are expressed. Menenius' description of the tribunes of the people is not a whit less scathing than that of Marcius.

"Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a butcher's cushion, or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying, Marcius is proud, who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion" (Act ii. sc. I).

When Coriolanus's freedom of speech has procured his banishment, Menenius exclaims in admiration (Act iii. sc. I):

"_His nature is too noble for this world_: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for's power to thunder. His heart's his mouth."

Thus he is exiled for his virtues, not for his failings, and at heart they all agree with Menenius. When Coriolanus has gone over to the enemy, and their one anxiety is to appease his wrath, Cominius expresses the same view of the culpability of people and tribunes towards him (Act iv. sc. 4):

"Who shall ask it? The tribunes cannot do't for shame; the people Deserve such pity of him as the wolf Does of the shepherd."

Even the voice of one of the two serving-men of the Capitol exalts Coriolanus and justifies his scorn for the love or hatred of the people, the ignorant, bewildered masses--

"... So that, if they love, they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground: therefore for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or hate him manifests the true knowledgehe has of their dispositions; and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly see't" (Act ii. sc. 2).

This is almost too well expressed for a servant; we perceive that the poet has taken no particular pains to disguise his own voice. The same man tells how well Coriolanus has deserved of his country; he did not rise, as some do, by standing hat in hand and bowing himself into favour with the people:

"... But he hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his actions in their hearts, that for their tongues to be silent and not confess so much were a kind of ungrateful injury; to report otherwise were a malice, that giving itself to lie, would pluck reproof and rebuke from every ear that heard it."

This uncultured mind bears the same testimony as that of the most refined and intelligent patricians to the greatness of the hero. It is not difficult, I think, to follow the mental processes from which this work evolved. When Shakespeare came to reflect on what had constituted his chief gladness here on earth and made his melancholy life endurable to him, he found that his one lasting, if not too freely flowing, source of pleasure had been the friendship and appreciation of one or two noble and nobly-minded gentlemen.

For the people he felt nothing but scorn, and he was now, more than ever, incapable of seeing them as an aggregation of separate individualities, they were merged in the brutality which distinguished them in the mass. Humanity in general was to him not millions of individuals, but a few great entities amidst millions of non-entities. He saw more and more clearly that the existence of these few illustrious men was all that made life worth living, and the belief gave impetus to that hero-worship which had been characteristic of his early youth. Formerly, however, this worship had lacked its present polemical quality. The fact that Coriolanus was a great warrior made no particular impression on Shakespeare at this period; it was quite incidental, and he included it simply because he must. It was not the soldier that he wished to glorify but the demigod. His present impression of the circumstances and conditions of life is this: there must of necessity be formed around the solitary great ones of this earth a conspiracy of envy and hatred raised by the small and mean. As Coriolanus says, "Who deserves greatness, deserves your hate."

Owing to this turn of thought, Shakespeare found fewer heroes to worship; but his worship became the more intense, and appears in this play in greater force than ever before. The patricians, who have a proper understanding of his merit, regard Coriolanus with a species of lover-like enthusiasm, a sort of adoration. When Marcius's mother tells Menenius that she has had a letter from her son, and adds, "And I think there's one at home for you," Menenius cries:

"I will make my very house reel to-night: a letter for me!

"_Virgilia_. Yes, certain, there's a letter for you; I saw't.

"_Menenius_. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years' health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician: the most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench" (Act ii. sc. I).

So speaks his friend; we will now listen to his bitterest enemy, Aufidius, the man whom he has defeated and humiliated in battle after battle, who hates him, and vows that neither temple nor prayer of priest, nor any of those things which usually restrain a man's wrath, shall prevail to soften him. He has sworn that wherever he may find his enemy, be it even on his own hearth, he will wash his hands in his heart's blood. But when Marcius forsakes Rome, and repairing to the Volscians, actually seeks Aufidius in his own home, upon his own hearth, we hear only the admiration and genuine enthusiasm which the sound of his voice and the mere majesty of his presence calls forth in the adversary who would gladly hate him, and still more gladly despise him if he could.

"O Marcius, Marcius! Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter Should from yond cloud speak divine things, And say ''Tis true,' I'd not believe them more Than thee, all noble Marcius. Let me twine Mine arms about that body, where against My grained ash an hundred times hath broke, And scarred the moon with splinters: here I clip The anvil of my sword, and do contest As hotly and as nobly with thy love, As ever in ambitious strength I did Contend against thy valour. Know thou first, I loved the maid I married; never man Sighed truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold" (Act iv. sc. 5).

We have, then, in this play an almost wildly enthusiastic hero-worship upon a background of equally unqualified contempt for the populace. It is something different, however, from the humble devotion of his younger days to alien greatness (as in _Henry V._), and is founded rather on an overpowering and defiant consciousness of his own worth and superiority.

The reader must recall the fact that his contemporaries looked upon Shakespeare not so much as a poet who earned his living as an actor, but as an actor who occasionally wrote plays. We must also remember that the profession of an actor was but lightly esteemed in those days, and the work of a dramatist was considered as a kind of inferior poetry, which scarcely ranked as literature. Probably most of Shakespeare's intimates considered his small narrative poems--his _Venus and Adonis_, his _Lucretia,_ &c.--his real claim to notoriety, and they would regret that for the sake of money he had joined the ranks of the thousand and one dramatic writers. We are told in the dedication of _Histrio Mastix_ (1634), that the playwrights of the day took no trouble with what they wrote, but covetously pillaged from old and new sources, "chronicles, legends, and romances."

Shakespeare did not even publish his own plays, but submitted to their appropriation by grasping booksellers, who published them with such a mutilation of the text, that it must have been a perfect terror to him to look at them. This mishandling of his plays would be so obnoxious to him, that it was not likely he would care to possess any copies. He was in much the same position in this respect as the modern author, who, unprotected by any law of international copyright, sees his works mangled and mutilated in foreign languages.

He would doubtless enjoy a certain amount of popularity, but he remained to the last an actor among actors (not even then in the first rank with Burbage) and a poet among poets. Never once did it occur to any of his contemporaries that he stood alone, and that all the others taken together were as nothing in comparison with him.

He lived and died one of the many.

That his spirit rose in silent but passionate rebellion against this judgment is obvious. Were there moments in which he clearly felt and keenly recognised his greatness? It must have been so, and these moments had grown more frequent of late. Were there also times when he said to himself, "Five hundred, a thousand years hence, my name will still be known to mankind and my plays read"? We cannot say; it hardly seems probable, or he would surely have contended for the right to publish his own works. We cannot doubt that he believed himself worthy at this time of such lasting fame, but he had, as we can well understand, no faith at all that future generations would see more clearly, judge more truly, and appraise more justly than his contemporaries. He had no idea of historical evolution, his belief was rather that the culture of his native country was rapidly declining. He had watched the growth of narrow-minded prejudice, had seen the triumphant progress of that pious stupidity which condemned his art as a wile of the devil; and his detestation of the mass of men, past, present, and to come, made him equally indifferent to their praise or blame. Therefore it pleased him to express this indifference through the medium of Coriolanus, the man who turns his back upon the senate when it eulogises him, and of whom Plutarch tells us that the one thing for which he valued his fame was the pleasure it gave his mother. Yet Shakespeare makes him say (Act i. sc. 9):

"My mother, Who has a charter to extol her blood, When she does praise me grieves me."

Shakespeare has now broken with the judgments of mankind. He dwells on the cold heights above the snow-line, beyond human praise or blame, beyond the joys of fame and the perils of celebrity, breathing that keen atmosphere of indifference in which the soul hovers, upheld by scorn.

Some few on this earth are men, the rest are _spawn_, as Menenius calls them; and so Shakespeare sympathises with Coriolanus and honours him, endowing him with Cordelia's hatred of unworthy flattery, even placing her very words in his mouth (Act ii. sc. 2):

"But your people I love them as they weigh."

Therefore it is he equips his hero with the same stern devotion to truth with which, later in the century, Molière endows his Alceste, but, instead of in the semi-farcical, it is in the wholly heroic manner (Act iii. sc. 3):

"Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death, Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger But with a grain a day. I would not buy Their mercy at the price of one fair word."

We see Shakespeare's whole soul with Coriolanus when he cannot bring himself to ask the Consulate of the people in requital of his services. Let them freely give him his reward, but that he should have to ask for it--torture!

When his friends insist upon his conforming to custom and appearing in person as applicant, Shakespeare, who has hitherto followed Plutarch step by step, here diverges, in order to represent this step as being excessively disagreeable to Marcius. According to the Greek historian, Coriolanus at once proceeds with a splendid retinue to the Forum, and there displays the wounds he has received in the recent wars; but Shakespeare's hero cannot bring himself to boast of his exploits to the people, nor to appeal to their admiration and compassion by making an exhibition of his wounds:

"I cannot Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them, For my wounds' sake, to give their suffrage: please you That I may pass this doing" (Act ii. sc. 2).

He finally yields, but has hardly set foot in the Forum before he begins to curse at the position in which he has placed himself:

"What must I say? 'I pray, sir '--Plague upon't! I cannot bring My tongue to such a pace:--'Look, sir, my wounds! I got them in my country's service when Some certain of your brethren roared and ran From the noise of our own drums'" (Act ii. sc. 3).

He makes an effort to control himself, and, turning brusquely to the nearest bystanders, he addresses them with ill-concealed irony. On being asked what has induced him to stand for the Consulate, he hastily and rashly replies:

"Mine own desert. "_Second Citizen_. Your own desert!. "_Coriolanus_. Ay, but not mine own desire. "_Third Citizen_. How not your own desire? "_Coriolanus_. No, sir, 'twas never my desire to trouble the poor with begging."

Having secured a few votes in this remarkably tactless manner, he exclaims:

"Most sweet voices! Better to die, better to starve, Than crave the hire which first we do deserve."

When the intrigues of the tribunes succeed in inducing the people to revoke his election, he so far forgets himself in his fury at the insult that they are enabled to pronounce sentence of banishment against him. He then bursts into an outbreak of taunts and threats: "You common cry of curs! I banish _you_!"--which recalls how some thousand years later another chosen of the people and subsequent object of democratic jealousy, Gambetta, thundered at the noisy assembly at Belleville: "Cowardly brood! I will follow you up into your very dens."

The nature of the material and the whole conception of the play required that the pride of Coriolanus should occasionally be expressed with repellant arrogance. But we feel, through all the intentional artistic exaggeration of the hero's self-esteem, how there arose in Shakespeare's own soul, from the depth of his stormy contempt for humanity, a pride immeasurably pure and steadfast.

[1] _Plays confuted in Five several Actions_, by Stephen Gosson, 1580.

[2] It is therefore a droll error into which the otherwise admirable writer, Professor Fr. Paulson, falls in his essay, _Hamlet die Tragedie des Pessimismus (Deutsche Rundschau_, vol. lix. p. 243), when he remarks as a proof of the sensuality of Hamlet's nature: "Man erinnere sich nur seiner Intimität mit der Schauspielern; als sie ankommen, fällt sein Blick sogleich auf die Füsse der _Schauspielerin._

[3] "A Prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on this stage, in the tragedy called _The Moor of Venice_: "--

"I come unknown to any of the rest To tell you news; I saw the lady drest. The woman plays to day; mistake me not, No man in gown or page in petticoat: A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't If I should die, make affidavit on't.... 'Tis possible a virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness and yet play, Play on the stage when all eyes are upon her. Shall we count that a crime, France counts an honour?"

[4] See _Shakespeare's Tragedy of Coriolanus_, by the Rev. Henry N. Hudson, Professor of Shakespeare at Boston University. Boston, 1881.

XII

_CORIOLANUS AS A DRAMA_

The tragedy of _Coriolanus_ is constructed strictly according to rule; the plot is simple and powerful, and is developed, with steadily increasing interest, to a logical climax. With the exception of _Othello_, Shakespeare has never treated his material in a more simply intelligible fashion. It is the tragedy of an inviolably truthful personality in a world of small-minded folk; the tragedy of the punishment a reckless egoism incurs when it is betrayed into setting its own pride above duty to state and fatherland.

Shakespeare's aristocratic sympathies did not blind him to Coriolanus' unjustifiable crime and its inevitable consequences. Infuriated by his banishment; the great soldier goes over to the enemies of Rome and leads the Volscian army against his native city, plundering and terrifying as he goes. He spurns the humble entreaties of his friends, and only yields to the women of the city when, led by his mother and his wife, they come to implore mercy and peace.

Coriolanus' fierce outburst when the name of traitor is flung at him proves that Shakespeare did not look upon treason as a pardonable crime:

"The fires of the lowest hell fold in your people! Call me their traitor!--Thou injurious tribune! Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, In thy hands clutched as many millions, in Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say 'Thou liest,' unto thee, with a voice as free As I do pray the gods" (Act iii. sc. 3).

Immediately after this his outraged pride leads him to commit the very crime he has so wrathfully disclaimed. No consideration for his country or fellow-citizens can restrain him. The forces which arrest his vengeance are the mother he has worshipped all his life and the wife he tenderly loves. He knows that it is himself he is offering up when he sacrifices his rancour on the altar of his family. The Volscians will never forgive him for delivering up their triumph to Rome after he had practically delivered up Rome to them. And so he perishes, finally overtaken by Aufidius' long-accumulated jealousy acting through the disappointed rage of the Volscians. In Plutarch Shakespeare found his plot and the chief characters of his play ready to hand. He added the individuality of the tribunes and of Menenius (with the exception of the parable of the belly). Virgilia, who is little more than a name in the original, Shakespeare has transformed by one of his own wonderful touches into a woman whose chief charm lies in the quiet gentleness of her nature. "My gracious silence, hail!" thus Marcius greets her (Act ii. sc. I), and she is exhaustively defined in the exclamation. Her principal utterances, as well as Volumnia's most important speeches, are mere versifications of Plutarch's prose, and this is why these women have so much genuinely Roman blood in their veins. Volumnia is the true Roman matron of the days of the Republic. Shakespeare has wrought her character with special care, and her rich and powerful personality is not without its darker side. Her kinship with her son is perceptible in all her ways and words. She is more prone, as a woman, to employ, or at least approve of, dissimulation, but her nature is not a whit less defiantly haughty. Her first thought may be jesuitical; her second is always violent:

"_Vol_. Oh, sir, sir, sir, I would have had you put your power well on, Before you had worn it out. _Cor_ Let go. _Vol_. You might have been enough the man you are, With striving less to be so: lesser had been The thwartings of your dispositions, _if You had not showed them how ye were disposed Ere they lacked power to cross you._ _Cor_. Let them hang. _Vol. Ay, and burn too_" (Act iii. sc. 2).

When matters come to a climax, she shows no more discretion in her treatment of the tribunes than did her son, but displays precisely the same power of vituperation. On reading her speeches we realise the satisfaction and relief it was to Shakespeare to vent himself in furious invectives through the medium of his dramatic creations:

"_Vol_.... Hadst thou foxship To banish him that struck more blows for Rome Than thou hast spoken words? _Sic_. O blessed heavens! _Vol_. More noble blows, than ever thou wise words; And for Rome's good. I'll tell thee what; yet go: Nay, but thou shalt stay too: I would my son Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him, His good sword in his hand" (Act iv. sc. 2).

A comparison between Volumnia's final appeal to her son in the last act and the speech as it is given in Plutarch is of the greatest interest. Shakespeare has followed his author step by step, but has enriched him by the addition of the most artlessly human touches:

"There's no man in the world More bound to's mother; yet here he lets me prate Like one i' the stocks. Thou hast never in thy life Showed thy dear mother any courtesy; When she, (poor hen!) fond of no second brood, Has clucked thee to the wars and safely home, Loaden with honour" (Act v. sc. 3).

How the stern, soldierly bearing of the woman is softened by these touches with which Shakespeare has embellished her portrait!

The diction both here and throughout the play is that of Shakespeare's most matured period; but never before had he used bolder similes, shown more independence in his method of expression, nor condensed so much thought and feeling into so few lines. We have already drawn attention to the masterly handling of his material--a handling, however, which by no means precludes the intrusion of several extravagances, some heroic, some simply childish.

The hero's bodily strength and courage, for example, are strained to the mythical. He forces his way single-handed into a hostile town, holds his own there against a whole army, and finally makes good his retreat, wounded but not subdued. Even Bible tradition, in which divine aid comes to the rescue, cannot furnish forth such deeds. Neither Samson's escape from Gaza (Judges xvi.) nor David's from Keilah (1 Sam. xxiii.) can compare with this amazing exploit.

Equally unlikely is the foolishly defiant and arrogant attitude assumed by the senate, and more especially by Coriolanus, towards the plebeian party. Upon what do the nobles rely to support them in such an attitude? They have already been compelled to yield the political power of tribuneship, and it never even occurred to them to defy the sentence of banishment pronounced by these same tribunes. How comes it then that they seize every opportunity to taunt and scorn? How is it that these patricians, who have spoken so many brave words, make so poor a show of resistance when the Volscians are at their gates? They are so steeped in party spirit that their first thought, when defeat comes upon them, is to rejoice in the confusion and discomfiture the plebeians have brought upon themselves, and finally, abandoning all self-respect, they crawl to the feet of their exasperated conqueror.

The confusion of Shakespeare's authority in this part of the story would account for much.[1] According to Plutarch, Coriolanus, in the course of his victorious march from one Latin town to another, plunders the plebeians, but spares the patricians. A sudden change of public opinion occurs in Rome during his siege of Lavinium, and the popular party desires to recall Coriolanus, but the senate refuses--why, we are not told. The enemy is close upon them before a parley is agreed upon. Coriolanus offers easy terms, the admission of the Volscians to the Latin Federation being the chief stipulation. Despite the general feeling of discouragement in Rome, the senate answers haughtily that Romans will never yield to fear, and the Volscians must first lay down their arms if they desire to obtain a "favour." Directly after this defiance they make the most abject submission, and send their women as suppliants to the hostile camp.

While Shakespeare's Coriolanus has none of this consideration for his former friends, his patricians are as cowardly and incapable as the historian's. Cominius, Titus Lartius, and the others, who are originally represented as valiant men, make a very poor show at the end. Several, in short, of Plutarch's abundant contradictions have found their way into Shakespeare's play; they mark the beginning of a certain inconsequence which henceforward betrays itself in his work. From this point onwards his plays are no longer as highly finished as formerly.

I am not alluding here to the inconsistencies of his hero, for they only serve to give life and truth to his character, and the poet either represented them unconsciously, or was too ingenuous to avoid them; witness the reflection made by Coriolanus at the very moment of his rebellious disinclination to ask the suffrages of the people:

"Custom calls me to't; What custom wills, in all things should we do't, The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heapt For truth to o'er-peer" (Act ii. sc. 3).

Coriolanus is utterly unconscious that this speech of his strikes at the very root of that ultra-conservatism which he affects. The very thing he has refused to understand is, that if we invariably followed custom, the follies of the past would never be swept away, nor the rocks which hinder our progress burst asunder. To Coriolanus, what is customary is right, and he never realises the fact that his disdain for the tribunes and people has led him into a politically untenable position. We are by no means sure that Shakespeare's perceptions in this case were any keener than his hero's; but, consciously or unconsciously, it is this very inconsistency in Coriolanus' character which makes it so vividly lifelike.

_ Troilus and Cressida_ overflowed with contempt for the feminine sex as such, for love as a comical or pitiable sensuality, for mock heroics and sham military glory. _Coriolanus_ is brimful of scorn for the masses; for the stupidity, fickleness, and cowardice of the ignorant, slavish souls, and for the baseness of their leaders.

But the passionate disdain possessing Shakespeare's soul is destined to a stronger and wilder outburst in the work he next takes in hand. The outbreak in _Timon_ is against no one sex, no one caste, no one nation or fraction of humanity; it is the result of an overwhelming contempt, which excepts nothing and no one, but embraces the whole human race.

[1] The matter is interestingly discussed in Kreyssig's instructive and sympathetic work: _Vorlesungen über Shakespeare_, 1859, vol. ii. p. 110.

XIII

_TIMON OF ATHENS--HATRED OF MANKIND_

Timon of Athens has come down to us in a pitiable condition. The text is in a terrible state, and there are, not only between one scene and another, but between one page and another, such radical differences in the style and general spirit of the play as to preclude the possibility of its having been the work of one man. The threads of the story are often entirely disconnected, and circumstances occur (or are referred to) for which we were in no way prepared. The best part of the versification is distinctly Shakespearian, and contains all that wealth of thought which was characteristic of this period of his life; but the other parts are careless, discordant, and desperately monotonous. The prose dialogue especially jars, thrust as it is, with its long-winded straining after effect, into scenes which are otherwise compact and vigorous.

All Shakespeare students of the present day concur in the opinion that _Timon of Athens_, like _Pericles_, is but a great fragment from the master-hand.

The _Lyfe of Timon of Athens_ was printed for the first time in the old folio edition of 1623. Careful examination shows us that the first pages of the play of _Timon_ (which is inserted between _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Julius Cæsar_) are numbered 80, 81, 82, 81, instead of 78, 79, 80, 81, and end at page 98. The names of the actors, for which in no other case is more than the necessary space allowed, here occupy the whole of page 99, and page 100 is left blank. _Julius Cæsar_ begins upon the next page, which is numbered 109. Fleay noticed that _Troilus and Cressida_, which, as we remarked, is unnumbered, would exactly fill the pages 78 to 108. By some error, which furnishes us with another hint, the second and third pages of this play are numbered 79 and 80. Obviously it was the publisher's original intention to include _Troilus and Cressida_ among the tragedies. On its being subsequently observed that there was nothing really tragic about the play, they cast about, since _Julius Cæsar_ was already printed, for another tragedy which would as nearly as possible fill the vacant space.

Shakespeare found the material for _Timon of Athens_ in the course of his reading for _Antony and Cleopatra_. There is, in Plutarch's "Life of Antony," a brief sketch of Timon and his misanthropy, his relations with Alcibiades and the Cynic Apemantus, the anecdote of the fig-tree, and the two epitaphs. The subject evidently attracted Shakespeare by its harmony with his own distraught and excited frame of mind at the time. He was soon absorbed in it, and in some form or another he made acquaintance with Lucian's hitherto untranslated dialogue _Timon_, which contained many incidents giving fulness to the story, and from which he appropriated the discovery of the treasure, the consequent return of the parasitic friends, and Timon's scornful treatment of them.

Shakespeare probably found these details in some old play on the same subject. Dyce published, in 1842, an old drama on Timon which had been found in manuscript, and was judged by Steevens to date from 1600, or thereabouts. It seems to have been written for some academic circle, and in it we find the faithful steward and the farewell banquet with which the third act closes. In the older drama, instead of warm water, Timon throws stones, painted to resemble artichokes, at his guests. Some trace of these stones may be found in these lines in Shakespeare's play:

"_Second Lord_. Lord Timon's mad. _Third Lord_. I feel't upon my bones. _Fourth Lord_. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones."

In the old play, when Timon finds the gold, and his faithless mistress and friends flock around him once more, he repulses them, crying:

"Why vexe yee me, yee Furies? I protest, and all the Gods to witnesse invocate, I doe abhorre the titles of a friende, of father, or companion. I curse the aire yee breathe, I lothe to breathe that air."

He naïvely intimates a change of mind in the epilogue:

"I now am left alone: this rascall route hath left my side. What's this? I feele through out a sodeine change: my fury doth abate, my hearte grows milde and lays aside its hate;"

and concludes with a still more ingenuous appeal for applause:

"Let loving hands, loude sounding in the ayre, cause Timon to the citty to repaire."

We have no proof that Shakespeare was acquainted with this particular work. He probably used some other contemporary play, belonging to the theatre, which had proved a failure in its original form, and which both his company and his own inclinations urged him to thoroughly recast. It was not so entirely rewritten, however, that we can look upon the play as actually the work of Shakespeare--there are too many traces of another and a feebler hand; but the vital, lyrical, powerful pathos is his, and his alone.

There are two theories on this subject. Fleay, in his well-known and thorough investigation of the matter, endeavours to prove that the original scheme was Shakespeare's, but that some inferior hand amplified it for acting purposes. Fleay selected all the indubitably Shakespearian portions, and had them printed as a separate play, contending that it "not only included all that was of any value (which will scarcely be disputed), but that, on the score of intelligibility, none of the rejected speeches were needed."[1] Swinburne, who scarcely ever agrees with Fleay, also shares the belief that Shakespeare used no ready-made groundwork for his play. His first opinion was that _Timon of Athens_ was interrupted by Shakespeare's premature death, but later he inclined to the theory that, after working upon it for some time, the poet laid it aside as being little suited to dramatic treatment. Swinburne does not undervalue the work done by Shakespeare on that account, but remarks, on the contrary, that, had Juvenal been gifted with the inspiration of Æschylus, he might have written just such another tragedy as the fourth act of the drama.[2]

The theory that Shakespeare made use of a finished play which he only

## partially rewrote, leaving the rest in its clumsy imperfection, was

originally propounded by the English critics Sympson and Knight. It was first attacked and afterwards eagerly supported by Delius, who gives the reasons for his change of opinion at great length.[3] H. A. Evans, the commentator of the Irving edition, also shares this latter view. There is no dispute between the two parties concerning the portions written by Shakespeare; the contention is simply this: Did Shakespeare remodel another man's play, or did another man complete his?

As Fleay's attempt to construct a connected and intelligible play from the Shakespearian fragments failed, because a great part of the weak and spurious matter is absolutely necessary to the coherence of the whole, it certainly seems more reasonable to accept Shakespeare as the reviser. Some of the English critics incline to the opinion that the inferior scenes were the work of the contemporary poets George Wilkins and John Day.

After a lapse of nearly 300 years it is impossible to give any decided opinion on the matter, more especially for a critic whose mother tongue is not English. In these days of occultism and spiritualism the simplest way out of the difficulty would be for some of those favoured individuals, who hold communion with the other world by means of small tables and pencils, to induce Shakespeare himself to settle the matter once for all. Meanwhile we must be content with probabilities. To those who only know the work through translations, or to those who, like Gervinus and Kreyssig, the German critics, have not devoted sufficient attention to the language, the necessity of assuming a second writer may not be so obvious. It is not impossible, of course, that the feeble, prosy, and long-winded parts were written by Shakespeare, roughly sketched in such a fit of despondency and utter indifference to detail that he could not force himself to revise, re-write, and condense; but the possibility is an exceedingly remote one. We know how finely Shakespeare generally constructed his plays, even in the first rough draft.

The drama, as it stands, presents the picture of a thoughtlessly and extravagantly open-handed nature, whose one unfailing pleasure is to give. King Lear only gave away his possessions once, and then in his old age and to his daughters; but Timon daily bestows money and jewels upon all and sundry. At the opening of the play he is, without appearing to be personally luxurious, living in the midst of all the voluptuousness with which a Mæcenas, in the gayest of all the world's gay capitals, could surround himself. Artists and merchants flock round the generous patron who pays them more than they ask. A chorus of sycophants sing his praises day and night. It is but natural that, under those circumstances, a carelessly good-natured temperament should look upon society as a circle for the exchange of friendly services, which it is equally honourable to render or receive.

He pays no heed to the faithful steward who warns him that this life cannot last. He no more disturbs himself about the melting of his money from his coffers than if he were living in a communistic society with the general wealth at his disposal.

At last the tide of fortune turns. His coffers are empty; the steward is no longer able to find him money to fling away, and Timon must go a borrowing in his turn. Almost before the report of his ruin has had time to spread, bills come pouring in, and his impatient creditors, yesterday his comrades, send messengers for their money. All his requests for a loan are refused by his former friends--one on the ground of his own poverty, while another professes to be offended because he was not applied to in the first instance, and a third will not even lend a portion of the large sums Timon has but lately lavished upon him.

Timon has hitherto been one of fortune's favourites, but now the true nature of the world is suddenly revealed to him, as it was to Hamlet and King Lear. Like theirs, but far more harshly and bitterly, his former confiding simplicity is replaced by frantic pessimism. Wishing to show his false friends all the contempt he feels for them, Timon invites them to a final banquet, and they supposing that he has recovered his wealth, attend with excuses on their lips for their recent behaviour. The table is sumptuously spread, but the covered dishes contain only warm water, which Timon disdainfully flings in the faces of his guests.

He cuts himself adrift from all intercourse with mankind, and retreats to the woods to lead the solitary life of a Stoic. The half-jesting retirement of Jaques in _As You Like It_, and his dismissal of all who trouble his solitude, are here carried out in grim earnest.

It is not for long that he remains poor, for he has hardly begun to dig for the roots on which he lives than he finds treasure buried in the earth. Unlike Lucian's misanthrope, who rejoices in the possession of gold as a means of securing a life free from care, Shakespeare's Timon sickens at the sight of his wealth. Neither does he care for the honourable amends made by his countrymen. We learn it so late in the day that we can scarcely believe that Timon was formerly a skilful general, who had done good service to his country. This feature is taken from Lucian, and the character of the luxurious Mæcenas would have gained in interest and nobility if this trait had been impressed upon us earlier in the play. The senate, meanwhile, being threatened with war, offers Timon the sole command. He proudly rejects the overtures made by these misers and usurers in purple, and even remains unsoftened by the faithful devotion of his steward. He anathematises every one and all things, and returns to his cave to die by his own hand.

The non-Shakespearian elements of the play do not prevent his genius and master-hand from pervading the whole, and it is easy to see how this work grew out of the one immediately preceding it, to trace the connecting links between the two plays.

When Coriolanus is exasperated by the ingratitude of the plebeians, he joins the enemies of his country and people, and becomes the assailant of his native city. When Timon falls a victim to the thanklessness of those he has loaded with benefits, his hatred embraces the whole human race. The contrast is very suggestive. The despair of Coriolanus is of an active kind, driving him to deeds and placing him at the head of an army. Timon's is of the passive sort: he merely curses and shuns mankind. It is not until the discovery of the treasure determines him to use his wealth in spreading corruption and misery that his hatred takes a semi-practical form. This contrast was not an element of the drama until Shakespeare made it so.

The whole conduct of his Alcibiades forms a complete parallel to that of Coriolanus, and here again the connection between the two plays is obvious. Shakespeare found a brief account of the mutual relations of Timon and Alcibiades in North's translation of Plutarch's "Life of Antony," together with a description of Timon's good-will towards the general on account of the calamities that he foresaw he would bring upon the Athenians. The name of Alcibiades would not recall to Shakespeare, as it does to us, the most glorious period of Greek culture, and such names as Pericles, Aristophanes, and Plato--he generally gives Latin names to his Greeks, such as Lucius, Flavius, Servilius, &c.; nor did it represent to him the unrivalled subtlety, charm, instability, and reckless extravagance of the man. He would read Plutarch's comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus, in which the Greek and Roman generals are considered homogeneous, and for Shakespeare Alcibiades was merely the soldier and commander; on that account he let him occupy much the same relation to Timon that Fortinbras did to Hamlet.

Where Timon merely hates, Alcibiades seizes his weapons; and when Timon curses indiscriminately, Alcibiades punishes severely but deliberately. He does not tear down the city walls and put every tenth citizen to the sword, as he is invited to do; he only seeks vengeance on his personal enemies and those whom he considers guilty. But Timon, like Hamlet, generalises his bitter experiences, and loathes everything that bears the form or name of man. When Athens sends to entreat him to take the command and save the city from the violence of Alcibiades, he is harder and colder, and a hundred times more bitterly relentless, than Coriolanus, who, after all, could bow to entreaty, or than Alcibiades, who is satisfied with a strictly limited vengeance. Timon's loathing of life and hatred of humanity is consistent throughout.

Like _Coriolanus_, this play was undoubtedly written in a frame of mind which prompted Shakespeare less to abandon himself to the waves of imagination than to dwell upon the worthlessness of mankind, and the scornful branding of the contemptible. There is even less inventiveness here than in _Coriolanus_: the plot is not only simple, it is scanty--more appropriate to a parable or didactic poem than a drama. Most of the characters are merely abstractly representative of their class or profession, _e.g._ the Poet, the Painter, the servants, the false friends, the flatterers, the creditors and mistresses. They are simply employed to give prominence to the principal figure, or rather, to a great lyrical outburst of bitterness, scorn, and execration.

In the poet's description of his work in the first scene of the play, Shakespeare has indicated his point of view with unusual precision:

"I have, in this rough work, shaped out a man Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug With amplest entertainment. . . . . . His large fortune, Upon his good and gracious nature hanging, Subdues and properties to his love and tendance All sorts of hearts."

He unfolds an allegory in which Fortune is represented as enthroned upon a high and pleasant hill, from whose base all kinds of people are struggling upwards to better their condition:

"Amongst them all Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fixed, One do I personate of lord Timon's fame, Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her; Whose present grace to present slaves and servants Translates his rivals."

The Painter justly observes that the allegory of the hill and the enthroned Fortune could be equally well expressed in a picture as a poem, but the Poet continues:

"When Fortune, in her shift and change of mood, Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants, Which laboured after him to the mountain's top, Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down, Not one accompanying his declining foot."

Shakespeare has defined his purpose here as clearly as did Daudet, some hundreds of years later, in the first chapter of his _Sappho_, in which the whole course of the story is symbolised in the ever-increasing difficulty with which the hero mounts the stairs, carrying the heroine to the highest story of the house in which he lives. The bitterness of Shakespeare's mood is shown in the distinct indication that the Poet and the Painter, rogues and toadies as they are, stand in the first ranks of their professions, and cannot, therefore, claim the excuse of poverty. It is significant of the dramatist's low opinion of his fellow-craftsmen--not one of them is mentioned in his will--that he should make his Poet most eloquent in condemnation of his own peculiar faults. Hence Timon's ejaculation in the last act:

"Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own work Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men?"

In _Timon_, as in _Coriolanus_, Shakespeare put his own thoughts and feelings into the mouths of the various characters of the play. Falseness and ingratitude are the subjects of the most frequent allusion. They were uppermost in the poet's mind at the time, and the changes are rung upon these vices by the Epicurean and the Cynic, by servants and strangers, before and after the climax. Even the fickle Poet serves, as we have seen, as spokesman for the all-prevailing idea; and the Painter, who is every whit as worthless, says with droll irony (Act v. sc. I):

"Promising is the very air o' the time: it opens the eyes of expectation: performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable: performance is a kind of will or testament, which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it."

If there was one thing Shakespeare loathed above another, it was the lifeless ceremony which disguises hollowness and fraud. Early in the play (Act i. sc. 2) Timon says to his guests:

"Nay, my lords, Ceremony was but devised at first To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown; But where there is true friendship, there needs none."

Although Apemantus is the converse of Timon at every point--coarse where he is refined, mean where he is generous, and base where he is noble--yet in his first monologue the Cynic also strikes the keynote of the piece (Act i. sc. 2):

"We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves; And spend our flatteries, to drink those men Upon whose age we void it up again, With poisonous spite and envy. Who lives, that's not depraved or depraves? Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves Of their friend's gift?"

The first stranger says in a speech, whose monotony betrays the fact that it was not entirely Shakespeare's although he has retouched it in several places (notably the italicised lines):

"Who can call him His friend that dips in the same dish? for, in My knowing, Timon hath been this lord's father, And kept his credit with his purse; Supported his estate; nay, Timon's money Has paid his men their wages: _he ne'er drinks, But Timon's silver treads upon his lip_; And yet, (oh, see the monstrousness of man When he looks out in an ungrateful shape!) He does deny him in respect of his, What charitable men afford to beggars" (Act iii. sc. 2).

Finally, like the serving-man in the Capitol, who expresses his approval of Coriolanus' self-conceit, Timon's servant, when his application for a loan is refused, says:

"The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by 't: and I cannot think but, in the end, the villainies of men will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked; _like those that, under hot, ardent zeal, would set whole realms on fire._"

This direct, unmistakable attack upon Puritanism has a remarkable effect coming from the lips of a Grecian servant, and we may gather from it some idea of the general aim of all these outbursts against hypocrisy.

We must now, with a view to defining the non-Shakespearian elements of the play, devote some attention to its dual authorship. In the first act it is particularly the prose dialogues between Apemantus and others which seem unworthy of Shakespeare. The repartee is laconic but laboured--not always witty, though invariably bitter and disdainful. The style somewhat resembles that of the colloquies between Diogenes and Alexander in Lyly's _Alexander and Campaspe_. The first of Apemantus' conversations might have been written by Shakespeare--it seems to have some sort of continuity with the utterances of Thersites in _Troilus and Cressida_--but the second has every appearance of being either an interpolation by a strange hand, or a scene which Shakespeare had forgotten to score out. Flavius's monologue (Act i. sc. 2) never came from Shakespeare's pen in this form. Its marked contrast to the rest shows that it might be the outcome of notes taken by some blundering shorthand writer among the audience.

The long conversation, in the second act, between Apemantus, the Fool, Caphis, and various servants, was, in all probability, written by an alien hand. It contains nothing but idle chatter devised to amuse the gallery, and it introduces characters who seem about to take some standing in the play, but who vanish immediately, leaving no trace. A Page comes with messages and letters from the mistress of a brothel, to which the Fool appears to belong, but we are told nothing of the contents of these letters, whose addresses the bearer is unable to read.

In the third act there is much that is feeble and irrelevant, together with an aimless unrest which incessantly pervades the stage. It is not until the banqueting scene towards the end of the act that Shakespeare makes his presence felt in the storm which bursts from Timon's lips. The powerful fourth act displays Shakespeare at his best and strongest; there is very little here which could be attributed to alien sources. I cannot understand the decision with which English critics (including a poet like Tennyson) have condemned as spurious Flavius's monologue at the close of the second scene. Its drift is that of the speech in the following scene, in which he expresses the whole spirit of the play in one line: "What viler things upon the earth than friends!" Although there is evidently some confusion in the third scene (for example, the intimation of the Poet's and Painter's appearance long before they really arrive), I cannot agree with Fleay that Shakespeare had no share in the passage contained between the lines, "Where liest o' nights, Timon?" and "Thou art the cap of all the fools alive."

One speech in particular betrays the master-hand. It is that in which Timon expresses the wish that Apemantus's desire to become a beast among beasts may be fulfilled:

"If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee: if thou wert the lamb, the fox would eat thee: if thou wert the fox, the lion would suspect thee when, peradventure, thou wert accused by the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee: and still thou livedst but as a breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner."

There is as much knowledge of life here as in a concentrated essence of all Lafontaine's fables.

The last scenes of the fifth act were evidently never revised by Shakespeare. It is a comical incongruity that makes the soldier who, we are expressly told, is unable to read, capable of distinguishing Timon's tomb, and even of having the forethought to take a wax impression of the words. There is also an amalgamation of the two contradictory inscriptions, of which the first tells us that the dead man wishes to remain nameless and unknown, while the last two lines begin with the declaration, "Here lie I, Timon." Notwithstanding the shocking condition of the text, the repeatedly occurring confusion of the action, and the evident marks of an alien hand, Shakespeare's leading idea and dominant purpose is never for a moment obscured. Much in _Timon_ reminds us of _King Lear_, the injudiciously distributed benefits and the ingratitude of their recipients are the same, but in the former the bitterness and virulence are tenfold greater, and the genius incontestably less. Lear is supported in his misfortunes by the brave and manly Kent, the faithful Fool, that truest of all true hearts, Cordelia, her husband, the valiant King of France. There is but one who remains faithful to Timon, a servant, which in those days meant a slave, whose self-sacrificing devotion forces his master, sorely against his will, to except one man from his universal vituperation. In his own class he does not meet with a single honestly devoted heart, either man's or woman's; he has no daughter, as Lear; no mother, as Coriolanus; no friend, not one.

How far more fortunate was Antony! It is a corrupt world in the process of dissolution that we find in _Antony and Cleopatra._ Most of it is rotten or false, but the passion binding the two principal characters together by its magic is entirely genuine. Perdican's profound speech in De Musset's "_On ne badine pas avec l'amour_ applies both to them and the whole play: "Tous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards, hypocrites, orgueilleux; toutes les femmes sont artificieuses, perfides, vaniteuses; le monde n'est qu'un égout sans fond; mais il y au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c'est l'union de deux de ces êtres imparfaits." This simple fact, that Antony and Cleopatra love one another, ennobles and purifies them both, and consoles us, the spectators, for the disaster their passion brings upon them. Timon has no mistress, no relation with the other sex, only contempt for it.

There is a significant revelation of the crudity and stupidity with which, even before the end of the seventeenth century, Shakespeare's admirers made free with him, in an adaptation which Shadwell published in 1678 under the title "The History of Timon the Man Hater into a Play." In this Timon is represented as deserting his mistress Evandra, by whom he is passionately loved to the last. This introduction of a sympathetic woman's character naturally secured the play a success which was never attained by Shakespeare's hero, a solitary misanthrope alone with his bitterness. Shakespeare has intentionally veiled the defects of nature and judgment which deprive Timon to some extent of our sympathy, both in his prosperity and his misfortunes. He had never in his bright days attached himself so warmly to any heart that he felt it beat in unison with his own. Had he ever been powerfully drawn to a single friend, he would not have squandered his possessions so lightly on all the world. Because he only loved mankind in the mass, he now hates them in the mass. He never, now as then, shows any powers of discrimination.

Shakespeare merely used him as a well-known example of the punishment simple-minded trustfulness brings upon itself; his indiscretion is the outcome of native nobility, and his wrath is perfectly justifiable. We feel that Timon possesses the poet's sympathy and compassion, even when his abhorrence of humanity passes the bounds of hatred, and becomes a passion for its annihilation. Timon turns hermit in order to escape from the sight of human beings, and this misanthropy is no mere mask worn to conceal his despair at the loss of this world's goods, since it stands the test of the finding of the treasure. He no longer looks upon wealth as the means of procuring pleasure, but only as an instrument of vengeance. It is for that, and that alone, that he rejoices when the "yellow glittering, precious gold" falls into his hands:

"Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, . . . Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves And give them title, knee, and approbation With senators on the bench; this is it That makes the wappened widow wed again; She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices To the April day again" (Act iv. sc. 3)

When Alcibiades, who was formerly on friendly terms with him and has retained some kindly feeling towards him, disturbs his solitude by a visit, Timon receives him with the exclamation:

"The canker gnaw thy heart For showing me again the eyes of man! _Alcibiades_. What is thy name? Is man so hateful to thee That art thyself a man? _Timon_. I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog That I might love thee something" (Act iv. sc.3).

So might old Schopenhauer, with his loathing for men and his love for dogs, have expressed himself. Timon explains this hatred as the result of a dispassionate insight into the worthlessness of human nature:

"For every guise of fortune Is smoothed by that below: the learned pate Ducks to the golden fool: all is oblique; There's nothing level in our cursèd natures But direct villany."

When Alcibiades, who appears in company with two hetæræ addresses Timon in friendly fashion, the latter turns to abuse one of the women, declaring that she carries more destruction with her than the soldier does in his sword. She retorts, and he rails at her in the fashion of _Troilus and Cressida_. In his eyes the wanton woman is merely the disseminator of disease, and he expresses the hope that she may bring many a young man to sickness and misery. Alcibiades offers to serve him:

"Noble Timon, What friendship may I do thee? _Timon_. None, but to maintain my opinion. _Alcibiades_. What is it, Timon? _Timon_. Promise me friendship, but perform none."

When Alcibiades informs him that he is leading his army against Athens, Timon prays that the gods will give him the victory, in order that he may exterminate the people root and branch, and himself afterwards. He gives him gold for his war, and conjures him to rage like a pestilence:

"Let not thy sword skip one: Pity not honoured age for his white beard; He is an usurer: strike me the counterfeit matron, It is her habit only that is honest, Herselfs a bawd: let not the virgin's cheek Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk paps That through the window bars bore at men's eyes Are not within the leaf of pity writ, But set them down horrible traitors: spare not the babe, Whose dimpled smile from fools exhaust their mercy; Think it a bastard, whom the oracle Hath doubtfully pronounced thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse: swear against objects; Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes; Whose proofs, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes, Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, Shall pierce a jot. There's gold to pay thy soldiers: Make large confusion: and, thy fury spent, Confounded be thyself" (Act iv. sc. 3).

The women, seeing his wealth, immediately beg him for gold, and he answers, "Hold up, you sluts, your aprons mountant." They are not to swear, for their oaths are worthless, but they are to go on deceiving, and being "whores still," they are to seduce him to attempts to convert them, and to deck their own thin hair with the hair of corpses, that of hanged women preferably; they are to paint and rouge until they themselves lie dead: "Paint till a horse may mire upon your face."

They shout to him for more gold; they will "do anything for gold." Timon answers them in words which Shakespeare, for all the pathos of his youth, has never surpassed, words whose frenzied scathing has never been equalled:

"Consumptions sow In hollow bones of men: strike their sharp shins, And mar men's spurring; crack the lawyer's voice, That he may never more false title plead, Nor sound his quillets shrilly: hoar the flamen, That scolds against the quality of flesh, And not believes himself: down with the nose, Down with it flat: take the bridge quite away Of him that, his particular to foresee, Smells from the general weal: make curled-pate ruffians bald, And let the unscarred ruffians of the war Derive some pain from you: plague all: That your activity may defeat and quell The source of all erection. There's more gold: Do you damn others, and let this damn you, And ditches grave you all. _Phrynia and Timandra_. More counsel with more gold, bounteous Timon."

The passion in this is overpowering. One need only compare it with Lucian to realise the fire that Shakespeare has put into the old Greek, whose reflections are only savage in substance, being absolutely tame in expression--"The name of misanthrope shall sound sweetest in my ears, and my characteristics shall be peevishness, harshness, rudeness, hostility towards men," &c. Compare this scene with the latter part of Plutarch's _Alcibiades_, to which we know Shakespeare had referred, and see what the poet's acrimony has made of Timandra, the faithful mistress who follows Alcibiades to Phrygia. They are together when his murderess sets fire to the house, and it is Timandra who enshrouds his body in the most costly material she possesses, and gives him as splendid a funeral as her isolated position can secure.

Apemantus follows close upon Alcibiades, and after he is driven away, two bandits appear, attracted by the report of the treasure. Timon welcomes them, crying, "Rascal thieves, here's gold." He adds good advice to the money. They are to drink wine until it drives them mad, so they may, perchance, escape hanging; they are to put no trust in physicians, whose antidotes are poisons; when they can, they are to kill as well as steal. Theft is universal, the law itself being only made to conceal robbery:

"Rob one another. There's more gold. Cut throats. All that you meet are thieves: to Athens go; Break open shops; _nothing can you steal_ _But thieves do lose it_."

The worthy Proudhon himself has not set forth more plainly his axiom, "Property is theft."

When the Senate appeals to Timon for his assistance as general and statesman, he first professes sympathy, then cries:

"If Alcibiades kill my countrymen, Let Alcibiades know this of Timon, That Timon cares not."

He may sack Athens, pull old men by the beard, and give the sacred virgins over to the mercies of the soldiery. Timon cares as little as the soldier's knife recks of the throats it cuts. The most worthless blade in Alcibiades' camp is more valued by him than any life in Athens. All feeling for country, home, even for the helpless, has utterly perished.

Shakespeare borrows a final touch from Plutarch, which, in his hand, becomes a masterpiece of bloodthirsty irony. He declares he does not, as they suppose, rejoice in the general desolation; his countrymen shall once more enjoy his hospitality. A fig-tree grows by his cave, which it is his intention to cut down; but before it is felled, any friend of his, high or low, who wishes to escape the horrors of a siege, is welcome to come and hang himself. He next announces that his grave is prepared, and they that seek him may come thither and find an oracle in his tombstone, then:

"Lips, let sour words go by and language end: What is amiss, plague and infection mend! Graves only be man's works and death their gain! Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign."

These are his last words. May pestilence rage amongst men! May it infect and destroy so long as there is a man left to dig a grave! May the world be annihilated as Timon is about to annihilate himself. The light of the sun will presently be extinguished for him; let it be extinguished for all!

This is not Othello's sorrow over the power of evil to wreck the happiness of noble hearts, nor King Lear's wail over the ever-threatening possibilities and the heaped-up miseries of life: it is an angry bitterness, caused by ingratitude, which has grown so great that it darkens the sky of life and causes the thunder to roll with such threatening peals as we have never heard even in Shakespeare. All that he has lived through in these last years, and all that he has suffered from the baseness of other men, is concentrated in this colossal figure of the desperate man-hater, whose wild rhetoric is like a dark essence of blood and gall drawn off to relieve suffering.

[1] _New Shakespeare Society's Transactions_, 1874, pp. 130-194.

[2] Swinburne: _A Study of Shakespeare_, pp. 212-215.

[3] _Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespearegesellschaft_, iii. pp. 334-361.

XIV

_CONVALESCENCE--TRANSFORMATION--THE NEW TYPE_

The last, wildest words of this bitter outbreak had been spoken. The dark cloud had burst and the skies were slowly clearing.

It seems as though the blackest of his griefs had been lightened in the utterance, and now that the steady _crescendo_ had burst into its most furious _forte_, he breathed more freely again. He had said his say; Timon had called for the extinction of humanity by plague, sexual disease, slaughter, and suicide. The powers of cursing could go no farther.

Shakespeare has shouted himself hoarse and his fury is spent. The fever is over and convalescence has set in. The darkened sun shines out once more, and the gloomy sky shines blue again.

How and why! Who shall say?

In all the obscurity of Shakespeare's life-history, nowhere do we feel our ignorance of his personal experiences more acutely than here. Some have sought an explanation in the resignation which comes with advancing years, and of which we certainly catch glimpses in his latest works. But Shakespeare neither was, nor felt himself, old at forty-five; and the word resignation is meaningless in connection with this marvellous softening of his long exasperated mood. It is more than a mere reconciliation; it is a revival of that free and lambent imagination which has lain so long in what seemed to be its death-swoon. There is no play of fancy in resignation.

Once more he finds life worth living, the earth beautiful, enchantingly, fantastically attractive, and those who dwell upon it worthy of his love.

In the purely external circumstances no change has occurred. The political outlook in England is the same, and it is not likely that he would be greatly stirred by events such as the assassination of Henry IV. of France in 1610 and the consequent expulsion of the Jesuits from Great Britain. Details--like the decree forbidding English Catholics (Recusants) from coming within ten miles of the Court, and James's removal of his mother's bones and their pompous re-interment in Westminster Abbey--could have little effect upon Shakespeare.

What has personally befallen him that has had such power to re-attune his spirit and lead it back from discord to the old melody and harmony? Surely we are now brought face to face with one of the decisive crises of his life.

Let us anticipate the works yet to be written--_Pericles, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest._

In this last splendid period of his life's glowing September, his dramatic activity, bearing about it the clear transparent atmosphere of early autumn, is more richly varied now than it has ever been.

What figures occupy the most prominent place in the poet's sumptuous harvest-home but the young, womanly forms of Marina, Imogen, Perdita, and Miranda. These girlish and forsaken creatures are lost and found again, suffer grievous wrongs, and are in no case cherished as they deserve; but their charm, purity, and nobility of nature triumph over everything.

They must have had their prototypes or type.

A new world has opened out to Shakespeare, but it would be profitless to spend much time on more or less probable conjectures concerning how and by whom it was revealed. We will, therefore, only lightly touch upon the possibility that Shakespeare, after and during the violent crisis of his loathing for humanity, was gradually reconciled to life by some young and womanly nobility of soul, and by all the poetry which surrounds it and follows in its train.

All these youthful women are akin, and are sharply separated from the heroines of his former plays. They are half-real, half-imaginary. The charm of youth and fantastic romance shines round them like a halo; the foulness of life has no power to defile them. They are self-reliant without being endowed with the buoyant spirit of his earlier adventurous maidens, and they are gentle without being overshadowed by the pathetic mournfulness of his sacrificial victims. Not one comes to a tragic end, and not one ever utters a jest, but all are holy in the poet's eyes.

The situations of Marina and Perdita are very similar; both are castaways, apparently fatherless and motherless, left solitary amidst dangerous or pitiable circumstances. Imogen is suspected and her life threatened, like Marina's, and although she is suspected and sentenced to death by her nearest and dearest, her strength never falters, and even her love for her unworthy husband is unimpaired.

Miranda is deprived of her rank and condemned to the solitude of a desert island, but is sheltered even there by a father's watchful care. There is indeed a half-fatherly tenderness in the delineation of Miranda, and the conception of the native charm of a young girl as a wonderful mystery of nature. Neither Molière's Agnes nor Shakespeare's Miranda have ever looked upon the face of a young man before they meet the one they love, but Agnes possesses only the artificially-preserved ignorance and innocence which disappear like dew before the sun of love. To Shakespeare, Miranda appears like a being from another world, an ideal of pure spiritual womanhood and maidenly passion, before which he almost kneels in worship.

Let us glance back at Shakespeare's gallery of women.

There are the viragoes of his youth, bloodthirsty women like Tamora, guilty and powerful ones like Margaret of Anjou, and later, Lady Macbeth, Goneril, and Regan; there are feeble women like Anne in Richard III., and shrews like Katharine and Adriana, in whom we seem to detect a reminiscence of the wife at Stratford.

Then we have the passionately loving, like Julia in _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, Venus, Titania, Helena in _All's Well that Ends Well_, and, above all, Juliet. There are the charmingly witty and often frolicsome young girls, like Rosaline in _Love's Labours Lost_, Portia in the _Merchant of Venice_, Beatrice, Viola, and Rosalind.

Then the simply-minded, deeply-feeling, silent natures, with an element of tragedy about them, pre-ordained to destruction--Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia. After these come the merely sensual types of his bitter mood--Cleopatra and Cressida.

And now, lastly, the young girl, drawn with the ripened man's rapture over her youth, and a certain passion of admiration.[1]. She had been lost to him, as Marina to her father Pericles, and Perdita to her father Leontes. He feels for her the same fatherly tenderness which his last incarnation, the magician Prospero, feels for his daughter Miranda.

He had taken a greater burden of life upon himself in the past than he well could bear, and he now lays its heaviest portion aside. No more tragedies! No more historical dramas! No more of the horrors of realism! In their stead a fantastic reflection of life, with all the changes and chances of fairy-tale and legend! A framework of fanciful poetry woven around the charming seriousness of the youthful woman and the serious charm of the young girl.

It works like a vision from another world, an enchantment set in surroundings as dream-like as itself. A ship in the open sea off Mitylene; a strange, delightful, ocean-encircled Bohemia; a lonely, magically-protected island; a Britain, where kings of the Roman period and Italians of the sixteenth century meet young princes who dwell in woodland caves and have never seen the face of woman.

Thus he gradually returns to those brighter moods of his youth from which the fairy dances of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ had evolved, or that unknown Forest of Arden in which cypresses grew and lions prowled, and happy youth and mirthful maidenhood carelessly roamed. Only the spirit of frolic has departed, while free play is given to a fancy unhampered by the laws of reality, and much earnest discernment lies behind the untrammelled sport of imagination. He waves the magician's wand and reality vanishes, now, as formerly. But the light heart has grown sorrowful, and its mirth is no more than a faint smile. He offers the daydreams of a lonely spirit now, rich but evanescent visions, occupying in all a period of from four to five years.

Then Prospero buries his magic wand a fathom deep in the earth for ever.

[1] In Mrs. Jameson's charming old book, _Shakespeare's Female Characters_, she has grouped his women in an arbitrary manner. Disregarding all chronological sequence, she divides twenty-three characters into four groups:--1. Characters of Intellect. 2. Characters of Passion and Imagination. 3. Characters of the Affections. 4. Historical characters. Heine characterises forty-five feminine figures in his _Shakespeare's Mädchen und Frauen_, but the last twenty-one are only distinguished by a few quotations, and he makes no attempt at any deeper interpretation, historical or psychological.

XV

_PERICLES--COLLABORATION WITH WILKINS AND ROWLEY--SHAKESPEARE AND CORNEILLE_

Sevenfold darkness surrounds Shakespeare's productions in that transition period during which morbid distrust was giving way to the brighter view of life we find in his later plays. We possess a brief series of plays: _Timon of Athens_ and _Pericles_, which are plainly only partially his work, and _Henry VIII._ and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, of which we may confidently assert that Shakespeare had nothing to do with them beyond the insertion of single important speeches and the addition of a few valuable touches.

He had not adapted other men's work since his novitiate, neither had he blended his own intellectual produce with alien and inferior efforts. What is the reason of such an association suddenly and repeatedly occurring now? I will state my view of the matter without any circumlocution or criticism of the opinion of others. We noticed in _Coriolanus_ that Shakespeare's changed attitude towards humanity had also affected his attitude towards his art. A certain carelessness of execution had made itself felt. His steadily increasing despair of finding any virtue or worth in the world, and the ever-growing resentment against the coarseness and thanklessness of men, were accompanied by his corresponding indifference and negligence as a dramatist.

We have followed Shakespeare through his early struggles and youthful happiness to the great and serious epoch of his life, and through the anything but brief period of gloom to its crisis in the wild outburst of _Timon of Athens_; after which we recognised the first symptoms of convalescence. A perspective of not too profoundly-serious nor realistic dramas has opened out before us, whose freely playing fantasy proves that Shakespeare is once more reconciled to life.

It stands to reason that this reconciliation was not effected by any sudden change, and Shakespeare would not immediately return to the old striving after perfection in his profession--did not do so, in fact, until that very last work in which he laid aside his art for ever. We saw that he had strained too much at life, and he now realises that he has done the same with art. Either he no longer taxes his strength to the uttermost when he writes, or he has lost that power for which no task was too heavy, no horror too terrible to depict. From this moment we feel a foreboding that this mighty genius will lay down his pen some years before his life is to end, and we realise that his mind is being gradually withdrawn from the theatre. He has already ceased to act; soon he will have ceased to write for the stage. He longs for rest, for solitude, away from the town, far into the country; away from his life's battlefield to the quietude of his birthplace, there to pass his remaining years and die.

He may have reasoned thus: For whom should he write? Where were they for whom he had written the plays of his youth? They were dead or far away; he had lost sight of them and they of him--how long does any warm sympathy with a productive intellect usually last? With his ever-increasing indifference to fame, he shrank more and more from the exertion entailed by laborious planning and careful execution, and as little did he care whether the work he did was known by his or another man's name. In his utter contempt for what the crowd did or did not believe about him, he allowed piratical booksellers to publish one worthless play after another with his immortal name upon the title-page--_Sir John Oldcastle_ in 1600, _The London Prodigal_ in 1605, _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ in 1608, _Lord Cromwell_ in 1613--and he either obscured or permitted others to obscure his work by associating it with the feeble or affected productions of younger and inferior men. We saw in _Timon_, as we shall presently see in _Pericles_ and other plays, how the lines drawn by his master-hand have been blurred by others, traced by clumsy and unsteady fingers. It is not always easy to distinguish whether it was Shakespeare who began the play and wearied of his work half-way through, as Michael Angelo so frequently did, carelessly looking on at its completion by another hand, or whether he had the attempts of others lying before him and hid his own poetical strength and greatness in these fungus growths of childish versification and unhealthy prose, leaving it to chance whether the future generations, to whom he never gave much thought, would be able to distinguish his part in them. It may be that he treated his work for the theatre much as a modern author does when he makes over his ideas to a collaborator, or writes anonymously in a newspaper or periodical. He believes that among his friends are three or four who will recognise his style, and if they do not (as frequently happens) it is no great matter.

On the title-page of the first quarto edition of _Pericles_, in 1609, are these words: "The late, and much admired play called Pericles, Prince of Tyre.... By William Shakespeare." "The late"--the play cannot have been acted before 1608, for there is no contemporary mention of it before that date, whereas from 1609 onwards it is frequently noticed. "The much admired play"--everything witnesses to the truth of these words.[1] Many contemporary references testify to the favour the play enjoyed. In an anonymous poem, _Pimlyco, or Runne Redcap_ (1609), Pericles is mentioned as the new play which gentle and simple crowd to see:

"Amazde I stood, to see a Crowd Of civill Throats stretched out so lowd (As at a New Play). All the Roomes Did swarm with Gentiles mix'd with Groomes, So that I truly thought all These Came to see _Shore_ or _Pericles_."

The previously mentioned prologue (p. 539) to Robert Tailor's _The Hog has Lost his Pearl_ (1614) cannot wish the play anything better than that it may succeed as well as _Pericles_:

"And if it prove so happy as to please, Weele say 'tis fortunate like _Pericles_."

In 1629, Ben Jonson, exasperated by the utter failure of his play _The New Inn_, affords evidence, in the ode addressed to himself which accompanies the drama, of the persistent popularity of _Pericles_:

"No doubt some mouldy tale Like Pericles, and stale As the shrieves crusts and nasty as his fish-- Scraps out of every dish Thrown forth and raked into the common tub, May keep up the Play-club."

In Sheppard's poem, _The Times displayed in Six Sestyads._ Shakespeare is said to equal Sophocles and surpass Aristophanes, and all for _Pericles'_ sake:

"With Sophocles we may Compare great Shakespeare: Aristophanes Never like him his Fancy could display, Witness the _Prince of Tyre, his Pericles._"

This play was not included in the First Folio edition, probably because the editors could not come to an agreement with the original publisher; for these pirates were protected by law as soon as the book was entered at Stationers' Hall. During Shakespeare's lifetime and after his death it was one of the most popular of English dramas.

_Pericles_ was formerly considered one of Shakespeare's earliest works, an opinion held strangely enough by Karl Elze in our own day. But all English critics now believe, what Hallam was the first to discover, that the language of such parts of it as were written by Shakespeare belongs in style to his latest period, and it is unanimously declared to have been written somewhere about the year 1608, after _Antony and Cleopatra_ and before _Cymbeline_ and _The Tempest_. (See, for example, P. Z. Round's introduction to the Irving edition, or Furnival's _Triar Table of the order of Shakespeare's Plays_, reprinted in Dowden and elsewhere.) My own opinion of course is, that _Pericles_ follows naturally upon _Coriolanus_ and _Timon of Athens_, and forms an appropriate overture to the succeeding fantastically idyllic plays. The reader will have noticed that, unlike Dowden and Furnivall, I have not been able to assign so early a date for the whole series of pessimistic dramas as 1608 would imply.[2] I assume that certain portions of _Pericles_ were forming in Shakespeare's mind even in the midst of the venom to which he was giving vent for the last time in _Timon of Athens_. In such periods of violent upheaval there may be an undercurrent to the surface-current in the mind of a poet as well as in another man's, and it is this undercurrent which will presently gain strength and become the prevalent mood.

The intelligent reader will have realised that all this dating of Shakespeare's pessimistic works can only be approximate. I am inclined to advance them a year, because I fancy I can trace a connection between _Coriolanus_ and Shakespeare's own thoughts of his mother, who died in 1608. But a son does not only think of his mother at the moment she is taken from him, and the fear of losing her in the illness which probably preceded her death may have recalled his mother's image to Shakespeare's mind with special force long before he actually lost her. Here, as in all cases where it is not expressly mentioned, the reader is requested to see an underlying Perhaps or Possibly, and to add one where he feels the need of it. Only the main lines of the sequence are at all certain. Where external criterions are missing, the internal alone cannot determine the question of a year or a month. As far as _Pericles_ is concerned, we do possess some guide, for it is most unlikely that Shakespeare's share in the play would be added after it was performed in 1608, especially in the face of the assurance on the title-page.

The work as it has come down to us is not in reality a drama at all, but an incompletely dramatised epic poem. We are taken back to the childhood of dramatic art. The prologue to each act and the various explanatory passages interpolated throughout the play are supposed to be spoken by the old English poet John Gower, who had treated the subject in narrative verse about the year 1390. He introduces the play to the audience and explains it, as it were, with his pointer. Anything that cannot well be acted he narrates, or has represented in dumb-show. He speaks in the old octosyllabic rhymed iambics, which, as a rule, however, do not rhyme:

"To sing a song that old was _sung_ From ashes ancient Gower has _come_, Assuming man's _infirmities_, To glad your ears and please your _eyes_"

And in the last lines of the prologue to the fourth act:

"Dionyza doth _appear_, With Leonine a _murderer_."

He jestingly alludes to the fact that the play includes nearly the whole of Pericles' life, from youth to old age. Marina is born at the beginning of the third act, and is about to be married at the close of the fifth. Nothing could well be farther from that unity of time and place which was attempted in France at a later period. The first act is laid at Antioch, Tyre, and Tarsus; the second in Pentapolis, on the sea-shore, in a corridor of Simonides' palace, and lastly in a hall of state. The third act opens on board ship and continues in the house of Cerimon at Ephesus. The fourth act begins with an open place near the sea-shore and ends in a brothel at Mitylerie; the fifth, on Pericles' ship off Mitylene, ending in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. There is as little unity of action as of time and place about the play; its disconnected details are merely held together by the individuality of the principal characters, and there is neither rhyme nor reason in its various incidents; pure chance seems to rule all. The reader will seek in vain for any intention--I do not mean moral, but any fundamental idea in the play. Gower certainly institutes a contrast between an immoral princess at the beginning of the play and a virtuous one at the close, but this moral contrast has no connection with the intermediate acts.

Pericles was an old and very popular subject. Its earliest form was probably that of a Greek romance of the fifth century, of which a Latin translation is still extant. It was translated into various languages during the Middle Ages, and one version has found its way into the _Gesta Romanorum_. In the twelfth century it was incorporated by Godfrey of Viterbo in his great _Chronicle_. John Gower, who adapts it in the eighth book of his _Confessio Amantis,_ gives Godfrey as his authority. The Latin tale was translated into English by Lawrence Twine in 1576, under the title of _The Patterne of Paynfull Aduentures_, a second edition of which was published in 1607. In all but the English adaptations the hero's name is given as Apollonius of Tyre. There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's play was based upon the 1607 editon, and this in itself is sufficient to refute the antiquated notion that his

## part in it belonged to his youthful period. It was on the substance

of this play, and doubtless also upon Shakespeare's share in it, that George Wilkins founded the romance he published in 1608 under the title of _The Painfull Aduentures of Pericles Prince of Tyre, Being the true history of the Play of Pericles as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient John Gower_. The fact that Wilkins, in the dedication of his book, which is a mere abstract of Twine and the play, calls it "a poor infant of my braine," and the still more remarkable similarity of the style and metrical structure of the first act of _Pericles_ with Wilkins' own play, _The Miseries of enforced Marriage_, would seem to point to him as the author of the extraneous portions of _Pericles_. In both dramas a quantity of disconnected material has been brought together in a long-drawn-out play, destitute of dramatic situations or interest, and in both we find the same jarring and awkward inversions of words. The incidents of the _Enforced Marriage_ recall some of the non-Shakespearian elements of _Timon_; here, also, we are shown a spendthrift, evidently in possession of the sympathies of his author, by whom he is considered a victim. The mingling of prose, blank verse, and clumsily-introduced couplets with the same rhymes constantly recurring, reminds us of those acts and scenes in which Shakespeare had no part. Fleay observes that 195 rhymed lines occur in the two first acts of _Pericles_, and only fourteen in the last three, so marked is the contrast of style between the two parts, and he notices that this frequency of rhyme corresponds closely to the method of George Wilkins' own work. Both he and Boyle agree with Delius, who was the first to express the opinion, that Wilkins is the author of the first two acts. By dint of comparisons of style, Fleay came to the conclusion that Gower's two speeches in five-footed iambics, before and after Scenes 5 and 6 (which differ so markedly in form and language from his other monologues), were written by William Rowley, who had been associated in the previous year with Wilkins and Day in the production of a wretched melodrama, _The Travels of Three English Brothers_. His attempt, however, to ascribe to Rowley the two prose scenes which take place in the brothel is made more on moral than æsthetic grounds, and can have very little weight. My own opinion is that they were entirely written by Shakespeare. They are plainly presupposed in certain passages which are unmistakably Shakesparean; they accord with that general view of life from which he is but now beginning to escape, and they markedly recall the corresponding scenes in _Measure for Measure_.

It is impossible to ascertain the precise circumstances under which the play was produced. Some critics have maintained that it originally began with what is now the third act, and that Shakespeare, having lain it aside, gave Wilkins and Rowley permission to complete it for the stage. But in reality the two men wrote the play in collaboration and disposed of it to Shakespeare's company, which in turn submitted it to the poet, who worked upon such parts as appealed to his imagination. As the play now belonged to the theatre, and Wilkins was not at liberty to publish it, he forestalled the booksellers by bringing it out as a story, taking all the credit of invention and execution upon himself.

Never was a drama contrived out of more unlikely material. The name of the knightly Prince of Tyre is changed, probably because it did not suit the metre, from Apollonius to Pericles, which was corrupted from the Pyrocles of Sidney's _Arcadia_. He comes to Antioch to risk his life on the solution of a riddle. According to his success or failure he is to be rewarded by the Princess's hand or death. The riddle betrays to him the abominable fact that the Princess is living in incest with her own father. He withdraws from the contest, and flies from the country to escape the wrath of the wicked prince, who is even more certain to slay him for success than for failure. He returns to Tyre, but feeling insecure even there, he falls into a state of melancholy, and quits his kingdom to escape the pursuit of Antiochus.

Arriving at Tarsus at a time when its inhabitants are suffering from famine, he succours them with corn from his ships. Soon afterwards he is wrecked off Pentapolis and cast ashore. His armour is dragged out of the sea in fishermen's nets, and Pericles takes part in a knightly tournament. The king's daughter, Thaisa, falls in love with him at first sight, as did Nausicaa with Odysseus. She ignores all the young knights around her for the sake of this noble stranger, who has suffered shipwreck and so many other misfortunes. She will marry him or none; he shines in comparison with the others as a precious stone beside glass. Pericles weds Thaisa, and bears her away with him on his ship. They are overtaken by a storm, during which Thaisa dies in giving birth to a daughter. The superstition of the sailors requires that her corpse shall be immediately thrown into the sea. The coffin drifts ashore at Ephesus, where Thaisa reawakes to life unharmed. The newborn child is left by Pericles to be nursed at Tarsus. As Marina grows up, her foster-mother determines to kill her because she outshines her daughter. Pirates land and prevent the murder; carrying off Marina, they sell her to the mistress of a brothel in Mitylene. She preserves her purity amidst these horrible surroundings, and, finding a protector, gains her release. She is taken on board Pericles' ship that she may charm away his melancholy. A recognition ensues, and, in obedience to a sign from Diana, they sail to Ephesus; the husband is reunited to his wife and the newly-found daughter to her mother.

This is the dramatically impossible canvas which Shakespeare undertook to retouch and finish. That he should have made the first sketch of the play, as Fleay so warmly maintains, seems very improbable upon a careful study of the plot. To write such a beginning to an already finished end would have been an almost impossible task for Wilkins and his collaborator, involving a terribly active vigilance; for the setting of the Shakespearian scenes, Gower's prologues, interludes, and epilogues, &c., is a frame of their own making. Everything favours the theory that it was Shakespeare who undertook to shape a half- or wholly-finished piece of patchwork.

He hardly touched the first two acts, but they contain some traces of his pen--the delicacy with which the incest of the Princess is treated, for example, and Thaisa's timid, almost mute, though suddenly-aroused love for him who at first glance seems to her the chief of men. The scene between the three fishermen, with which the second act opens, owns some turns which speak of Shakespeare, especially where a fisherman says that the avaricious rich are the whales "o' the land, who never leave gaping till they've swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all," and another replies, "But, master, if I had been the sexton, I would have been that day in the belfry.'

"_Second Fisherman_. Why, man?

"_Third Fisherman_. Because he should have swallowed me too: and when I had been in his belly, I would have kept such a jangling of the bells, that he should never have left till he cast bells, steeple, church, and parish up again."

It is not impossible, however, that these gleams of Shakespearean wit are mere imitations of his manner. But, on the other hand, the obvious mimicry of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ in Gower's prologue to the third act is commonplace and clumsy enough:

"Now sleep yslaked hath the rout; No din but snores the house about. . . . . . . . The cat, with eyne of burning coal, Now couches fore the mouse's hole; And crickets sing at the oven's mouth, E'er the blither for their drouth."

Compare this with Puck's:

"Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud," &c.

An awkwardly introduced pantomime interrupts the prologue, which is tediously renewed; then suddenly, like a voice from another world, a rich, full tone breaks in upon the feeble drivel, and we hear Shakespeare's own voice in unmistakable and royal power:

"Thou God of this great vast, rebuke these surges, Which wash both heaven and hell; and thou, that hast Upon the winds command, bind them in brass, Having called them from the deep! Oh, still Thy deafening, dreadful thunders; gently quench Thy nimble, sulphurous flashes!--Oh, how, Lychorida, How does my queen?--Thou stormest venomously: Wilt thou spit all thyself? The seaman's whistle Is as a whisper in the ears of death, Unheard."...

The nurse brings the tiny new-born babe, saying:

"Here is a thing too young for such a place, Who, if it had conceit, would die, as I Am like to do: take in your arms this piece Of your dead queen. _Pericles_. How, how Lychorida! _Lychorida_. Patience, good sir; do not assist the storm. Here's all that is left living of your queen, A little daughter: for the sake of it, Be manly and take comfort."

The sailors enter, and, after a brief, masterly conversation, full of the raging storm and the struggle to save the ship, they superstitiously demand that the queen, who has but this instant drawn her last breath, should be thrown overboard. The king is compelled to yield, and turning a last look upon her, says:

"A terrible childbed hast thou had, my dear; No light, no fire: the unfriendly elements Forgot thee utterly; nor have I time To give thee hallowed to thy grave, but straight Must cast thee, scarcely coffined, in the ooze; Where, for a monument upon thy bones, And e'er-remaining lamps, the belching whale And humming water must o'erwhelm thy corse, Lying with simple shells."

He gives orders to change the course of the ship and make for Tarsus, because "the babe cannot hold out to Tyrus." There is so mighty a breath of storm and raging seas, such rolling of thunder and flashing of lightning in these scenes, that nothing in English poetry, not excepting Shakespeare's _Tempest_ itself, nor Byron's and Shelley's descriptions of Nature, can surpass it. The storm blows and howls, hisses and screams, till the sound of the boatswain's whistle is lost in the raging of the elements. These scenes are famous and beloved among that seafaring folk for whom they were written, and who know the subject-matter so well.

The effect is tremendously heightened by the struggles of human passion amidst the fury of the elements. The tender and strong grief expressed in Pericles' subdued lament for Thaisa is not drowned by the storm; it sounds a clear, spiritual note of contrast with the raging of the sea. And how touching is Pericles' greeting to his new-born child:

"Now, mild may be thy life! For a more blustrous birth had never babe: Quiet and gentle thy conditions, for Thou art the rudeliest welcomed to this world That ever was prince's child. Happy what follows! Thou hast as chiding a nativity As fire, air, water, earth, and heaven can make, To herald thee from the womb." ...

Although Wilkins' tale follows the course of the play very faithfully, there are but two points in which the resemblance between them extends to a similarity of wording. The first of these occurs in the second act, which was Wilkins' own work, and the second here. In his tale Wilkins says:

"Poor inch of nature! Thou art as rudely welcome to the world as ever princess' babe was, and hast as chiding a nativity as fire, air, earth, and water can afford thee."

Even more striking than the identity of words is the exclamation "Poor inch of nature!" It is so entirely Shakespearian that we are tempted to believe it must have been accidentally omitted in the manuscripts from which the first edition was printed.

It is not until the birth of Marina in the third act that Shakespeare really takes the play in hand. Why? Because it is only now that it begins to have any interest for him. It is the development of this character, this tender image of youthful charm and noble purity, which attracts him to the task.

How Shakespearian is the scene in which Marina is found strewing flowers on the grave of her dead nurse just before Dionyza sends her away to be murdered; it foreshadows two scenes in plays which are shortly to follow--the two brothers laying flowers on the supposed corpse of Fidelio in _Cymbeline_ and Perdita, disguised as a shepherdess, distributing all kinds of blossoms to the two strangers and her guests in _The Winter's Tale_.

Marina says

(Act iv. sc. I):

"No, I will rob Tellus of her weed To strew thy green with flowers: the yellows, blues, The purple violets, and marigolds, Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave While summer-days do last.--Ay me! poor maid, Born in a tempest, when my mother died, This world to me is like a lasting storm, Whirring me from my friends."

The words are simple, and not especially remarkable in themselves, but they are of the greatest importance as symptoms. They are the first mild tones escaping from an instrument which has long yielded only harsh and jarring sounds. There is nothing like them in the dramas of Shakespeare's despairing mood.

When, weary and sad, he consented to re-write parts of this _Pericles_, it was that he might embody the feeling by which he is now possessed. Pericles is a romantic Ulysses, a far-travelled, sorely tried, much-enduring man, who has, little by little, lost all that was dear to him. When first we meet him, he is threatened with death because he has correctly solved a horrible riddle of life. How symbolic this! and he is thus made cautious and introspective, restless and depressed. There is a touch of melancholy about him from the first, accompanied by an indifference to danger; later, when his distrust of men has been aroused, this characteristic despondency becomes intensified, and gives an appearance of depth of thought and feeling. His sensitive nature, brave enough in the midst of storm and shipwreck, sinks deeper and deeper into a depression which becomes almost melancholia. Feeling solitary and forsaken, he allows no one to approach him, pays no heed when he is spoken to, but sits, silent and stern, brooding over his griefs (Act iv. sc. I). Then Marina comes into his life. When she is first brought on board, she tries to attract his attention by her sweet, modest play and song; then she speaks to him, but is rebuffed, even angrily repulsed, until the gentle narrative of the circumstances of her birth and the misfortunes which have pursued her arrests the king's attention. The restoration of his daughter produces a sudden change from anguished melancholy to subdued happiness.

So, as a poet, had Shakespeare of late withdrawn from the world, and in just such a manner he looked upon men and their sympathy until the appearance of Marina and her sisters in his poetry.

It is probable that Shakespeare wrote the part of Pericles for Burbage, but there is much of himself in it. The two men had more in common than one would be apt to suppose from the only too well-known story of their rivalry on a certain intimate occasion. It is just such trivial anecdotes as this that make their way and are remembered.

Shakespeare has spiritualised Pericles; Marina, in his hands, is a glorified being, who is scarcely grown up before her charm and rare qualities rouse envy and hatred. We first see her strewing flowers on a grave, and immediately after this we listen to her attempt to disarm the man who has undertaken to murder her. She proves herself as innocent as the Queen Dagmar of the ancient ballad. She "never spake bad word nor did ill turn to any living creature." She never killed a mouse or hurt a fly; once she trod upon a worm against her will and wept for it. No human creature could be cast in gentler mould, and truth and nobility unite with this mildness to shed, as it were, a halo round her.

When, after rebuffing and rejecting her, Pericles has gradually softened towards Marina, he asks her where she was born and who provided the rich raiment she is wearing. She replies that if she were to tell the story of her life none would believe her, and she prefers to remain silent. Pericles urges her:

"Prithee, speak: Falseness cannot come from thee; for thou look'st Modest as Justice, and thou seem'st a palace For the crowned Truth to dwell in; I will believe thee. . . . . . . . . . Tell thy story; If thine considered prove the thousandth part Of my endurance, thou art a man, and I Have suffered like a girl: yet thou dost look Like Patience gazing on kings' graves, and smiling Extremity out of act."

All this rich imagery brings Marina before us with the nobility of character which is so fitly expressed in her outward seeming. It is Pericles himself who feels like a buried prince, and it is he who has need of her patient sympathy, that the violence of his grief may be softened by her smile. It is all very dramatically effective. The old Greek tragedies frequently relied on these scenes of recovery and recognition, and they never failed to produce their effect. The dialogue here is softly subdued, it is no painting in strong burning colours that we are shown, but a delicately blended pastel. In order to gain an insight into Shakespeare's humour at the time _As You Like It_ and _Twelfth Night_ were written, the reader was asked to think of a day on which he felt especially well and strong and sensible that all his bodily organs were in a healthy condition,--one of those days in which there is a festive feeling in the sunshine, a gentle caress in the air.

To enter into his mood in a similar manner now you would need to recall some day of convalescence, when health is just returning after a long and severe illness. You are still so weak that you shrink from any exertion, and, though no longer ill, you are as yet far from being well; your walk is unsteady, and the grasp of your hand is weak. But the senses are keener than usual, and in little much is seen; one gleam of sunshine in the room has more power to cheer and enliven than a whole landscape bathed in sunshine at another time. The twitter of a bird in the garden, just a few chirps, has more meaning than a whole chorus of nightingales by moonlight at other moments. A single pink in a glass gives as much pleasure as a whole conservatory of exotic plants. You are grateful for a trifle, touched by friendliness, and easily moved to admiration. He who has but just returned to life has an appreciative spirit.

As Shakespeare, with the greater susceptibility of genius, was more keenly alive to the joyousness of youth, so more intensely than others he felt the quiet, half-sad pleasures of convalescence.

Wishing to accentuate the sublime innocence of Marina's nature, he submits it to the grimmest test, and gives it the blackest foil one could well imagine. The gently nurtured girl is sold by pirates to a brothel, and the delineation of the inmates of the house, and Marina's bearing towards them and their customers, occupies the greater part of the fourth act.

As we have already said, we can see no reason why Fleay should reject these scenes as non-Shakespearian. When this critic (whose reputation has suffered by his arbitrariness and inconsistency) does not venture to ascribe them to Wilkins, and yet will not admit them to be Shakespeare's, he is in reality pandering to the narrow-mindedness of the clergyman, who insists that any art which is to be recognised shall only be allowed to overstep the bounds of propriety in a humorously jocose manner. These scenes, so bluntly true to nature in the vile picture they set before us, are limned in just that Caravaggio colouring which distinstinguished Shakespeare's work during the period which is now about to close. Marina's utterances, the best he has put into her mouth, are animated by a sublimity which recalls Jesus' answers to his persecutors. Finally, the whole _personnel_ is exactly that of _Measure for Measure,_ whose genuineness no one has ever disputed. There is also an occasional resemblance of situation. Isabella, in her robes of spotless purity, offers precisely the same contrast to the world of pimps and panders who riot through the play that Marina does here to the woman of the brothel and her servants.

After all that he had suffered, it was hardly possible Shakespeare would relapse into the romantic, mediæval worship of woman as woman. But his natural rectitude of spirit soon led him to make exceptions from the general condemnation which he was inclined for a time to pass upon the sex; and now that his soul's health was returning to him, he felt drawn, after having dwelt solely upon women of the merely sensual type, to place a halo round the head of the young girl, and so he brings her with unspotted innocence out of the most terrible situations.

When she sees that she is locked into the house, she says:

"Alack, that Leonine was so slack, so slow! He should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates, Not enough barbarous, had but o'erboard thrown me For to seek my mother! _Bawd_. Why lament you, pretty one? _Marina_. That I am pretty. _Bawd_. Come, the gods have done their part in you. _Marina_. I accuse them not. _Bawd_. You are 'light into my hands, where you are like to live. _Marina_. The more my fault To 'scape his hands where I was like to die. . . . Are you a woman? _Bawd._ What would you have me be, an I be not a woman? _Marina._ An honest woman, or not a woman."

The governor Lysimachus seeks the house, and is left alone with Marina. He begins:

"Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade? _Marina_. What trade, sir?

_Lysimachus_. Why, I cannot name't but I shall offend.

_Marina_. I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you to name it.

_Lysimachus_. How long have you been of this profession?

_Marina_. E'er since I can remember.

_Lysimachus_. Did you go to't so young? Were you a gamester at five or at seven?

_Marina_. Earlier too, sir, if now I be one.

_Lysimachus_. Why, the house you dwell in proclaims you to be a creature of sale.

_Marina_. Do you know this house to be a place of such resort, and will come into't? I hear say you are of honourable parts, and are the governor of this place.

_Lysimachus_. Why, hath your principal made known unto you who I am?

_Marina_. Who is my principal?

_Lysimachus_. Why, your herb-woman; she that sets seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. Oh, you have heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. . . . Come, bring me to some private place: come, come.

_Marina_. If you were born to honour, show it now; If put upon you, make the judgment good That thought you worthy of it."

Lysimachus is arrested by her words and his purpose changed. He gives her gold, bids her persevere in the ways of purity, and prays the gods will strengthen her. She succeeds in obtaining her freedom and in supporting herself by her talents. The lasting impression she had made on the governor in her degradation is proved by his sending for her to charm King Pericles' melancholy, and later he aspires to her hand.

The scenes quoted do not give an intellectual equivalent for all that has been dared in order to produce them, but they bear witness to the desire Shakespeare felt of painting youthful womanly purity shining whitely in a very snake-pit of vice, and the spirit in which it is accomplished is that of both Shakespeare and the Renaissance.

At a somewhat earlier period such a subject would have assumed, in England, the form of a _Morality_, an allegorical religious play, in which the steadfastness of the virtuous woman would have triumphed over _Vice_. At a somewhat later period, in France, it would have been a Christian drama, in which heathen wickedness and incredulity were put to confusion by the youthful believer. Shakespeare carries it back to the days of Diana; his virtue and vice are alike heathen, owning no connection with church or creed.

Thirty-seven years later, during the minority of Louis XIV., Pierre Corneille made use of a very similar subject in his but little-known tragedy, _Théodore, Vierge et Martyre_. The scene is laid in the same place in which _Pericles_ begins, in Antioch during the reign of Diocletian.

Marcella, the wicked wife of the governor of the province, determines that her daughter Flavia shall marry the object of her passion, Placidus. He, however, has no thought but for the Princess Theodora, a descendant of the old Syrian kings. Theodora is a Christian, and these are the times of Christian persecution. In order to revenge herself upon the young girl and estrange Placidus from her, Marcella causes her to be confined in just such another house as that into which Marina was sold.

The dramatic interest would naturally lie in the development of Theodora's feelings when, she finds herself abandoned to her fate. But the chaste young girl will not, and cannot, express in words the horror she must feel; and in any case the laws of propriety would not allow her to do so on the French stage. Corneille avoided the difficulty by exchanging action for narrative. Various false or incomplete accounts of what has taken place keep the audience in anxious expectation.

Placidus is told that Theodora's sentence has been commuted to one of simple banishment. He breathes again. Then he hears that Theodora has actually been taken to the house; that Didymus, her Christian admirer, bribed the soldiers to allow him to enter first, and that shortly afterwards he returned, covering his face with his cloak as though ashamed. He is furious. The third announcement informs him that it was Theodora who came out disguised in Didymus's clothes. Placidus' rage now gives way to agonising jealousy. He believes that Theodora has yielded willingly to Didymus, and he suffers tortures. Finally we learn the truth. Didymus himself tells how he rescued Theodora unharmed; he is a Christian, and expects to die. "Live thou without jealousy," he says to Placidus; "I can endure the death penalty." "Alas!" answers Placidus, "how can I be other than jealous, knowing that this glorious creature owes more than life to thee. Thou hast given thy life to save her honour; how can I but envy thy happiness!" Both Theodora and Didymus are martyred, and the pagan lover, who did nothing to help his love, is left alone with his shame.

The sole contrast intended here is between the noble qualities developed by the Christian faith and that baseness which was considered inseparable from heathendom.

Two things arrest our attention in this comparison: firstly, the superiority of the English drama, which openly represents all things on the stage, even such subjects as are only passingly alluded to by society; and, secondly, the marked difference in the spirit of that Old England of the Renaissance from the all-pervading Christianism of the early classic period in "most Christian" France.

The calm dignity of Marina's innocence has none of that taint of the confessional which was plainly obnoxious to Shakespeare, and which neither the mediæval plays before him, nor Corneille and Calderon after, could escape. Corneille's Theodora is a saint by profession and a martyr from choice. She gives herself up to her enemies at the end of the play, because she has been assured by supernatural revelation that she will not again be imprisoned in the house from which she has just escaped. Shakespeare's Marina, the tenderly and carefully outlined sketch of the type which is presently to wholly possess his imagination, is purely human in her innate nobility of nature.

It is deeply interesting to trace in this sombre yet fantastically romantic play of _Pericles_ the germs of all his succeeding works.

Marina and her mother, long lost and late recovered by a sorrowing king, are the preliminary studies for Perdita and Hermione in _A Winter's Tale_. Perdita, as her name tells us, is lost and is living, ignorant of her parentage, in a strange country. Marina's flower-strewing suggests Perdita's distribution of blossoms, accompanied by words which reveal a profound understanding of flower-nature, and Hermione is recovered by Leontes as is Thaisa by Pericles.

The wicked stepmother in _Cymbeline_ corresponds to the wicked foster-mother in _Pericles_. She hates Imogen as Dionyza hates Marina. Pisanio is supposed to have murdered her as Leonine is believed to have slain Marina, and Cymbeline recovers both sons and daughter as Pericles his wife and child.

The tendency to substitute some easy process of explanation, such as melodramatic music or supernatural revelation, in the place of severe dramatic technique, which appears at this time, betrays a certain weariness of the demands of the art. Diana appears to the slumbering Pericles as Jupiter does to Posthumus in _Cymbeline_.

But it is for _The Tempest_ that _Pericles_ more especially prepares us. The attitude of the melancholy prince towards his daughter seems to foreshadow that of the noble Prospero towards his child Miranda. Prospero is also living in exile from his home. But it is Cerimon who approaches more nearly in character to Prospero. Note his great speech:

"I held it ever, Virtue and cunning were endowments greater Than nobleness and richer: careless heirs May the two latter darken and expend; But immortality attends the former, Making a man a god. 'Tis known I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o'er authorities, I have, Together with my practice, made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones; And I can speak of the disturbances That Nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the fool and death" (Act iii. sc. 2).

The position in which Thaisa and Pericles stand in the second act towards the angry father, who has in reality no serious objection to their union, closely resembles that of Ferdinand and Miranda before the feigned wrath of Prospero. Most notable of all is the preliminary sketch we find in _Pericles_ of the tempest which ushers in the play of that name. Over and above the resemblance between the storm scenes, we have Marina's description of the hurricane during which she was born (_Pericles_, Act iv. sc. I), and Ariel's description of the shipwreck (_Tempest_, Act i. sc. 2).

Many other slight touches prove a relationship between the two plays. In _The Tempest_ (Act ii. sc. I), as in _Pericles_ (Act v. sc. I), we have soothing slumbrous music and, mention of harpies (_Tempest_, Act iii. sc. 3, and _Pericles_, Act iv. sc. 3). The words "virgin knot," so charmingly used by Marina:

"If fires be hot, knives sharp, or waters deep, Untied I still my virgin knot will keep" (Act iv. sc. 2),

are also employed by Prospero in reference to Miranda in _The Tempest_ (Act iv. sc. I); and it will be observed that these are the only two instances in which they occur in Shakespeare.

Thus the germs of all his latest works lie in this unjustly neglected and despised play, which has suffered under a double disadvantage: it is not entirely Shakespeare's work, and in such portions of it as are his own there exist, in the dark shadow cast by her hideous surroundings about Marina, traces of that gloomy mood from which he was but just emerging. But for all that, whether we look upon it as a contribution to Shakespeare's biography or as a poem, this beautiful and remarkable fragment, _Pericles_, is a work of the greatest interest.[3]

[1] The complete title runs thus:--"The late, and much admired Play, called Pericles, Prince of Tyre, with the true Relation of the whole History, adventures, and fortunes of the said Prince: As also, The no lesse strange and worthy accidents, in the Birth and Life of his Daughter MARIANA. As it hath been diuers and sundry times acted by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe on the Bancside. By William Shakespeare. Imprinted at London for Henry Gosson, and are to be sold at the Signe of the Sunne in Paternoster Row. 1609."

[2]The Triar Table determines their order thus:--

Troilus and Cressida 1606-7 Antony and Cleopatra 1606-7 Coriolanus 1607-8 Timon of Athens. 1607-8

[3] Delius: _Ueber Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_, iii. 175-205; F. G. Fleay: _On the Play of Pericles. The New Shakspere Society's Transactions_, 1874, 195-254; Swinburne: _A Study of Shakespeare_, p. 206; Gervinus: _Shakespeare_, vol. i. 187, and Elze: _Shakespeare_, p. 409, still believe _Pericles_ to be a work of Shakespeare's youth.

XVI

_FRANCIS BEAUMONT AND JOHN FLETCHER_

It was a comparatively easy task to distinguish Shakespeare's part in _Timon of Athens_ and _Pericles_, for it consisted of all that was important in either play. The identity of the men who collaborated with him seems to have been decided by pure chance, and is of little interest to us now-a-days. It is a different matter, however, in the case of two other dramas of this period which have been associated with Shakespeare's name--_The Two Noble Kinsmen_ and _Henry VIII_.--for his part in them is unimportant, in one almost imperceptible, in fact. Their real author was a young man just coming into notice, who afterwards became one of the most famous dramatists of the day, and can hardly have been indifferent to Shakespeare. The question, therefore, of their mutual relations and the origin of their collaboration is one of the greatest interest.

A drama entitled _Philaster_ had been played at the Globe Theatre., in 1608 with extraordinary success. It was the joint work of two young men, Francis Beaumont, aged 22, and John Fletcher, aged 28. The play made their reputation, and they found themselves famous from the moment of its representation. A would-be amusing, but in reality rather dull play of Fletcher's, _The Woman-Hater_, had been put on the stage in 1606-7. It contained some good comic parts, but nothing that gave promise of the poet's later works.

After this triumph with _Philaster_, the two friends produced in 1609 or 1611 their masterpiece, _The Maid's Tragedy_, and their scarcely less admired _A King and no King_. This joint activity continued until the death of Beaumont in 1615. During the remaining ten years of his life Fletcher wrote alone, with the single exception of a play produced in collaboration with Rowley, and attained to a fame which probably eclipsed Shakespeare's in these last years of his life, as it certainly did immediately after his death. Dryden remarks, in his well-known _Essay of Dramatic Poetry_ (1668), "Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of them being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or Jonson's." This statement seems somewhat exaggerated if we compare it with the entries in Pepys' Diary; still, we know that Shakespeare's fame was completely eclipsed towards the end of the century by that of Ben Jonson. Samuel Butler not only prefers the latter, but speaks as though his superiority was universally admitted.[1]

The two new poets were neither learned proletaires, like Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, nor of the middle classes, like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, but were both of good family. Fletcher's father was a high-placed ecclesiastic, much experienced in the courts of Elizabeth and James, and Beaumont was the son of a Justice of Common Pleas, and related to families of some standing. One great source of their popularity lay in the fact that they were thus enabled to reproduce to perfection the manners of the fine gentleman, his general dissipation, and his quick repartee.

Francis Beaumont was born somewhere about the year 1586, at Grace Dieu in Leicestershire. His family numbered among those of the legal aristocracy, and many of its members were noted for poetical propensities and abilities; there were no fewer than three poets by name of Beaumont living at the time of Francis' death. The future dramatist was entered at ten years of age as a gentleman-commoner at Broadgate Hall, Oxford. He early left the university for London, where he was made a member of the Inner Temple. His legal studies appear to have sat lightly upon him, and he seems to have devoted himself principally to the composition of those plays and masques which were so frequently performed by the various legal colleges of those days. In 1613 he wrote the masque which was performed by the legal institutions of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn in honour of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage with the Elector-Palatine.

It seems to have been a mutual enthusiasm for Jonson's _Volpone_ (1605) which brought Beaumont and Fletcher together, and united them in a brotherly friendship and fellowship in work of which history affords few parallels. Aubrey, to whom we are indebted for a number of anecdotes about Shakespeare, gives the following vivid picture of their life: "They lived together on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse; both batchelors lay together, had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same cloathes and cloake, etc., between them."

The two friends soon set to work, and appear to have planned out the dramas together, each finally working out the scenes most suited to his talents. An anecdote related by Winstanley seems to indicate such a method. One day while they were thus apportioning their parts in a tavern they frequented, a man standing at the door overheard the exclamation, "I will undertake to kill the king;" suspecting some treasonable conspiracy, he gave information, with the result that both poets were arrested. In support of the veracity of this anecdote, George Darley observes that a similar incident occurs in Fletcher's _Woman-Hater_ (Act v. sc. 2). Great bitterness is certainly expressed in this play on the subject of informers; witness the very unflattering sketch of their ways and manners in the third scene of the second act.

In whatsoever fashion _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ may have originally been written, the joint-authors must have finally revised it in company and obliterated to the best of their ability the distinguishing marks of their very different styles. Otherwise it would not offer, now that we are in possession of works executed by each separately, the present difficulty of apportioning to each the honour due to him.

There was no lack of difference, especially of a metrical nature, about their styles. As far as we can judge, Beaumont's was the gift for tragedy; he had less wit and less skill than Fletcher, but he was more genuinely inspired, richer in feeling, and more daring in invention than his brother poet. His noble head is encircled by a halo of sadness, for, like Marlowe and Shelley, two of England's greatest poets, he died before he had completed his thirtieth year.

Beaumont was a devoted admirer of Ben Jonson, and a constant frequenter of that "Mermaid Tavern" whose literary and social gatherings have been celebrated in his poetical epistle to the object of his admiration. His passionate regard for the author of _Volpone_ is shown in a poem addressed to him upon the subject, in which he exalts Jonson's art and the charm of his comedy above all that any other poet (thereby including Shakespeare) had ever produced for the English stage. Jonson replies with his ode "To Mr. Francis Beaumont," in which he reciprocates the admiring attention by a declaration of the warmest affection, and expresses himself "not worth the least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth," assuring his friend that he envies him his greater talent. According to Dryden, Jonson submitted everything he wrote to Beaumont's criticism as long as the young man was alive, and even gave him his manuscripts to correct.

While Beaumont's name is thus associated with Jonson, Fletcher's forms a constellation in conjunction with that of Shakespeare.

John Fletcher was born in December 1579, at Rye in Sussex, and was therefore fifteen years younger than the great poet with whom he is said to have collaborated more than once. His father, the Dean of Peterborough, was successively promoted through the bishoprics of Bristol and Worcester to that of London. He was a handsome, eloquent man, with a luxurious temperament, inclined to display and pleasure of all kinds. Every inch a courtier, all his thoughts were concentrated upon gaining, retaining, or recovering the royal favour.

One episode of his life of an impressively dramatic and historic interest, calculated to make the strongest impression on the imagination of an embryo tragic poet, must have been often related by him to his young son. Dr. Richard Fletcher was the divine appointed by Government to attend on Mary Stuart at the time of her execution, and was therefore both spectator and participator in the closing scene of the Scottish Cleopatra's life.

When he approached the Queen in the great hall hung with black, and invited her, as he was in duty bound to do, to unite with him in prayer, she turned her back upon him.

"Madam," he began with a low obeisance, "the Queen's most excellent majesty. Madam, the Queen's most excellent majesty." Thrice he commenced his sentence, wanting words to pursue it. When he repeated the words a fourth time she cut him short.

"Mr. Dean," she said, "I am a Catholic, and must die a Catholic. It is useless to attempt to move me, and your prayers will avail me little."

"Change your opinion, madam," he cried, his tongue being loosed at last. "Repent of your sins, settle your faith in Christ, by Him to be saved."

"Trouble not yourself further, Mr. Dean," she answered. "I am settled in my own faith, for which I mean to shed my blood."

"I am sorry, madam," said Shrewsbury, "to see you so addicted to Popery!"[2]

Slowly and carefully her ladies removed her veil so as not to disturb the arrangement of her hair. They took off her long black robe, and she stood then in a skirt of scarlet velvet; they removed the black bodice, and revealed one of scarlet silk. Sobbing, they drew on her scarlet sleeves and placed scarlet slippers upon her feet. It was like a transformation scene in a theatre when the proud woman stood suddenly dressed in scarlet in the black funeral hall. When her women wept and wailed she said to them, "_Ne criez pas vous, j'ai promis pour vous. Adieu, au revoir_," and praying in a loud voice, "_In te Domine confido_," she laid her head upon the block. It was impossible that Richard Fletcher should ever forget the inflexible resolution and indomitable courage displayed by the great actress, nor was he likely to forget the terrible mingling of horror with pure burlesque in the final scene. In his agitation, the executioner missed his aim, and a weak blow fell upon the handkerchief with which the Queen's eyes were bound, inflicting a slight wound upon her cheek. The second blow left the severed head hanging by a piece of skin, which the executioner cut as he drew back the axe. Then Dr. Fletcher witnessed a second transformation, as marvellous as any ever produced by a magician's wand: the great mass of thick false hair fell from the head. The Queen who had knelt before the block possessed all the ripened charm and dignified beauty of maturity; the head held up by the executioner to the gaze of the little company was that of a grey, wrinkled, old woman.[3] Could anything in the world have given young Fletcher a keener insight into the horrors of tragic catastrophe, the solemnity of death, and the blending of the terrible with the utterly grotesque which life's most supreme moments occasionally produce? It must have acted like a call and incitement to the creation of tragic and burlesque theatrical effect.

John Fletcher was educated at Cambridge, and probably came to London shortly before Beaumont, to try his fortune as a dramatic writer. His first success was with _Philaster, or Love lies Bleeding_, in 1608. Shakespeare must have witnessed its triumphant performance with strangely mingled feelings, for it could but strike him as being in many ways an echo of his own work. In so far as he is wrongfully deprived of his throne, Prince Philaster occupies much the same position as Hamlet, and several of his speeches to the king are markedly in the style of the Danish Prince of Shakespeare's play. Thus, in the opening scene of the first act:

"_King_. Sure he's possess'd. _Philaster_. Yes, with my father's spirit: It's true, O king! A dangerous spirit. Now he tells me, king, I was a king's heir, bids me be a king; And whispers to me, these are all my subjects. 'Tis strange he will not let me sleep, but dives Into my fancy, and there gives me shapes that kneel And do me service, cry me 'King.' But I'll oppose him, he's a factious spirit, And will undo me. Noble sir, your hand, I am your servant. _King_. Away, I do not like this," &c.

The king, however, has nothing to fear from Philaster, for the prince loves and is beloved by the monarch's daughter, Arethusa, whom her father intends to wed to that arrogant braggart, Prince Pharamond of Spain. Philaster, all unknown to himself, is beloved by Euphrasia, the daughter of the courtier Cleon. Disguised as a page she enters the prince's service under the name of Bellario, and displays a devotion which no trial can shake, not even that of carrying love-letters between Philaster and Arethusa, nor of being transferred to the service of the latter that she may be at hand in case of need. Euphrasia's situation and feelings resemble those of Viola in _Twelfth Night_, but the comedy of Shakespeare's play here becomes serious and romantic tragedy. _Philaster_ must have reminded Shakespeare yet more forcibly of another of his plays, and one to which the second half of the title, _i.e., Love lies Bleeding_, would have been applicable, for in the course of the piece Philaster and Arethusa are brought into a situation which is a counterpart of that of Othello and Desdemona.

It happens in the following manner. The princess treats Pharamond with as much coldness as she dares, allowing her betrothed none of the privileges which he may claim after marriage. Pharamond, who naïvely confides to the audience that his temperament will not stand such treatment, is sympathised with by an exceedingly accommodating court lady. Her name is Megra; she is one of those wanton fair ones whom Fletcher excelled in portraying, and is closely akin to the Chloe of his charming play _The Faithful Shepherd_, The time and place of this assignation being betrayed, the king, enraged at the insult offered to his daughter, breaks in upon them and overwhelms Megra with cruel and coarse abuse. She, on her part, threatens that if her name is publicly disgraced, she will reveal all she knows of a much too tender friendship between the princess and a handsome page lately taken into her service.

The king, finding that Bellario is actually attendant upon Arethusa, believes the slander and insists upon his instant dismissal. The courtiers, who, in common with the people, love Philaster and look to him to dethrone the king and rule in his stead, have watched this obstacle of his passion for the princess with no great favour. They hasten to report the rumour to him. Dion, Euphrasia-Bellario's own father, mendaciously asserts that he has surprised the lovers together. No use is made of this incident, nor of any of the opportunities offered by Euphrasia's disguise, which remains a secret even from the audience until the last scene of the play. Philaster in a jealous frenzy draws his sword upon Bellario and drives him away. The page instinctively guesses that Philaster is caught in the meshes of some intrigue, but does not divine its nature. Her parting words might have been addressed by Desdemona to Othello:

"But through these tears, Shed at my hopeless parting, I can see A world of treason practised upon you, And her, and me."

Just as Desdemona, suspecting nothing, warmly pleads Cassio's cause with Othello, so Arethusa laments to Philaster that she has been forced to dismiss his cherished messenger of love:

"O cruel! Are you hard-hearted too? Who shall now tell you How much I loved you? Who shall swear it to you, And weep the tears I send? Who shall now bring you Letters, rings, bracelets? lose his health in service? Wake tedious nights in stories of your praise?" (Act iii. sc. 2).

Philaster suffers the same agonies as the Moor of Venice, but being of a naturally gentle disposition, he only answers her in terms hardly to be surpassed for mournful and pathetic beauty. Later, coming upon the princess and her page, who have met by chance in a wood, he is so carried away by jealousy that he draws his sword first upon Arethusa and then upon Bellario. The page takes the blow without a murmur, and goes willingly to prison in place of Philaster for the attempt upon the princess's life. The devotion of Desdemona is thus reproduced in both these maidens, and finds in both a striking expression. All comes right eventually. A revolution places Philaster upon the throne, the women who love him recover from their wounds, and the discovery of Bellario's sex puts an end to all scandal. Philaster marries his beloved, and she, even more magnanimous than the queen in De Musset's _Carmosine_, closes the play with an invitation to Bellario-Euphrasia to share their life:

"Come, live with me; Live free as I do. She that loves my lord, Cursed be the wife that hates her."

In spite of its many echoes from his own plays, Shakespeare cannot have failed to appreciate the talent displayed in this drama. The gentleness and charm of the women in the works of both young poets must have appealed to him, offering as they did so marked a contrast to those of Chapman and Marlowe, neither of whom had any appreciation of womanliness or power to depict it. The best of Chapman's tragedies can have contained little that would attract Shakespeare. _The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron, Marshall of France_, was rather a ten-act epic than a drama. His comedies, too, even _Eastward Hoe_, with its wonderful picture of the London of the day to which Ben Jonson and Marston contributed their share, must have repelled him by a realism which he always avoided in his own work. Beaumont and Fletcher laid their scenes in Sicily, or rather in some imaginary country, whose abstract poetry, more in accordance with the Romance nation's manner of representing men and their passions, cannot have been unsympathetic to Shakespeare, especially at this period of his life.

_A King and no King_, the play which in all probability immediately succeeded _Philaster_, contains the same merits and defects as the latter, and here also Shakespeare might find reminiscences of his own work. When the king's mother kneels before her son, and is raised by him (Act iii. sc. I), we are reminded of Volumnia kneeling to Coriolanus, and we feel that the same scene was in the mind of the two young poets. The comic character of the play is one Bessus, a soldier by profession, and an arrant coward in spite of his captaincy. He is a braggart, liar, and, if occasion offers, a pander, being equally diverting in all these capacities. Considerable humour is displayed in the elaboration of his character, but the mighty figure of Falstaff is plainly discernible in the background. The authors even go to the length of appropriating some distinctly Falstaffian expressions. A fencing-master says of Bessus (Act iv. sc. 3):

"It showed discretion, the better part of valour."[4]

In _Philaster_ we were shown a strong passion consumed by groundless jealousy. In _A King and no King_ we have a still stronger passion, that of the young Arbaces for Princess Panthea, leading to confusion and disaster. Throughout the whole play Arbaces never doubts for a moment that they are brother and sister. The secret of his birth is not discovered until the last scene, just as Bellario's sex is not made known until the end of _Philaster_. Spaconia discovers that King Tigranes, who is as her very life to her, is in love with Panthea; whereupon she assumes much the same position towards him that Euphrasia did towards her love. But there is profounder study of character in the new play. Arbaces, a mixture of vanity and boastfulness with really excellent qualities, makes an extremely complex personality, though not an unnatural or unsympathetic one, and we are given a study of complicated passion in no way inferior to that in Racine's _Phèdre_, the instinct of love violently and irresistibly aroused, but constantly met by the fear and horror of incest. The subject is treated with great pathos and power of language.[5]

In 1609-10 Fletcher reached the zenith of his fame as sole author and as collaborator with Beaumont. That sweet and fresh pastoral play _The Faithful Shepherdess_, Fletcher's unassisted work, must have been written before the spring of 1610, for Sir William Skipworth, to whom, amongst others, it is dedicated, died in the May of that year. The theme was peculiarly suited to the fresh and delicate grace of Fletcher's lyrical gift, and here again Shakespeare may have perceived a distinct imitation of his _Midsummer Night's Dream_. Here also the lovers are metamorphosed, and Perigot embraces Amaryllis in the form of Amoret, believing her to be his love; he also wounds Amoret as Philaster wounds Arethusa. A still earlier version of the play may be found in Spenser's _Shepherds Calendar_. Darley has observed that Fletcher imitated several lines from the same source, and among them, oddly enough, some which had been appropriated by Spenser from Chaucer, whose verses greatly surpass either of the later poets in charm. In _The Faithful Shepherdess_, for example, we have (v. 5):

"Sort all your shepherds from the lazy clowns That feed their heifers in the budded brooms."

In Spenser's _Shepherds Calendar_ it stands:

"So loytering live you, little herd grooms, Keeping your beasts in the budded brooms."

But in Chaucer's _House of Fame_ we find the following verse (iii. 133):

"And many a floite and litlyng home And pipis made of grenè corne As have these litel herdè-groomes That kepen bestis in the bromes."

Fletcher's principal source, however, was, as the title tells us, Guarini's _Pastor Fido_.

_The Faithful Shepherdess_ is a charming idyl, too airy and delicate to have an immediate success with his own generation, but it may be read with pleasure to this day, and has secured lasting fame to its author. Ben Jonson's later but also admirable pastoral play, _The Sad Shepherd_, is the English poem of that period which most resembles it.

Immediately after the production of this little tragi-comedy, Fletcher offered to the Globe Theatre the most remarkable work which had resulted from the combined labours of himself and Francis Beaumont--_The Maid's Tragedy_.

The first act opens with the preparations for a wedding festivity. The king has commanded the worthy and distinguished Lord Amintor to break off his engagement to the gentle and devoted Aspasia and to marry Evadne, the beautiful sister of his dearest friend and comrade, the great general Melantius. Amintor, to whom the king's command is sacred, and who is, moreover, strongly attracted by Evadne, breaks with Aspasia, dear as she is to him. We witness Aspasia's deep grief, the outburst of rage on the part of her father (the cowardly Calianax), and the performance of the masque on the eve of the wedding, in which some of the poets' sweetest lyrics are to be found.

The second act represents the wedding-night. The disrobing of the bride by her friends, and all the fun and banter attendant on the occasion, form the introduction. Then follows, between bridegroom and bride, the first great scene of the play, as boldly dramatic as any written by Shakespeare before or Webster after this date. Amintor approaches Evadne with tender words, she gently repulses him. He strives to disarm what he supposes to be her bashfulness, but she tells him calmly and coldly that she will never be his. Still he does not understand, and now urges her with impatient desire. Then she rises, like a serpent about to sting, and coldly hisses that she is, and will continue to be, the king's mistress, that the marriage has merely been arranged by him as a screen for his relations with her. The fury and thirst for revenge which seizes Amintor when he realises this outrage gives way to a desperate comprehension that it is the king who has dishonoured him; to a subject the person of the king is inviolable.

The third act opens with an audacious visit from the king on the following morning. With cool patronage he asks Amintor if the night has given him satisfaction. Amintor replies composedly, and answers the king's more particular inquiries quite in the style of the happy husband. It is now the king's turn to be disconcerted. He sends for Evadne and violently accuses her of treachery, against which she, of course, passionately protests. The king, beside himself with rage, sends for Amintor; he is furiously attacked by Evadne for his falsehoods, and the king brutally explains the situation and the part the husband is expected to play. This double scene is written in a masterly fashion, with a strong sense of dramatic effect, but the rest of the act is worthess, being chiefly composed of dialogues between Amintor and Melantius, who learns the truth about his sister from his friend. The two are perpetually drawing upon each other and sheathing their swords again; firstly, because Melantius will not believe in his sister's shame; secondly, because Amintor will not allow Melantius to seek any revenge which will reveal his dishonour. It all reads like a weak imitation of the Spanish dramatists before Calderon.

The fourth act presents another series of effective scenes. The brother accuses the sister of her infamy, and when she coldly denies everything he threatens her with his sword, until she vows that she will take bloody vengeance on the cruel and vicious king who has brought about her degradation. Then the suddenly converted Evadne falls upon her knees and implores her husband's forgiveness, which he, seeing how bitterly she repents the life she has been living, accords. This is followed by a particularly well-imagined scene, in which the ridiculous old Calianax, who hates Melantius, denounces him to the king for his attempt to persuade him, Calianax, to give up the city he held for the monarch. In spite of its truth, Melantius listens to the accusation quite imperturbably, and succeeds in giving it the appearance of being merely the ramblings of an old dotard.

In the fifth act is a skilfully prepared Judith scene--the second great scene of the play. Evadne goes to the king's chamber, passing through the anteroom, which resounds with the profligate jests of the courtiers. The authors linger with a certain voluptuous cruelty over the scene between the king, who does not awake from his sleep until his hands have been tied to the bed, and the woman who has been his mistress, and who now tortures him with scathing words before she murders him. The remaining scenes are marred by their excessive sensationalism. Aspasia, disguised as her brother, seeks Amintor, from whom she can no longer be separated. He receives her with warm cordiality, but she taunts, strikes, and even kicks him, wishing to attain, if possible, the happiness of dying by his hand. He finally loses patience and draws his sword upon her, seeing too late that it is his beloved whom he has slain. Evadne now appears, red-handed and glowing with love, but Amintor repulses her with horror, she is stained with that greatest of all crimes, regicide. She kills herself in despair, and Amintor also dies by his own hand.

Aspasia is the perpetually slighted young woman who appears, always resigned and gentle, in all Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. The old coward Calianax is another of their standing characters. The brotherhood between Melantius and Amintor possesses, in spite of its occasional artificiality, some interest for us, as does the corresponding friendship in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_, from the fact that the mutual relations between the authors evidently served as the prototype in both cases. Evadne's character, if not completely intelligible, is entirely _hors ligne_, and most admirably suited to dramatic treatment. The play indeed is a model of everything which dramatic and theatrical treatment requires, and was well calculated to impress an audience for whom Shakespeare's art was too refined.

We cannot, therefore, be surprised that the friend and fellow-craftsman of the two poets, who was the first to publish a collected edition of their works after their death, should write the following words without fear of contradiction: "But to mention them is to throw a cloud upon all former names and benight posterity; this book being, without flattery, the greatest monument of the scene that time and humanity have produced, and must live, not only the crown and sole reputation of our own, but the stain of all other nations and languages" (Shirley's address to the reader).

[1] See Richard Garnett: _The Age of Dryden_, p. 249

[2] Froude: _History of England_, vol. xii. p. 254.

[3] J. St. Loe Strachey: _Beaumont and Fletcher_, vol. i. p. xv.

[4] It is Falstaff who says in the _First Part of Henry IV_. (Act v. sc. 4), "The better part of valour is discretion." This parallel has been overlooked both in Ingleby's _Shakespeare's Century of Praise_ and in Furnivall's _Fresh Allusions to Shakespeare_.

[5]

"Know I have lost The only difference betwixt man and beast, My reason. PANTHEA. Heaven forbid! ARBACES. Nay, it is gone, And I am left as far without a bound As the wide ocean that obeys the winds; Each sudden passion throws me where it lists, And overwhelms all that oppose my will. I have beheld thee with a lustful eye; My heart is set on wickedness, to act Such sins with thee as I have been afraid To think of.... I have lived To conquer men, and now am overthrown Only by words, brother and sister. Where Have those words dwelling? I will find 'em out And utterly destroy'em; but they are Not to be grasped Accursed man! Thou bought'st thy reason at too dear a rate; For thou hast all thy actions bounded in With curious rules, where every beast is free; What is there that acknowledges a kindred But wretched man? Who ever saw the bull Fearfully leave the heifer that he liked Because they had one dam?"

XVII

_SHAKESPEARE AND FLETCHER--THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN AND HENRY VIII_.

In the year 1684 a drama was published for the first time under the following title:

"_The Two Noble Kinsmen_; presented at the Blackfriars, by the King's Maiesties Servants, with great applause. Written by the memorable Worthies of their time Mr. _John Fletcher_ and Mr. _William Shakespeare_, Gent: Printed at _London_ by _Tho. Cotes_ for _John Waterson_, and are to be sold at the signe of the _Crown_ in Paul's Churchyard."

This play was not included in the First Folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (1647), but it appeared in the second (1679). Even supposing the editors of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's works to have entertained no doubt of his share in it, it would probably remain in Fletcher's possession until his death in 1625, and would therefore be inaccessible to them.

The play is of no particular value; it is far inferior to Fletcher's best work, and not to be compared with any of Shakespeare's completed dramas. Nevertheless, many eminent critics of this century have found distinct traces in this play of the styles of both greater and lesser poet.

Like that of _Troilus and Cressida_, the theme found its way from the pages of an old-world poet, Statius' _Thebaide_ in this case, into those of Boccaccio, and through him it came to Chaucer. Under the form given it by the latter it proved the foundation of several dramas of the reigns of Elizabeth and James.[1] Most of the essential details of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ may be found in Boccaccio's _La Teseide._

It is a tale of two devoted friends, both suddenly seized by a romantic passion for a woman whom they have watched walking in a garden from the window of the tower in which they are held prisoners of war. Their friendship is shattered, each claiming the exclusive right to the affections of this lady, who is the Duke's sister Emilia. One of the friends is set at liberty upon the express condition of his quitting the country for ever. His irresistible longing for the fair one, however, draws him back to live disguised in her neighbourhood. The second friend escapes from prison, and meeting the first, engages him in a duel, which is interrupted by Duke Theseus. They explain their position to him, and their passion for his sister. The Duke arranges a formal tournament between the suitors; Emilia's hand is to reward the victor, and the vanquished is to suffer death. The conqueror, however, is fatally injured by a fall from his horse, and it is the defeated man who marries the princess.

There can be no reasonable question of the traces of Fletcher's hand in this play, for in it we find not only his easily recognised metrical style, but many features peculiar to his poorer work--the lax composition which permits of two plots running side by side with no connection between them, a tendency to merely theatrical effect and entirely motiveless action, contrived to surprise the audience at the cost of psychology, and finally his conception of virtue and vice in the relations between man and woman. To Fletcher, chastity meant entire abstinence, and side by side with this "chastity" he places, and delineates with relish, an immodest and purely sensual passion. Thus Emilia talks of her "chastity," and the jailer's daughter alludes to her passion for Palamon in terms which are repulsively shameless. When Shakespeare's women love, they are neither chaste in this fashion nor passionate in this fashion. They are sympathetically and reverentially drawn as loving only one man and loving him faithfully, whereas the affections of Fletcher's heroines veer round as suddenly as we saw Evadne's veer in _The Maids Tragedy_. Therefore it is possible for him to portray such women as Emilia, who during the tournament loves first one and then the other of her suitors as his chances of victory are in the ascendant. That it contains many reminiscences of Shakespeare is no argument against Fletcher's responsibility for the greater part of the play, but quite the contrary; we have already seen how many of these traces are to be found even among his best works. In the _Two Noble Kinsmen_ we find echoes from _The Midsummer Night's Dream,_ from _Julius Cæsar_ (the quarrel between Brutus and Cassio), and, above all, a tasteless and offensive imitation of Ophelia's madness, when the jailer's daughter goes crazy for fear while seeking Palamon in the wood at night, and in her raving and singing later in the play. Shakespeare never repeated without excelling, and certainly never parodied himself in this fashion.[2]

Shakespeare evidently had no part in the planning of the play. There is no originality in it, and if we do obtain a glimpse of some sort of life's philosophy, it is certainly not his. Swinburne's surmise that the play was sketched by Shakespeare and completed by Fletcher, can therefore hardly be correct. Among other arguments, we may mention that the part in which, according to Swinburne's own opinion, Shakespeare's hand is most traceable, is the conclusion, which is hardly likely to have been written first.

Can any part of the play be ascribed to Shakespeare? Gardiner and Delius believe not, and the Danish critics a few years ago shared the same scarcely justifiable opinion. Bierfreund is uninfluenced by the fact that many of the most eminent English critics hold a contrary view, but such a circumstance should impose the very closest study of the play on the part of foreign critics. In my case this has led me to the conclusion that although the drama was planned and the greater part executed by Fletcher, he had Shakespeare's assistance in finishing the work. We can hardly imagine that Shakespeare vouchsafed his help from any motive but that of interest in, and a friendly feeling for, the younger poet, who had submitted his work to him and appealed for his assistance.

It would but weary the reader to go through the work from beginning to end to show how the seal of Shakespeare's style is stamped upon it. The traces of his pen are most frequent in the opening act; the appeal of the first queen to Theseus ("We are three queens," &c.), in the introductory scene, for example. These lines possess all the rhythm peculiar to the productions of the last years of the poet's life; and how boldly figurative and genuinely Shakespearian in expression is the same queen's fanciful expression:

"Dowagers, take hands; Let us be widows to our woes; delay Commends us to a famishing hope."

Theseus' last speech in this act (the summing up of the situation and circumstances) reminds us of Hamlet's monologue, "The whips and scorns of life, the oppressors' wrongs," &c., and "Ulysses' beauty, wit, high birth," &c.

"Since I have known frights, fury, friends' behests, Love's provocations, zeal, a mistress' task, Desire of liberty, a fever, madness."...

Mere imitations must not be confounded with Shakespeare's own style, however. The passage in which Emilia speaks of the ardent and tender friendship that united her to her dead friend, Flavina, which in England has been mistakenly admired as Shakespeare's work, is in reality a poor copy of the passage in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_ (Act iii. sc. 2) where Helena describes the love between herself and Hermia. The unhealthy affection here set forth bears Fletcher's stamp upon it, and is made particularly unpleasant by the use Emilia makes of the word "innocent."

We are again sensible of Shakespeare's touch in the monologue spoken by the jailer's daughter, which constitutes the second scene of the third act. Note the picturesque expression, "In me has grief slain fear," and many others. From the moment she goes out of her mind down to the last word she utters, Shakespeare has neither part nor lot in those speeches whose uncouth imitation of his style must have been singularly offensive to him.

The greater part of the first scene of the fifth act is undoubtedly Shakespeare's. Theseus' first speech is superb, and Arcite's address to the knights and invocation of Mars is delightful. The lines at the close of the play have also a Shakespearian ring about them, especially the words so much admired by Swinburne:

"That nought could buy Dear love but loss of dear love."

But there is no deeper, no intellectual interest for us in all this. Shakespeare had nothing to do with the psychology, or rather want of it, in this play.[3]

Had he any greater share in _Henry VIII_.? The play was first published in the Folio edition of 1623, where it closes the series of Historical Plays. The first four acts are founded on Holinshed's Chronicle, and the last upon Fox's _Acts and Monuments of the Church_, commonly known as the _Book of Martyrs_. The authors were also directly or indirectly indebted to a book which at that date only existed in manuscript, George Cavendish's _Relics of Cardinal Wolsey_, which had been largely drawn upon by Holinshed and Hall. The earliest reference to a play of Henry VIII. may be found in the Stationers' Hall Registry for the 12th of February 1604-5, where the "Enterlude for K. Henry VIII." is entered; but this refers to Rowley's worthless and fanatically Protestant play "_When you see mee you know mee._" The next mention of such a drama occurs in the well-known oft-quoted letters concerning the burning of the Globe Theatre on the 29th of June 1613. In an epistle from Thomas Larkin to Sir Thomas Pickering, dated "This last of June 1613," we read: "No longer since than yesterday, while Burbege's company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry VIII., and there shooting off certain chambers in way of triumph, the fire catched and there burnt so furiously, as it consumed the whole house, all in less than two hours, the people having enough to do to save themselves." Also Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to his nephews, dated the 6th of July 1613, writes: "Now let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at the present with what happened at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some principal pieces of the reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the Order, with their Georges and Garter, the guards with their embroidered coats and the like; sufficient, in Truth, within a while to make greatness very familiar if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's House, and certain canons being shot off at his entrance, some of the paper, or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House to the very grounds."

The emphatic and thrice repeated assertion of the prologue that all that is about to be represented is _the truth_, taken in conjunction with other details, proves that the play described is our _Henry VIII_., and at that date, therefore, a new work.

Although never very highly esteemed, it was not until somewhere about the year 1850 that it was ever doubted that _Henry VIII_. was entirely written by Shakespeare. It would now be impossible to find any one holding such an opinion; some of the most competent critics, indeed, maintain that Shakespeare had nothing whatever to do with it.[4]

That keen observer, Emerson, alluding to _Henry VIII_. in his book _Representative Men_ draws attention to the two entirely different rhythms of its verse--one that is Shakespearian, and another much inferior. Almost simultaneously, Spedding published an article in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for August 1856 (afterwards reprinted under the title "Who Wrote Shakespeare's Henry VIII?"), in which he points out these differing rhythms, affirming one of them to be Fletcher's. Furnivall and Fleay declared themselves of the same opinion in 1874. To understand this criticism, the reader must bear in mind the following simple evolution of English five-footed iambics. The language does not possess what Scandinavians call feminine rhymes, alternating and contrasting with the masculine. The first attempt to break the monotony of the blank verse simply consisted in the addition of an extra syllable to the original ten--_double ending_. The proportion of these lengthened lines in Shakespeare's _Henry V._ is 18 in 100. Ben Jonson long adhered to the old regular construction, but finally yielded to the newer fashion. Fletcher constantly used the eleven-syllabled lines, employing them indeed so regularly and consciously that he is betrayed into a certain monotoneous mannerism. Instance the following from _The Wild Goose Chase_:

"I would I were a woman, sir, to fit you, As there be such, no doubt, may engine you too, May with a countermine blow up your valour. But in good faith, sir, we are both too honest; And the plague is, we cannot be persuaded; For look you, if we thought it were a glory To be the last of all your lovely ladies."...

This will also show that Fletcher did not, as a rule, allow the idea to overlap from one line to the next.

In Shakespeare's later works the proportion of eleven-syllabled lines is 33 in 100; in Massinger it is 40, and in Fletcher 50 to 80, or even more. Again, Shakespeare made use, with ever-increasing frequency, of _enjambement_ or "run on" lines. This style is particularly noticeable in the passionate dramas of his bitter period, and the growing habit of employing them led to the more and more frequent appearance of lines ending with an adverb, article, or preposition (light and weaking endings). There may be a hundred such in his later plays; there are, for instance, 130 in _Cymbeline_. This feature became an extravagance with his successors. Massinger, whose dramas are considerably shorter than Shakespeare's, has from 150 to 170 of these weak endings in each play.

In comparison with Shakespeare's work there is an effeminate ring about Fletcher's verse, and his was the Corinthian, if Shakespeare's was the Ionic style. Separate and unalloyed, it would be impossible to mistake them, but it is a very different matter when they are blended together in one and the same work as in _Henry VIII_. And here again the problem offered by the _Two Noble Kinsmen_ presents itself. Did Shakespeare leave the play unfinished, and was it completed by Fletcher after his death? or did he help Fletcher by writing or re-writing certain scenes of his play? The first supposition is an utter impossibility, as far as I am concerned. The planning of the drama was not Shakespeare's; never in his life did anything so shapeless come from his pen. Is any part of the play due to him? In spite of the verdicts of Furnivall and Symons, I think so. In the first place, we are not justified in ignoring the testimony borne by Heminge and Condell in the First Folio edition. We have always hitherto taken for granted that they were better qualified to judge of the authenticity of a play than we of the present day; not one of the plays accepted by them has since been rejected by posterity, and we need a very good reason for making an exception of _Henry VIII_. The sole pretext we can offer is the weakness of the whole play, including those portions of which we are in doubt. But this weakness cannot in any way be considered as decisive. Here, working with another man, Shakespeare did not put forth his full strength, exercise all his powers, nor give free play to his imagination. Of this, _Henry VIII_. is not the only example. Moreover, there are strong points of resemblance between those parts of the play which the majority of English critics ascribe to him and works of the same period which were unmistakably his and his alone.

So far back as 1765, Samuel Johnson, who never doubted that the whole play was due to Shakespeare, remarked that the poet's genius seemed to rise and set with Queen Katharine, and that any one might have invented and written the rest. In 1850 James Spedding, moved thereto by some suggestive criticism by Tennyson, came to the conclusion already mentioned, that only certain parts were written by Shakespeare, and that the remainder was due to Fletcher. This opinion was confirmed by Samuel Hickson, who remarked that he had arrived at the same decision three or four years previously, and even with the same results as far as the separate scenes were concerned. This theory was, after a careful examination of the metrical structure, still further corroborated by Fleay.

That the general scheme of the drama was not due to Shakespeare is self-evident. Spedding observed how utterly ineffective the play is as a whole, how the interest collapses instead of increasing, and how the sympathy aroused in the audience is in steady opposition to the actual development of events. The centre of interest in the first act is undeniably Queen Katharine, and, although the deference due to so recent a king as Elizabeth's father forbade too plain speaking, the audience is clearly given to understand that the monarch's passion for Anne Boleyn was really at the bottom of his conscientious scruples concerning the wedlock in which he had lived for twenty years. Notwithstanding this, the spectators are expected to feel joy and satisfaction when Anne is solemnly crowned queen, and actual triumph when she gives birth to a daughter. In the last act we have the impeachment of Archbishop Cranmer, his acquittal by the king, and his appointment to the godfathership of Elizabeth, all of which has no connection whatever with the real action of the play. Wolsey, one of the two chief characters, the evil principle in opposition to the good Queen Katharine, disappears before her, not even surviving the close of the third act. The whole play, in fact, resolves itself into a succession of spectacular effects, processions, songs, dances, and music. We are shown a great assembly of the State Council in connection with Buckingham's trial; a great festival in Wolsey's palace, with masquerade and dance; the great trial scene, with England's queen at the bar; a great coronation scene, with canopy, crown jewels, and flourish of trumpets; the dying Katharine's vision of dancing angels, with golden vizards and palm branches in their hands; and lastly, the great christening scene in the palace, with another procession of canopy, trumpets, and heralds.

An invisible writing inscribes on every page the words _Written to order_. In all probability it was a hurriedly written piece, hastily put together for performance at the court gaieties in honour of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage. It was for those festivities that Beaumont's little play, _The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn,_ and Shakespeare's own masterpiece, _The Tempest_, were written. Shakespeare's part in _Henry VIII_ is limited to Act i. sc. I and 2, Act ii. sc. 3 and sc. 4, Act iii. sc. 2 as far as Wolsey's first monologue, "What should this mean," and Act v. sc. 1 and 4.

This play cannot be classed with Shakespeare's other historical dramas, for, as we have already observed, its events were of too recent occurrence to allow of a strictly veracious treatment. How was it possible to tell the truth about Henry VIII., that coarse and cruel Bluebeard, with his six wives? Did he not inaugurate the Reformation, and was he not the father of Queen Elizabeth? As little could the material interests which furthered the Reformation be represented on the stage, or the various religious and political aspects of the Reformation itself. Fettered and bound as he was by a hundred different considerations, Shakespeare acquitted himself of his difficult task with tact and skill. When Henry, immediately after his encounter with the beauteous court lady, began, after all those years, to feel scruples on the score of his marriage with his brother's wife, Shakespeare, without making him a hypocrite, allows us to perceive how the new passion acted as a spur to his conscience. The character of Wolsey is founded upon the Chronicle, and the clever parvenu's bold, unscrupulous, yet withal self-controlled nature, is indicated by a few light touches. Fletcher has spoiled the character by the introduction of the badly-written monologues uttered by Wolsey after his fall. We recognise the voice of the clergyman's son in their feeble, pastoral strain. The picture of Anne Boleyn, delicately outlined by Shakespeare, was also put out of drawing later in the play by Fletcher. All the light of the piece, however, is concentrated around the figure of the repudiated Catholic queen, Katharine of Arragon, for in her (as he found her character in the Chronicle) Shakespeare recognised a variant of his present all-absorbing type--the noble and neglected woman. She closely resembles the misjudged Queen Hermione, so unjustly separated from her husband and thrown into prison in the _Winter's Tale_. As in _Cymbeline_ Imogen still loves Posthumus although he has cast her off, so Katharine continues to love the man who has wronged her.

Shakespeare has hardly put a word into the mouth of the Queen which may not be found in the Chronicle, but he has created a character of mingled charm and distinction, a union of Castilian pride with extreme simplicity, of inflexible resolution with gentlest resignation, and of a quick temper with a sincere piety, through which the temper sometimes shows. He has drawn with a caressing touch the figure of a queen neither beautiful nor brilliant, but true--true to the core, proud of her birth and queenly rank, but softer than wax in the hands of her royal lord, whom she loves after twenty-four years of married life as dearly as on her wedding-day. Her letters show how devoted and lovable she was, and in them she addresses Henry as "Your Grace, my husband, my Henry," and signs herself "Your humble wife and true servant." In those scenes in which it has fallen to Fletcher's lot to represent the Queen, he has adhered faithfully to Shakespeare's conception of her, which was virtually that of the Chronicle. Even in the hour of her death, Katharine does not forget to rebuke and punish the messenger who has failed in due respect by omitting to kneel; but she forgives her enemy the Cardinal and sends the King this last greeting:

"Remember me In all humility unto his highness: Say his long trouble now is passing Out of the world: tell him in death I bless'd him, For so I will.--Mine eyes grow dim."

Her stately dignity resembles that of Hermione, but she differs from the latter in her pride of race and piety. Hermione is neither pious nor proud; neither was Shakespeare. We find a little proof of his detestation of sectarianism even in the pompous play of _Henry VIII_. In the third scene of the fifth act the porter exclaims of the inquisitive multitude crowding to watch the christening procession:

"There are the youths that thunder at the playhouse and fight for bitten apples; that no audience but the Tribulation of Tower Hill or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear brothers, are able to endure."

Limehouse was an artisan house in London; there also the foreigners settled, and it resounded with the strife of religious sects. It is amusing to note how Shakespeare contrived to have a fling at his detested _groundlings_ and his Puritan enemies at one and the same time.

As we all know, the drama closes with Cranmer's lengthy and flattering prediction of the greatness of Elizabeth and James, which is marred by the monotony of Fletcher's worst mannerisms. Shakespeare clearly had no share in this tirade, which makes all the more strange the part it has played in the discussions which have been carried on with so little psychology relative to Shakespeare's religious and denominational standpoint. How many times has the prophecy that under Elizabeth "God shall be truly known" been quoted in support of the great poet's firmly Protestant convictions? Yet the line was evidently never written by him, and not a single turn of thought in the whole of this lengthy speech owns any suggestion of his pathos and style. It is only here and there in the play that we obtain a glimpse of Shakespeare, and then he is fettered and hampered by collaboration with another man and by an uncongenial task, to which only a great exertion of his genius could here and there impart any dramatic interest.

[1] A careful study of the plot may be found in Theodor Bierfreund's book: _Palamon og Arcite_, 1891.

[2] A similar opinion is skilfully maintained by Bierfreund, but I cannot agree with his main contention that Shakespeare had no

## part in this play whatever.

[3] Compare Hickson, Fleay, and Furnivall upon the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_. _New Shakspere Society's Transactions_, 1874. R. Boyle maintains that he can trace Massinger's hand in the play.

[4] In his prefatory treatise to the _Leopold Shakspere_ (136 quarto pages), F. J. Furnivall has dealt with this play as being in part Shakespeare's. Now he is of a different opinion, and in a copy of the book presented by him to me, he has written on the margin against _Henry VIII_. "Not Shakspere's." Arthur Symons, who edits and prefaces the play in the Irving edition, told me that he now inclines, on account of its metrical structure, to the belief that Shakespeare had no share in it. P. A. Daniels, the erudite editor of so many Shakespearian quartos, said that he had arrived at no decision respecting its authorship, and characteristically added that the identity was a matter of indifference to him so long as the play was good. This is not the psychological standpoint.

XVIII

_CYMBELINE--THE THEME--THE POINT OF DEPARTURE--THE MORAL--THE IDYLL --IMOGEN--SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE--SHAKESPEARE AND CALDERON_

In _Cymbeline_ Shakespeare is once more sole master of his material, and he works it up into such a many-coloured web as no loom but his can produce. Here, too, we find a certain off-hand carelessness of technique. The exposition is perfunctory; the preliminaries of the

## action are conveyed to us in a scene of pure narrative. The comic

passages are, as a rule, weak, the mirth-moving device being for one of the other characters to ridicule or parody in asides the utterances of the coarse and vain Prince Cloten. In the middle of the play (iii. 3), a poorly-written monologue gives us a sort of supplementary exposition, necessary to the understanding of the plot. Finally, the dramatic knot is loosed by means of a _deus ex machinâ_, Jupiter, "upon his eagle back'd," appearing to the sleeping Posthumus, and leaving with him an oracular "label," in which, as though to bear witness to the poet's "small Latin" the deity childishly derives _mulier_ from _mollis aer_, or "tender air." But, in spite of all this, Shakespeare is here once more at the height of his poetic greatness; the convalescent has recovered all his strength. He has thrown his whole soul into the creation of his heroine, and has so enchased this Imogen, this pearl among women, that all her excellences show to the best advantage, and the setting is not unworthy of the jewel.

As in Cleopatra and Cressida we had woman determined solely by her sex, so in Imogen we have an embodiment of the highest possible characteristics of womanhood--untainted health of soul, unshaken fortitude, constancy that withstands all trials, inexhaustible forbearance, unclouded intelligence, love that never wavers, and unquenchable radiance of spirit. She, like Marina, is cast into the snake-pit of the world. She is slandered, and not, like Desdemona, at second or third hand, but by the very man who boasts of her favours and supports his boast with seemingly incontrovertible proofs. Like Cordelia, she is misjudged; but whereas Cordelia is merely driven from her father's presence along with the man of her choice, Imogen is doomed to death by her cruelly-deceived husband, whom alone she adores; and through it all she preserves her love for him unweakened and unchanged.

Strange--very strange! In Imogen we find the fullest, deepest love that Shakespeare has ever placed in a woman's breast, and that although _Cymbeline_ follows close upon plays which were filled to the brim with contempt for womankind. He believed, then, in such love, so impassioned, so immovable, so humble--believed in it now? He had, then, observed or encountered such a love--encountered it at this point of his life?

Even a poet has scant enough opportunities of observing love. Love is a rare thing, much rarer than the world pretends, and when it exists, it is apt to be sparing of words. Did he simply fall back on his own experiences, his own inward sensations, his knowledge of his own heart, and, transposing his feelings from the major to the minor key, place them on a woman's lips? Or did he love at this moment, and was he himself thus beloved at the end of the fifth decade of his life? The probability is, doubtless, that he wrote from some quite fresh experience, though it does not follow that the experience was actually his own. It is not often that women love men of his mental habit and stature with such intensity of passion. The rule will always be that a Molière shall find himself cast aside for some Comte de Guiche, a Shakespeare for some Earl of Pembroke. Thus we cannot with any certainty conclude that he himself was the object of the passion which had revived his faith in a woman's power of complete and unconditional absorption in love for one man, and for him alone. In the first place, had the experience been his own, he would scarcely have left London so soon. Yet the probability is that he must just about this time have gained some clear and personal insight into an ideal love. In the public sphere, too, it is not unlikely that Arabella Stuart's undaunted passion for Lord William Seymour, so cruelly punished by King James, may have afforded the model for Imogen's devotion to Leonatus Posthumus in defiance of the will of King Cymbeline.

_Cymbeline_ was first printed in the Folio of 1623. The earliest mention of it occurs in the _Booke of Plaies and Notes thereof_ kept by the above-mentioned astrologer and magician, Dr. Simon Forman. He was present, he says, at a performance of _A Winters Tale_ on May 15, 1611, and at the same time he sketches the plot of _Cymbeline_, but unfortunately does not give the date of the performance. In all probability it was quite recent; the play was no doubt written in the course of 1610, while the fate of Arabella Stuart was still fresh in the poet's mind. Forman died in September 1611.

In depth and variety of colouring, in richness of matter, profundity of thought, and heedlessness of conventional canons, _Cymbeline_ has few rivals among Shakespeare's plays. Fascinating as it is, however, this tragi-comedy has never been very popular on the stage. The great public, indeed, has neither studied nor understood it.

In none of his works has Shakespeare played greater havoc with chronology. He jumbles up the ages with superb indifference. The period purports to be that of Augustus, yet we are introduced to English, French, and Italian cavaliers, and hear them talk of pistol-shooting and playing bowls and cards. The list of characters ends thus--"Lords, ladies, Roman senators, tribunes, apparitions, a soothsayer, a Dutch gentleman, a Spanish gentleman, musicians, officers, captains, soldiers, messengers, and other attendants." Was there ever such a farrago?

What did Shakespeare mean by this play? is the question that now confronts us. My readers are aware that I never, in the first instance, try to answer this question directly. The fundamental point is, What impelled him to write? how did he arrive at the theme? When that is answered, the rest follows almost as a matter of course.

Where, then, is the starting-point of this seeming tangle? We find it on resolving the material of the play into its component parts.

There are three easily distinguishable elements in the action.

In his great storehouse of English history, Holinshed, Shakespeare found some account of a King Kymbeline or Cimbeline, who is said to have been educated at Rome, and there knighted by the Emperor Augustus, under whom he served in several campaigns. He is stated to have stood so high in the Emperor's favour that "he was at liberty to pay his tribute or not" as he chose. He reigned thirty-five years, was buried in London, and left two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus. The name Imogen occurs in Holinshed's story of Brutus and Locrine. In the tragedy of _Locrine_, dating from 1595, Imogen is mentioned as the wife of Brutus.

Although Cymbeline, says Holinshed, is declared by most authorities to have lived at unbroken peace with Rome, yet some Roman writers affirm that the Britons having refused to pay tribute when Augustus came to the throne, that Emperor, in the tenth year after the death of Julius Cæsar, "made prouision to passe with an armie ouer into Britaine." He is said, however, to have altered his mind; so that the Roman descent upon Britain under Caius Lucius is an invention of the poet's.

In Boccaccio's _Decameron_, again (