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Title: Wit, Humor, and Shakspeare: Twelve Essays

Author: John Weiss

Release date: April 11, 2021 [eBook #65060]

Language: English

Credits: Chris Curnow, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WIT, HUMOR, AND SHAKSPEARE: TWELVE ESSAYS ***




WIT, HUMOR, AND SHAKSPEARE.




 In Press:


 _The West-Easterly Divan
 of Goethe._

 Translated, with an Introduction
 and Notes,

 By John Weiss.


  [Ready in December.]




 WIT, HUMOR, AND
 SHAKSPEARE.

 Twelve Essays.

 By JOHN WEISS.

 [Illustration]

 BOSTON:
 ROBERTS BROTHERS.
 1876.




 _Copyright_, 1876,
 By John Weiss.

 _Cambridge:
 Press of John Wilson & Son._




CONTENTS.


                                                                 PAGE

 I. The Cause of Laughter                                          3

 II. Wit, Irony, Humor                                            33

 III. Dogberry, Malvolio, Troilus and Cressida
 (Ajax), Bottom, Touchstone                                       73

 IV. Falstaff: his Companions; Americanisms                      119

 V. Hamlet                                                       151

 VI. The Porter in "Macbeth," the Clown in
 "Twelfth Night," the Fool in "Lear"                             185

 VII. Women and Men: Maria, Helena, Imogen,
 Constance                                                       211

 VIII. Lord Bacon and the Plays, Shakspeare's
 Women, Love in Shakspeare                                       245

 IX. Portia                                                      301

 X. Helena; Ophelia                                              327

 XI. Macbeth                                                     361

 XII. Blonde Women: Lady Macbeth                                 397




THE CAUSE OF LAUGHTER.


This Subject is best reached from the point of reflecting that, of all
the animals, man alone appears to be capable of laughter. If, as so
many naturalists now claim, man has ascended by successive evolutions
of varieties from a lower animal type, we ought to be able to find
some germs of the laughing propensity among our ancestors. The first
witness we summon on this question is the anatomist, because the
physical expression that accompanies an act of laughter depends upon
the connection of the respiratory nerves with the diaphragm below
and the orbicular and straight muscles of the mouth above. But these
muscles are not perfectly developed in the animals. When dogs are
fondly gambolling about you, there is "a slight eversion of the lips,"
which is a rudimentary hint of man's facial expression in an act of
mirth. The dog has been the associate of human moods in all countries,
and for thousands of years; yet, although we are told that "the little
dog laughed to see the sport," he has not yet made up his mouth for any
thing more emphatic than a simper.

Some kinds of monkeys have established a facial expression, accompanied
with a laughing noise, which is so like the human that we might charge
them with being entertained at the practical jokes which they pass
upon each other, or over some obscurer sense of sylvan incongruity.
We can see, at least, that Nature was preparing in them the nervous
connections which men employ to transmit their pleasurable emotions; as
the flexible plants which dangle by the streams and chasms of the Andes
are woven by his after-thought to span the intervals, and the good
cheer of humanity passes to and fro.

The respiratory nerves radiate from their centre in the medulla
oblongata, the place to which the brain must transmit the first shock
of the surprise which ends in smiling and laughing. Thence it is
transmitted to the heart and diaphragm, quickening the action of the
one, and setting the other in motion, at the same instant climbing
to engage the facial nerves in sympathy; then the orbicular muscles
retract, forcing the cheek up towards the eye, and tightening the
muscles which surround the eyelid.

All our passions appear to claim the respiratory nerves for outward
expression. They are a signal corps which communicate by hoisting the
blush, the smile; by letting fall the tear, by the exhalation of a
sigh, by the explosions of laughter. The life-breaths of joy and grief
tend primitively to the lungs, and they voice the mother-tongue of all
emotions.

I have often wondered how animals can avoid being struck with the
differences which exist among themselves, so much more salient and
intrusive than among the races of men, in shape, gestures, tones, and
habits. What a wide range of Nature's curious freakery a forest has, or
a district of country like those plains and thickets of Africa, where
the natives dig their great pit and organize a monster drive! Into it
falls every thing which cannot escape to either side. The giraffe,
elephant, gnu, antelope, hartbeest, zebra, jackal,--think of the
commingling of strange discrepancies thus suddenly collected! Were it
not for the panic which prevails, and the accidents to life and limb,
one would suppose that they ought to be aware of Nature's whims in
themselves, and to narrowly escape inventing amusement. But curiosity
and aversion probably exhaust the speculative possibilities of animals
in this direction.

It is true, we occasionally hear of happy families, like that of the
prairie-dog who has an owl and a rattlesnake to share his housekeeping,
which they do with zest; for they have established a taste for the
young of the prairie-dog, and they hire his tenement only with an eye
to business.

When a great freshet takes possession of a country, and evicts the
tenants of every hole, thicket, and burrow, there is an indiscriminate
stampede of the animals for the driest and safest places: hares,
rattlesnakes, mice, cats, and the carnivora cling together to the tops
of trees, or wait in terror on the highest hills. So a prairie fire
startles all the wild creatures with its sweep into a promiscuous
race towards some spot that cannot be tenanted by flame. There they
might observe the strange traits which shun each other in ordinary
times or seek each other only when hunger demands its toll. While
the fright and the dread of death are beginning to pass off are these
creatures insensibly attracted to notice each other? Probably only
as a curious deer observes a man. The danger has not established any
sympathy between them. And they separate without any better opinion of
each other, nor approach to geniality. Even men who are strangers, and
in general dissociated by the distinctions of society, will be thrown
together by some stress of the moment, part with a mutual feeling of
relief, and resume their predilections. Yet man only is endowed with
the magnanimity to welcome the emergencies which abolish superficial
differences. They can be invaded by a circumstance which comprises them
under an idea different from those which keep them asunder; and this
new congruity can make the forced society congenial. It is Nature's
witty rendering of the text that declares all men of one blood. The
effect is grave, and under some conditions it may reach an heroic
stature, but the root of wit is the nourisher; and only those creatures
who are capable of annihilating capricious distinctions by a feeling
of common humanness are capable of enjoying the union of heterogeneous
ideas.

What mutual impression do a dog and a duck make? He runs around with
frolic transpiring in his tail, and barks to announce a wish to
fraternize; or perhaps it is a short and nervous bark, and indicates
unsettled views about ducks. Meantime, the duck waddles off with
an inane quack, so remote from a bark that it must convince any
well-informed dog of the hopelessness of proposing either business or
pleasure to such a doting and toothless pate. He certainly must have
overheard the conversation of his betters, when the Shallows, Slenders,
and Silences are near. What a prompt retreat human beings make, and
what wariness is expended in steering clear of them for the future!
Yet I never feel quite sure that the dunces are not amused at the
manœuvre. Is there a human being permitted to live without wit enough
to know when he is avoided? Even this duck has a twinkle in that bead
of an eye, as it rejoins the other ducks, that seems to convey to us
its sense of the absurdness of a creature so caninely exuberant. Or
was it a duck which I noticed? I am sure I have often seen creatures
who are hopelessly posed or scandalized waddle away from some superior
extravagance.

What vague auroral flittings of human perception pass beneath that
horrid crest of the gorilla, as he elevates it in astonishment at
encountering a creature of matchless symmetry like the wild ass, of
picturesqueness like the zebra, of remote rarity like a beautiful
woman! As for cockatoos, parrots, and macaws, I am convinced they are
an endless source of amusement to the monkey tribe, who pelt them with
nuts to make them scream and scold. Monkeys have a great flow of animal
spirits: this, with their imitative talent and quick observation,
renders them capable of entertaining ludicrous impressions. But one
must be very closely related to the anthropoid ape, if not quite
recently derived from it, to tell what they are.

There are many well-attested cases of an absolute enjoyment among
animals that sometimes rises to the pitch of mirthfulness. One day,
Dr. Kane came across a long, icy, inclined shoot, like the artificial
coasting-places made by the Russians, down which a long file of white
bears went sliding on their hams: at the bottom they jumped up like a
crowd of boys, with evident delight, to carry their sleds back to the
top of the hill. He says that the signs of pleasure among them were
unmistakable.

The Canadian fish-otter (_Lutra Canadensis_) loves to do the same
thing. He climbs to the top of a snow-ridge in winter, or of a slippery
bank in summer, lies on his belly, with the fore feet bent backward,
then, pushing with the hind legs, down he goes. So the Russians, with
their ice-slides, are only imitating the sport of their own arctic
creatures. I suppose that long ago the pleasure derived from an
involuntary and accidental slide originated the habit.

Lieutenant Dall says that the beavers in Alaska engage in gymnastics
for fun. If they find a smooth, miry bank, they betake themselves
to sliding down it. And the Californian gray whale loves to play in
the shoals where the surf breaks; keeping a wary outlook, so that it
continually escapes being beached. Its pleasure is enhanced by the
peril. Seals do the same thing when they find a heavy surf. They turn
from side to side with half-extended fins, moved apparently by the
heavy ground-swell; at times making a playful spring with bended flukes
that throws the body clear out of the water, to come down with a heavy
splash: then, giving two or three spouts, they settle again under
water, to appear perhaps the next moment rolling over in a listless
manner with the heavy swell, plainly full of intense enjoyment.

If the sea-otter of Siberia escapes into the water from its hunters,
it expresses joy and derision by marked gestures, one of which is
the putting a paw up over the eyes, as if shading them to regard the
hunters. It would seem to be a very slight natural variation when the
thumb slips to the point of the nose, and the rest of the paw executes
that vibratory sarcastic gesture highly approved by boys.

The same sea-otter will mourn itself to a skeleton over the loss of
its young. If animals can be capable of grief, as innumerable facts
testify, mirth ought to endow them with a finite compensation.

Lady Barker, in her book called "Station Life in New Zealand,"
describes a favorite cockatoo, whose amusement consisted in imitating
a hawk. "He reserves this fine piece of acting until his mistress is
feeding the poultry; then, when all the hens and chickens, turkeys
and pigeons are in the quiet enjoyment of their breakfast or supper,
the peculiar shrill cry of a hawk is heard overhead, and the bird is
seen circling in the air, uttering a scream occasionally. The fowls
never find out that it is a hoax, but run to shelter, cackling in
the greatest alarm; hens clucking loudly for their chicks, turkeys
crouching under the bushes, the pigeons taking refuge in their house.
As soon as the ground is quite clear, the bird changes his wild note
for peals of laughter from a high tree, and finally, alighting on
the top of a hen-coop filled with trembling chickens, remarks, in a
suffocated voice, 'You'll be the death of me.'"

If we are disposed to think that such accounts of originality are only
cases of accidental coincidence, what shall we say to the following
story, which comes to us from an authority upon which we may rely:--

A long-tailed paroquet, which had been a pet of an English barrack in
India, where it had picked up all kinds of oaths and slang, passed into
the possession of a lady in England, who, one day, receiving a visitor
endowed with a very decided squint, took her into the room where the
bird was kept. No sooner did the bird see this lady than it cried,
"Twig her eye! What a beauty!"

How many human beings get immortality discounted for themselves upon a
capital of sprightliness hardly more extensive than this parrot's!

There is also a well-authenticated story of a parrot belonging to an
English carpenter, who undertook to make it say a long word in several
syllables, that had no particular meaning. All at once the parrot
declined to use any of his usual phrases, and remained entirely mute
for a year, at the end of which time he suddenly pronounced the word,
and then talked as before. The story is parallel to the Roman one, of
the parrot which heard for the first time the note of a trumpet, became
silent for several months, and then suddenly began to imitate the note.
It is remarkable that no rehearsals or prelusions of the difficulty to
be overcome were ever heard in either case.

The naturalist has lately found a monkey of the Gibbon family, which
has a voice that is divided into distinct notes that correspond to
our scale and run an octave or more, clear, musical, and firm. What
an invaluable prize this would be for M. Offenbach and his opera
bouffe! for the creature has all the flexibility and briskness, all
the parody of human nature, and all the lubricity which this style of
art requires, with the caudal emphasis appended; and great economy
would be gained in exempting more expensive human performers from
moral degradation. We would all pay our money for such an exhibition,
rejoiced to see the drama recovering from its decay.

But, as yet, no cosey couples of clever apes have been discovered
in paroxysms of laughter over the last sylvan equivoque; nor have
elephants been seen silently shaking at a joke too ponderous for their
trunks to carry. Everybody has observed how ducks will gather into a
corner of the farm-yard and stand still, and apparently breathless,
as if listening to a jocose tale fished out of their Decameron of a
gutter, then break into hearty quacking, which reminds one of the
wheezing of snips of fellows over their muddy jest. But probably the
ducks are only holding a caucus on the question of food, to nominate
the next pool to be dredged, and make it unanimous.

But when we consider that the higher animals can compare objects and
make selections, exercise a memory and have association of ideas
concerning each other and the outer world, we come near to that human
quality which is the ground of the function of laughter. These mental
traits are the buried roots of the consciousness which blossoms into
smiles in the sun of wit and humor. For the power to combine or to
contrast two or more objects, to remember one absent object by another
present one, to experience a feeling that two objects are associated,
leads to the highest manifestations of wit. In the delicate structures
of men and women, which are bequests to them descending through the
whole inviolate entail of Nature, refined by it and amplified till they
entertain keenly the pathos of life, all mental traits accumulate into
the faculty of imagination, upon which every thing that is laughable
depends.

With this faculty man makes shift to relieve the moments when
existence, with its incessant toil and merciless persistency of
routine, threatens to become insupportable. One day is not exactly like
another, if hearty laughter loosens its handcuffs and lets the prisoner
stretch his frame and have a little run. Every laugh reddens the blood,
which goes then more blithely to dissipate the fogs of a moody brain.
Multitudes of our American brains are badly drained in consequence
of a settling of the wastage of house-grubbing and street-work into
moral morasses which generate many a chimera. So there is something
positively heroic in the hilarity which braves, light-armed as it is,
our brood of viperous cares, and attacks their den. One flash of a
smile shears off Medusa's head with impunity.

No creature that is not capable of being bored can be capable of
laughing at its own incongruous circumstances. The more simply
constructed the brain and nervous system are, the less liability is
there to that misfortune of _ennui_. We cannot imagine that a turtle's
head gets tired of lying around, decapitated, for a week or more; or
that a toad imprisoned in a rock or tree for one or two thousand years
should become jaded by its close confinement. When the miner's pick
releases him, his hop is as alert, and his appetite for the next fly
as keen, as before his prison stole upon him. The lower animals are as
contented as the forests and waters in which they pass an instinctive
existence. Continually cheerful we may suppose they are, even when
the larder is empty and the springs run low. Their monotonous round
of hungering, feeding, and procreating sympathizes with the reposeful
temper in which the whole of the inanimate nature discharges those
functions, as we see the flower absorb, fructify, and exhale. But
as the brain becomes more complicated, and capable of breeding more
positive ideas and feelings,--such as the questing of a greyhound,
the tact of setters and retrievers, the attachment of dogs for
persons,--we may expect to observe a liability to suffer tedium. How
plainly a good dog can show his disappointment when he goes out with a
green sportsman, or with one who is so abstracted in his mood that he
neglects the chances to shoot! The dog's natural language is that he
will not tolerate such an irreligious abuse of providence: he will soon
begin to sulk and not put up any more game.

If an animal is capable of having a consecutive dream, as Miss
Mitford's greyhound was, who regularly every year, just before the
coursing season began, used to dream of going out, and quested in
his sleep, such an animal can feel the torment of _ennui_. He is not
blindly indicating that a season has come around,--as a wound made by
the bite of a lion will gape anew in the same month of the following
year, and the juice of the grape is agitated in remembrance of its
vintage,--but the animal is conscious that the time has come for him to
resume his talent.

Such dogs become tired of waiting if their masters are absent, and
are disquieted if their day's routine be changed. And you will notice
in a zoölogical garden many of the better-educated animals to whom
the monotony of their life is a positive sorrow, till, like opium, it
stupefies their spirits. They have not the resource of man, who is also
devoured with _ennui_, but, furnished with imagination, can dissipate
its most tragic moods by heart-shaking and sky-splitting laughter. His
most climbing grief is like an Alpine flower that sits close to the
snow-line and takes its color; but near at hand are hillsides sprinkled
with winking wild-flowers, and the blue succory stands amid the corn.
There is but a step from one to the other.

That step is taken, and the gravity of life upset whenever any of our
ideas can suddenly and for a moment join an object or another idea,
and appear to belong to it, though essentially different in every
respect, and only capable of seeming like by the imagination starting
a pretence of it. Things that are incongruous are forced to touch at
one point, and for one moment to feign congruity. The surprise to the
mind is a laughable one, because it is in the habit of regarding ideas
and objects as they naturally cohere or differ. Sanity and business
depend upon this habit. The understanding is at home in the ordinary
congruities of things, and is not prepared to admit that two things
which are absolutely incongruous can be ever made for a single instant
to agree. Such a result cannot be soberly contemplated: the order of
the world and the mental consistency which pays the butcher for his
meat and the milkman for his refreshing dash of the hydrant forbid it.
It becomes laughable precisely because this gravity of order is against
it. If a thing cannot be done soberly, and yet _is_ done, the result is
fatal to sobriety. This is the root of every laugh: two things which
never met before, and ought not to meet, hail each other and set up a
claim of relationship on this very ground,--namely, that it was always
impossible that they could be related. In the farce of "Box and Cox,"
says one of these doubles to the other eagerly, "_Have you_ the mark
of a strawberry between your shoulders?" "No," answers the other. "Oh,
then you are indeed my long-lost brother!" It is so in the relations
which make laughter. There should be the mark of a strawberry; but
just because there is not, the whim of fraternity is raised, and for a
moment it appears as if the two things must have been twins at birth,
though separated since.

Thus, to begin at the lowest degree of this subject, the simply
ludicrous has its origin in the surprise caused by something which
interrupts or modifies an ordinary procedure: the latter is thus joined
for a moment to an idea not belonging to it. Why do we laugh when a
person tumbles upstairs? or when some respectable female struggles with
an umbrella which has shamelessly turned its bare ribs upon her and
sails jauntily with her down the street, or flounders in the gutter, an
inebriated wreck of usefulness? Because an erect position is the normal
one for man, and a protecting umbrella the helpmeet for woman. If it
were not so, we should laugh to see the most revered person succeed
in controlling her gingham dome, and stemming the tide as easily as
the whale which furnished it with bones. There is nothing essentially
ludicrous in seeing a man chase an animal: on the contrary, if you are
trying to head off your favorite pig and persuade it to taste again
your bounty, it is one of the saddest spectacles in existence. But when
a man is in full hue and cry after his own hat we laugh, because a hat
is inseparable from a head in idea, but becomes separated in fact. A
hatter's shop is full of the larvæ of this idea, but they would never
hatch there into hats. The conjunction of a head to each is needed to
make a perfect notion of a hat.

If we could be sure of preserving our own scalps, we should like to
have been near enough to watch the expression of the first Indian who
ever killed a man wearing a wig. For the wig is a sudden violation of
the logic of scalping, and the astonished Indian would have raised a
laugh as he raised the artificial hair.

General Sherman's body-servant was a German who went with him through
the war, but could never realize the idea that the war at last was
over. One day the General, having travelled from the South to Chicago,
was on the point of leaving, and ordered this man to pack a valise.
The one he selected was so enormous that the General remonstrated, and
examined what could be within. It was filled with hotel towels that had
been looted from Atlanta clear through, in company with table-spoons of
the Milledgeville Hotel; the German plundering on every route as if we
were still marching through Georgia. This incongruous behavior has all
the effect of a ludicrous incident.

Whatever accidental infirmity deposits us in positions incongruous
with our ordinary state generates a ludicrous impression. When the
obese lover, encased in corsets and tightly-strapped pantaloons, fell
plump upon his knees before a lady to make his declaration, she was
embarrassed, and besought him to arise; but he, fast anchored in the
stiffest of costumes, whimpered out, "I can't, madam," and she had to
ring for a servant. That is simply ludicrous. But suppose I should say
that his suit had been rejected,--it would be an execrable remark, but
still would modify the ludicrous impression, and raise it into a higher
region of the pleasurable by making the first step of a pun towards the
peculiar element of wit.

If a pun is good, the pleasure is sometimes purely mental and scarcely
gets beyond a smile; for it constrains two different ideas into an
accidental relation with one word, and the clever feat surprises us.
We are not looking for it, as our life is plain-spoken, does not twist
its intention nor its language, and passes for what it is. A friend,
really wanting to know if Foote the comedian had ever been in Cork,
in good faith asked him. "No," said he; "but I have seen a good many
drawings of it." So the new conundrum finds us unprepared: "Which goes
the quicker,--a full minute or a spare moment?" That pleases the mind,
but it does not make us laugh as when Abraham Lincoln, in his attack of
small-pox, said, "Now I am willing to see the office-seekers, for at
last I have something I can give 'em all." We laugh because the play
upon the word "give" betrays and yet relieves the moral annoyance of
that class of beggars.

Punning can enhance its quality by lurking in the quotation of
well-known and esteemed lines; as when a man who is importuned to
subscribe to something, on the score of the virtue there is in giving,
should quote the tender George Herbert,--

 "Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
 Like seasoned timber, never gives."

In this way Mr. Thackeray made one of his best puns. Some one was
talking to him of a man of talent, who was prodigiously addicted to
beer; saying what a pity it was, for they hardly knew his equal. "Yes,"
said Thackeray, "take him for half-and-half, we ne'er shall look upon
his like again."

So Douglas Jerrold, referring in one of his plays to the English habit
of scrawling names and lines with diamonds upon window-panes, makes
one of his characters say: "One man goes to foolscap, another to a pane
of glass. They may be very different people; but, well considered,
I doubt if the motive hasn't the same source." "At least, the same
effect," is the reply; "for, as my friend Laman Blanchard sings,--

       "''Tis oft the poet's curse
 To mar his little light with verse.'"

In the same way a classic line which is quoted in mimicry of a modern
situation can raise the surprise of a pun. The very best instance,
perhaps, of this felicity was the quotation of Dean Swift when a lady's
long train swept down a fine fiddle and broke it. He cried out,--

 "Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ!"[1]

Sporting with words blew aside a little the powder-smoke of the battle
of Shiloh, and etherized the pain of one of our soldiers, whose cheek
and chin had been carried away by a shot. "What can we do for you?"
asked his comrades. "Boys," said he, with what articulation was left
to him, "I should like a drink of water mighty well, if I only had the
face to ask for it."

A very good pun can be made unconsciously, as when the schoolmaster
asked the class what Shylock meant when he said, "My deeds upon my
head." "Well," said one of the boys, "I don't know, unless he carried
his papers in his hat." In the same way, Lord Dundreary makes a good
pun because he can only comprehend one use for one word at a time;
and, if the most obvious use strikes him first, he is incapable of
making any transfer of it. So he says to Lieutenant Vernon, "Of course
you can _pass_ your examination: what I want to know is, can you _go
through_ it?"

Every language invites this trick of the pun. The Greeks and Romans
relished it, but the instances would involve explanations too tedious
for popular reading. Perhaps a few may be ventured from the French,
who are as delicate in this as in the manufacture of a Sèvres cup or a
pattern of tapestry.

Henry IV., at the surrender of Chartres, received a deputation at the
gates. The spokesman said, "Sire, the city submits to your Majesty as
much by divine as by Roman law." He replied, "You may as well add, by
canon law, too."

Louis XIV., during a critical aspect of his affairs, said in council,
"_Nous maintiendrons la couronne de la France_." His dauphin merely
remarked, "_Maintenons la_" (_Madame de Maintenon l'a_).

When complaint was made in Paris that the first Napoleon was too young
to assume command of an Italian campaign against Austria, he said,
"They may let me alone: in six months _j'aurai Milan_" (_j'aurai mille
ans_).

But the late M. Jules Janin made the cleverest pun. It was at a time
when the Parisian authorities were macadamizing some of the streets
that he was unsuccessfully proposed for membership of the famous
Académie. Some one condoling with him for his failure, he replied that
he meant to throw himself into the streets. "But how so, Monsieur?"
"_Parceque, dans ce cas, on tout de suite m'acadamiserait._"

Punning approaches the character of wit when the identity of sound not
only covers two ideas, but also hides an allusion to still another.
When Douglass Jerrold by a quick motion accidentally threw himself
backward into the water, and was carried into a tavern, he said to the
servant, "I suppose these accidents happen frequently off here." "Oh,
yes, sir, frequently; but it's not the season yet." "Ah! I suppose it's
all owing to a backward spring." "That's it, sir." The play recalls the
manner of his ducking, and also involves the servant's idea, as if it
depended upon the time of the year. This is witty, because it effects
a temporary junction of very opposite ideas, apart from the pun which
gives the opportunity.

Let a case in illustration be invented. Suppose a man hears that in
the Quissama tribe of Angola any one who cannot pay his debts is at
once killed and eaten. He improves this curious fact to say, "That
would be a pretty effective way of collecting a debt, if debtors did
not always disagree with creditors." This leads us to consider that
wit takes place when two or more very distinct objects or perceptions
are brought arbitrarily under the sway of one idea which for a moment
appears to embrace them. Punning is a constraint of two different ideas
to be expressed by one word. Wit is the constraint of different objects
to be expressed by one idea. Wit depends for its effect upon ideas
alone; and it is reached whenever the mind suddenly forces an idea
that is suggested to it to appear, for a moment, like something that
belongs to another idea. The latter really resembles the first idea in
no point at all: they ought to be kept asunder for want of a natural
and organic connection. Yet they are compelled to seem to have this;
and, though the illusion can last but for a moment, that is time enough
to surprise and delight us with the mental stratagem. Perhaps the
second idea, so far from having any natural relation with the first,
is violently opposed to it in every sensible way, so that nobody can
pretend a possibility that they should communicate. The mind contrives
this momentary rendezvous; and a lightning-flash betrays these two
heterogeneous things apparently in close communion.

But, although this is the metaphysical basis of all wit, we must
notice the distinctions in its quality, according as it draws upon
more or less of the imagination, and is more or less interfused with
good-nature. It has a range of effects extending from a bitterness
which may be ferocious through a cold cynicism, a clear, calm light
of the understanding, into moods that are colored by fancy and warmed
into geniality by a human heart; and then it becomes a favorite ally
of humor to promote its intention of tolerating all our infirmities.
Douglas Jerrold gives us examples of the caustic kind; Tom Hood, of
its jollity; Charles Lamb, of its clearness; Richter, Sydney Smith,
Shakspeare, of its broad humanity.

Some one asked Heine, "Have you read B.'s new pamphlet?" "No, dear
friend; I only read his great works: the three, four, and five-volumed
ones suit me best." "Ah! you jest, and mean something." "Certainly: a
great extent of water--a lake, sea, ocean--is a fine thing; but in a
teaspoon I cannot stand it."

Heine said of one of his acquaintances, "The man is really cracked; but
I will confess that he has lucid intervals when he is only foolish."
This was the same person whom Heine had in his mind when he said to
a caller, "My head to-day is perfectly barren, and you will find me
stupid enough; for a friend has been here, and we exchanged ideas."

The old age of Lamartine exhibited a painful decline of his truly great
qualities, and an exaggeration of his foibles. A French paper concluded
his obituary with the remark, "He has ceased to survive himself."

These are caustic specimens; but the last one contains a high per cent
of pleasure, because we are left uncertain whether it was a serious
case of wit. But none of them can scald as Douglas Jerrold did, when,
meeting a man who was such an abject toady that if his friend Jones had
the influenza he would contrive to get up a cold, Jerrold said to him,
"Have you heard the rumor that is flying around town?" "No." "Well,
they say that Jones pays the dog-tax for you."

That is bitter. But when one gentleman during a supper of sheep's heads
throws down his knife and fork in rapture, and exclaims, "Well, sheep's
heads for ever, say I," and Douglas Jerrold remarks, "There's egotism,"
we have a point tempered in the flame of fun. So, too, when a member
of his club, hearing an air mentioned, said, "That always carries
me away when I hear it," Jerrold, merely to seize an opportunity,
said, "Then can nobody whistle it?" This kind of wit easily rankles,
if there be a drop or two of suspicion in our veins; for there is
nothing in the tone to announce its discrimination from ill-nature. For
instance: Sheridan, soliciting the votes of the shoemakers of Stafford,
exclaimed, "May the trade of Stafford be trampled under foot of all the
world!" and mortally offended them.

We should like to know how the French attaché felt who, being at a
soirée just after the dubious affair of the annexation of Nice and
Savoy to France, met Lord Houghton, as he went towards the supper-room,
and said, "_Je vais prendre quelque chose!_" "_Vous avez raison_," was
the reply; "_c'est l'habitude de votre pays_."

But the French abound in the kind of wit which penetrates like a
colorless North light, and sets a contrast in clearness, so that we
admire its outlines, scarcely smiling; as when Hippolyte Taine said,
"An Englishman would be exceedingly mortified if he had no faith in
another life." When the Duke de Choiseul, who was a remarkably lean
man, came to London to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, being asked
whether the French Government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty,
answered that he did not know, but they had sent the outline of an
ambassador. This preserves the French flavor, which we recognize, for
instance, in Ninon de l'Enclos, who, being asked one day by a Parisian
lady whether she believed that St. Denys walked _all_ the way to Paris
with his head under his arm, replied, "_Pourquoi pas, Mademoiselle? ce
n'est que le premier pas qui coûte._"

The best repartee must subsidize the pleasure of wit. When M. Scribe
replied to the millionnaire who wanted him to lend the use of his
genius for a consideration, that it was contrary to Scripture for a
horse and an ass to plough together, the man instantly parried the snub
by saying, "By what right do you call me a horse?"

Among the announcements in a French paper, we find that "a young man
about to marry wants to meet a man of experience who will dissuade
him." So Abraham Lincoln thought he would not marry, because "I can
never be satisfied with any one who would be blockhead enough to have
me."

Perhaps the purest instance of thoroughly French wit is to be credited
to Mr. Emerson. An amiable rustic once heard him lecture, but could
make nothing of it. Turning to a friend, he said, "Darn it! I'd like
to know what Emerson thinks about God. I bet I'll ask him." He did,
when Mr. Emerson came down the aisle. "God," replied he, "is the _x_
of algebra,"--that is, the unknown quantity in every problem. Nothing
could be more admirable.

Mr. Beecher affirms that "it is impossible to discriminate between
the wit that produces only pleasure of thought and that which
produces pleasure of laughter." It does not seem to me so hopeless a
task to discriminate between the two kinds of wit. Where reflection
predominates, and the act of wit approaches the statement of a truth,
so that the surprise does not borrow any tinge from any human
sentiment, the pleasure will be inaudible; and, if we produce a
smile at all, it will be where the German constructed the idea of a
camel,--in the depths of his consciousness; as when Voltaire said of
the priests of his time, "Our credulity makes all their knowledge." But
when an American poet, whose Pegasus had stepped upon his foot, said,
"What a pity it is! my grandfather left to me his gout, and nothing
in the cellar to keep it up with," a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous
kind; it is so incongruously human to nurse our own infirmities.

So when Frederic the Great said spitefully to Minister Elliot, on
occasion of the Te Deums over the reverses of Hyder Ali in India,
"I never knew that Providence was one of your allies," and Elliot
replied, "The only one, sire, whom we do not pay," both the remark and
the retort involve the mind in a momentary adjustment of its ideas to
the new suggestion; and the wit is thus restrained from sallying into
laughter. We have to reflect that Elliot's repartee is a hit at all
subsidized powers, including Prussia, and also at his own nation for
its trick of futile gratitude and ascription of praise. But if any
movement of sympathy prevents the act of wit from settling upon the
internal organs, and bids it escape by every pore, we feel the dew
of laughter on the face; as when Falstaff whimsically apologizes for
himself, "Thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what
should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villany?"--or when, at
a meeting in London to hear a report from some missionaries who had
been sent to discover the lost tribes of Israel, the chairman opened
the business by saying, "I take a great interest in your researches,
gentlemen. The fact is, I have borrowed money from all the Jews now
known; and, if you can find a new set, you'll do me a favor."

It is witty when the author of the "Maid of Sker," describing a dinner,
makes the mouth water with smiles when he particularizes "a little pig
for roasting, too young to object to it, yet with his character formed
enough to make his brains delicious."

Wit can depend, like punning, upon the felicitous use of some
well-known verse or sentiment, which suddenly is made to adapt itself
to a new idea; as when Henry Clapp, speaking of an intolerable bore,
inverted the famous sentence which is associated with Shakspeare, and
said, "He is not for a time, but for all day."

In the same vein, on the strength of Laurence Sterne's[2] assertion
that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," a Boston wit, finding
himself in the powerful blast which sweeps across the Common and makes
a tunnel of Winter Street, remarked that he wished there was a shorn
lamb tied at the head of that street.

Walter Scott tells an anecdote of the same special character. "So deep
was the thirst of vengeance impressed on the minds of the Highlanders
that, when a clergyman informed a dying chief of the unlawfulness of
the sentiment, urged the necessity of forgiving an inveterate enemy,
and quoted, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' the acquiescing
penitent said, with a deep sigh, 'To be sure! it is too sweet a morsel
for a mortal.'"

Wit can be blundered into as well as a pun. The unmerited praise of it
can be earned by mental awkwardness and want of tact. A widower, who
had loved a lady previous to his marriage to another, approached his
first love after the death of his wife, and sought to renew the old
attachment. After he had made his offer, at a juncture more critical
than the turning-point of Waterloo, he was permitted to add, "And I
know that all my children will follow you to the grave with the same
affection that they showed when their mother died." This is certainly
the _pallida mors_ of Horace beating _æquo pede_ at the door.

Wit can also be enhanced by a droll incompetence of understanding on
the part of the listener. Sydney Smith, complaining of the heat, told a
lady that he wished he could take off his flesh and sit in his bones.
The wit consists in extending the congruity of taking clothes off to
the flesh, and there is an electric instant of mental possibility. But
it is enhanced to us when we recollect the shocked and puzzled look
of the lady, who saw only an indelicacy in a remark which was really
delicate to the pitch of ghastliness,--stripped, in fact, of every
rag of that most indelicate of all things, prudery. Thus the raillery
of Falstaff owes half its excellence to Dame Quickly's consistent
misinterpretation, for this reflects back upon it the color of wit.
She is a duenna who blunders into being a go-between and making a
capital match. "Go to! you are a woman: go." "Who, I? No! I defy thee.
God's light! I was never called so in mine own house before." "You are
a thing to thank God on." "I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou
should'st know it." And the grim irony of Hamlet, who, after killing
Polonius, replies to the king that the old man is at supper, has grown
upon us through the slow perception of the courtiers, who know he is
killed as well as we do, and have been sent to find the body, but
cannot take the point of Hamlet's answers.

In a play of Douglas Jerrold, an old sailor gets a box on the ear while
trying to snatch a kiss. "There," cries he, "like my luck! always
wrecked on the coral reefs." When the manager heard the play read he
could not see the point, and increased the wit for us by making Jerrold
strike it out.

Perhaps the best modern instance of this kind is the colossal stupidity
of some foreign critics, who gave such an exquisite flavor to Mark
Twain's "Innocents Abroad" by blaming his ignorance and misapprehension
of places, pictures, and traditions.

The Beaufort negroes are unconsciously witty when, perceiving that
an idea is dawning upon them, they say they feel their head "growing
thinner." A premium for involuntary wit must be conferred upon the old
lady in New Bedford, who heard about the cheapness of the manufactured
oils and the great increase in the use of them, which threatened to
drive sperm-oil out of the market: "Dear me, the poor whales! What will
they do?"

There must also be complete unconsciousness in the perpetrator of a
bull. "The pleasure," says Sydney Smith, "arising from bulls proceeds
from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be dissimilar
in which a resemblance might have been suspected;" but ordinary wit
creates a sudden surprise at a resemblance which could not have been
suspected between two things. Perhaps the best bull was practically
perpetrated by the old lady in Middlebury, Wis., who crossed over a
bridge that was marked "Dangerous" without seeing the sign. On being
informed of the fact on the other side, she instantly turned in great
alarm and re-crossed it.

The wit which produces laughter cannot be analyzed without a mental
process: but that is an after-thought and laughter anticipates it;
as when Mark Twain, writing upon Franklin, says, "He was twins,
having been born simultaneously in two houses in Boston." There is an
unconscious organic assumption that both houses, since people insist
upon both, must have been the spots of his birth. If so, the births
in two houses must have been simultaneous, but the two Franklins not
identical. Of course, then, they must have been twins. At least, this
is the best that can be done with the historical material. But I am
reminded of a famous wit, who, after viewing the Siamese Twins for a
while, quietly remarked, "Brothers, I suppose."

If wit ever unmasks a moral feeling it performs its noblest function
and imparts a complicated pleasure; as when Abraham Lincoln, in
defending a fugitive slave before a court, said, "It is singular that
the courts will hold that a man never loses his right to his property
that has been stolen from him, but that he instantly lost the right to
himself if he was stolen."

When wit creates a temporary congruity between an idea and an object
which are essentially incongruous on all points, the shock dissolves in
pleasure, because the oppressiveness of life results from its ideas;
and yet one of them opens to us an escape from it. We find a way of
eluding for a moment a task-master, and it makes us smile. It is not
a moral revolt, for that would be a deepening of the seriousness till
it became too pathetic; but it is a momentary beguilement, and we are
cheated into the presumption that there is no care in the world. We
return to the care refreshed by this electric bath of wit, which has a
tonic quality and saves us from despair.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Ninth Eclogue of Virgil, 28th line.]

[Footnote 2: Sterne may have picked up this sentiment during his
journey in France, when the donkey was bewept. At any rate, it is
found in literature as early as 1594, when Henri Estienne wrote his
"Prémices:" "_Dieu mesure le froid à la brebis tondue._"]




WIT, IRONY, HUMOR.


WIT.

The similes of poetry which select natural objects and fit human
thoughts and emotions to them have the movement which belongs to wit.
They suddenly take things which we have been in the habit of seeing all
our lives without after-thought, just as we see a brick or a house;
but, when thus taken, they become involved in sentiments which are also
customary, and indulged by us without after-thought. We are surprised
and charmed to notice what an apt comradeship springs up between the
object and the sentiment.

 "Such tricks hath strong imagination,
 That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
 It comprehends some bringer of that joy."

Constantinople may be seen any day from the Bosphorus, stretching
its length of domes and minarets across the sunset; but when Mr.
Browning observes it he says it runs black and crooked athwart the
splendor, "like a Turk verse along a scimitar." There occurs a moment
of surprise; a lively shock is given to the mind, which would liberate
itself into the smile of wit if we were not instantly conscious that
the sudden aptness is also beautiful. All pure wit is born in the
imagination, but only in that capability of it to see one point where
two incongruous things may meet. But the poetic simile involves more
than that: it is born of the inmost vitality which must overflow,
spill itself upon Nature, appropriate her, senseless as she may
seem and incapable of reflecting our subtilties of mind and heart.
Often there is something very noble and tender in this process of
imagination, which converts surprise into emotion: as when Coleridge
says,--

 "Methinks it should have been impossible
 Not to love all things in a world so filled;
 Where the breeze warbles, and the mute, still air
 Is music slumbering in her instrument."

This innate nobleness of the simile checks our smile, and if we feel
any hilarity it belongs to that delighted health which mantles all
through us when we recognize beauty. Perhaps the mind soared,

 "By means of that mere snatch, to many a hoard
 Of fancies: as some falling cone bears soft
 The eye, along the fir-tree spire, aloft
 To a dove's nest."

The simile gives us such a new perception of the mysterious relations
of mind and Nature that we should not be surprised if the object
designated had really, in the great involvement of all things, some
secret affinity with the thought; perhaps the thought has recognized
the family mark and claimed kinship. This is an exalted claim because
it sets free our personality. We become superior to Nature, and are
made aware that we can vivify her as the Creator can; but, as we also
are creatures, we admit her to a tender and refining confidence.
"Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares," "take the winds of
March with beauty."

 "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
 And the earth changes like a human face."
               "Earth is a wintry clod,
 But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
 Over its breast to waken it."
                             "The winds
 Are henceforth voices, in a wail or shout,
 A querulous mutter, or a quick, gay laugh,--
 Never a senseless gust now man is born."

The imagination thus proclaiming the banns between spirit and matter
reminds us of Wordsworth's dear maiden, of whom he says,--

 "She was known to every star in heaven,
 And every wind that blew."

The impression of surprise which a perfect simile produces is
transferred from the understanding back to the imagination before the
former can venture to be amused. But sometimes the surprise lingers
there long enough to have a narrow escape from smiling; as when Sir
Thomas Brown, finding that midnight has overtaken him at his desk,
says, "To keep our eyes open longer, were to _act_ the antipodes." His
wakefulness is not only like the antipodal day, but dramatizes it; and
this is a simile that imparts the shock of wit.

Here is one from Shakspeare that approaches it, but is intercepted by a
sense of beauty:--

 "These violent delights have violent ends,
 And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
 Which, as they kiss, consume."

And he says that, when the people saw Anne Boleyn at her coronation,
such a noise arose "as the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest."
Mr. Browning makes us smile when he paints the "poppy's red
effrontery--till autumn spoils their fleering quite with rain,"

 "And, turbanless, a coarse, brown, rattling crane
 Protrudes."

This reminds me that in the West a bald man's head is spoken of as
rising above the timber-line; which is quite in the style of American
similes, as when Rufus Choate, who so frequently appeared to be saying
to his jury, "If you have tears, prepare to shed them now," was
described to be a man who always bored for water.

Charles Lamb commenting upon the following line from Davenport's King
John and Matilda,--

 "And thou, Fitzwater, reflect upon thy _name_,
 And turn the _Son of Tears_,"--

says, "Fitzwater: son of water." A striking instance of the
compatibility of the _serious pun_ with the expression of the
profoundest sorrows. Grief as well as joy finds ease in thus playing
with a word. Old John of Gaunt in Shakspeare thus descants on his
name: "Gaunt, and gaunt, indeed;" to a long string of conceits which
no one has ever yet felt to be ridiculous. The poet Wither, thus, in
a mournful review of the declining estate of his family, says with
deepest nature,--

 "'The very name of Wither shows decay.'"

But, in the following passage from John Fletcher's "Bonduca," pure
poetry checks the laugh,--

 "I have seen these Britons that you magnify
 Run as they would have outrun time, and roaring,
 Basely for mercy, roaring; the light shadows,
 That in a thought scur o'er the fields of corn,
 Halted on crutches to them."

That is in the finest style of an exaggeration which has been inherited
by Americans and is the source of much of their wit and humor. Here
is a coarser specimen, but perfectly witty. A person, remarking to a
famous criminal lawyer that his client would certainly go to hell, had
for a reply, "Go to hell! he ought to be thankful that there is a hell
he _can_ go to."

This characteristic will recur under the head of Falstaff.

Some of the similes which Americans derive from their professions, and
apply to persons, have all the character of wit. A farmer says of a
meagre and unequal speech that it was "pretty scattering," alluding to
ground crops that grow unevenly. An iron-founder will say of a speech
that was all fusion and passion that, notwithstanding, it "didn't make
a weld." Miners in the West use the word "color" for the finest gold in
the ground. One of them remarked of a man who had been tried and found
worthless, "I have panned him out clear down to the bed rock, but I
can't even raise the color." Frequenters of the race-course mention a
beaten politician as "the longest-eared horse they ever saw," as the
ears hang to a jaded horse. And a Nantucket captain, when asked his
opinion of a very rhetorical preacher, said, "He's a good sailor, but a
bad carrier."

The poetry of Donne, Cowley, Suckling, and others of that epoch, easily
furnish examples of similes which stop so far short of beauty that
their aptness only serves to raise a smile. Suckling says,--

 "Her feet beneath her petticoat
 Like little mice stole in and out."

Cowley begins his Hymn to Night,--

 "First-born of chaos, who so fair didst come
 From the old negro's darksome womb,"

and we have to deny poetic freedom to this aboriginal contraband.

How charmingly, however, did the poor woman reply to the gentleman who
found her watering her webs of linen cloth. She could not tell him even
the text of the last sermon. "And what good can the preaching do you,
if you forget it all?" "Ah, sir, if you will look at this web on the
grass, you will see that as fast as ever I put the water on it the sun
dries it all up, and yet, sir, I see it gets whiter and whiter." This
is pure wit from the well of imagination, and the smile is as deep in
it as truth.

It would be hazardous to liken a poet to a spider, we might think; but
when Mr. Browning undertakes it, this dodger of brooms spins a web
all dripping with the splendor of fancy. Mr. Browning speaks of young
Sordello, the poet, as he dreams in the old castle and connects the
events around him by absorbing surmises of his own:--

       "Thus thrall reached thrall;
 He o'erfestooning every interval,
 As the adventurous spider, making light
 Of distance, sports her threads from depth to height,
 From barbican to battlement; so flung
 Fantasies forth and in their centre swung
 Our architect,--the breezy morning fresh
 Above, and merry,--all his waving mesh
 Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged.
 This world of ours by tacit pact is pledged
 To laying such a spangled fabric low,
 Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow."

Beauty has spun the poet and the insect into a cocoon out of which the
splendid wings emerge; then wit takes up the thread with the conception
of the prosaic old world's hostility to flimsy poesy, and we admire the
sudden congruity which is established between two such irreconcilable
objects.

Outside the domain of poetry involuntary wit lurks everywhere, even in
passages of history whose passion seems capable of expunging all smiles
upon the face. Two contrarious ideas may blend for a moment at one
point, as when King Olaf put a pan of coals upon Eyvind's naked flesh
until it broiled beneath them, and then asked, without suspecting any
thing incongruous, "Dost thou now, O Eyvind, believe in Christ?" Here
is a momentary inclusion of an act of belief under an act of physical
pain. When in the course of time the deadly earnestness of Olaf fades
away for us, we perceive the incongruity, but also perceive that Olaf,
in sad simplicity, imagined there was congruity; or, he reflected, a
pan of coals shall compel a congruity.

This grim practice of unconscious wit is heightened when we recollect
that Christ was a person who declined to call down fire upon those who
did not receive him; and such an incident affords us a ready passage
from Wit into the domain of Irony.


IRONY.

Nature herself practised irony long before men had suffered from it
enough to endow literature with its expressive form. She has always
pretended to agree with our _penchant_ for pleasant but noxious habits,
and for a long time seems to be of our opinion that such ways of
living are of a capital kind; but eventually she is fatigued because
we misunderstand her, and exclaims by many a twinge, "You simpletons!
I meant just the reverse." "Why didn't you say so at first?" we reply,
as we smart to find we had been so prosaic when we thought we were so
romantic; but the smart etches the shapes of tragedy upon the soul.

The mind uses irony when it gravely states an opinion or sentiment
which is the opposite of its belief, with the moral purpose of
showing its real dissent from the opinion. It must therefore be done
with this wink from the purpose in it, so that it may not pass for
an acquiescence in an opposite sentiment. It may be done so well as
to deceive even the elect; and perhaps the ordinary mind complains
of irony as wanting in straightforwardness. There is a moment of
hesitation, when the mind stoops over this single intention with a
double appearance, and doubts upon which to settle as the real prey.
So that only carefully poised minds with the falcon's or the vulture's
glance can always discriminate rapidly enough to seize the point. In
this moment of action the pleasure of irony is developed, which arises
from a discovery of the contrast between the thing said and the thing
intended. And this pleasure is heightened when we observe the contrast
between the fine soul who means nobly, and his speaking as if he meant
to be ignoble. Then the ignoble thing is doubly condemned, first, by
having been briefly mistaken to be the real opinion of the speaker,
and then by the flash of recognition of the speaker's superiority.
Thackeray describes the high-minded intentions of Rebecca Sharp: "It
became naturally Rebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable
to her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her
power. Who can but admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected
orphan? 'I am alone in the world,' said the friendless girl: 'well, let
us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honorable maintenance.'
Thus it was that our little romantic friend formed visions of the
future for herself; nor must we be scandalized that, in all her castles
in the air, a husband was the principal inhabitant. Of what else have
young ladies to think but husbands? Of what else do dear mammas think?
'I must be my own mamma,' said Rebecca." Thus the great author confides
to us his abhorrence of Vanity Fair.

In matters which are morally indifferent, irony is only a jesting which
is disguised by gravity; as when we apparently agree with the notions
of another person which are averse from our own, so that we puzzle him
not only on the point of our own notion, but on the point of his own,
and he begins to have a suspicion that he is not sound in the matter.
This suspicion is derived from the mind's instinctive feeling that
irony is a trait of a superior person who can afford to have a stock
of original ideas with which it tests opinion, and who holds them so
securely that he can never play with them a losing game. The Bastard in
King John indicates this superiority when he says,--

 "Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail,
 And say,--there is no sin but to be rich;
 And being rich, my virtue then shall be,
 To say,--there is no vice but beggary."

A man who pretends to hold the opposite of his own belief is morally
a hypocrite, until we detect that slight touch of banter which is
the proof of genuine irony. Then we see that he is honest though he
equivocates, for he belies himself with sincerity. A man who can afford
this is to that extent superior to the man who, whether right or wrong,
is hopelessly didactic, and incapable of commending his own opinions by
the bold ease with which he may deplore them.

It is irony when Lowell, speaking of Dante's intimacy with the
Scriptures, adds, "They do even a scholar no harm." Jaques, in "As
You Like It," is ironical when he indicates men by the actions of the
wounded deer which augmented with tears the stream that did not need
water, as men leave their money to those who have too much already. The
herd abandons him: that is right,--misery parts company. Anon, they
come sweeping by, and never stay to inquire into his hurt. That is just
the proper fashion, too. "Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens!" This
pretence of praising the deer is a parable which arraigns mankind.

In the Old Testament there is an instance of irony, where the priests
of Baal called on his name but there was no reply, and Elijah suggested
that "either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey,
or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked." But the priests had
all the prosaic singleness of an ignorant mind, and went on scarifying
themselves with knives and lancets, as if Elijah had not already let
their blood.

The New Testament furnishes a more delicate specimen in the parable of
the unjust steward, which has difficulties of interpretation, arising
from an unwillingness, perhaps, to recognize the irony. The steward
is expecting to be dismissed for malfeasance in office. In the days
of parable, whitewashing committees were unknown. He then expects to
ingratiate himself with his lord's debtors by reducing the amount of
their bills, hoping that some of them would take him up when discarded.
It is not clear what commendation to a debtor who might also be a
creditor lay in this fraudulent reduction of his bill; but a parable
serves only the main point, which in this case is to show how much
more tact a thoroughly worldly man has than a technically spiritual
man. So the lord admires the shiftiness of his steward, because it
had an ulterior purpose; whereas your conventional child of light
has no genuine foresight. This is done to introduce the irony of the
verse: "And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into
everlasting habitations." The master's hint of the superior sagacity
of the people of mammon is delightfully qualified by the irony that
lurks in his use of the word "everlasting." Then the serious intent of
the parable is clearly stated in the three succeeding verses.

When irony becomes persistently cynical it defeats the moral advantage
which it would possess of attracting men to its serious meaning,
because it then involves too large a tract of human life in its
insinuation. The pretences that things are all bad may become so
clamorous at the door of our faith in human nature that no good things
can gain admission. In literature, an irony that is tinged a little
with cynicism is a healthy recoil from sentimentalism: for an affected
ideal, if too long and too floridly sustained, piques our knowledge of
human nature into making inquiries; and, as it is in public affairs
when people are aroused to investigate, the facts which are discovered
receive too great a valuation. They seem to indicate that every thing
is rotten; and while one temper denounces, another temper sneeringly
inquires for virtue. In broad day, this lantern of Diogenes goes about
hunting up an honest citizen. "There is nothing but roguery to be found
in villanous man."

The strained and almost impossible goodness of Dickens's "Battle of
Life" is punished by the cool depreciation of Thackeray's pen. When
the former insists too strongly that his humble characters shall be
examples of all the British beatitudes, the latter depicts too easily
sharpers and nonentities for women, and well-bred, high-toned rascals
for men. But when a too fluent and prolific imagination, working in
the steam of a great modern centre, has its shapes distorted, and
the outlines waver into caricature, a tonic breath with the taste of
brine in it will always set in to temper this radiation. Then it is
inevitable that we shiver and complain that the tone has been reduced
too far. When a skilfully distended bubble breaks, and only a thin spat
of suds is left, a cynic finger will point to it as if to say, "Here's
your fine iris all gone to unserviceable soap." But there is a solider
ball, the earth itself, upon which human nature paints its zones; and
although life is despicable at the poles, and revolting in many a foul
quarter, we know that noble landscapes stocked with graciousness and
honor spread on every side. Shakspeare alone seems to have this bubble
hanging securely from his pipe, where it sheds the swift glances of
myriad eyes.

Thackeray says, "How can I hold out the hand of friendship, when my
first impression is, 'My good sir, I strongly suspect that you were up
my pear-tree last night'? It is a dreadful state of mind. The core is
black; the death-stricken fruit drops on the bough, and a great worm is
within,--fattening and feasting and wriggling. Who stole the pears? I
say. Is it you, brother? Is it you, Madam?"

These suspicions cannot conceal their good humor: the one hand drives
the railing pen; the other, behind the chair, holds the glimmer, not of
steel, but of a smile.

But when Swift writes a chapter upon the use and improvement of
madness in a Commonwealth, the smile which scantily flickers over
the surface of it is the smile of the Spartan boy while the fox was
gnawing at his vitals. Swift's pen makes the Iron Madonna's gestures of
invitation,--she that stood in mediæval torture-chambers and bade the
bewildered prisoner take refuge in her opening arms, where a thousand
lancets pricked life, faith, and hope away.

At one time, the German Heine's irony smacks of good humor; at another,
you would ask for a bumper of gall to sweeten your mouth. He represents
two fat Manchester ladies at a particularly exposed ballet, murmuring
to each other, "Shocking! For shame!" And he says that they were so
benumbed with horror that they could not for an instant take their
opera-glasses from their eyes, and consequently remained in that
situation to the last moment, when the curtain fell.

By and by we hear a change of tone. "I always obeyed the one
commandment, that we should love our enemies; for, ah! those persons
whom I have best loved were always, without my knowing it, my worst
enemies." And again: "Madame, you can readily form an idea of what life
is like in heaven,--the more readily, as you are married."

This style of innuendo is always more good-natured in Thackeray; as
when speaking in the character of a widower, who remembers the late
Mrs. Brown, he says: "By a timely removal she was spared from the grief
which her widowhood would have doubtless caused her, and I acquiesce
in the decrees of Fate in this instance, and have not the least regret
at not having preceded her."

Heine also can be pleasantly mischievous. When he was about to
travel from Lyons to Paris in the old days of diligences, a friend
commissioned him to carry one of the colossal Lyons sausages to a
homœopathic doctor in the capital. But Heine and his wife were so
frequently hungry, and had trespassed so often upon the length of
the sausage, that a very small end remained on their arrival. Heine
thereupon shaved off a transparent slice with a razor, and enclosed it
in the following letter to the doctor: "_My dear Sir_,--Your researches
have helped to establish the fact that millionths produce the greatest
effects. Pray receive herewith the millionth part of a Lyons sausage,
which your friend consigned to you. In case your theory be true, it
will have the effect of the whole sausage upon you."

Irony employs wit to feather its purport. A Frenchman said of a man
who never really did make a witty remark: "How full of wit that man
must be! he never lets any escape." That, when translated, is improved
because the English word _any_ can refer at once to no wit and to no
person's escaping the effect of wit. Thus the irony is increased.

One of the most characteristic and important specimens of irony is
Thackeray's "Philip," a story of a villanous doctor who deceives a
woman with a mock marriage, deserts her, and marries a lady with
expectations, who has a son Philip and dies. But the traitor is
endowed with an impressive amount of deportment, and his starched front
and cravat seem to have been secreted by the stiffest of spotless
souls, in a rapture of rigidness. This carapace of deportment is
gradually worn too thin; for it has been put to rough service on
all occasions to supply the place of virtue and to make its absence
appear no calamity. The irony consists in accepting this deportment
as if it were really put forth by an estimable man. The book is one
long strain of grave assumption that Dr. Firmin is a good man and a
killing physician; but the reader knows better on the first point,
and enjoys tasting the man's villany through this pretence. And it is
kept up long after the deportment becomes like the pantaloons of the
stingy lawyer, which hung in his garret labelled thus, "Too old to
wear, too good to give away." It is still good enough for Dr. Firmin;
and he reaches a respectable grave in ignorance that we know him so
thoroughly, and discovers rather late that he was always well known at
the head-quarters of genius.

The story is a wonderfully sustained innuendo of rascality, carried on
by this ironical pretence of virtue. Thackeray appears in it to be as
green as Dr. Firmin's dupes; but the mask is lifted a little in every
sentence, and the author and the reader peeping in at opposite sides,
their eyes meet, and smiles at what they have discovered are exchanged.

Even the little sister, who becomes a living mother to the Philip of
the dead lady, cannot flee from this great tide of irony, which catches
her and stands up to her heart. The author is constantly deprecating
her love for Philip; though he knows it is the sweet flower of her
life that is fed from the ugly soil of her betrayal. Why will she go
on so with that boy, and save up money for him, and extemporize little
treats with brandy and water _ad libitum_, and believe in him when he
tries to become a bad magazine writer, and believe in his fortune when
he marries a beggar, and, in short, believe that she was sent into the
world to be deceived, and then have a great, blundering, brave, pure,
splendid Philip, as if by bequest from a legal mother? Why in Heaven's
name does she not blow upon the doctor, and make a good thing out of
betraying his contemptible meanness? Gracious goodness! why is she
so expensively magnanimous? Would you, Madame, be so extravagant as
to pinch yourself in that way to be faithful and tender to a seducer
out of faith and tenderness for his wife's boy? But, there he is: God
set such a pure amen to a hideous deed, and she is the woman to say,
Amen, after him; for God is just and watches the index of the balance.
What! shall she compete with God for retribution? So her life is a long
sacrifice to the purest and most mute devotion, and our author banters
her to keep the tears from obscuring the page at which he writes.

This charming insinuation of the great observer, who once said of
himself that he had no head above his eyes, proves to us that he had
a mighty truly-beating heart below them; and we reverently accept the
little mother from his shaping hands, to place her in our Valhalla of
Women, where Portia, Imogen, and Cordelia have long languished for her
company.

If irony does not forget good nature in its indignation at discovered
shams, it can impart the exhilaration of wit. In a late novel, entitled
the "Maid of Sker," there is a fishmonger who says that, "when the eyes
of a fish begin to fail him through long retirement from the water,"
he has means of setting up their aspect; "and I called" my patrons
"generous gentlemen and Christian-minded ladies every time they wanted
to smell my fish, which is not right before payment. What right has
another man to disparage the property of another? When you have bought
him, he is your own; but, when he is put in the scales, remember
'nothing but good of the dead,' if you remember any thing."

This recalls Hamlet's irony, when he said that he knew Polonius
excellent well,--he was a fishmonger! "Not I, my lord." "Then I would
you were so honest a man." Poor, stale Polonius! He was not as fresh as
the fish which Shakspeare used to scent at Billingsgate, and knavery in
the wind besides.

The cynicism of irony can be illustrated by the character of Jaques in
"As You Like It," as the character of Apemantus in "Timon of Athens"
will serve to show us a cynicism that has grown so ferocious as almost
to beat irony from the field.


JAQUES.

There is not a spark of unkindly feeling in Puck when he says to
Oberon, concerning the lovers,--

 "Shall we their fond pageant see?
 Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

But when we overhear Jaques telling Orlando, "By my troth, I was
seeking for a fool, when I found you," there is a tang of seedy beer in
the speech. We suspect his common-sense of having soured: so that when
he says to Orlando, "The worst fault you have is to be in love," we
relish the estimate of Orlando's reply, "'Tis a fault I will not change
for your best virtue."

The melancholy of Jaques is the cynicism of a man who is _blasé_ with
the convictions as well as the manners of society. He enjoys his vein
too well to be melancholy in the modern sense of that word, for being
something more than satirical he is something less than morose, and we
feel that he is secretly pleased with his ability to be displeasing.
Every vice lends a man a feeling of superiority in being different from
other men: he broke through some bounds to acquire it, and this action
contains some spice of originality and independence. He transgresses in
a temper of pity for the less audacious and unchartered souls. So the
cynic who makes his whole vicinity uncomfortable is pleasant company
for himself because he has no mawkishness; you cannot cheat him with
superfine emotions, he happens to have seen the world.

Jaques characterizes the use of the word "melancholy" as applied to
himself, when he says: "It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of
many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry
contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in
a most humorous sadness." He has also gained his experience at the
expense of having tried various vices of high life, as the Duke hints:
"For thou thyself hast been a libertine." So the arsenic eaters of the
Styrian Alps take the natural poison in small successive doses which
give them a bloated aspect of florid health, but they so affect the
action of the heart that it stops quite suddenly.

The famous speech beginning with, "All the world's a stage," is purely
cynical, and assumes the futility of the parts which the necessity of
living compels us to play. It might be spoken by one who believes that
our little life is rounded by a sleep whose pure oblivion swallows up
our striving.

When Jaques calls for more singing, and is told that it will make him
melancholy, he replies, "I thank it: I can suck melancholy out of a
song as a weasel sucks eggs." We may infer that he sucks music with
the notion of the weasel, who probably regards eggs as being laid on
purpose for his sucking. There is nothing more ferrety than your cynic,
to whom all objects are game for observation. When he hears that Duke
Frederic, the usurper, has restored the kingdom and "put on a religious
life," he goes to find him for the purpose of critical inspection;
for "out of these convertites there is much matter to be heard and
learned." So Jaques surmising that every hole leads to a rat does not
leave one unexplored. In the matter of music Jaques only cares for his
sad reverie, not for the names of the songs. He will thank nobody.
"When a man thanks me heartily, methinks I have given him a penny, and
he renders me the beggarly thanks." So, sing, if you choose to: the
song tracks me to that rat behind the arras.

Compare his scirrhous habit of assimilating music with that of the Duke
in "Twelfth Night." Love has an appetite for music: give me excess of
it to kill the love. Enough: it is not so sweet as before; for love
is like the sea, as vast, as real, as domineering. When the brooks
of music fall into it, sweet as they are, genuine as love, yet the
great sea subdues them to a greater disposition, even in a minute; and
my fancy for Olivia is alone "high-fantastical." Jaques would have
sneered at this Duke for not extracting from the music a suspicion of
the frailty of his love. No matter what a man's gifts may be, this
"vicious mole of nature" that pretends to spread over all surfaces
discolors only the gifts: all virtues, "in the general censure, take
corruption from that particular fault," and to its own scandal; because
the world is a flower that nods upon the stock of reality, and the
particles of its aroma, though invisible, set in motion the nerves of
a corresponding reality, and man does not put his nose to an illusion.
But your debauchee, like Jaques, has scorched and tanned his senses
with misuse, and his abortive sniffing at the roses sours into a sneer.

Still, Jaques in defending himself makes disclaimers of ill-nature: as
thus, Who is hit by my speech? It means so and so. If the coat does
not fit, who is wronged? If a man be above my estimate, "why, then, my
taxing like a wild goose flies, unclaimed of any man."

Yes, but he really delights himself with the conviction that every man
is a wild goose upon the wing, and that virtue is the last game that
ventures to alight and feed on the wild celery of our ponds.

Jaques reserves his last and cruelest thrust for Touchstone, to whom
he predicts a marriage victualled for two months, and wrangling ever
after; which is hard on the wise fool, who has taken up with Audrey
as if to show the under side of court manners and the comparative
cheapness of mere breeding. This ought to have endeared him to the
heart of the cynic.


APEMANTUS.

Apemantus, in "Timon of Athens," is a cynic of a different breed, and
his temper is so acid that, as was once said of Douglas Jerrold, he
must have been suckled on a lemon. There is spleen in it when he says:
"Would I had a rod in my mouth, that I might answer thee profitably."
The cynicism of Apemantus is partly justified by the generous folly
of Timon: "Now, Apemantus, if thou wert not sullen, I'd be good to
thee." "No, I'll nothing: for if I should be bribed too, there would be
none left to rail upon thee, and then thou would'st sin the faster."
Shakspeare seems to indicate how a virtue, pushed to excess, provokes
excessive criticism. We are continually generating these extremes, when
our social virtue piques some social fault into parading itself. Money
maxims and manners are good things, but they may all be strained to
bankruptcy. So when Timon becomes a fanatic of good-nature we see him
developing a monstrous Apemantus: his virtue, like an overgrown fruit,
becomes stringy and deprived of proper flavor. We taste its coarseness
in the colossal spleen of the cynic who says, as Timon turns away from
the repulsive tone which was really sired by himself:--

 "Thou wilt not hear me now: thou shalt not then, _I'll lock Thy heaven
 from thee_."

So it will always be: if the kingdom of heaven is claimed by one
violence, it will be competed for by another.

Apemantus is specially reared to be this bitter foil to Timon's
profuseness. He leads an isolated life, and thus like all solitaries
acquires the vice of exaggerating his own opinions. They have never
passed between the fine emery of social contact. So he is a caltrop
in men's path, with a spike always uppermost to impale the over-hasty
feet. Poverty drives Timon directly upon it, to wince at every step he
takes on such a bristly virtue, till he matches his smart with curses
quite as pointed; and Shakspeare shows us the two fanatics of two
virtues exhausting the vituperations of the English tongue to banish
each other into an oblivion, "where the light foam of the sea may beat"
their gravestones daily with a bitter lip.

 TIM. When there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be welcome. I
 had rather be a beggar's dog, than Apemantus.

 APEM. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.

 TIM. Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon.

 APEM. A plague on thee, thou art too bad to curse.

 TIM. Away, thou issue of a mangy dog!
 Choler does kill me, that thou art alive;
 I swoon to see thee.

 APEM. Beast!

 TIM. Slave!

 APEM. Toad!

 TIM. Rogue, rogue, rogue!

So people who never know "the middle of humanity," but "the extremity
of both ends," batter each other's virtue out of shape and capacity to
be recognized.

Julian Hawthorne likens the cynic to a chimney-sweeper, "that eccentric
misanthrope who vents his spite against the race by plucking defilement
from the very flame which makes bright the household hearth."

But Jaques was expressly plunged into social estimates and manners that
he may be withdrawn from them in a less splenetic temper. The wild crab
has sunned itself in orchards, and, nodding among mellower branches,
is not all flavored with their rottenness. So far from secluding
himself in the conceited fashion of all hermits from the manifold
culture of life, he has expended himself upon every phase of it, and
withdraws with the pensiveness of satiety toning the sharpness of
experience in his speech. Some men turn cynics when the first serious
disappointment of their lives drifts over them. Of a sudden the whole,
nature is drenched from the leaden cloud. The revulsion from a sunny
day to this pitiless blackening of heaven chills the very marrow of
their common-sense. Then they rail at the sky which is but for a while
retired, and insist that its old grace and clearness were a subterfuge.
So when the accursed plot of Iachimo to make the chastity of Imogen a
naughty thing has its effect, her husband, Posthumus, sets the key for
all the woman-haters since:--

                           "Could I find out
 The woman's part in me! For there's no motion
 That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
 It is the woman's part: Be it lying, note it,
 The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;
 Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;
 Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,
 Nice longings, slanders, mutability,
 All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows,
 Why, hers, in part, or all; but, rather, all;
 For ev'n to vice
 They are not constant, but are changing still
 One vice, but of a minute old, for one
 Not half so old as that. _I'll write against them._"


HUMOR.

If we wished to find a passage from Irony to Humor, we should have to
look for it in cases where good-nature assumes the positive attribute
of impartiality, because humor is a kind of disposition to adopt the
whole of human nature, fuse all its distinctions, tolerate all its
infirmities, and assemble vice and misery to receive rations of good
cheer.

Two Jews have been elected within a few years to be Lord Mayors of
London. They were members of the synagogue in full connection, and
might have appointed Rabbins for chaplaincies if they had chosen. But
they pursued the old custom, which was not however of legal stringency:
appointed clergymen of the Church of England, and regularly made all
the usual contributions for Christian purposes, including the customary
one to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews. In this incident it
is the element of Humor which imparts to us the pleasure we feel.

Hippolyte Taine acknowledges that the French have not the idea of
Humor, nor the word for it. But we might expect from him at least a
definition. He can only say, however, that humor includes a taste for
contrasts, buffooneries, the mockery of Heine, starts of invention,
oddities, eruption of a violent joviality that was buried under a heap
of sadness, and absurd indecency. In another place he says that English
humor "is the product of imaginative drollery, or of concentrated
indignation."

Sir Henry Bulwer, in his book entitled "France, Social, Literary, and
Political," concedes the talent of wit to the French and quotes the
following instance of it: "I asked two little village boys, one seven,
the other eight years old, what they meant to be when they were men?
Says one, 'I shall be the doctor of the village.' 'And you, what shall
you be?' said I to the other. 'Oh! if brother's a doctor, I shall be
_curé_. He shall kill the people, and I'll bury them; so we shall have
the whole village between us.'"

Bulwer appreciates this, yet Taine denies to the English the sense
of wit. In fact, the quality of wit exists wherever imagination
percolates through the understanding: the sediment is the grain-gold
of wit. But the quality of humor, depending upon various moral traits,
exists only wherever a broad imagination is combined with a sweet and
tolerant moral sense that is devoid of malice and all uncharitableness,
and at peace with all mankind. A petulant egotism may exist with wit,
but never with humor. Sarcasm and satire are the forms which best agree
with imperfect moral dispositions. A too prolonged irony has something
melancholy and dyspeptic in it, and passes into the blood of a faulty
temper even if there be the tonic of an upright moral sense. This moral
sense may exist on every meridian of the earth, but it may not appear
at literary epochs in solution with the brightest minds. Rabelais
seems to be a French exception to the Gallic trait that was noticed so
long ago by the great Roman: _Comɶda_ and _argute loqui_,--belonging
to comedy and to the ingenuities of conversation. Humor appears best
in conjunction with the temper of Northern Europe, whose early races
began with deep impressions of the gravity of things and broke thence
into alleviating moods. If it be the primitive trait of a nation to
enjoy comic gayeties and the subtle surprises of discourse, it does not
readily rise to the moral earnestness which a serious world imposes,
and therefore it cannot invent the relief and grave delight of humor.

Sydney Smith uses this word to cover any thing that is ridiculous and
laughable. So the epithet _comic_ is quite indiscriminately applied.
But we ought not to submit to this loose application; for there are
plenty of other words to make proper distinctions for us amid our
pleasurable moods, and permit us to reserve humor for something which
is neither punning, wit, satire, nor comedy. Humor may avail itself
of all these mental exercises, but only as a manager casts his stock
company to set forth the prevailing spirit of a play. Comedy, for
instance, represents sorrows, passions, and annoyances, but shows
them without the sombre purpose of tragedy to enforce a supreme will
at any cost. All our weaknesses threaten in comedy to result in
serious embarrassments, but there is such inexhaustible material for
laughter in the whims and follies with which we baffle ourselves and
others, that the tragic threat is collared just in time and shaken
into pleasure. All kinds of details of our life are represented, which
tragedy could never tolerate in its main drift towards the pathos of
defeated human wills and broken hearts. Tricks, vices, fatuities,
crotchets, vanities, play their game for a stake no higher than the
mirth of outwitting each other; and they all pay penalties of a light
kind which God exacts smilingly for the sake of keeping our disorders
at a minimum. Comedy also funds a great deal of its charm in the
unconsciousness of an infirmity. We exhibit ourselves unawares: each
one is perfectly understood by everybody but himself; so we plot and
vapor through an intrigue with placards on each back, where all but the
wearers can indulge their mirth at seeing us parading so innocently
with advertisements of our price and quality.

There is a comic passage in the "Inferno" of Dante, noticed by Lowell
(XV. 119), "where Brunetto Latini lingers under the burning shower to
recommend his _Tesoro_ to his former pupil," Dante; "a comical touch
of Nature in an author's solicitude for his little work; not, as in
Fielding's case, after _its_, but his own damnation."

The opening verses of Canto XVI. of the "Paradiso" are also comic,
"where Dante tells us how, even in heaven, he could not help glorying
in being gently born,--he who had devoted a _Canzone_ and a book of the
_Convito_ to proving that nobility consisted wholly in virtue."

Humor subsidizes every vein like this to supply the great heart-beat
which mantles over all human features and visits all the members of
great or little honor. Irony is jesting hidden behind gravity. Humor is
gravity concealed behind the jest. Our grave and noble tendencies are
brought in this world of ours into contact with very ordinary styles of
living, which are stubborn; they neither surrender nor give way. Humor
steps in to mediate: it seeks to put in the same light and color all
the parts of this incongruity, the ideal and the vulgar real; and the
constant inference of humor is that all the ideals of right, honor,
goodness, manly strength, are serious with a divine purpose.

Even the coarsest and most revolting things can be adopted by this
temper and cheerfully assigned to their places in the great plan. Jamie
Alexander, the old Scotch grave-digger, had the habit of carrying home
fragments of old coffins, long seasoned in the earth which was turned
up by his exploring spade. He used to make clocks and fiddles of them,
thus coaxing time and tune out of these repulsive tokens of human
infirmity. Our mouldiest accessories can furnish material for humor;
since "a good wit," says Shakspeare, "will make use of any thing; it
will turn diseases to commodity."

We cannot say that man derives this power to resolve contrariety into
delight from the divine mind, though we have the habit of saying
that every intellectual act must spring from an original source of
intelligence, just as affection must have its root in the infinite
love. But Deity can have no consciousness of incongruities in creation,
because the whole must at every instant be comprehended in the Creator
of the whole, who originates the real relation of all its parts and
their mutual interdependence. Human dissatisfaction springs from want
of this ability to comprehend the whole within one reconciling idea.
This incompetency is felt by us because we have an instinct that all
dissonant things ought to be reconciled, and can be in some way, but
only can be by the finite becoming the infinite. Humor strives to
bridge this gulf. It is man's device to pacify his painful sense that
so many things appear wrong and evil to him, and so many circumstances
inconsistent with our feeling that Deity must have framed the world in
a temper of perfect goodness. We get relief by trying to discover the
ideas which may effect a temporary reconcilement, to approach as far as
we can to the temper of divine impartiality in which all circumstances
must have been ordained. That temper passing down through our
incompleteness is refracted, broken all up into a tremulousness of
human smiles. Nothing that a Creator has the heart to tolerate can
disturb him. But where there is no sense of incongruity there can be
no sense of humor. That sense is man's expedient to make his mortality
endurable. The laughter of man is the contentment of God.

Shakspeare was not preoccupied by any theory of the universe which
denies the facts or tries to shut them up in a private meaning, as
theology does. His creative genius reflected a Creator's mind. So
he accepted all that is permitted to exist, without extenuation,
instinctively acknowledging the right of God to make men as they are,
if so He chose, out of complex motives and passions whose roots are
hidden in each man's ancestry, and whose drift the man himself cannot
anticipate, as he was not consulted. This admission of all the facts of
human nature did not disable his preference for pure and honest things.
All that is lovely has a good, report made of it in his lives, and all
that is odious appears in its habit as it lived. Thus he moralized, as
Nature does by letting all her creatures breed and show their traits.
She pastes no placards upon things which advertise themselves to every
observer. All our infirmities have the freedom of Shakspeare's verse to
display themselves at pleasure. He is not standing by with a showman's
stick to designate his creatures to us who have eyes of our own, and
know what is ugly and pleasant when we see it. No perfume is added to
the violet, no gilding to the rose. "The image of a wicked heinous
fault" lives in its eye.

Now this impartial observation cannot shield the poet's ideal from
the hurts which are inflicted by the discrepancies of life: the real
seems to be no legitimate child of the ideal, but a changeling with
low-born traits. The noble lover of goodness cannot help being pained
at the contrast of circumstances with his thought, and there moves
over his nature a deep seriousness from this cloud, beneath which his
imagination broods upon the landscape. It raises a suspicion that Deity
itself must find omniscience annoying and provocative of gloom; for
all the worlds and the ages keep on inflicting this incongruity upon
the divine source of all ideal things. The poet must manage to recover
from this mood, to reassure his heart with the faith that the One who
calculated and devised the aberrations which sustain His system must
exist in eternal serenity.

When many human characters are contemplated by a superior observer, an
impartiality kin to that of the mind who created them sets in. But it
cannot remain a colorless, judicial attitude, nor can it deteriorate
into indifference. Good nature is an element in the superiority of
a good observer. He may make use of wit, comedy, and irony, but his
essential mood can only be described by the word "humor;" that is, the
quality of being reconciled with all that is observed. The poet would
fain conciliate, but without complicity; for he can never give up the
gravity of his ideal. Now to be perfectly impartial to all would be
too great a strain for a finite mind. It would weary of the incessant
balancing, of the exigency of moderation. The mind yields from this
in unconscious self-defence, and passes into a mood that conciliates
itself. The gravity is precipitated by the infusion of a smile. And
although this lighter ingredient appears upon the surface, it is the
record and announcement of the serious affair below.

In Burns's "Address to the Devil," he is of opinion that that personage
cannot take much pleasure in tormenting poor devils like him. Besides,
if any thing is the matter with him, it is all the fault of the devil's
own trick which so nearly ruined every thing. Still, he confesses to a
fellow-feeling for the devil. Why can't he mend a bit? Burns hates to
think of hell for the devil's sake, as Dr. Channing once said he hoped
there was no devil for the devil's own sake.

But, as Shakspeare says, "the devil knew not what he did when he made
man politic; he crossed himself by it; and I cannot think, but, in the
end, the villanies of man will set him clear."

The humor here is pervaded with the earnest perception that Nature
contains organically the good and the evil. Both are placed in
permanent juxtaposition, to result in the interaction which makes life
and history possible.

We notice the same touch of humor in Goethe's Prologue to "Faust."
The Lord gives full permission to Mephistopheles to try his hand at
Faust:--


MEPHISTOPHELES.

 Dust shall he eat for pleasure's sake,
 Like my old famous aunt, the snake.


THE LORD.

 Just freely as you please, do I reply:
 I never hated people of your kind;
 Of all the spirits that deny
 The knave is he best suits my mind.
 Since man soon tires and thinks that labor's evil,
 For unconditioned rest he sighs;
 And so I'm glad to pique his enterprise
 By a provoking comrade, like the devil.

The Lord has always tolerated this element on a compulsion of his own.
But whenever creeping plants that have extorted bitter drops from the
world around their roots climb over Shakspeare's sunny exposure, the
clusters grow fit for human lips and are crushed into smiles.

The characters of humor in Shakspeare promote the business of the
play, but they do it as much by being special studies of the traits of
human nature as by necessary complicity with the plot. Sometimes they
appear, as they would to a Frenchman like Voltaire, to be absurdities
interpolated in the texture of the plot as if merely to raise a laugh
and stretch the mouths of the groundlings. The notion is not uncommon,
even among cultivated people, that they are drolleries contrived to
suspend the strain of the more serious portions of the play; the
poet assuming that the average mind cannot bear gravity for a whole
evening. And doubtless great numbers of spectators find this relief
in the lighter scenes into which they step down the stairs of the
blank verse, rather tired and strained. They only notice that they are
amused. But the characters of humor flow out of a natural logic that
is behind the plot, which cannot be apprehended without them. They are
essential to it because they are intrinsically logical, however little
they may appear to be woven along with the rest of the texture. But
they are in fact, as all human life is, a seamless piece constructed at
a single loom.

Why for instance, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," does Launce enter,
leading his dog, just after Proteus and Julia have exchanged rings, and
they part, she too much overcome to respond to his tender farewell?
What an impertinent soliloquy which describes Launce's parting, too,
from his family to follow Proteus, all of them dissolved in tears
except Crab the dog! What does this bit of vulgar life in such a
connection? It introduces the essential vulgarity of Proteus himself,
who, we shall see, has the remembrance of Julia driven out of his heart
by Silvia as soon as he has turned his back. To obtain her he plays a
mean trick upon his dearest friend who loves her. In the midst of this
Launce intrudes again; for he has fallen in love, and gives us what he
calls the "cat-log" of his girl's conditions. It is as if the trivial
disposition of Proteus was suddenly dumped upon its proper refuse-heap
by the fine verse which held it. And we soon perceive why this dog Crab
was trotted into the company; for Proteus procures a dog of gentle
breed and bids Launce carry it as a present to Silvia. But it is stolen
from him, and Launce substitutes his own vicious cur who behaves badly
in Silvia's presence, and is whipped out. This is just what Proteus is
doing in love. Launce's shift is the shabbiness of Proteus, and Silvia
dismisses it as summarily as she disposed of Crab; for she is not "so
shallow, so conceitless," as to trust such a born flirt as Proteus.
Shakspeare certainly has not left a shred of sentiment hanging to the
back of Proteus's meanness; for Launce, who is a kind of choragus of
it, is furnished with the most vigorous vulgarity which the vernacular
contains. Especially we see what a satirical dog Crab is.

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our
virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not: and our crimes
would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues."[3]

With that for our text, let us approach some characters of Shakspeare.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the requisition of the English government for the surrender of
Mason and Slidell in the Trent affair was made through Lord Lyons,
Judge Hoar rode out to see an old Concord farmer whom he highly
respected, to tell him the news, which he did with considerable
excitement. The farmer listened coolly, and said, "Well, if those
fellows are really going in for the rebels and slavery, you tell Lord
Lyons he may have my copy of Shakspeare."

But I suspect that New England farmers are content to be patriotic
without cultivating the poet's page. Shakspeare may be everywhere
extensively owned without being mentally possessed. We need a
Shakspearian piety. Formerly the Bible and a copy of Josephus or some
protracted commentary stood within reach of the household, and the
leaves were turned by Religion herself who found her own meaning in
every text and the meaning inexhaustible. If the volume of Shakspeare
could attract a sympathy so loyal and grave as that, Religion would
find in him, too, her counterpart. But we do not read Shakspeare yet in
spiritual faith, as Bibles are pondered for their consecrated sense.
Literature swarms with books of criticism which exhaust invention for
theories of his life, profession, and intent; and the various editions
of his works are liberally patronized. But where are the devotees
whose morning orison is the wonderful liturgy of his imagination, with
responses that are intoned by human nature itself, the acknowledgment
that mind and heart are surprised by their own detection, yet with as
little fear and as much confidence as we repay to omniscience? This is
rare, this persistent recurrence of the soul to his enlightening, this
praying before the shrine of every verse in which a thought, a passion,
a humor, a delight, a beauty, is the saint. Must we have, then,
professorships of Shakspeare to instruct the youth and inculcate this
natural piety? Rather let every household accuse its own indifference,
and endow its hearts to make him more widely felt and understood. For
there are sweetness and light, wisdom and conscience and self-knowledge
slumbering unmined below those covers.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: French Gentleman in "All's Well that Ends Well," iv. 3.]




DOGBERRY, MALVOLIO,

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (AJAX),

BOTTOM, TOUCHSTONE.


DOGBERRY.

The advocates of the theory that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays
like to point to the coincidences of phrase between Dogberry's
Charge to the Watch in "Much Ado about Nothing," and Bacon's "Office
of Constables." They may be found in Judge Holmes's "Authorship
of Shakspeare," 2d ed. pp. 324, 326, and are plainly Dogberry's
misapplications of terms used in some municipal code or usage for
constables which was common in Shakspeare's time. They may have been
only transmitted in the form of oral instructions before being codified
by Bacon, but at any rate they were well known and highly relished by
Shakspeare as specimens of rural pomp in language. So that although the
play was first acted in the autumn of 1599, and Bacon did not publish
his manual until 1608, the force of referring the coincidences to Bacon
is lost by considering that every village youth between Stratford and
London must have often heard the petty constables, which were elected
by the people, instructed in the phrases so comically misapplied by
Dogberry.

And at first it seems as if Shakspeare intended by the introduction of
Dogberry and his ineffective watch merely to interpolate a bit of comic
business, by parodying the important phrases and impotent exploits of
the suburban constable. But Dogberry's mission extended farther than
that, and is intimately woven with delightful unconsciousness on his
part into the fortunes of Hero.

Dogberry is not only immortal for that, but his name will never die so
long as village communities in either hemisphere elect their guardians
of the peace and clothe them in verbose terrors. If the town is
unfortunately short of rascals, the officer will fear one in each bush,
or extemporize one out of some unbelligerent starveling to show that
the majestic instructions of his townsmen have not been wasted on him.
This elaborate inefficiency is frequently selected by busy communities,
because so few persons are there clumsy enough to be unemployed. Such
a vagrom is easily comprehended. Dogberry has caught up the turns
and idioms of sagacious speech, and seems to be blowing them up as
lifebelts; so he goes bobbing helplessly around in the froth of his
talk. "I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which, I beseech your
worship, to correct yourself, for the example of others. I humbly give
you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit
it." He ties his conversation in hopeless knots of absurdity; when
pomp takes possession of a vacuous mind, it rattles like the jester's
bladder of dried pease. Have not his fellow-citizens invested him? He
will then lavish the selectest phrases. I heard a village politician
once say with scorn in town-meeting, "Mr. Moderator, I know nothing
about your technalities." Dogberry is the most original of Malaprops,
says to the Prince's order that it shall be suffigance, and tells the
watch that salvation were a punishment too good for them, if they
should have any allegiance in them. He has furnished mankind with that
adroit phrase of conversational escape from compromise, "Comparisons
are odorous." Where common men would suspect a person, Dogberry says
the person is auspicious. His brain seems to be web-footed, and tumbles
over itself in trying to reach swimming water; as when he says,
"Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false
knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly." This is the
precipitancy of a child's reasoning.

His own set do not discover by his malapropisms how futile he is, for
their ears are accustomed to this misplacing of terms; which, indeed,
is not uncommon among people of stronger native sense. Even the
spelling-book and primer are not prophylactic against this failing,
which seems to be owing to cerebral inability to keep words from
gadding about with each other after they have once entered the mind: a
laxness between notions and memory which results in verbal hybridity,
as when a man, who was well informed enough, used to say, when the
castors were passed, that he never took condignments with his food; and
the Western lawyer said of a man that he could not tell a story without
embezzlements. A suburban resident informed a friend that he lived in
the vicissitude of General ----. We can only hope that Dr. Watts would
have found it a "beautiful vicissitude." I have heard of a stout,
cheerful, and polite Dogberry, who had arrived at the discretion of
fifty years when his parents died. Then, in reply to a friend who was
practising condolence upon him, he said, "Yes, I'm a poor orphanless
man!" The same person remarked of his nephew, that he hadn't decided
on his profession yet, but was preponderating; and arguing against
non-resistance with somebody, he said, "Why, sir, if a man should
draw a pistol on me, do you think I'd put my life in his jeopardy?" A
venerable clergyman, finding an inebriated person in the gutter, said,
"My friend, how did you get there?" The man, with a twinkle of jest
yet alive in him, replied, "I'm here, _notwithstanding_." This amused
the clergyman, who tried to impart it to his family. "And what do you
think the man replied to me?" Nobody could guess. "Well, said he to
me, Nevertheless!" And there was a worthy old deacon, who, repeating
Watts's hymn line for line after his clergyman, said, "Return, ye
rancid sinners!" a condition for which Dogberry would say they ought to
be condemned into everlasting redemption.

A very impracticable and contentious person was chosen to be a member
of a committee. Somebody asked one of the other members, "Well, how did
you find Mr. ----, when it came to business?" The reply was, "Oh, full
of fight as ever,--a regular _horse de combat_."

When the Boston fire was stopped at the new post-office, a man standing
near was heard to say, "I'm glad they've got that fire under headway at
last." In all such cases there is a moment supplied during which some
sense is pretended, so that many malapropisms belong to the race of
bulls. At other times they contain the effect of a pun. A man who had
lately moved into the country, and was planning some new buildings,
informed a friend that he had already got a barn in imbroglio.

A friend called my attention to an article in a Bengal (E.I.)
newspaper, which advised its readers "not to kill the calf that lays
the golden egg." That is, as he remarked, "a happy combination of Æsop
and the Prodigal Son."

So that Mrs. Malaprop's "allegory" basks beside all rivers, and is
not the "pretty worm of Nilus" alone. Climate and race do not seem to
set up distinctions in the universal breed. It skips in all pastures,
with aboriginal characters unchanged. One would suppose that the Irish
might be content with that happy cross between wit and witlessness
which engenders bulls. But they, too, revenge themselves upon English
oppressors of Home Rule by miscalling the language which they hate to
use. I heard of an Irish domestic, who, descanting upon the manufacture
of soft-soap, tried to describe the virtue of potash, saying with the
solemnity of a sacrament, "It's con-se-cra-ted lie." What a pity that
potash should not be the sole instance of that commodity!

The magistrate asked the tramp what his occupation was. "Plaze y're
honor, I am a sort of pedlar, picking up iron and junk in this and
the previous towns." This reminds me of an obfuscated person who was
feeling around in vain to recover his carpet-bag in the horse-car, a
search which finally enriched our literature when he mumbled, "It's
damned seldom where my bag is."

The malapropisms of Shakspeare have a quality that is not strained.
They would be so likely to occur that they seem to verify all prosody
and syntax, and we sometimes prefer them to the correct word,
especially when the mistake brings a faint flavor of wit. Launcelot
Gobbo is tempted to run away from his service to Shylock, and says that
"the most contagious fiend" bids him pack. When he meets his father,
he says, "I will try confusions with him," which is made witty by the
scene that follows, in which old Gobbo does not recognize his son. I
once heard a fine lady of society generously revive Launcelot's vein
when she said, _apropos_ of some event, "however incredulous it may
appear."

Dogberry has a pondering look and a fribbling emphasis. He rolls the
plump phrases over and over like a quid, but ejects them with a kind of
strenuous drivel. He makes pauses, as if discriminating the juiciest
reflection, but really settles at random, like a pigeon whose brain has
been vivisected; so he concludes that, if a man will not stand when he
is bid to, he may go; and that, though a thief ought to be arrested,
they that touch pitch will be defiled; and that, on the whole, it
is better to let him show himself what he is, and steal out of your
company.

Thus he attains to the merit of genius when it chips the egg and
lets loose the struggling chick of the ordinary mind. He voices the
perplexity of the watch, and lends to it the color of concession and
sagacious compromise. It is exactly what old Verges thought but did
not know how to incubate into definite expression. So all the people
who sit upon political fences, and find the edge growing inconvenient,
welcome the pad which postpones the necessity for a jump to either side.

Dogberry admires and cossets his own authority, but is too timid to
enforce it save with poor old Verges, whose mental feebleness is an
exact shadow of Dogberry's; and the latter manages to step upon himself
in amusing unconsciousness. "An old man, sir, and his wits are not
so blunt, as, God help, I would desire they were." A good old man,
sir; but he will gabble. All men are not alike, alas! So he goes on,
dismissing himself, and slamming to the door without observing it.

But when the watch blunders by reason of idiocy into arresting
Borachio, who was the agent in the plot against Hero, the innocent
Conrade is found in his company, listening to his disclosures. He,
too, is carried off and confronted with Dogberry before the whole
"dissembly" of constables. Then and there Conrade calls him in set
terms an ass.

Dogberry flickers up into a kind of lukewarmness, and does his little
to resent it. "Dost thou not suspect my ears?" "Thou villain, thou
art full of piety, as shall be proved." Then his speech seems to
be handling a dustpan to gather up his good points with tremulous
huffiness: I am a pretty piece of flesh, and know the law, go to; and a
rich fellow, with leases, and two gowns, and every thing handsome about
me. He was never called ass before; for Conrade was probably the first
free-spoken prisoner entirely innocent of malapropisms that he had
ever faced. He cannot compose his shallow fluster; for it is as deep as
he is, and it even comes splashing into the pathos of the moment when
the wrong done to Hero is discovered, who is not yet known to be still
living. He wants the man punished who called him ass, not the man who
was the slanderer of Hero. Standing round him are noble natures touched
with sorrow and remorse; but for him Conrade is "the plaintiff, the
offender," who did call him ass. Dead, shamed, ruined Hero, distracted
lover, and tender father, retreat into a background upon which he
scrawls himself an ass. For the ocean cannot be accommodated in a
saucer, and some men should beware lest the spatter of a tear swamp and
drown them. Here the comedy of Dogberry's character acquires a touch
of humor; for so are we obliged to tolerate in our profoundest moments
the trivialities of those who do not know or cannot contain our serious
mood.

There is underlying humor in the fact that all this ignorance and
inconsequence, this burlesquing of the detective's business, effects
what the age and wisdom of Leonato, and the instinct of the lover
Claudio, could not; namely, the discovery of Hero's innocence and of
the plot to besmirch her chastity in the eyes of her lover. The wise
men are taken in and the accident of folly undeceives them. Then it
becomes no longer an accident, but the regimen of the world adopts and
puts it to a use. Here comedy becomes humorous, because it is shown
how the fortunes of the good and prudent are involved with all the
vulgarities of the world, and justice itself, which is nothing if not
critical, cannot make up its case without _non sequiturs_.

When a stratagem compels the braggart Parolles in "All's Well that
Ends Well" to show the white feather, he says adroitly, "Who cannot
be crushed by a plot?" But absence of plot is quite as hostile to our
luck, and goodness and beauty provide no immunity against it. Two
soldiers, who had been sent to arrest the Duchess de Berri, rigorously
searched for her a whole house over to no purpose; then, lighting a
fire to warm their fingers, roasted her out from a hiding place behind
the chimney. A Jacobite climbing into the hollow of an oak leaves his
garter on a twig to make a silly advertisement of him. Major Andre
meets two men who are not looking for him, and convinces them that
he is the very man they ought to seek. Dogberry and his men are as
apposite as the female toggery which trips up an escaping rebel; and
through them Shakspeare delights to apprise us of a world in which
knavery may be outwitted by fatuity.


MALVOLIO.

The humor in the play of "Twelfth Night" resides in the contriving to
make one vice ridiculous by other vices which are also absurd. Not
one of the comic characters, taken separately, provides the peculiar
element of humor. It transpires during the impartial interplay of the
silliness of Aguecheek, the drunken techiness of Sir Toby, the spite of
Fabian, the mischievousness of Maria, and the immeasurable conceit of
Malvolio, who appeared not like a human being, but "as if he were his
own statue erected by national subscription." All these vices betray
themselves with such an infantile simplicity, and help each other to
construct so delightful a plot, that we feel, with the clown, perfectly
content to see "foolery walk about the orb like the sun." It is so
difficult to discriminate between follies when they protect themselves
by being so amusing, that we say with Viola,--

 "I hate ingratitude more in a man,
 Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
 Or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption
 Inhabits our frail blood."

We always have, as she did, some vice which we hate worse than others.
The one that is damned is generally the only one which would put us to
discomfort to practise. But humor can make for a time only those vices
companionable which turn a man into his own worst enemy and raise no
tragic threat against the State.

Malvolio, the steward of Olivia's household, is prized by that lady
for his grave and punctilious disposition. He discharges his office
carefully and in a tone of some superiority, for his mind is above his
estate. At some time in his life he has read cultivated books, knows
the theory of Pythagoras concerning the transmigration of the soul, but
thinks more nobly of the soul and no way approves that opinion. His
gentility, though a little rusted and obsolete, is like a Sunday suit
which nobody thinks of rallying. He wears it well, and his mistress
cannot afford to treat him exactly as a servant; in fact, she has
occasionally dropped good-natured phrases which he has interpreted into
a special partiality: for Quixotic conceits can riot about inside of
his stiff demeanor. This proneness to fantasy increases the touchiness
of a man of reserve. He can never take a joke, and his climate is too
inclement to shelter humor. Souls must be at blood-heat, and brains
must expand with it like a blossom, before humor will fructify. He
wonders how Olivia can tolerate the clown. "I protest," he says, "I
take these wise men, that crow so at these set kind of fools, to be no
better than the fools' zanies." Olivia hits the difficulty when she
replies, "Oh, you are sick of self-love, and taste with a distempered
appetite." Perhaps he thinks nobly of the soul because he so profoundly
respects his own, and carries it upon stilts over the heads of the
servants and Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.

Imagine this saturnine and self-involved man obliged to consort
daily with Sir Toby, who brings his hand to the buttery-bar before
breakfast, and who hates going to bed "as an unfilled can," unless no
more drink is forthcoming; an irascible fellow, too, and all the more
tindery because continually dry. He has Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a
boon companion, who says of himself that sometimes he has no more wit
than a Christian, or than an ordinary man. When he is not in liquor he
is fuddled with inanity, and chirps and skips about, deluding himself
with the notion that Olivia will receive his addresses. Sir Toby, to
borrow money of him, fosters the notion, and flatters his poor tricks.
Then there is that picador of a clown, who plants in Malvolio's thin
skin a perfect quickset of barbed quips, and sends him lowering around
the mansion which these roisterers have turned into a tavern. The
other servant, Fabian, has a grudge against him for interfering with
a bear-baiting he was interested in; for Malvolio was one of those
Puritans who frowned upon that sport, as Macaulay said, not because
it worried the bear but because it amused the men. The steward was
right when he informed this precious set that they were idle, shallow
things, and he was not of their element. No doubt he is the best man of
the lot. But he interrupts their carousing at midnight in such a sour
and lofty way that we are entertained to hear their drunken chaffing,
and we call to Maria for another stoup, though they have had too much
already; but a fresh exposition of dryness always sets in when such
a virtue as Malvolio's tries to wither us. However, he becomes the
object of their animosity, and they work in his distemper to make him
ridiculous.

There is no humor in seeing Malvolio fall so easily a prey to their
device. When a man becomes the cause of his own mortification, it is
simply comic. But the intrigue becomes humorous when his vice shows
disgust at theirs, and theirs becomes indignant at his, and they are
delighted to see it well ventilated. For so do we revenge ourselves
upon each other, using not our strength which would be tragic, but
our weaknesses. Then impartial justice is obliged to smile to see
these counterplots of folly further its great plan. What economy it is
to have individuals so contrived that they can baffle, mortify, and
school each other without importing the constable! We are self-acting
arrangements to relieve the universe from tax and keep its hilarity
replenished. In this genial manner "the whirligig of time brings in his
revenges." Even if we do not lie in wait for each other, the knowledge
of mutual frailties gives our whole life a sub-taste of humor; and that
leaves respect upon the tongue.

Sebastian says to the clown: "I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else."
Mankind makes the clown's answer: "Vent my folly! He has heard that
word of some great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I
am afraid this great lubberly world will prove a cockney." No fear of
that, my "corrupter of words;" so long as perfect discretion is unknown
upon the earth, we are all cosmopolites of infirmity and speak the
great language of smiles.

But the play does not let Malvolio drop softly on his feet. There is a
faint grudge provoked by the ill-tempered quality of his conceit, and
Shakspeare indicates this trait of our nature. The clown, who remembers
how the steward used to twit Olivia's contentment at his sallies, and
to deprecate it in a lofty way, now mimics his phrases and manner to
sting him with a last fluttering dart. Malvolio's pride is already too
deeply wounded, for he has indeed been "notoriously abused." There is
no relenting in such a man on account of the fun, for that is a crime
in the eyes of a Puritan, to be punished for God's sake. His temper
acquires sombreness from his belief that total depravity is a good
doctrine if you can only live up to it. But when this crime of fun is
perpetrated against the anointed self-esteem of the Puritan himself,
it is plain he will be revenged on the whole pack of them unless they
proceed to make a sop of deference to touch his hurt with, and a pipe
out of his own egotism for sounding a truce.

Shakspeare delighted to mark the transition of a virtue to a vice;
that elusive moment, as of a point of passage from one species to
another, discovered and put into a flash from the light of humor.
Malvolio's grave and self-respecting temperament is an excellence.
No decent man thinks meanly of himself, and the indecent ones cannot
afford the disparagement. The pretence of it is a warning to us to
expect mischief, a notice put up, "This is a private way; dangerous
passing." Whatever gift a man has becomes a divine permission for
self-consideration. Modesty is the humanity of a great mind, a
vapor which the sun instinctively gathers to make itself tolerable.
For instance, the profits of the Globe and Curtain Theatres helped
Shakspeare to his orchards and house in Stratford, but his poverty
in the matter of conceit furnished and made the New Place habitable.
The neighbor gossips did not have his "greatness thrust upon them."
Precisely because he was virtuous there were cakes and ale, and his
jests, no doubt, were spicy in the mouth too. This man who travailed
in secret with his glorious brood had nothing in his manner to record

 "Those daily, nightly drippings in the dark
 Of the heart's blood."

Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear were not known to be in town. These mighty
shapes, silently content to wait till a world's worship matched them,
forbore to bully the villagers. In time whole nations were mustered in,
so that his manifold greatness could be met on an equal footing. But
their gentle peer left posterity to beat the drum for this service.

But all men pardon that occasional frankness of egotism which is like
lifting a window for clear light to pass through, so that we recognize
that a commander is in the street.

Now, Malvolio's sobriety, his contempt for guzzling and roaring of
catches, his measured deportment, his nice and cleanly ways are
commendable results of his self-opinion, and cannot yield any advantage
to low fellows for roughing him until the decent pace of his austerity
becomes a strut. One of the characters in a late novel says, "When
I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam-cocks, I stand
dormant with wonder, and says no more." This tendency of Nature to a
peacock is discovered in the very act, at the moment of production, by
this lens of a smile with which we arm our eye. Malvolio is like the
fanatical England of the Commonwealth, which was flouted and dishonored
by the Aguecheeks and Belches of King Charles II., those inevitable
conspirers against immoderate and arrogant sobriety. They are sure
to come. "Nay, I'll come," says Fabian, "if I lose a scruple of this
sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy." Yes, the niggard
fellow shall "come by some notable shame." Says Sir Toby, "To anger
him, we'll have the bear again;" which England did to her heart's
content; but the discredit must be shared by the epoch which strove to
strut in the sad conceit that gladness was the sin against the Holy
Ghost.


TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (AJAX).

It is evident that large portions of this play are not by Shakspeare's
hand. It was first attributed to him and published in 1608. But there
is an entry in Henslowe's Diary, April 7, 1599, of a sum money lent to
"Mr. Dickers and Harey Cheatell, in earneste of their boocke called
Troyeles and Creassedaye." This play of Dekker and Chettle was probably
the original which Shakspeare adopted in order to improve. Mr. Fleay,
however, attributes to Shakspeare a first form of this play as early
as 1597. The improvements are as palpable as the original defects.
The play did not receive the benefit of a thorough recasting, and was
published under Shakspeare's name with large portions of the crude,
absurd, and indecent original matter unchanged.

When Troilus says,--

                 "Helen must needs be fair,
 When with your blood you daily paint her thus;"

and when Ulysses replies to the complaint of Achilles that his deeds
are forgotten,--

 "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
 Wherein he puts alms for oblivion;
 A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
 Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd
 As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
 As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
 Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang
 Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
 In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
 For honor travels in a strait so narrow,
 Where one but 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 enter'd tide, they all rush by,
 And leave you hindmost.
 For time is like a fashionable host,
 That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
 And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
 Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
 And farewell goes out sighing,"--

we need no help in recognizing the pen of Shakspeare. This is the
speech that holds embedded the world's household line,

 "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

But we should need sore helping to discover a touch of nature's style
in the lines of Troilus replying to the question, "Why stay we, then?"--

 "To make a recordation to my soul
 Of every syllable that here was spoke.
 But if I tell how these two did co-act,
 Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?
 Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,
 An esperance so obstinately strong,
 That doth invert th' attest of eyes and ears;
 As if those organs had deceptious functions,
 Created only to calumniate."

In the same fashion, the Prologue seems written by a pen whose feather
was in a constant ruffling. It talks of "princes orgulous," a word
nowhere used by Shakspeare, and one which he would have rallied: the
six gates of Troy have

                         "Massy staples
 And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts."

And Hector well earns the epithet which has sprung from his name when
he cries,--

 "Stand, stand, thou Greek! thou art a goodly mark:--
 No! wilt thou not?--I like thy armor well;
 I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,
 But I'll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide?
 Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide."

Numerous passages like this have the tone which unmistakably remands
them to the original play.

But who can help feeling the joyous and tender mood of Shakspeare
reproduced by the worshipping lines of Troilus to Cressida?--

 "Oh that I thought it could be in a woman
 (As, if it can, I will presume in you),
 To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love;
 To keep her constancy in plight and youth,
 Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind
 That doth renew swifter than blood decays!
 Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,
 That my integrity and truth to you
 Might be affronted with the match and weight
 Of such a winnow'd purity in love!
 How were I then uplifted! but, alas!
 I am as true as truth's simplicity,
 And simpler than the infancy of truth."

What a pure flame mounts up from each altar of these consecrated lines
to show the detestable uncleanness of some scenes which are left over
from the original play! When the wanton Cressida sweeps the chaste
fire from those altars and leaves them standing cold in his heart,
Shakspeare cries,--

                 "O Cressid!
 Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,
 And they'll seem glorious."

Some of the sentences spoken by Ulysses have become fixed in the
English consciousness; the rings of robust reflection have grown around
and appropriated them, so that the material is quotable in every market
and is applied to modern conveniences. The famous speech that charges
the Greek factions to their neglect of "degree, priority, and place,"--

         "Oh, when degree is shaked,
 Which is the ladder to all high designs,
 The enterprise is sick!"--

contains a truth as applicable to a democracy as to that Shakspearian
age which reared the defeaters of the Armada, and sent Drake and
Hawkins round the world.

What cause, in want of time or other inconvenience, left this
uncultivated play to be ascribed to Shakspeare is past conjecture. In
many respects it is like the modern burlesque, and may be regarded as
a remote ancestor of the rollicking English fun which brings out the
latent absurdities in ancient and mediæval chivalry. There is, for
instance, a play called "The Field of the Cloth of Gold," which makes
ridiculous the pomp of the courts of Kings Henry VIII. and Francis I.,
and represents the famous tournament as a tilt upon hobby-horses ending
in a milling match with bottle-holders and all the pugilistic cant.
There are plenty of blond women who appear to be out of employment at
present on purpose to lend a zest to this drollery, and everybody seems
to welcome with democratic delight the slur upon obsolete solemnities,
and the insinuation that the surviving ones are no more imposing.
With all the devices of the modern theatre, such a play manages to
be vastly more ludicrous than Troilus and Cressida, but it does not
start with such a cutting motive, and it is in the matter of morality
simply neutral. But the play attributed to Shakspeare is one prolonged
assault upon the foibles and indecencies of greatness, upon the trivial
pretexts that mar and vulgarize an epoch of heroism. The period of the
Trojan war is borrowed, and the characters of Homer's Iliad, to throw
into a salient light what was after all the real occasion of the famous
siege. Paris went to Greece, as Troilus says,--

 "And, for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,
 He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness
 Wrinkles Apollo's, and makes pale the morning.
 Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.
 Is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl,
 Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,
 And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants."

Several scholars dissatisfied with this reputed motive of the siege,
and of Homer's Iliad, take refuge in a theory of light-worship, and
of a conflict between the Orient and the Occident, the Dawn and the
Dark, such as no doubt underlies many of the ancient myths whose names
bear allusion to such phenomena. These commentators torture the names
and incidents of the Iliad to clear it of the stigma of having no
motive-power beyond the stealing of a light wife, and a re-delivery of
her to a complacent husband who makes no inquiries. Ten years of siege
and battle, of domestic broil and murder, of Odyssean adventures by sea
and land, that Helen may be transferred, warm from the arms of Priam,
back to the condoning embrace of Menelaus! Truly, when the ugly thing
stands thus stripped of its Homeric mantle, we hurry to demand that it
shall be decently clothed in travesty.

After the Prologue announces that expectation is "tickling skittish
spirits on one and other side," the scene soon opens with the indecent
Pandarus trifling with the famous epic names, as he taps them lightly
with his battledore to keep up his little game, which is to get Troilus
thoroughly involved with Cressida: "An her hair were not somewhat
darker than Helen's (well, go to), there were no more comparison
between the women;" then the puppy says, "I will not dispraise your
sister Cassandra's wit." Think of the jaunty go-between thus estimating
the terrible prophetess of the Agamemnon, while he is only whetting
Troilus's passion for Cressida, and devising means to bring them
together. For this is meant to travesty the rape of Helen, which was
the motive of the siege. The play begins by making incontinence a very
important business, and thus ridiculous. As Thersites says, "All the
argument is a cuckold, and war and lechery confound all."

Subsequently Cressida, at a wink from the Greek Diomedes, passes
out of the keeping of her Trojan lover, thus making the politics as
light as her love. And the scenes where Pandarus lickerishly plans
the assignation, and rallies Cressida afterwards, are so purposely
broad that every pretence of sentiment is emptied out of the play;
the vulgarity becomes so conspicuous that the fighting itself is
infected with it and runs into parody. The reader need only turn to
the interjectional soliloquies of Thersites, which supply to every
mock-heroic incident a very free translation, to perceive that there
was an intention in the co-laborers upon this play to make all such
famous court-manners and their quarrels seem ridiculous.

Thersites is Shakspeare himself in a cynic masquerade, that he may
watch the whole game and be privy to the monstrous immorality. Achilles
hangs back from fighting the Trojans, not in anger at the slight of
Agamemnon, but rather because he has a secret understanding with one
of Priam's daughters. Instead of maintaining consistent political
attitudes, almost everybody is carrying on some private transaction
of this kind, and the great heroes scramble like boys in a shower of
comfits. Pandarus, the disgraceful old uncle of Cressida, who brought
her and Troilus together in the same spirit which gave Helen to Paris,
and back again coolly to her proper husband, is left at the close of
the play to bewail the whole bad issue of the Homeric morals: "A goodly
medicine for mine aching bones! O world, world, world! Thus is the poor
agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a'
work, and how ill requited!"

In the second scene, the heroes swagger across the stage one by one
coming from the field, while Pandarus stands by and talks of each in
a way to make of them diminutive patterns of militia colonels. Æneas,
Antenor, Hector, Paris: "There's a brave man, niece;" "It does a man's
heart good." That's Antenor, "And he's a man good enough;" but where
is Troilus? "If he see me, you shall see him nod at me;" but see
Hector, and, oh, "What hacks are on his helmet!--there be hacks!" His
niece says, "Be those with swords?" "Swords? any thing:--an the devil
come to him, it's all one, by God's lid;" but there's Troilus; look,
niece, there's a man, "and his helm more hacked than Hector's." "Had
I a sister were a Grace, or a daughter a Goddess, he should take his
choice. Paris is dirt to him." Eh, Cressid, don't you take? So all
these scenes pass with a mischievous innuendo pushed forward by the
lackey sentences: "I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to
boot." Thus it runs on like a nautical melodrama, or the rattling chaff
of "Tom and Jerry," a stream on which the moral disgust of Thersites
swims in full view.

When Ajax appears, we are made aware in the first place, that he does
not know his letters. He flies into a rage with Thersites because
he refuses to read to him the proclamation of Hector's challenge,
and they fling the vilest Billingsgate at each other, varied with
fisticuffs. They try to outdo each other at a game of epithets. If one
says, "Thou mongrel, beef-witted lord," the other says, "Toad-stool."
"Porcupine," says one in a way to wither. "Scurvy-valiant ass," retorts
the other. So in a later scene these phrases of invective remind us of
Shakspeare: "Damnable box of envy;" "thou full dish of fool;" "thou
idle, immaterial skein of sleeve silk;" "green sarcenet flap for a sore
eye." This, flung at Patroclus, convinces us that the plain of Troy has
shrunken to a dog-pit, and we give odds on Thersites. "To be a mule, a
cat, a lizard, an owl, or a herring without a roe, I would not care;
but to be Menelaus,--I would conspire against destiny. I care not to be
the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus."

There is a long scene in which the prominent Trojans discuss the policy
of returning Helen and getting entirely out of the scrape. Hector says,
"Let her go,--any ten Trojans' lives are as dear to us as she; she is
not worth what she doth cost the holding." This profit-and-loss view
of the case is despised by the rest, especially by Troilus, who is the
only consistent person in the play, and who is nobly contrived to keep
alive for us the tradition of honor and manhood. Now Cassandra enters
to bully like a fish-woman, with arms akimbo:

 "Our fire-brand brother, Paris, burns us all.
 Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen, and a woe:
 Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go."

Troilus flatly says that she is mad. Finally, Hector, though confessing
that by every moral law Helen ought to be restored to her husband,
thinks it better to hold on to her because she is a spur to valor, and
their reputations depend upon preventing the Greeks from carrying their
point. It is a discussion of shopkeepers who are aspiring to be actors
and couch their speech in high-stepping hexameters.

Pandarus sings to Helen such a bit of frippery that we expect to see
them both begin to hop from one foot to the other in the style of the
burlesque, as they deliver the chorus of "Oh! oh! ha! ha! hey ho!"

There never was such deliberate absurdity as the fighting in this play.
The original draught of it was certainly left untouched by Shakspeare,
probably to keep the laugh sustained. It is all done in the vein of
Bombastes. "Now, they are clapper-clawing one another," says Thersites;
"I'll go look on." Diomedes enters, followed by Troilus, who bids
him stand; for, if he took to the river Styx, Troilus would jump in
after him. "Stand, forsooth," says Diomedes; "don't flatter yourself I
was flying: no, my worthy Trojan, I was only extricating myself from
the multitude to get at you,--so come on." They come on, and go off
fighting. Pretty soon Diomedes enters with the horse of Troilus, under
the pantomimic illusion that he has slain its master. He despatches the
horse with a note to Cressida, his new mistress, late the mistress
of the late Troilus. But Troilus was no more dead than Falstaff was
embowelled; he enters in a fine fume, looking up his horse. There is
Ajax bellowing to come to close quarters with him, and Diomedes in the
rear bawling in imitation of Ajax, but ironically, because he thinks
that Troilus fell by his hand. It is a very unexpected accommodation
when Troilus appears, and the three go out fighting. Not a drop of
blood is spilt as yet, for these are pasteboard warriors with wind
for blood. But now comes Hector meeting Achilles, who goes into a
perilous bluster as if the Trojan's last moments had arrived in his
person. "Have at thee, Hector." "Very well," says Hector, "why don't
you begin?" "Well, no, on the whole, I won't," replies Achilles; "my
arms are out of practice, luckily for you; you may go unscathed this
time." No sooner has Hector gone, than Achilles slips off to collect a
party of his Myrmidons whom he engages to waylay Hector and overcome
him by force of numbers. They find him resting with his helmet off,
and they butcher him; Achilles crying, "Here he is, that's your man!"
Then a retreat is sounded on both sides, as if for fear that some one
would get hurt. The whole play breaks up abruptly, and nothing is
finished. It seems like a tale told by an idiot, "full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing." The sincere lover, Troilus, meeting Pandarus
somewhere amid these punchinello combats, invokes ignominy and shame
upon the pander's life, and invites posterity to use his name as a
designation of a vile profession. Thus we return upon the track of
the play's motive, and feel competent to enjoy, without hindrance, the
humor and irony which saturate the scenes. Let us notice the character
of Ajax, which is scratched all over by Shakspeare's pen.

From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit
only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent
distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, and not to any distinction
in his quality. Malvolio's conceit is Turveydropian and runs to
deportment. Even when he grows flighty with the fancy of being Olivia's
husband, he still meditates what his great air must be. "I will be
point-de-vice the very man: to have the humor of state, and after a
demure travel of regard, to ask for my kinsman, Toby. I extend my
hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard
of control." Standing thus posed, if he should undertake to bow, Toby
might believe he "saw creases come into the whites of his eyes."

Dogberry's consequence affects inconsequential phrases, and his days
on earth are a series of _non-sequiturs_. Ajax has quite as good an
opinion of himself as both these worthies, yet he says he knows not
what pride is. "Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I do
hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of toads." "Yet he loves
himself," says Nestor. Ulysses and Nestor avail themselves of his
monstrous sense of superiority to flatter him into fighting Hector
in the place of Achilles. This is to pique Achilles and break up his
lethargy. Ajax is "a man into whom Nature hath so crowded humors,
that his valor is crushed into folly." He sulks in his tent because he
feels as valorous as Achilles, and must therefore sport the Achillean
moods. He despises the strategy of Ulysses, calls it closet-war,
because his own _forte_ is nothing but giving and taking knocks, and
his want of thought feels superior to all thinking. You have to behave
very gingerly with such a person; if your deference once turns its
back, the offence is mortal, and you may make your will. And these
people are outrageously touchy; before you have time to make all snug,
their conceit has assumed a vortical movement threatening to suck
up into its spout every thing in the way. Fire shots at it if you
please, but they will not make it tumble. Your only tact is to tack
and give it a wide berth. So we see that when Ajax fails to attract
any notice he becomes abusive and violent; and he is constantly trying
to get somebody to concede that he is a man of as pretty parts as any
other Greek. Achilles, forsooth! Who set him up to feel so big, and a
better man than I? "If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him
o'er the face." "Oh, no, you shall not go." "An a' be proud with me,
I'll pheeze his pride." Of course, for of all our pretexts for hating
each other there is none so apt as our mutual conceits. We can pardon
villainy sooner, for that only affronts an abstract conscience. But a
man's conceit is the particular cherished bunion for another man's foot
to inadvertently outrage. A straight blow in the chest, hit out from
the shoulder, is a signal to measure your strength with another man.
But to measure your weakness with him makes you wince. How adroitly
Ulysses "rubs the vein" of Ajax's pride! As soon as the first ripple of
Ulysses's blarney reaches his feet, he begins to float like a bladder
of rapture, and goes bobbing enormously into the net they have spread
for him.

When the plot begins to affect him, Thersites observes that "he goes up
and down the field asking for himself." As Douglas Jerrold would say:
"He stalks as though Colossus had quitted Rhodes to head a company."
"He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically
proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing."
Then he describes him as a veritable Malvolio in armor. Is he really
in Olivia's garden, with Sir Toby and the rest on the watch? "Why, he
stalks up and down like a peacock; a stride, and a stand; ruminates
like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her
reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard,[4] as who should say,
'There were wit in this head, an't would out.' The man's undone for
ever; for if Hector break not his neck in the combat, he'll break't
himself in vain-glory. He knows not me. I said, 'Good morrow, Ajax;'
and he replies, 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think you of this man that
takes me for the general? He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a
monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a
leather jerkin."

Thersites does not allude to opinions which may be turned as easily as
a jacket, but to the opinionative temper; nothing turns us so neatly
inside out as our good opinion of ourselves. Shakspeare uses the word
"opinion" occasionally in this sense; as in I Henry IV. iii. I, where
Worcester criticises Hotspur's disposition:--

 "Defect of manners, want of government,
 Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain."

So, whether in armor, in a swallow-tail, or in a surplice, our peacock
vein expands around the world.

Then Thersites proposes to imitate the austere conceit of Ajax: "Let
Patroclus make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax."
This is done, and the freezing brevity of Thersites is exactly like
Malvolio's in the height of his fantasy, when Sir Toby and the rest
offer to converse with him.


BOTTOM.

When Malvolio is trying to break up the midnight revel, the mischievous
Maria fleers at him with, "Go shake your ears." That is a performance
for which Malvolio is still too distant from his congener. But
self-sufficiency succeeds in preserving that structure in Bottom, who
is so deep and rich with harmless vanity that he sprouts into the
auricular appendages, and he shakes them in the most amiable, frisky
way through the Dream of a Midsummer Night. But there is nothing
sour about Bottom; he has none of the quality which Margaret Fuller
was the first to call "aloofness." He is hale-fellow with all his
mates who appreciate the small gifts which belong to him, and which he
good-naturedly strives to render serviceable. Though he is a better
fellow than Malvolio, he has all that precisian's ambition; for as the
steward could be Olivia's husband as well as any other man,--forsooth,
why not?--so Bottom thinks he can play all the parts, rises to their
glittering bait, and would appropriate the whole interlude. He is one
of those self-made men who occasionally discredit their own bringing
up and help us to recover our respect for a liberal education. Like
the man of whom Sydney Smith said that he was ready at any moment to
undertake the command of the Channel Fleet or run a factory, they have
elbowed their way into a conviction that they can fill all the offices
from constable to President in a style to astonish men of disciplined
intelligence. And they frequently succeed in doing that. Men who
unfortunately enjoyed early advantages, and whose lives have perhaps
been a protracted training in the virtue as well as wit which lifts
state-craft above gambling, have the proper kind of admiration for
these chevaliers of industry.

But a highly successful deficiency of education does not make Bottom
arrogant. As Athenian dicast, foreman of an English jury, republican
officer under investigation, his suavity would be unimpeachable. He
is good-tempered, and the first tap of flattery cracks his whole
pretension; so that the crafty Quince manages to cast him for Pyramus,
who was just such another sweet-faced and destructive lady's man.

Dogberry's malapropisms are inflations made by his vanity to float him
into an appearance of sagacity, donkeys' hides blown up to take him
across the stream of intercourse. But Bottom miscalls his words from
sheer rusticity, and not from any effort to borrow the language of his
superiors. The word "alleviate" which he has sometimes heard has been
dribbling from brain-cell to cell, and so struggles unconsciously into
"aggravate" at last. He uses genteel words which have stayed out of
town so long as to be countrified; he has not picked them up, but they
have blown into his mind and lodged there, like mallow-seeds. So we see
that he is in most senses a born natural, proprietor by birth of the
crest which at last he wears. But he is not all fool, for when he wakes
out of his exposition of sleep and says he has had a dream, we notice
that he is reluctant to expound it. He begins, "Methought I was,"--but
a feeling of self-respect interrupts him; he tries it again, to say if
he can that he had been wearing asses' ears, but his lips refuse that
indignity and he gives it up, much to Shakspeare's credit.

A student of Shakspeare often finds himself wandering waterless and
foodless in the sage-brush of æsthetic criticism. Heraud, in his book
entitled "Shakspeare, his Inner Life," suggests that when Bottom
"transmogrified" the text, "The eye of man hath not seen," &c., so
that the new gospel according to Bottom ran thus, "The eye of man
hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able
to taste," &c., Shakspeare intended to imply that the changing and
translating of Bottom shadowed forth the manner in which we shall be
transformed in the future life; "but to have done this directly would
have been undramatic and otherwise objectionable." This affronts
and takes advantage of Bottom's want of intelligence, who might
well caution the critic: "Monsieur Cobweb! good Monsieur, get your
weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top
of a thistle; and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. And, good
Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not: I would be loath to have
you overflown with a honey-bag." But this surfeiting freshet of the
modern revival spreads all over Shakspeare's meadows of daisies and
forget-me-nots.

Heraud's notion spoils the humor of Bottom's snarl of words which
represents perplexity so profound that it must recur to Scripture for
relief in expression.

I must notice here another pragmatic after-thought, although it has no
connection with the character of Bottom. Heraud is so bent upon forcing
a conscious Protestant motive upon Shakspeare that he spoils one of the
best passages in the play of Cymbeline. When Imogen, in consequence
of a note brought to her from her husband, Leonatus Posthumus, goes
to Milford Haven with Pisanio, whom the husband has commissioned to
kill her for supposed adultery, she first learns the object of the
journey: this converts the beguiling note into something false, unlike
her husband, inexplicable. She has thrust it into her bosom: there it
lies. "Come, here's my heart," as she invites Pisanio to perform his
duty. Then her hand comes into contact with the paper which she had
put there. It shall not stand in the way: "The scriptures of the loyal
Leonatus all turned to heresy?" That is, she has put the note in a
place where it might divert the stroke which the spirit of the note
intended:--

                       "Away, away,
 Corrupters of my faith! You shall no more
 Be stomachers to my heart!"

The constant and innocent wife disdains even the slight chance that
a bit of paper might turn or deaden the stroke despatched by a loyal
husband. She is as loyal as he, but he knows it not: so it is better to
die at once than live on thus misconceived. For what is life without
the confidence of a loyal husband? The canon against self-slaughter is
so divinely engraven in the conscience that it suspends her own hand.
Therefore, since life is no longer of value and interest to her, let
Pisanio finish. This is the drift of Imogen's speech.

But Heraud imputes to Shakspeare a theological motive in the use of the
word "scriptures," as if he meant to include, by secondary allusion,
the Bible; and he adds that Shakspeare, although "a critical reader
of the Bible and an extreme Protestant," felt the danger of letting
the Reformation lapse, by the abuse of reason, into heresies, the only
preventive of which was the Catholic principle of authority watching
over the use of the Bible.

The German commentators of Shakspeare have done some magnificent work,
open occasionally to the English charge of over-subtlety. But no
German can yet vie with this English straining to impute to the text
an unnatural and ponderous motive. Bottom said that he could "see a
voice," and went to the chink to spy if he could hear his Thisbe's
face. But these modern observations are far more preternatural.

All the scenes of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," which depend upon the
desire of the Athenian mechanicals to amuse their prince, are merely
comical when taken alone. The characters thus constructed, by passing
into the serious portions of the play, infect it with the element of
humor; for the simple earnestness of all their clownishness fraternizes
in no offensive way with the more poetical moods of high society, and
we feel the charm that equalizes all mankind. The pomp of a court is
concentrated at a fustian play that is poorly propertied with bush,
lantern, and a fellow daubed with lime. Simpleness and duty tender
this contrast, and it comes not amiss. Their crude parody of the fate
of Pyramus and Thisbe, done in perfect good faith, is a claim that
humble love may have its fortunes too, as well as that of the proud
and over-conscious dames who have been roaming through the woods, sick
with fancies. What a delightful raillery it is! Yes, we take the point:
"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if
imagination amend them."

It is also a suggestion of the subtlest humor when Titania summons her
fairies to wait upon Bottom; for the fact is that the soul's airy and
nimble fancies are constantly detailed to serve the donkeyism of this
world. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman." Divine gifts stick
musk-roses in his sleek, smooth head. The world is a peg that keeps
all spiritual being tethered. John Watt agonizes to teach this _vis
inertiæ_ to drag itself by the car-load; Palissy starves for twenty
years to enamel its platter; Franklin charms its house against thunder;
Raphael contributes halos to glorify its ignorance of divinity; all the
poets gather for its beguilement, hop in its walk and gambol before
it, scratch its head, bring honey-bags, and light its farthing dip at
glow-worms' eyes. Bottom's want of insight is circled round by fulness
of insight, his clumsiness by dexterity. In matter of eating, he really
prefers provender: "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow." But how
shrewdly Bottom manages this holding of genius to his service! He knows
how to send it to be oriented with the blossoms and the sweets, giving
it the characteristic counsel not to fret itself too much in the action.

You see there is nothing sour and cynical about Bottom. His daily peck
of oats, with plenty of munching-time, travels to the black cell where
the drop of gall gets secreted into the ink of starving thinkers, and
sings content to it on oaten straw. Bottom, full-ballasted, haltered
to a brown-stone-fronted crib, with digestion always waiting upon
appetite, tosses a tester to Shakspeare, who might, if the tradition
be true, have held his horse in the purlieus of the Curtain or Rose
Theatre: perhaps he sublet the holding while he slipped in to show
Bottom how he is a deadly earnest fool; and the boxes crow and clap
their unconsciousness of being put into the poet's celestial stocks.
All this time Shakspeare is divinely restrained from bitterness by the
serenity which overlooks a scene. If, like the ostrich, he had been
only the largest of the birds which do not fly, he might have wrangled
for his rations of ten-penny nails and leather, established perennial
indigestion in literature, and furnished plumes to jackdaws. But he
flew closest to the sun, and competed with the dawn for a first taste
of its sweet and fresh impartiality.

The humor in this play meddles even with love; for that, too, must be
the sport of circumstance and superior power, yet always continue to
be the deepest motive of mankind. The juice of love's flower dropped
on the eyelids of these distempered lovers makes the caprices of
passion show and shift; love in idleness becomes love in earnest, as
Puck distils the drops of marriage or of mischief. Titania herself is
possessed with that common illusion which marries gracious qualities to
absurd companionship. Says Puck,--

       "Those things do best please me
 That befall preposterously."

But this is fleeting. Shakspeare soon breaks the spell in which some
of his most delicate and sprightly verses have revelled. The whole
play expresses humor on a revel, and brings into one human feeling the
supernature, the caprice and gross mischance, the serious drift of life.


TOUCHSTONE.

When we pass from Jaques to Touchstone in "As You Like It," we have
expelled that bitter drop which infused sadness into our vein, and the
pulse resumes its hilarity. Jaques was not so well-tempered as the
female celebrity of our day, who made it a rule, she said, when she
heard any scandal of a friend, to hope for the best and believe the
worst. Touchstone agrees substantially with Jaques in his views about
court-fashions and social conventions, and says things quite as sharp;
but he has the tone of genuine humor, and its good-nature never deserts
him except when his legs do, as he takes that dispiriting journey into
the forest of Arden. We should say that, for a man of his breeding, the
clownish and ill-favored Audrey would overcome the most redoubtable
temper; for we half believe with Jaques that his "loving voyage is
but for two months victualled:" but he has no cynical suspicion. When
he sees the sentimental plight of Rosalind, he merrily parodies it,
and imagines an old flirtation of his with one Jane Smile; pretending
to recollect that he wooed a peascod instead of her in her absence,
from which he "took two cods, and, giving her them again, said with
weeping tears, 'Wear these for my sake.'" Then he sums it all up with
the tolerant reflection, "We, that are true lovers, run into strange
capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal
in folly:" that is, Nature can be foolish in love, but the folly is
mortal as all the things of Nature are, and will pass away leaving
love behind. Therefore he'll have no jibes about it; and Rosalind
justly replies, "Thou speak'st wiser than thou art 'ware of." In his
quick answer to this, we detect the purpose of Shakspeare to keep the
character ignorant of its own _naïveté_: "Nay, I shall ne'er be 'ware
of mine own wit, till I break my shins against it." For humor is not so
studiedly conscious of its own quality as irony and satire are. Jaques,
meeting Orlando over ears deep in love, says ill-natured things to him,
and invites him to a game of railing "against our mistress the world,
and all our misery." The difference between his wit and Touchstone's is
subtly indicated throughout the play, and is one of Shakspeare's most
admirable studies in nature. Jaques marks the moment when the virtue
of complete knowledge of the world passes into the vice of discontent.
Touchstone expresses the gladness of being a member of this inevitable
world, and of tolerating himself with the other fools. Thus all his
strictures upon society have this superiority, that they cannot be
suspected of hypocrisy and ill-will. Nothing is so depressing as the
cynic's perpetual strain of undervaluing. It exhausts the heart like
an air-bell; the feather of his irony no longer floats, but drops like
lead to weigh us down with suspecting ourselves, and so dragging by
that mood all the other people into a pitiful depreciation. We grow
light again and rise buoyantly to the sunshiny surface when Touchstone
implicates us so good-humoredly in unwisdom, counting himself in, not
to miss his taste of the impartiality we all require.

As his name indicates, he tests with a touch the metal of society, and
shows dispassionately the color of spuriousness. His foolishness is his
naturalness. He is a born simpleton in the sense of being unworldly,
a fool "by heavenly compulsion." So he is continually in a state of
organic contrast to conventionality. He hears the wrestling-match
described, in which three men had their ribs broken. "What is the
sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?" "Why, this that I speak
of." "Thus men may grow wiser every day! It is the first time that
ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies." The people in
the fashion are the real wearers of motley, as Celia says: "Since the
little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise
men have makes a great show." Touchstone is

           "Wise enough to play the fool;
 And, to do that well, craves a kind of wit;
 He must observe their mood on whom he jests,
 The quality of persons, and the time;
 Not, like the haggard, check at every feather
 That comes before his eye. This is a practice
 As full of labor as a wise man's art."

In these lines, Shakspeare provides us with the pass-key to the purpose
of his court fools and clowns. In them the world's confidential moments
speak, when it is off its guard or has no motive to dissimulate. And it
is a benefit if men can discover their folly by having it wisely shown
to them.

 "The wise man's folly is anatomiz'd
 Even by the squandering glances of the fool."

Jaques accosts him in the forest, "Good-morrow, fool." Touchstone
replies, "Call me not fool, till Heaven hath sent me fortune." For
thus, indeed, like the wise men, he will have a social chance to show,
as they do, what his folly is. Jaques relates how he heard Touchstone
airing the solemn triviality of well-ordered circles. Taking out his
dial,--

 "Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags;
 'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;
 And, after one hour more, 'twill be eleven;
 And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,
 And thereby hangs a tale."

What tale? Why, the everlasting tedious one of over-accredited
common-place behavior. Only a Touchstone, with his sly appreciation,
can lend any liveliness to that. No wonder Jaques exclaims, "Motley's
the only wear." He sees that Touchstone "hath strange places crammed
with observation," and is a man after his own mind. If the temper of
Jaques only could have been invested in that motley, they that would
be most galled with his folly, "they most must laugh." He is delighted
to find that fools can be "so deep contemplative." The deepness of it
rests on Touchstone's appreciation of the average shallowness, but
there is nothing in his tone to stir that up to a feeble sputter of
resentment. Something in the tone continually appeals to us, as he did
to Audrey: "Doth my simple feature content you?" Yes, there is nothing
scurrilous in thee, else thou hadst not taken up so comfortably with
Audrey, who cannot even wish that the gods had made her poetical.
"Who calls?" says Corin. "Your betters, sir," replies Touchstone; for
everybody is superior to somebody.

What a fine pretence he makes that good manners are essential to
salvation, when he asks Corin, "Wast ever in court, shepherd?" Never at
court! "Then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin
is damnation." See the mock Grundy lift his hands, and cast upward the
look of shocked superiority. It is done well enough to serve our social
virtuosity for a whole epoch of its disdain.

And mark what good sense the fellow has; for, knowing that Audrey
cannot appreciate his parts, he says: "When a man's verses cannot be
understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child,
understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a
little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical." Audrey
replies: "I do not know what poetical is. Is it honest in deed and
word? Is it a true thing?" Honest and true! We see what has won the
heart of this motley disparager of cant and shams.

We see it too in the scene where he brings his wife into the Duke's
company, with such an air of self-possession mixed with a pleased sense
that she is his best joke at the punctilio of fashionable life. "An
ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own; a poor humor of mine, sir, to
take that that no man else will." Not so poor a humor; for humor itself
does that, and adopts into the human family the outcasts who come
between the wind and our nobility. "Rich honesty dwells like a miser,
sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster." Then he
amuses the Duke with a strain that runs into irony, because it has the
semblance of being seriously meant, upon some other esteemed punctilios
of the code of honor: he rallies the whole nicely graded scale of
customs from the retort courteous to the lie direct, and nominates in
order the degrees of the lie. But you may avoid even the lie direct
with an _If_. "If you said so, then I said so." How many a quarrel on
the platform and in the parlor has been stifled by this bolster of an
_If_, and the parties quietly subside into a profounder dislike.

The kind of marriages which the French call _de convenance_ get a
wholesome rebuke from him; and the vulgarity of its terms is not wanton
but highly apposite, as it is a part of the intended satire. It strips
the matrimonial arrangement of its rhetoric, when he tells the shepherd
that it is another simple sin in him to bring the incompatible members
of his flock together, "out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not
damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds." He really
imparts to you the surmise that the _mariages de convenance_ were
appropriately derived by natural selection from the animal world.

In fine, the Duke characterizes Touchstone well when he says, "He uses
his folly like a stalking-horse; and under the presentation of that
he shoots his wit." So hunters, who are seriously concerned to obtain
food, work along towards their game behind a mimicry of it. And such
a hunter for the soul of goodness, stalking it underneath the obvious
beguilement, is the Humor of Shakspeare:--

 "In good earnest, and so God mend me."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: A clear trace of Shakspeare. Malvolio says, "A demure
travel of regard," when he imagines the state-humor he will put on;
and when he will send for Toby he expects to quench his familiar smile
"with an austere regard of control." The "Twelfth Night" was first
acted in February, 1602.]




FALSTAFF:

HIS COMPANIONS; AMERICANISMS.


FALSTAFF.

The political interest of the reigns of Henry IV. and V. is divided by
the huge bulk of Falstaff, who lightly buffets the tide and emerges
with invincible gayety as often as the tragedy closes around him. His
wake draws after it a number of disreputable or silly fellows, whom
his audacious humor alone prevails upon the tragedy to tolerate. The
job of turning them out would include the dismissal of the unbounded
man in whom they move and have their being; and the gravity of the
political situation is engrossed enough to hold its own ground against
them, to prevent a freshet of comedy from washing off its state.
They seem to have been the traits of Falstaff which were left over
in the making up of his personality; and, this attaining at length
to such a circumference that no more matter could be comprised, the
surplus revolved as satellites. There is Bardolph who says that Sir
John is "out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass;" but he
himself is the inflammation which all the monstrous quantity of sack
could not suffuse Sir John with, who burns by proxy in his nose. He
is the red mark for Falstaff's raillery, but liquor and lodgings
keep him companionable, so that, when at last "the fuel is gone that
maintained that fire," he has a tear or two, not yet evaporated, to
help the obsequies of his master. There is Pistol, a great haunter
of play-houses, where he has picked up phrases of bombast, such as
swarmed in the bad tragedies of the period; when the sack has reached
his head it sets them all afloat, to raffle the company:

                 "Shall packhorses,
 And hollow-pamper'd jades of Asia,
 Which cannot go but thirty miles a day,
 Compare with Cæsars, and with Cannibals,
 And Trojan Greeks? nay, rather damn them with
 King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar."

Pistol's love for alliteration puts a _c_ for an _h_ in the third line,
and turns the Carthaginian into a Carib.

Falstaff is cowardly from policy, and reasons himself into the belief
that honor is a paltry motive for the risk of sustaining knocks. What
was left over of this pusillanimity appears unadulterated in Pistol,
who snatches up his sword, calls upon death to rock him asleep and
abridge his doleful days; but he is a tame cheater, "you may stroke
him as gently as a puppy greyhound." If a hen turns back her feathers
he is off, to disappear from history with his mouth full of the
Welshman's leek. There is Mistress Quickly who caters for Falstaff's
vices, endures his swindling till almost all her goods have gone to the
pawnbroker's, and then admires to be cajoled back into more lending,
dismisses the suit which she brought with such strenuous and voluble
feebleness, and hopes he will come to supper. She tells a story as any
Yankee Cousin Sally would, dwelling upon insignificant accessories and
recurring to them to give the memory a fresh start, till the narrative
becomes nothing but mnemonics. "It was no longer ago than Wednesday
last,--Neighbor Quickly, says he,--Master Dumb, our minister, was
by then,--Neighbor Quickly, says he, receive those that are civil;
for, saith he, you are in an ill-name;--now, he said so, I can tell
whereupon."

It is plain that the Down-East style of narrative emigrated with
Popham, and effected the settlement which he failed to do. A trivial
mind is a haunt for petty details, where they are fondled and fed, so
that they become too familiar, and keep tripping up the story-teller
who vainly tries to strike a direct path, and for want of point arrives
nowhere.

"Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my
Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday
in Whitsun-week, when the Prince broke thy head for liking his father
to a singing-man of Windsor: thou didst swear to me then, as I was
washing thy wound, to marry me, and make me my lady thy wife. Canst
thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then,
and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar;
telling us she had a good dish of prawns, whereby thou didst desire to
eat some, whereby I told thee they were ill for a green wound." But
she, too, is won into a kind of fidelity by the charms of Sir John's
manner; and, when he falls sick unto his death, she cannot forget some
genial hours. "Ah, poor heart! he is so shaked of a burning quotidian
tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him."

The brain of Justice Shallow smoulders with the brag of his youth; and,
when he delightedly blows it up, he has the impression that he was
redoubtable for performance. The visit of such a solid, whole-souled
profligate as Falstaff is a rare chance for him to prate of the
wildness of his youth, "and every third word a lie." "Lord, lord, how
subject we old men are to this vice of lying!" He makes paralytic
efforts to fraternize with Falstaff's wickedness, poking sly innuendoes
at his immeasurable superiority in that line. Falstaff remembers that
he "came ever in the rear-ward of the fashion." He has settled down
into comfortable living; and his leanness is smug with all the details
of it,--the pigeons, and the russets, the mutton, "and any pretty
little tiny kickshaws." "Oh, the mad days that I have spent! and to
see how many of my old acquaintance are dead.--How a good yoke of
bullocks? Is old Double dead?--How a score of ewes now?" So earnest
with his petty thrift that death is but a formality. The feeble ripple
of his talk over a bed of commonplaces would soon tire out the livelier
Sir John, if he did not see money to borrow and good fat quarters to
cultivate. So this man, "made after supper of a cheese-paring," has
the flimsiest of butterfly-nets thrown over him, and is caught without
damage.

There is little to say of Poins, save that he helps the Prince to play
the fool with the time, while the spirits of the wise mock them. Now
and then he reminds the Prince that his father is lying sick while
he trifles so. Then the Prince gives us glimpses of the temper which
separates at last from Falstaff, when the crown pushes the fool's cap
from his head. "Thou think'st me as far in the devil's book as thou
and Falstaff, for obduracy and persistency: let the end try the man."
He is strong enough to enact this episode of folly without letting it
tamper with the kingship which is the proper quality of his soul. And
Falstaff seems to have transferred to him a portion of his own wit, as
if on purpose to be soundly railed at and stimulated to the top of his
bent. The only advantage which the Prince has over his fat knight is a
commodity of truth-telling; but Falstaff cheapens it by the genius of
his escapes.

Corporal Nym will cut a purse and drain a can without winking, as the
rest will; but he admires to have a pretence of soldierly bluntness,
as when he says, "I dare not fight; but I will wink, and hold out
mine iron." He is a man of few words, and has something of Cromwell's
enigmatic way of speaking to cover his deliberate intention of doing
nothing to end his days. "I cannot tell; things must be as they may.
There must be conclusions. Well, I cannot tell, ... and that's the
humor of it." A silent man, but not of the fighting type which helped
Queen Elizabeth's adventurers to sack the towns of the Spanish main and
defray the expense of her countenance. His rapier is out before his
bluster, because the latter has rusted in its sheath. He has a quarrel
with Pistol about eight shillings,--not the first, by many a tavern
reckoning; and he has an unaffected desire to run him through the body
and let out his vaporing.

"Pay!" cries Pistol: I have not sunk so low as that. "Base is the slave
that pays." Out come the swords, and you expect "flashing fire will
follow." But Pistol has calculated that Bardolph, who is present, will
allow no fighting; so he brandishes up to the very verge of blows, to
make Bardolph say, "He that strikes the first stroke, I'll run him up
to the hilts, as I am a soldier." Pistol manages to have this threat
arrive on the ground just in time to apprehend the parties for a breach
of the peace. Nym shoves his sword back with the feigned grumble of a
disappointed man: "I will cut thy throat, one time or other, in fair
terms; that is the humor of it,"--Mrs. Quickly having plighted her
troth to him, and Pistol having married her in spite of it.

A man with a great flow of animal spirits is sometimes, especially if
he is liable, to sudden bursts of this exuberance, mistaken to be under
the influence of wine. Falstaff's average rate of mirth is so high that
wine refuses to contest it. The blood of his vein can afford to be
handicapped against the blood of the grape. The monstrous quantities of
sack sink through the porosities of his rotundity, and mildly percolate
a subterranean world; so that his abstinence in the article of bread is
a very nice instinct that balancing bulk enough exists already.

Falstaff, by every ordinary law of human nature, should be inebriated.
His exemption is a kind of atheism. But he prefers to have his own
vices over-done in the persons of his companions, all of whom seem to
have anticipated the sanitary argument in favor of the use of liquor
that an American suggested: "If water will rot a cedar-post, what
will it do to the human stomach!" Now Pistol's brain, owing to the
rarefaction produced by rhetoric, is an exhausted receiver into which
all fluids rush and qualify him for inebriety. It is sometimes so
excessive that the fuller Falstaff has to beat him out of the room. But
one can never say that Pistol is disguised in liquor; for when he is
the drunkest his exalted style is most conspicuous. He calls for more
sack; then, unbuckling his sword, he draws out the Bilbao blade before
laying it down, and manglingly spouts off the Spanish motto that is
upon it,--

 "_Se fortuna me tormenta, il sperare me contenta_;"

calls the weapon his sweetheart, and, when Bardolph tries to turn him
out, snatches it up, and seems to sharpen it upon horrid threats:

 "What! shall we have incision? shall we imbrue?
 Why then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds
 Untwine the sisters three! Come, Atropos, I say!"

Fate comes in the person of Falstaff, who declares, "An a' do nothing
but speak nothing, a' shall be nothing here;" for Falstaff has the
virtue of a keen appreciation of the appositeness of words.

You have your choice to regard these people as whimsical
disenchantments of Falstaff by a satirical demon, or to consider
Falstaff as an aggregate of these people invested with the illusion of
wit. Pistol is the raw article of poltroonery done in fustian instead
of a gayly slashed doublet. Bardolph is the capaciousness for sherry
without the capacity to make it apprehensive and forgetive: it goes to
his head, but, finding no brain there, is provoked to the nose, where
it lights a cautionary signal. Nym is the brag stripped of resources,
shivering in prosiness. Dame Quickly is the easy virtue in reduced
circumstances, dropped out of its fashionable quarter to keep a bar
and be a procuress,--all the fine phrases pawned clear down to vulgar
gossip.

Thus brawling, boasting, tippling, thieving, silly tricks and waggery
come strolling behind Falstaff into the company of kings and nobles, no
chamberlain to announce them, no crossed halberts to repel.

The second part of "King Henry IV." opens nobly with the conflicting
rumors which travel from the lost field of Shrewsbury, where the
flame of rebellion was quenched, towards the castle of the Earl of
Northumberland, who hopes to hear that it has prospered. There is
nothing insignificant in the characters who have ranged themselves on
either side of the great question of their times. Rebellion may be a
blunder, but it levies on manhood a tax as heavy as loyalty. So we
are admitted to the society of great politicians, full of an idea,
who blossom on the top of their epoch whence the sap that feeds them
is derived. They venture life and fortune upon the moment when their
tendency opens and exhales. They are impersonations of that quality
in the soil of their country which has grown up to them, to claim and
put them forth to triumph or suffer with the ideas which are involved.
They risk hereditary honor and estate, send their eldest sons and
heirs of titles into the field which two political tendencies select
to strive for precedence. The whole spirit of the scene is noble and
unselfish: lands, luxuries, and quiet are forsworn; and a preference,
be it only of passion, be it a humor of the times mixed of equal parts
of honor and vanity, be it alloyed with disappointments and galled
ambitions, is yet virile enough to stake its own aggrandizement rather
than let inglorious caution strangle the chance of supremacy. The
style is elevated and sincere. Rumors of a conflicting nature, making
post-horses of the wind, come like cross-tides to dash the feelings to
and fro; now lifting them upon a wave of promise, now letting them drop
into the trough of despondency. The decisive drift is soon announced,
and the father of Hotspur has to accept the tidings of his son's fate.
In vain the sanguine-tempered Lord Bardolph discredits and tries to
explain away the news. But his spirit rises to the tide-mark of the
disaster:

 "We all, that are engaged to this loss,
 Knew that we ventur'd on such dangerous seas,
 That, if we wrought our life, 'twas ten to one:
 And yet we ventur'd, for the gain propos'd
 Chok'd the respect of likely peril fear'd;
 And, since we are o'erset, venture again.
 Come; we will all put forth,--body, and goods."

It seems as if these high resolves ought to fill the horizon and
extrude every thing irrelevant. But not so: something quite as
capacious, but fertilized by not one dot of grandeur, comes vaporing on
the scene.

Down to a period quite late in the history of literature, the French
were unable to understand how we could accept the confusion of moods in
Shakspeare's tragedies, and their abrupt introduction into the nobler
sentiment of the scene, as comedy races after gravity to overtake
and strangle it, and the gravity quite as unexpectedly recurs. This
appeared to their æsthetic criticism as an absurd and grotesque
wrong done to the unity of impression which a play ought to make by
developing and depending upon a single idea, and to this end admitting
only the feelings which belong to it.[5] Without this, no tragedy
can have its effect of gravity, but rather, to use Falstaff's quip
in parrying the Chief Justice, its effect of gravy,--to leave in the
palate a taste of a mixture of sauce and drippings. But Shakspeare runs
the coulter of unity deeper than the obvious idea which the plot of
his tragedy develops; for it passes at once through soils of diverse
elements, driven by a sure but vigorous instinct to turn them all up
to the fructifying light. Instead of the unity of a single strand, he
weaves all the threads of human nature into the cable which holds our
hearts at anchor on his spring-tide.

This rotund earth that goes wallowing eastward is an aboriginal
Falstaff, and carries all sorts of humors in its unbounded stomach.
It puts off night and slips into the garments of the day not more
easily than its vein changes from hour to hour, as the tone of its
daylight does, rolling along the whole gamut from gloom to garishness.
The mood must be very solemn and absorbing to be exempt from the
sudden interruption of jollities which may be even ribald in their
bearing. If nothing is too cheap for Nature it is precious enough
for Shakspeare. Whatever a Creator has permitted to take lodgings in
the human breast is not turned out by him; for he lodges there too,
claiming the shelter of the same impartial roof beneath which we have
to learn to tolerate each other. So the first impression which his
plays make is this complaisance towards the most discrepant moods, just
as life has it on the stage of the world; for he is not so concerned
to develop a single motive by nice and consecutive gradations as he
is to show the world's swift alternations of all the motives and
tempers of mankind. The French complained that the result is like a
road built of smooth pavement, corduroy, rutted mud, jarring heaps of
cobble-stones; and that the feeling is transferred without warning
along all the discrepancies of this route, to be jolted and racked
till self-preservation becomes more absorbing than the landscape. But
the structure of the Teutonic mind is well adapted to this journey by
its robust manifoldness, sired by a primitive vigor of Nature, that
propagates her turbulence, her jest and earnest, her nobleness and
indecorum, the infinite variety which age cannot dim nor custom stale,
the instincts of her animals and the intuitions of her men. Above all,
the races which appreciate the deeper unity of Shakspeare, and bear
without discontent its fusion of elements which seem to have only harsh
antipathies, have drawn from Nature the mental quality of humor, and
that is a flux which no substances can withstand. Nothing is uncouth or
recluse enough to stay outside of its reconcilement.

So while Northumberland's castle is agitated by the news of disaster,
and the slain Percy is expected home by the halls he never shall
inherit, Falstaff appears, with that diminutive page who was Christian
when the Prince gave him, "and look, if the fat villain have not
transformed him ape." We were pitying Northumberland, as in grief
and anger he threw away his crutch, tore the "sickly quoif" from the
head which princes aimed to hit, and called for iron to encase his
forehead. What does this fat man here, jeering at his page for being
smaller than he, and asking what Master Dumbleton said about the satin
for his short cloak and slops? It must have been a mistake of some
precipitate scene-shifter. No: there be peers of the realm and peerless
blackguards; one is in revolt against his king, the other against all
decency. But the play has a history which includes them both in its
epoch, as Nature includes them; and for her it is but a step from
Warkworth, where the old nobleman is weeping, to London, where this
tavern-haunter defies fortune with his shifty gibes, and laments
nothing but the consumption of his purse. What stimulus can there be
for us in his gilded rascality so soon after Harry Percy's spur is
cold? Shall we put up with him? We shall have no trouble: Falstaff
undertakes to vindicate Nature for setting him in this company, and he
does it with such resource and admirable cheerfulness that earldoms
seem to have been created to be his foil.

His character belongs to comedy because its vices are of the breed
which never contract alliances with great passions. The big frame is
so completely inoculated with laughter that his faults cannot take the
contagion of tragedy. His wit is an implement which his comic nature
uses for purposes of self-defence. He is essentially comic before he
opens his mouth: for he is built to brag, and is too fat to be brave;
his fleshly propensities are latent with situations for covering him
with ridicule; his talent for lying has the peril that it may be used
too often. Yet, on the whole, he is of Swift's opinion, that a lie is
too good a thing to be wasted. But let the Prince and Poins plot a
little, and the Wives of Windsor beguile his loose vein, and the scene
quickly runs to his discomfiture. The mountainous knave is caught in
a trap which might have been baited for a mouse, so small that we
wonder how his wit could have blundered into it. But, being in, his
wit behaves so delightfully like virtue that we think he has escaped.
"Nothing confutes me but eyes," he says. Only seeing is disbelieving
such an embodied stratagem. "By the Lord, I knew ye!" said he to the
Prince, after the midnight scare the latter gave him, and goes nigh to
convince us that he ran away to avoid killing the heir-apparent. So
large a man does not often wriggle so unctuously through such a narrow
place. We should have to make his bail bear some correspondence to his
bulk, if he lived where swindling was a signal for juries to disagree.

There is a scene where the Prince comes out of his hiding-place after
Falstaff has been abusing him to Doll Tear-street.[6] "Didst thou hear
me?" "Yes; and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by Gad's
Hill: you knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to try my
patience." How slyly Falstaff avoids putting his foot into this trap;
and the Prince underestimated his resources. "No, no, no, not so; I
did not know thou wast within hearing. No abuse, Hal, on my honor; no
abuse, Ned. I dispraised him before the wicked, that the wicked might
not fall in love with him; and thy father is to give me thanks for it."
His mind is supple and adaptive, yet all the more comical because the
talent is futile for concealment, and only earns for him a laugh which
shakes the arm suspended to chastise.

He extemporizes deafness, and does not hear the Chief Justice calling
to him. When the attendant comes and plucks him by the elbow to bid
him note the Justice, he gains time by inventing the pretext that a
beggar has him by the sleeve. "What! a young knave, and beg!" But this
resource was by no means invented by Falstaff. This world is an old
hand at it; and, whenever the truth of one age summons the error of
the past to arrest and judgment, the interested parties start a dodge,
and stimulate it with voluble pretence of earnestness, hoping to make
it serve their day, at least. When Galileo discovered the satellites
of Jupiter, people expected the sky to fall. Something must be done to
prop it up. So they said that, even if the satellites could be seen
through the telescope, the inference that they were really in the sky
was not a fair one; more likely they were something in the telescope
itself.

When Scheiner, the Jesuit, discovered solar spots in 1611, he had
to communicate the discovery to his Superior. The latter was an
Aristotelian. He would not even risk a peep through Scheiner's
telescope. He said: "I have read Aristotle's writings from end to end
many times, and I have, nowhere found in them any thing similar to
what you mention. Go, therefore, my son, and endeavor to tranquillize
yourself. Be convinced that these appearances, which you take for
spots, are the faults of your glasses or of your eyes; if they are
not, as I in part suspect, the result of a disordered imagination."
Texts and pretexts are still employed to prevent Theology and Science
from coming to close quarters. Science impends and threatens with the
majestic facts of the divine order. Theology, driven from pretext to
pretext, cries at last, "What! upon compulsion? No: if reasons were
as plenty as blackberries," nothing on compulsion! When Falstaff is
hurried, he says, "Do you think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet?
have I, in my poor and old motion, the expedition of thought?" That is
the trouble with the ponderous old past; so it turns Falstaff's deaf
ear to thought, and imitates his strategy.

He is a good mimic of the style of bluntness and honesty. Pretending to
have killed Percy, he cries, "There is Percy: if your father will do me
any honor, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself." "Why,"
says the Prince, "Percy I killed myself." "Didst thou? Lord, lord, how
is this world given to lying! If I may be believed, so; if not, let
them that should reward valor bear the sin upon their own heads." You
can hear the same tone to-day wherever shifty impudence pilfers the
inventions and exploits of others to furnish with them a house and
reputation. This style is comic because it is assumed to cover deceit,
but is too scant a pattern after all; and the cloven foot is amusingly
unconscious of being in full sight.

Sir John does not intend to be readily put down. In the matter of
arrest at Dame Quickly's suit for debt, how airily he gives the Chief
Justice tap for tap, and urges that the officers are hindering him
from going on the king's errand! He is hard to get fairly cooped in
a corner; most invaluable counsel to defend a ring, big enough to
break through the most carefully woven indictment. When you think you
have him neatly at bay, the bulky culprit floats over your head in a
twinkling of resource and is gone: it is done so cleverly that you have
not the heart to pursue him farther, or, if you do, it is only for the
sake of enjoying an encore of this trapeze-shifting of his wit.

It is comic when his tone of protestation that he will discharge his
debt to Dame Quickly succeeds in taking in her who has been so often
deceived before. But one weakness is always too strong for another; so
he is constantly betrayed into expense by her, and that is at once her
vice and its reward. "I owe her money; and whether she be damned for
that I know not."

It is also comic that his vanity prevents him from suspecting himself
of cowardice and evasion of duty; so that he indulges the most inflated
self-appreciation, and no misadventure is sharp enough to prick it.
"Embowelled! 'Sblood, 'twas time to counterfeit." And his fright
inspires him with the adage dear ever since to shirkers, "The better
part of valor is discretion;" and it has a sensible purport which
blinds him to his own disgrace. "There is not a dangerous action,"
complains he to the Chief Justice, "but I am thrust upon it. Well,
I cannot last ever. But it was always yet the trick of our English
nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. I would to
God, my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is." Does he
really think his bullying style is a perpetual action of bravery, or is
he delighting to be ironical upon himself?

Now Falstaff's mind has many a talent which liberates it from the
grossness of his body. His wit shows a nimble foot of fancy. His
common-sense is an acute ally of his cowardice. The imagination which
betrays him into the largeness of his lying goes into the felicity
of his wit: both are on an ample scale. He rallies Bardolph for his
complexion, and overwhelms his ragged company with comparisons,
just as his men in buckram grow in number. When his fancy seizes an
opportunity he cannot let it go, but unconsciously shifts it into all
possible lights, and exhausts invention to make the point emphatic.
How many imaginative people there are who unconsciously lie in the
same way with their exaggerated raptures at a landscape, their
wholesale contributions to an occurrence! The flavor of stories
improves by going to sea upon their bounding fancies. Only give them
time enough and a free swing among their friends, and an event of the
chimney-corner will become bewitched into a Cinderella at the ball.
These people really believe with the imagination instead of with the
understanding; and, if conscience is comparatively weak, common-sense
is not a sufficient curb to their career.

Falstaff's ragged soldiers have hearts "no bigger than pins' heads." "A
mad fellow met me on the way, and told me that I had unloaded all the
gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. There's but a shirt and a half
in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together."
This fanciful destitution reminds us of an American improvement upon
it, attributed to a man the smallest hole in whose shirt was that for
the head, so ragged that it had to be washed by the dozen.

All of Falstaff's speeches are one crescendo of phrases; each seems to
breed the next one, and they swarm in his fancy like gnats in a broad
sun. Bardolph's red features are very tropics to yield spicy railing to
him. The ginger of it is hot in the mouth. He never sees that face but
he thinks upon hell-fire, and Dives in his purple, burning. He imagines
he saw it running up Gad's Hill in the pitchy dark, and took it for
an ignis-fatuus. It has saved him a good deal of money in links and
torches.

We come upon the same vein in the "Comedy of Errors," where Dromio
says, "Marry, sir, she's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know
not what use to put her to, but to make a lamp of her, and run from
her by her own light. I warrant her rags, and the tallow in them, will
burn a Poland winter: if she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week
longer than the whole world."

Falstaff might have said of himself that "wherever his shadow falls it
leaves a grease-spot."

Shakspeare evidently relished these unctuous conceits, for in the
"Merry Wives of Windsor," when Falstaff's wooing in the forest is
suddenly interrupted, he says, "I think the devil will not have me
damned, lest the oil that is in me should set hell on fire; he would
never else cross me thus."

There is sometimes in Shakspeare an exaggeration of this kind which
has a Titanic grasp to it that throttles laughter just as it meditates
escape. The grotesque and humorous element is stunned by a fierce and
passionate feeling, such as Dante might have steeped one of the circles
of his Inferno in. A specimen of this may be found in "Henry VIII.,"
where Lord Abergavenny, talking about Wolsey's low-born greatness, says:

                 "But I can see his pride
 Peep through each part of him: whence has he that?
 If not from hell, the devil is a niggard;
 Or has given all before, and he begins
 A new hell in himself."

All the followers of Falstaff catch his habit of improving Bardolph's
redness. The Page could not distinguish his face through a red lattice,
but, at last spying his eyes, thought he had made two holes in a new
red petticoat to peep through. And, after Falstaff is dead, a boy
recalls his fanciful notion that a flea sticking upon Bardolph's nose
was a black soul burning in hell. A specimen worthy of Falstaff is
found in an ancient Greek epigram which celebrates a nose so long that
the owner could never hear himself sneeze. But Falstaff's imagination
is so prolific that we feel as if a great many of these comments on the
text of Bardolph's nose had not come down to us.

But the talent itself has descended; and Falstaff may be regarded as
the mighty progenitor of the American knack at exaggerating, into which
imagination must enter either to make it witty or simply ludicrous. We
can match the felicities of Falstaff from every State of the Union.
Indeed, we are of opinion that emigration, which has impaired the
physical fulness of the Anglo-Saxon man, has not depleted the vein
of his humor: our romancing talent is as vast as the country which
nourishes it by all enterprises and ambitions. We have not fallen away
vilely; we do not bate, do not dwindle. Mr. Dickens declares that even
the national habit of expectoration is on the scale of the country's
streams. He is a genuine descendant of Falstaff, and he must have
always lived at Gad's Hill, where, at some time or other, he helped
the Prince and Poins to rob the fat knight, and outwitted all his
accomplices by taking imagination for his best share of the booty. So
we are not much surprised to hear him describe a high wind with the
amplitude of Falstaff's girth: "The air was for some hours darkened
with a shower of black hats, which are supposed to have been blown off
the heads of unwary passengers in remote parts of the town, and have
been industriously picked up by the fishermen." When Grip, his raven,
falls sick, towards eleven o'clock he was so much worse that "it was
found necessary to muffle the stable-knocker."

But we have made improvements in this style of fiction, and almost
every newspaper might furnish forth a play. We are told of grass in
Colorado that is so short you must lather it before you can mow.
We hear of a man who moves about so lazily that when he works in
his garden the shade of his hat kills the plants. Another man wakes
up in the morning, after a day spent in hunting strawberries, with
only one eye, the other being engaged in holding the cheek which had
marched over it during the night. It was a case of dog-wood poison.
The relatives did not find his mouth until near noon, when it was
discovered just back of his left ear, enjoying the shade. There was a
man who stood on his head under a pile-driver to have a pair of tight
boots driven on. He found himself shortly after in China, perfectly
naked and without a cent in his pocket.

There is a man in the West who is so bow-legged that his pantaloons
have to be cut out with a circular saw. Apropos of this, a pair of
pantaloons which was distributed to one of the sufferers by the forest
fires, a few years ago, was found to be ridiculously small. The man's
wife wanted to know if there lived and breathed a man who had legs no
bigger: if there did, he ought to be taken up for vagrancy as having
no visible means of support. It was discussed whether to use them for
gun-cases, or to keep the tongs in. This reminds us that Falstaff said
you might have thrust Shallow, "and all his apparel, into an eel-skin;
the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a court."

In the same style of minifying a thing by magnifying its minuteness,
he says, "If I were sawed into quantities, I should make four dozen
of such bearded hermit's staves as Master Shallow." Then he delights
himself with fancying how he will riot over the slim subject and endow
it with every imaginable chance for provoking laughter: "I will devise
matter enough out of this Shallow to keep Prince Harry in continual
laughter, the wearing out of six fashions. Oh, it is much that a lie
with a slight oath, and a jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow
that never had the ache in his shoulders! Oh, you shall see him laugh,
till his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up!"

A lie with an oath not always slight, "and a jest with a sad brow," is
a prophecy of America which Mr. Sumner might have incorporated among
his other classic Voices.

The country also supplies specimens of a wild-cat oratory in whose
bombast Shakspeare might have recognized an element of his own
imagination. I am not certain whether the following is genuine, or
possesses only the truth of verisimilitude: "Build a worm-fence around
the winter's supply of summer weather; skim the clouds from the sky
with a teaspoon; catch a thunder-cloud in a bladder; break a hurricane
to harness; ground-sluice an earthquake; lasso an avalanche; pin a
napkin on the crater of an active volcano; but, Mr. Chairman, never
expect to see me false to my principles." On the whole, the stress laid
upon the "principles" is quite in favor of its American genuineness.

The quality of imagination which creates the humorousness of an
exaggeration can also be fine enough to stop it before a laugh is
raised. In that case it may be charged with the subtlety of wit. But,
if the poetic feeling predominates, the sense of wit is merged in
that, and requires an after-thought to recall it; as when Shakspeare
describes how the populace rushed to see Cleopatra coming up the river
Cydnus, leaving Antony in the market-place: he

                              "Did sit alone,
 Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
 Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
 And made a gap in Nature."

"But for vacancy" is a phrase that piques suggestion. It may be that
the air dreads leaving a vacuum if it goes to see her. It may be that
Antony's whistling vaguely detains it. Or it may be that the air is
in a mood so vacuous that it cannot entertain any preference for any
thing, even for Cleopatra. And the possibility that the atmosphere
could all leave and go elsewhere is an extravagance at once large and
subtle. But, just as the smile impends, the ample poetry of the whole
passage checks it.

A passage from "The English Traveller" of Thomas Heywood, published in
1633, is thoroughly American in its style of describing a drinking
scene, and the shipwreck of the company by drink. The topers suddenly
conceive that the room is a vessel laboring at sea: one climbs the
bed-post and reports turbulent weather, whereat all go to work to
lighten the vessel by throwing the furniture into the street. One man
gets into the bass-viol for a cock-boat. When the constable enters he
is taken for Neptune, and his posse for Tritons. In short, the American
gift for exaggeration was started under an Elizabethan sun.

Sometimes the breadth of imagination produces the effect of wit by
bringing two incongruous ideas under one statement. During a political
procession, a remarkably dirty man, stopping in front of a small boy
who was sitting on a fence, expected to have some fun with him. "Well,
boy, how much do you weigh?" "As much as you would if you were washed."
Such a free-soiler as that can be matched with nothing short of a line
of Shakspeare:

 "Lord of thy presence, _and no land beside_."

The American would be quite capable of composing narratives in the
Eastern vein, as in that series of fables called the Hitopadesa, which
attributed to animals the passions and motives of men. The famous
mediæval poem of "Reynard the Fox" presumes the same intelligence. Here
is a specimen, whose slight flavor of coarseness is lost and forgotten
in the genius of its climax. Just as a traveller was writing his name
on the register of a Leavenworth hotel, a certain insect took its way
across the page. Laying down the pen, the man remarked, "I've been bled
by St. Joe fleas, bitten by Kansas City spiders, and interviewed by
Fort Scott gray-backs; but hang me if I was ever in a place where these
critters looked over the register to take the number of your room."

A Western editor, culminating in his description of a tornado, said,
"In short, it was a wind that just sat up on its hind legs and howled."

Some of the Texan cows have been lately described as so thin that it
takes two men to see one of them. The men stand back to back, so that
one says, "Here she comes!" and the other cries, "There she goes!" Thus
between them both the cow is seen.

All these American instances are conceived in the pure Shakspearian
blending of the understanding and the imagination. But one more of
them, perhaps the most artistically perfect of all, must suffice. A
coachman, driving up some mountains in Vermont, was asked by an outside
passenger if they were as steep on the other side also. "Steep! Chain
lightnin' couldn't go down 'em witheout the breechin' on!"

We have seen in what the comedy of Falstaff's character consists. Its
humor lies in the tolerance which his inexhaustible wile procures for
his vices. We are all the time reconciled to his behavior, though in
anybody else it would be outrageous,--"most tolerable and not to be
borne." But such a Noachian deluge of animal spirits would carry away a
bulkier man than he. It is love of fun more than villainous inclination
which leads him into many of his scrapes. When he is moralizing upon
his course of life, and half-earnestly complaining that the Prince had
been the ruin of him, the latter has only to interrupt this strain
with, "Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack?" when he drowns
his megrims in the jolliest laugh, and draws his belt another hole for
an adventure. The midnight frolic, with sack and supper afterwards,
attracts him quite as much as the prospect of checking the consumption
of his purse. He is quite conscious of a mercurial disposition that
keeps the door ajar for every temptation. There are intervals of
self-upbraiding--or are they seedy forenoons before the sherris sets in
to wet his coast?--when he wishes the Prince were not such a rascally,
fascinating companion. And we ought to put to Falstaff's credit the
fact that to be hail-fellow with a prince has unsettled many a sterner
virtue; and he says flatly to him that he wishes they knew "where a
commodity of good names were to be bought."

When the old lord of the council rated him, he was too proud to seem to
attend, but quite aware that he had been blown up in a justifiable way.
His love of mirth is a better ally than the Prince, far more sumptuous
and capable; for it helps us to condone his follies, and so qualifies
him to be an object of Humor.

And reflection pursues the train which Humor starts. We are charmed
into admitting that there must undoubtedly be many good native
qualities, still unobscured, lingering in vicious haunts and courses;
and Humor has no sublimer mission than to make us tolerate that
thought. She seizes the coy hand of Philanthropy, and beguiles it "with
nod and beck and wreathed smile" towards its rugged purpose.

There are some places which we only venture to visit in Shakspeare's
company. We have been too well bred to seek our vices in such quarters,
but not so well bred as to accommodate no vice. We cannot air our
intolerance before the Searcher of hearts; perhaps we are grateful to
him for that gift of Shakspeare which bids the tavern and the brothel
be tolerable to our conscience by the touches of nature which make
_the whole_ world kin. Our respect for mankind is increased if the men
who disgrace it can still be made to appear inseparable members of it.
When we see the common air pressing in to ventilate the most infected
places, we admire this brave, elastic quality, and rejoice to feel it
fill our lungs. But what policeman or sanitary commissioner can we
trust in a tour to inspect the cesspools of the world? Only such an
one who has the counterinfection of his own impartial light and air.
We follow in the wake of his geniality, forget to hold disinfectants
to our nose, find the air still medicinal, since it has retained
qualities belonging to ourselves; and we step from ward to ward with a
reconciling smile.

We do not quite relish the rebuff which Prince Hal, after his
accession, administers to Sir John. Our good-nature is wrenched by the
abrupt transition from roystering fellowship and complicity with all
of Falstaff's infirmities. We acknowledge that the King cannot go on
countenancing the courses which, as the Prince, he found so amusing;
but we are sorry that he could not let down the tutor and the feeder
of his riots more softly. His downfall carries Justice Shallow with
him, to be sure, of whom he had borrowed a thousand pounds, fortunately
for our sense of poetic justice: and there is some recompense for
Falstaff's mortification in hearing Shallow whimper for his money; for
he lent to the knight and to his golden prospects, not to the prodigal
Sir John. And it is good to see the indomitable wit outflank even this
disaster with the advice to Shallow not to grieve; he will be sent for
in private; the King must appear thus sternly to the world.

The King has cut the cord of their mutual revelling at one stroke.
Down tumbles Falstaff, and it breaks his heart; as Dame Quickly says,
"The King has killed his heart." Nym says bluntly, "The King hath
run bad humors on the knight, that's the even of it;" which Pistol
adorns thus: "Nym, thou hast spoke the right; his heart is fracted and
corroborate." There was a human heart, then, involved in his enjoyment
of the Prince's condescension. Yes, and no reasons of state can quite
reconcile us to the sudden frost which fell upon its flower, flaunting
as it was and rank of smell; since both of the men interchanged it,
and wore it on their breast as token of copartnership in folly.
Shakspeare himself cannot convince me that there was kingliness in thus
snapping up the partner of his revels and sending him to the Fleet. It
would have broken the heart of any less bulky comrade. Perhaps it is
the nature of kings and titled men to be suddenly forgetful of the
humanness which generally makes a man ineligible to office; so that the
kingship was a charter from Providence to give Falstaff his first sneap
of retribution. None the less do we sympathize with him rather than
with the King, because we are all prodigals out of office.

But notice the art of Shakspeare in this, that, if the King had broken
with his old pal in such a way as not to hurt our feelings, we should
not have been so well prepared to sympathize with the manner of his
death. When that hour comes, we feel the full effect of Humor in the
unwillingness to let our knowledge of his grossness and knavery break
the legacy of his geniality. It sets in again, to take him off, "at
the turning o' the tide." Dame Quickly, Bardolph, and the rest, cannot
prevent reminiscences of his wit from seasoning their tears. Her story
of his end, with its delicious inconsequence, cannot blunt the thrust
we feel when he plays with flowers and babbles of green fields; and it
suddenly occurs to us that the battered old sinner had once listened
to the birds in the hedge-rows, and climbed summer trees to explore
their nests. This bloated breather of tavern fumes had expanded a
boy's glad lungs on the English hillsides, and shared the landscape's
innocence. It just saves us from damning him, and we shift elsewhere
the responsibility of doing that, though we are not prepared to go as
far as Bardolph, who says he would like to be with him "wheresome'er he
is, either in heaven or in hell." "Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's
in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom." Dame Quickly,
"clear thy crystals," for at least he was none the worse for being
witty; and Bardolph may some day find himself in company that is at
once bad and criminally stupid.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: But since Voltaire's time, and notably within the present
century, the French mind has amply atoned for previous misconceptions,
and its tribute to the genius of Shakspeare is rivalling England
itself. Germany was earlier in this field; but, if France means to
annex Shakspeare, she can afford to let Alsace and Lorraine go. The
younger Hugo's study of Hamlet; the volumes of Alfred Mézières, of
Philaréte Chasles; the studies of Guizot; the admirable article upon
Cleopatra by Henri Blaze de Bury, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, June
15, 1872; another, later, in the same review, upon "Medical Psychology
in the Dramas of Shakspeare," &c.,--show a noble disposition and a
thorough sympathy.]

[Footnote 6: Obviously the proper reading. Prince Henry says, "This
Doll Tear-street should be some road." First noticed by Coleridge.]




HAMLET.


HAMLET.

In this play it is common to look for an exhibition of humor in the
scene of the Grave-diggers; but those personages are only amusing as a
couple of common men whose profession seems to have buried both their
feelings and their wits. One of them is accidentally witty when he
asks, "Is she to be buried in Christian burial, that wilfully seeks
her own salvation?" But he and his companion do not make good the
promise of this opening text: they turn out to be tedious louts who
bring ale-house chatter to a churchyard and only rise to the dignity
of being ghastly, although we know that the grave they dig is for
Ophelia. We do not properly recollect and feel this till they disappear
and the music of the funeral train is heard. Their shovelfuls of dirt
and bones make coffin-like cæsuras in their singing, but the songs are
too trivial to be trolled over a pot; scarce are they a setting to an
empty skull. They rattle so dryly you wish they might be dumped in and
covered up. The sexton-riddles have little more juice in them, for they
are the kind that boozy gossips clink out of their cans, and not the
gay pursuivants of wisdom. We begin to reflect that such triviality
does not become interesting because it is well hit off, and that in one
respect it is not well hit off, since it recurs too tiresomely; and we
are on the point of voting the whole grave-digging business to be a
mouldy impertinence, when there flashes upon us the better thought that
Shakspeare was here deepening pathos upon the fair maid who must be
the tenant of this grave so fatuously dug. To this complexion must we
all come at last, and beauty cannot repel the loutish hands which take
their fee for shovelling dirt upon its clay.

There is so little comic business in this scene that actors are at
their wits' end to make it hold the audience. They used to wear a dozen
or two waistcoats, and, pretending to be hot and blown, strip them
off, one after another; wearing all the time an air as if each one was
the last, until you doubted whether, instead of a man inside, there
were any thing more than a yardstick to measure vest-patterns with. So
Thackeray takes George IV. to pieces by peeling away all the well-known
articles of his apparel,--"under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and
then nothing." But the waistcoated business always secured the laugh
which the clowns' insipid discussion could not raise.

This scene, as it stands in the Folio of 1623, had no existence in the
earlier Hamlets, and was plainly an after-thought of Shakspeare as he
moulded the play to its perfection.

In the vignettes of mediæval manuscripts and the frescoes of chapels,
there were ghastly drawings of the Dance of Death, or the so-called
_Danse Macabre_.[7] It was a retort of religious art upon the fleshly
man by the spectacle of his own skeleton waltzing down "the primrose
way to the everlasting bonfire." But blood runs counter to the violent
bad taste of these unfleshed processions; they contrast with the warm
truth of Nature too sharply for the work of redemption. Shakspeare was
anxious not to point the old moral, but to enhance our pity: he needed
this contrast with Ophelia. Perhaps he was recalling those paintings
when he set the grave-digger dancing stark naked in his verses. "O rose
of May, dear maid!" He purposely lifts a handful of mould to our faces,
that we may smell the rose above it.

 "A pickaxe, and a spade, a spade,
   For ----, and a shrouding sheet:
 Oh, a pit of clay for to be made
   For such a guest is meet."

Taine mentions with surprise that the English audiences still laugh
when Hamlet traces the noble dust of Alexander to its final bier
in a bung-hole. The Frenchman does not relish the broadness of the
incongruity between the great commander and a cask of ale. But the
laugh comes rightly in with the boldness of fancy which suddenly brings
together such opposite things. The effect is like that of witnessing
any ludicrous circumstance which takes no account of dignity. Extremes
meet with a shock, as if a great orator's chair should be whipped away
just as he sits down from his climax. Hamlet does not think it too
curious to consider how indifferent Nature is to all our pomp: she is
not impressed, and serves it with not one inopportune mischance the
less.

After Hamlet's interviews with the ghost, the "antic disposition" which
tints his behavior is ironical; his remarks keenly cut down to where
our laugh lies, but scarcely let its blood. The mood does not throw
open the great valves of the heart as the sun-burst of Humor does. We
enjoy seeing with what superior insight he baffles all the spies who
cannot play upon a pipe, yet expect to play upon him. This gives to the
scene the flavor of comedy. In the churchyard we taste the subacid of
cynicism, so that Yorick's skull is quite emptied of its humor, and is
only an ill-savored text to a chop-fallen discourse upon mortality.

But Hamlet radiates a gleam of geniality at a moment when you are least
expecting it, as events transpire which ought to kill, you would think,
the very heart of such a feeling: it is, indeed, expiring,--caught as
it falls in the arms of the coming Irony. Let us enter, with Horatio
and Marcellus, the scene upon the platform after Hamlet's dread
interview with a murdered father. No wonder that his wonted evenness of
manner is shaken; and we hear him writing truisms in his tablet, in a
flighty style, as, for instance, that a man may smile and be a villain.
But let us also make a note of that, as he did: it will interpret to
us the tone of his subsequent demeanor which everybody thought was
madness. In the mean time we are upon this spectre-haunted platform,
seeking with his friends to discover what news the ghost brought.
Hamlet trifles with them to put off their curiosity; but the scene soon
rises to the solemnity of taking an oath, and one that is extorted
by the experience of a vision which comes to so few that mankind has
only heard of such things. But just as the human voices are about to
pledge themselves to a secrecy which they must feel all their lives,
and shudder in feeling, to be reflected upon them from the glare and
publicity of purgatorial fires, a voice comes, building this terrific
chord of a nether world up to their purpose, that it may unalterably
stand. "Swear!" The deep craves it of them; it has joined the company
uninvited, but they feel convinced that it is a comrade fated to go
with them to their graves. "Swear!" it reiterates: no change of place
can remove them from this importunity. The centre of an unatoned murder
is beneath every spot to which they shift their feet.

Now the two friends of Hamlet possess nerves which have been hitherto
tuned only by the vibrations of the sunshine or of the moon's unhaunted
silver. Even if they had known of the murder, their interest in
it would not have been personal enough to lend fortitude to help
them tolerate this unseen visitor, the murdered man himself! What
an encounter! Whose wits of earthly stoutness can sustain it? They
feel, and so do we, that the awe is accumulating into a wave that may
o'ertopple every sense.

Here mark how superior Shakspeare would have us estimate Hamlet to be,
with a capacity of self-possession and a readiness to recur to it.
He perceives their friendship to be sorely tried, and on the point
of crumbling; and as men muster to repair a dyke, so his resource is
prompt, drawn from a soul that can make even a ghost companionable, and
no match at all for any bantering mood of his. Tush, my friends! it
is no ghost at all: 'tis a "fellow in the cellarage." There's a human
phrase for which this wild weather provides a rift; it touches the
awe with a strange smile that relieves the men to complete their pact
before all the blood of friendship curdles. And we who listen are also
kept within our human kind.

"You hear this fellow in the cellarage?" What a sentence to puncture
the abyss of the supernatural!

Then Hamlet shifts his standing-place for the sake of his friends; but
the unavenged murder is underneath there awaiting them. So the Prince
lightly rallies it for its knack of burrowing: he nicknames it an old
mole, and the fancy is pleasant; for it occurs to him that he must work
under ground for the future; so he calls the mole "a worthy pioneer."
"Once more remove, good friends." Then, as he instructs them with
minute precautions against ever seeming too wise about the subterranean
disposition he may choose to follow, the awful revenge cries up again
to them. But their nerves, by this time wonted to the strangeness, no
longer need the relief of his ironical braving; so Hamlet dismisses
that vein, and lets a murdered father claim the scene to close it
with its proper color subdued to the solemn reassurance, "Rest, rest,
perturbed spirit!" Then our own spirits venture forth into calmness and
hush of the breaking day.

Not the faintest streak of Humor appears in this tragedy to reconcile
us with the drift of it. Polonius belongs to comedy, because he is an
old counsellor who was once valuable, whose wits have grown seedy on
purpose to delight us with his notion that he fathoms and circumvents
the Prince. When a man's feeling of importance has outlived his value,
so that his common-sense trickles feebly over the lees of maxims, and
his policies are absurd attempts to appear as shrewd as ever before
persons who are in better preservation, he belongs to the comic side of
life. We cannot help smiling at his most respectable recommendations;
for they are like hats lingering in fashion, but destitute of nap. He
wears one of these, and goes about conceiting that his head mounts a
gloss. There is not enough of Polonius left to tide him through this
tragedy, unless it might have been in dumb show: he must lurk behind an
arras to get himself mistaken for a king; and, as he does this after
sending a spy into France to watch his son's habits, we have not a
tear to spare. And we only think how delightfully bewildered he will
be if his ghost gets out of the body, escaping a politic convocation
of worms, in time to help receive the other ghost, and to understand
then, if any wit is left over in him, that his king was murdered and
Hamlet is harping on something besides his daughter. But his absurdity
survives, and is voiced by Hamlet in the scenes where the King tries
to discover what has become of the body.

The theories which undertake to explain the nature of the "antic
disposition" which Hamlet hinted that he might assume do not satisfy
me that the heart of that mystery has been plucked out. But the key to
it may be read engrossed upon his tablets. The subsequent behavior of
Hamlet is the exact counterpart in Irony of the conviction that was so
suddenly thrust upon him, and terribly emphasized by his father, that
a man may smile and be a villain. To this point let a few pages of
explanation be accorded.

In the first place, I notice that the behavior of Hamlet, which has
the reputation of being feigned, is a genuine exercise of Irony, and
consequently covers a feeling and purpose that are directly opposite
to its tone of lightness; but it results organically from Hamlet's new
experience, and does not require to be premeditated as madness would
be. We see his vigorous and subtle mind set open by the revelations
of the ghost; but it is too well hung to be slamming to and fro in
gusts of real madness, and its normal movement shuts out the need of
feigning. When his father first tells that he has been murdered, we
find that Hamlet thinks himself quite capable of decision: there is no
infirmity of purpose in that early mood to sweep to his revenge "with
wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love." What is it that
converts this mood into an irresoluteness which contrives the whole
suspense, and in fact gives us the whole tragedy? First, partly, that
his father tells Hamlet he was murdered by his own brother. Then the
question of revenge becomes more difficult to settle, especially as
it involves widowing his mother; and it is noticeable that the father
himself, who afterwards deplored Hamlet's irresolution, had previously
made suggestions to him which hampered his action by constraining him
to feel how complicated the situation was. The father's caution runs
thus:--

 "But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act,
 Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
 Against thy mother aught: leave her to Heaven,
 And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
 To prick and sting."

This does not inhibit Hamlet from dealing retribution on the uncle, but
clogs a mind so sensitive with the drawback of consideration for the
wife: she is evidently no accomplice or confidant of the murder; that
is clear from the uniform respect, and even tenderness, which the ghost
craves for her.

But though Hamlet thinks that he is capable of decision, he is so only
when the case presented to his meditation is so direct and plain that
no chance for a fencing-match of motives is involved. The conviction
which justifies his prophetic soul half disarms it. When the uncle is
at his prayers, Hamlet might "do it, pat;" but the opportunity is too
favorable: it paralyzes a mind of his consideration. He cannot bear to
rush upon a man's back whose face is bent towards an act that has a
savor of salvation in it. But when Polonius was concealed behind the
arras and cried out, Hamlet impulsively utilized the moment of hatred
of the supposed eavesdropper; but, finding he had killed the wrong man,
his swift action passes into that impetuous arraignment of his mother
which follows, and thus expends itself upon the nearest object. He took
Polonius for his better, but his resolve is "sicklied o'er" by this
mistake; and an almost blunted purpose proves seasonable armor for the
King. People of far less nice reflection than Hamlet had would feel
hampered by such an accident. It is in the nature of all of us to find
a passion grow cool beneath the drift of an untoward cloud; so that I
cannot conceive that Shakspeare meant to develop the whole tragedy out
of an over-scrupulosity of speculation. The ghost himself, whose latest
visitation is but to whet Hamlet's revenge, again diverts him from
that point by bidding him turn and look where amazement sits upon his
mother:--

 "Oh, step between her and her fighting soul!
 Speak to her, Hamlet."

And an arrowy current from a long accumulating heart sweeps through the
midnight hours. Then, by the light of the succeeding day, we observe
that Hamlet's mind has recovered its strain of irony: it passes for the
flightiness that gets him despatched to England, where all the people
are as mad as he. But Hamlet's nerves, though delicately spun, are
spun of some toughness that never snaps nor ravels. His pulse "doth
temperately keep time, and makes as healthful music" as any man's.

Throughout the play, a refined superiority is the keynote of his
character. The "heavy-headed revel" of the Danes seems to him a custom
"more honored in the breach than the observance," though he is to
the manner born and has a head not easily overthrown. He says to his
fellow-students, "We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart." But he
keeps himself aloof from contracting a habit. The same speech contains
traces of the observation exercised by a soul that is sustained by the
sound pith of virtue. It often chances, he says, that one vicious mole
of nature is the fly in the ointment of the apothecary, and undoes all
the noble substance. His tendency to speculate upon suicide belongs
to a mind in which conscience is so supreme and strong that its ideal
makes life scarcely tolerable. But there is no feeble whimper in the
tone, nor when his friends are trying to dissuade him from following
the ghost; he routs them and all our cowardice at once:

               "Why, what should be the fear?
 I do not set my life at a pin's fee;
 And, for my soul, what can it do to that,
 Being a thing immortal as itself?"

Yes, we--already the ghosts--are a match for any ghost. Self-poised
and self-sufficing, his ambition is to occupy the kingdom of a mind.
"O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of
infinite space." And, in the midst of the torrent that bursts from him
to overwhelm his mother, there is that smooth, still eddy, "Forgive me
this my virtue," and all the stars of his soul look down into it.

Shakspeare plainly meant us to infer that Hamlet had inherited the
traits of a noble father: for who but such a son could describe with
impetuous remembrance the kingly qualities which had given birth to
him? In his mind's eye, he could always see this father:--

 "Look here, upon this picture, and on this:
 See what a grace was seated on this brow!
 A combination and a form, indeed,
 Where every god did seem to set his seal,
 To give the world assurance of a man.
 This was your husband."

He is that man's son, and not his mother's.

 "Ha! have you eyes?"

What devil was it that made you seize upon this other man in a game of
blindfold?

 "A slave, that is not twentieth part the tithe
 Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings!
 A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
 That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
 And put it in his pocket."

Look there! The dear hallucination of fatherhood! "What would you,
gracious figure?" The ghost has come to put this sketch of memory into
italics; as if filial appreciation had projected it upon the midnight,
in the intensity of recalling his majestic soul. Only a son who was
in all respects worthy to be born of Nature's nobleman could pay this
debt of being nobly born, and give Imagination's birth to such a sire.
See there, he is born! the son is father and mother: inbred posterity
conceives its ancestor.

Thus I venture to suppose that, when Hamlet came to his mother,
Shakspeare had not deliberated that the ghost would join the party.
But his brain kindled with the midnight passion, streamed over
down into the pen, and the ink exhaled under the heat of Hamlet's
reminiscence into the vaporous outline, which always startles us
because it startled Shakspeare,--a sudden whiteness running high along
the edge of Hamlet's swelling heart. The scene then shudders with
deference to this unexpected presence, which only the son who conceived
it can observe. Afterward the verse seems to become merely a coast to
help the great wave fall back and subside.

It is possible to have Hamlet played in a style so greatly absorbed as
to obliterate our knowledge that the father's custom is to take his cue
from the climax of his son's speech and to appear. Then we reproduce
the thrill that Shakspeare felt when he sat alone with awe and silence,
and they suddenly drew him to their ghost.

I recur now to consider the nature of the oblique and enigmatic style
into which Hamlet has fallen. It is not a deliberate effort to sustain
the character of a madman, because such a person as Hamlet could find
no motive in it: he could not need it to mask his desire to avenge the
ghost, for he is Prince, an inmate of the palace, and supernaturally
elected to be master of the situation. He says he has "cause and will
and strength and means to do't." I conceive, then, that his mind,
driven from its ordinary gravity, and the channel of his favorite
thoughts diverted, instinctively saves itself by this sustained gesture
of irony; and it appears to be madness only to those who do not know
that he is well informed of the event, and is struggling to set free
from it a purpose. And why should a man of such a well-conditioned
brain, a noticer of nice distinctions, have selected for a simulation
of madness a style which, nicely estimated, is not mad? He could not
calculate that everybody would interpret this difference from his
usual deportment into an unsettling of his wits; for the style shows
unconsciousness and freedom from premeditation. If he wished to feign
distraction, he would have taken care to mar the appositeness of his
ironical allusions, which are always in place and always logical. And,
if he was half unhinged without knowing it, his speech would have
betrayed the same inconsequence. Nowhere is he so abrupt, or delivers
matter so remote from an immediate application, that he seems to us to
wander, because we too have been admitted to the confidences of the
ghost, and share that advantage over the other characters.

Since this essay was written, I have found, in the highly suggestive
"Shakspeare-Studien" of Otto Ludwig, the following remarks, which are
closely related to my own treatment of the subject, and provide some
additional reflections:--

"Hamlet's subjective tendency is so predominant that we are surprised
when he alleges no motive for assuming madness; nor is it elsewhere
accounted for. It would have served his purpose much better if he
had feigned a comfortable and contented, rather than an unsettled,
mind. And, on the whole, one cannot at any point detect a reason why
he chooses any active dissimulation. For he merely needed to remain
undiscovered.

"We never hear him once reflecting upon his intention, though he runs
to reflection on all topics. Just after the apparition, he merely
remarks to his friends that, if he should appear to them to do strange
things, they need not remark upon it so as to betray his object."
Ludwig here alludes to the lines,--

 "As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
 To put an antic disposition on."

Hamlet tells them not to seem too wise about it. The theory of
premeditated madness rests upon this passage, and upon one other, which
will be noticed. But suppose that Shakspeare did at first entertain a
purpose, borrowed from the old chronicle, of disguising Hamlet in some
unusual vein, the psychological necessities of his character decided
what that vein must be, as they also decided against the old chronicle
in the matter of introducing a ghost. And Hamlet's mental quality
is really shown by the vein into which it imperatively runs. He was
overmastered and completely occupied by this mood of indignation at all
the villainous cants of a smiling world. The temper grew so compactly
beneath Shakspeare's pen that he could not interpolate into it any
amateur simulations. The poet would not, if he could, have so diluted
the terribly gathering sincerity which left that epithet of "antic"
beached high up and disqualified for floating on its tide.

On Elsinore's platform, Hamlet felt that the sudden complication would
put him into strange behavior; he did not know exactly what, but he
perceived it coming on. Such a man estimates himself more shrewdly
than the crowd imagines. He was aware of a mind that over-refined and
idealized, and of a disposition to avoid too close realities. Any hint
of nature or society sufficed to sequester him in a monologue. But
now he felt some modification passing through him; it is scarcely yet
articulate, but it is inevitable to a man of his quality. Hamlet may
call his mood by whatever phrases suit the different emergencies; but,
in the main, it is the breaking-up of his mind's customary exercise
into ironical scorn at discovering the rottenness of Denmark.

The Greek word εἱρωνεἱα, whence our Irony is derived with its special
meaning, had not yet been modernly grafted on the Saxon stem. Ben
Jonson says:--

     "Most Socratic lady!
 Or, if you will, ironick!"

For the words _irony_, _ironick_, were at first used in English, and
quite sparingly, to express the method of Socrates in conducting an
argument; that is, by eliciting from an opponent his own refutation by
asking him misleading questions. The words, in any sense, are not found
in Shakspeare. Lord Bacon, in one instance, uses _irony_ nearly in the
modern sense; and that is Socratic only so far as a thing is said with
an intent the reverse of its ostensible meaning.

The other passage upon which the theory of premeditated madness rests
occurs in the great scene with his mother, Act III. 4, during which she
becomes convinced that Hamlet is out of his senses by seeing him kill
the good Polonius, and hearing him rave as if he saw a spectre. She was
the earliest of the critics and experts who are profoundly convinced
of his madness. At the close of the scene, it occurs to him to avail
himself of her misapprehension to procure continued immunity from
any suspicion of design against the King. How shall he do this,--how
contrive to clinch her conviction of his madness, and send her reeking
with it to inform the King? His subtle intelligence does at this point
invent the only simulation of madness that the play contains. He is
just about to bid the Queen good-night: "So, again, good-night." Then
the device occurs to him: "One word more, good lady;" and the Queen,
turning, says, "What shall I do?"

 "Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:
 Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed;
 Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;
 And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,
 Or paddling in your neck with his damned fingers,
 Make you to ravel all this matter out,
 That I essentially am not in madness,
 But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know."

This is the very craftiness of a madman, to try to convince people
that, if he ever seems to be insane, it is for a sane motive. Hamlet
reckons that the Queen is so deeply imbued with the idea of his
insanity as to interpret this disclaimer of his into the strongest
confirmation. Hamlet, moreover, not only seems to be accounting for
symptoms of madness, but to be making a confidant of his mother; he
begs her not to betray the secret object of his strange behavior. This
seems to her to be the very quintessence of madness, to confess to her
that he is feigning it out of craft, and to suppose that she would not
apprise her husband, who must be the special object of that craft and
most in danger from it. He must be indeed preposterously mad; so in
parting she pretends to receive his confidential disclosure:--

 "Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
 And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
 What thou hast said to me."

She may safely promise that, when she means to repair to the King with
quite a different version of Hamlet's condition, the very one upon
which he counts to keep the King deceived. And in the next scene she
conveys her strong impression to him:--

 KING. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?

 QUEEN. Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
        Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit,
        Behind the arras hearing something stir,
        He whips his rapier out, and cries, "A rat!"
        And in his brainish apprehension kills
        The unseen good old man.

She is the mother of the physiological criticism which issues from
insane asylums to wonder why Hamlet is not an inmate: and Hamlet
himself, by deceiving his mother, furnished to psychological criticism
the text that he was mad in craft. Between the lines of the genuine
Hamlet you can read that Shakspeare belonged to neither school.

Hamlet gives us unconsciously an opportunity to infer his ability to
frame the incoherences which real madness suggests to one who would
feign it. It occurs directly upon the Queen's suspicion, who, being
unable to see her husband's ghost standing in her chamber, exclaims,--

 "This is the very coinage of your brain:
 This bodiless creation ecstasy
 Is very cunning in."

Hamlet, repelling the insinuation, says,--

                         "It is not madness
 That I have uttered: bring me to the test,
 And I the matter will re-word, which madness
 Would gambol from."

And herein he implies that as he can construct the phrases of sanity,
being all the time of a sound mind, so the soundness would serve him
to invent the _non sequiturs_ of madness. If, then, he purposed to
feign it when he said that perhaps he might hereafter put on an antic
disposition, the reader may ask why so subtle a person did not carry
out his plan. No doubt, it occurred to him that, as he travelled
towards his purpose, his demeanor must be of the kind that would cover
up his traces. But he could baffle Polonius and the other spies by
the natural penetration of a mind that suspicion had sharpened. Those
emergencies did not call for any style of feigning. It is enough for
him to finger the ventages of a recorder and invite Guildenstern to
play upon it; the latter understands that he knows no touch of Hamlet,
and leaves the heart of that mystery to be voiced by the varying
breaths of critics.

When Hamlet explains to Polonius that he is reading slanders, and
then describes the old man himself as having a plentiful lack of wit
together with most weak hams, yet holds it hardly fair to have it thus
set down,--"For yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab,
you could go backward,"--Polonius, who is nothing if not satirical upon
himself, muses apart, saying, "Though this be madness, yet there's
method in 't;" and there he blundered as patly into Shakspeare's secret
as he did into his own death.

And why do so many actors make Hamlet appear to be conscious of the
manɶuvre to throw Ophelia in his way that the King and Polonius may
mark his tone from the place where they hide? Shakspeare has left
no loop-hole for this supposition that Hamlet, observing the trick,
assumes a tone of flightiness towards Ophelia, in order to throw off
the spies and make them infer that he is mad. The scene being over, the
King is wrong when he says,--

 "Love! his affections do not that way tend;"

but right when he adds,--

 "Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
 Was not like madness."

Of course it was not; and the whole scene with Ophelia is ruined for
Shakspeare's purpose by this modern contrivance of the theatre to
deprive Hamlet of his spontaneous and uncalculating mood.

Otto Ludwig notices that his madness is "alluded to by Ophelia as
having broken out between the first and second acts; and that is
another strange thing in Shakspeare. Then, too, the style, if it was
dissimulation, is such as to bring to pass the opposite of what he
seems to have intended. So far from being disguised by it he is rather
betrayed. And what is the use of any feigning when he does things like
that of contriving the mock play? For that betrays him to the King more
than it does the King to him. It makes the situation all awry, because
the King must now know on what footing he is with Hamlet. At all
events, the courtiers keep telling how danger is threatened to the King
from Hamlet: they have no means of fathoming the King's offence. They
merely presage some danger to the King, and they manifest no surprise.
Hamlet must be conscious that he would be in great peril if the King
knew that he knew every thing; the King would be put on his defence,
and he was quite capable of contriving another murder to forestall
retribution for the first one. Why, then, does he keep on feigning?
Yet we do not observe that he hits upon any expedients to meet this
possible case; it does not even occur to him before he concocts the
trial-scene."

Ophelia thinks that she sees

               "That noble and most sovereign reason,
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,"

because she cannot understand his unflattering talk that appears to
be disclaiming any regard for her and any desire to marry her. In all
those sentences that make such a coarse rupture with love and soil
the previous sentiment of their intercourse, there is no trace of a
distracted mind. How could we expect this maid to be prepared to
entertain such monstrous irony? It was as much Shakspeare's intention
to have him misunderstood as to represent him so occupied by the
sweeping scepticism that follows the disclosure of villainy. This irony
of the most sombre kind, the mental mood that corresponds to such a
harsh awakening, was not customary with Hamlet, who was by nature
mirthful before this murder happened.

And notice how this ironical tone is kept up by him all through
Ophelia's misconception, into which she falls because Hamlet's mood is
too overpowering, and she thinks he has a wrecked brain from which she
can rescue nothing to enable her to claim the salvage of loving him.
When he meets her after many days of unaccountable neglect, she returns
the few remembrances which were messengers of the happier hours of his
affection, but he casts discredit upon these sacred tokens. He never
meant them, in fact he never gave her any thing. But she says, "Yes,"

 "And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd,
 As made the things more rich."

Has the bloom been rubbed from them, and their perfume lost? Then, says
the self-respecting maid, tearing the presents by bleeding roots out of
the heart where they had lodged to fructify, take them again,

                     "For to the noble mind
 Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind."

"I did love you once," he says. "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe
so." Hamlet is enraged at his own love, and appears to have discarded
it, for that too may smile and be a villain, or hers may. "You should
not have believed me: for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, but
we shall relish of it." That is to say, if I had felt true love grafted
on my stem I should have received and imparted its flavor of sincerity.
But nothing is sincere: "I loved you not."

Hamlet's observation of human nature had furnished him with elements
which only needed provocation to develop into this uncompromising
irony. His mother, married to that satyr of an uncle,

             "Or ere those shoes were old,
 With which she follow'd my poor father's body,"

might well cast a slur upon the sex in his opinion, and prompt the
text which cynics use, "Frailty, thy name is woman,"--all but Ophelia:
it does not include her until all life's illusions vanished with the
ghost. Then she would do well not to walk in the sun, and would be
safest in a nunnery.

Previous to that, he had dispatched a missive to her, which is commonly
supposed to have been written on purpose to foster the notion that
he was mad. But its tone does not seem to me to have been rightly
interpreted. It begins in the style of Pistol: "To the celestial, and
my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia." Then comes a verse fit
for a valentine,--

 "Doubt thou the stars are fire,
   Doubt that the sun doth move;
 Doubt truth to be a liar,
   But never doubt I love."

So far the mocking spirit of his irony does not fail him. But the mood
changes, for this was written just after the scene in Ophelia's chamber
when he seemed to bid her an eternal farewell. Remembering this, he
breaks the tone and adds, "O dear Ophelia! I am ill at these numbers: I
have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, oh! most
best, believe it." So with impetuous emphasis he confessed afterward
upon Ophelia's grave. Nothing could more precisely convey to us his
mental condition than this mixture of moods.

In the churchyard scene, we observe that Hamlet recurs unconsciously
to his ordinary mental disposition, because he is alone there with
Horatio, whose grave and silent friendship is congenial. It is the foil
to Hamlet's restless speculation; it calls a truce to the civil war
between his temper and his purpose. He is pacified in the society of
Horatio, who gives him a chance to recur to his native mental habit. As
he naively pours out his thoughts, how little does Horatio answer! as
little as the ground beneath their feet, less laconic than the lawyer's
skull. He is a continent upon which Hamlet finds that he can securely
walk, the only domain in Denmark that is not honeycombed with pitfalls.
Turning toward Horatio's loyal affection, he feels a response that is
articulated without words. As little need the forest reply to her lover
save in dumb show and in obscure reflex of feeling.

The artless nature solicits confidence: its still air disarms and
dissipates the unrelenting irony. Then we see that Hamlet was naturally
more inclined to that use of satire which indicates an ideal far
lifted above the methods by which men live. He puts that fine sense
into the skulls of the politician, the courtier, and the lawyer, and we
acknowledge the satirical tone of an exalted mind. And this lends to
that scene a feeling that in it Hamlet recurs to himself, and resumes
the usual tone which always advertised him to his friends. To them his
long maintenance of ironical behavior, broken by so few sallies of his
healthy satire, was additional confirmation of his madness because it
was so unusual with him. Old friends remembered nothing of the kind;
they were first puzzled, then convinced, and we saw that Polonius
hurried to show his insapiency by attributing the craze to love for his
daughter. 'Tis very likely, they all thought, for they could refer to
no other probable cause for it.

It is by unconsciously remanding Hamlet to Irony that Shakspeare has
expressed the effect of an apparition, and of the disenchanting news it
brought, upon a mind of that firm yet subtle temper. Lear's noble mind
tottered with age before grief struck it into the abyss of madness.
Constance stands before us, like Niobe, all tears, or sits with sorrow;
but she was a too finely tempered woman to drip into craziness, till
health, hope, and life broke up. Shakspeare has not represented any of
his mature and well-constructed natures as capable of being overthrown
by passion the most exigent or events the most heart-rending. They
preserve their sanity to suffer, as all great souls must do to make us
worship them with tears. So Hamlet, being incapable of madness and
lifted above the necessity of feigning it, gives to every thing the
complexion of the news which has revolted his moral sense,--that is,
the King, his uncle, is not what he seems; his own mother's husband
does not appear to be a murderer. The State of Denmark is rotten with
this irony. No wonder that his brain took on the color of the leaf on
which it fed. Oh, every thing is not what it appears to be, but only
an indication of its opposite, and must be phrased by contradiction!
He is really in love with Ophelia, but this irony conceals it. With
the mood into which he has been plunged, his own love is no more worth
being seriously treated than is old Polonius, whom he knows excellent
well,--he is a fishmonger; that is, not that he is a person sent to
fish out his secrets, as Coleridge would explain it, but that he is a
dealer in staleness, and yet not so honest as those who only vend stale
fish.

If we return to a period in the play which follows closely upon the
scene of the taking of the oath, Ophelia herself will discover for us
the turning mood in Hamlet's character. The time and action of the
piece allow us to suppose that he soon went from the oath-taking to
visit Ophelia. Naturally, he turned from that bloodless and freezing
visitation to see life heaving in a dear bosom and reddening in lips
which he had love's liberty to touch. The disclosures of the ghost had
worked upon him like a turbid freshet which comes down from the hills
to choke the running of sweet streams, deface with stains of mud all
natural beauties, and bury with the washings of sunless defiles the
meadows spangled with forget-me-nots. His love for Ophelia was the
most mastering impulse of his life: it stretched like a broad, rich
domain, down to which he came from the shadowy places of his private
thought to fling himself in the unchecked sunshine, and revel in the
limpid bath of feeling. How often, in hours which only over-curious
brooding upon the problems of life had hitherto disquieted, had he gone
to let her smile strip off the shadow of his thought, and expose him to
untroubled nature! The moisture of her eyes refreshed his questioning;
her phrases answered it beyond philosophy; a maidenly submission of her
hand renewed his confidence; an unspoken sympathy of her reserve, that
flowed into the slight hints and permissions of her body, nominated him
as lover and disfranchised him as thinker; and a sun-shower seemed to
pelt through him to drift his vapors off. But this open gladness has
disappeared underneath the avalanche of murder which a ghostly hand
had loosened. He ventures down to the place where he remembers that it
used to expect him; but we know that it has disappeared. His air and
behavior announce it to us. The catastrophe seems to have swept even
over his person, to dishevel the apparel upon that "mould of form."
In this ruin of his life Ophelia is the first one buried; for she was
always more resident in his soul than maintained within a palace, and
his soul is no longer habitable.

Polonius has just been giving those scandalous instructions to his pimp
to waylay the Danes in Paris, and, by insinuations of ill-conduct in
Laertes, worm out of them possible admissions of its truth. He wants
to know how his son is spending money in the gay capital, how many
times he gamed, was overtaken in drink, or visited "a house of sale."
The pimp is to draw on his fellow-countrymen by pretending that Laertes
is given to all these things: he knows the man; 'tis the common talk
about him at home; you cannot surprise him by any thing you say. Says
the old manœuvrer:

 "See you now;
 Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
 And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
 With windlasses, and with assays of bias,
 By indirections find directions out."

No wonder that Hamlet in the churchyard, kicking the pate of a
politician, called it something "that would circumvent God." The
state-craft of old Polonius has lived so long without a change that its
garments are dropping from its limbs. Now see what an indecent forked
radish it is. But the scene is eminently in its place, and has nothing
incongruous with what transpires before or after; for the incident is
cunningly contrived to prepare us to find him applying his principle of
the windlass and indirect purchase to the relation of Hamlet with his
daughter; and it breeds in us a contempt for the notion that the Prince
has been made mad by love.

Ophelia enters to her father:

 "Oh, my lord, my lord! I have been so affrighted!"

Then she describes Lord Hamlet entering with garments all disordered,

 "And with a look so piteous in purport,
 As if he had been loosed out of hell,
 To speak of horrors....
 He took me by the wrist, and held me hard;
 Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
 And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
 He falls to such perusal of my face,
 As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;
 At last,--a little shaking of mine arm,
 And thrice his head thus waving up and down,--
 He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound,
 That it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
 And end his being. That done, he lets me go:
 And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
 He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
 For out of doors he went without their help,
 And, to the last, bended their light on me."

Polonius decides that it is the very ecstasy of love. Yes, it is, but
ecstasy that has made an assignation with despair. The two feelings
meet at the rendezvous of Ophelia's description, where they display to
us the yearning scrutiny that a man throws into the eyes of an expiring
love: it is too passionately dear to be surrendered into the inane; it
is too selfishly personal to be consistent with his future purpose. For
he had married a bride at midnight who is still expecting him. It is
the consummation of one murder by another. For such a bridal as that,
to leave her cheeks on which the color comes and goes between her love
and his renunciation, "like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set,"
seems to shatter and end his being. But let him fall to such perusal of
her face as he may, he sees the complexion of the ghost through each
warm feature; and its pallor stands even there to wave him apart to an
interview in which all seeming becomes debatable, for rascally things
may smile. He shades his brow, and his eyes are two magnets which he
detaches from her heart, as he surrenders his last confidence in a
stale and unprofitable world.

The irony reaches its most powerful exercise in the second scene of the
third act, where Hamlet avails himself of the arrival of play-actors
to test the King with his mouse-trap of an interlude. The Athenian
mechanics played Pyramus and Thisbe with the simple intention of
contributing their duty and homage to the nuptials. We see the humor
of its juxtaposition with courtly scenes and weddings. But Hamlet,
in his interlude, pretends amusement and mimics a murder to conceal
his knowledge of the real one. "No, no, they do but jest, poison in
jest; no offence in the world." His light talk with Ophelia is nothing
but the audacity of excitement and expectation. His baffling of
Guildenstern with the pipe; his making Polonius see a camel, a weasel,
and a whale in a cloud,--covers the dreadful necessity which drives
him, in the witching time of night, to that upbraiding of a mother, and
that second meeting with a dead father, which will make men's breath
bate and their veins creep while English is spoken in this world.

What other mood than Irony could a soul with such a secret for its
guest spread for entertainment? Too strongly built and level to be
cracked with the earthquake of madness; too awfully overclouded
to sparkle with imaginings of wit; too daunted and saddened with
the thought of a dear father in purgatorial flames to break into
the geniality of Humor,--all his mirth lost of late, there is no
resource, no method of relief to the mind that is strained to live
with dissemblers and swear vengeance to a ghost, but to dissemble too
with an irony as ruthless and sweeping as the crime. He saves his wits
which might otherwise justify suspicion and go all distraught, by
unconsciously assuming that love, marriage, chastity, all honorable
things, and friendship too, are crazes, and he that banters them alone
is sane.

But when he knows that the grave, near which he stood and satirized
the careers which men pursue, was another piece of irony, since Nature
by keeping Ophelia alive and beautiful really meant death by her, it
destroys his own tendency to be ironical, and he breaks forth with an
intense sincerity; then we take the point of his previous behavior.

 "I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
 Could not, with all their quantity of love,
 Make up my sum."

And as his soul was thus ample in its love, so was it in all serious
and ennobling things,--too much so to grow deranged, enough so to
create the concealment and defence of all his innuendo.

The tone recurs when Osrick is introduced, and makes a speech full
of pompous platitudes about Laertes,--"an absolute gentleman, full
of most excellent differences, the card or calendar of gentry," and
so on. Hamlet mimics the style; and you would think he was just such
another natty phrase-monger as Osrick, whose macaronic manner he
assumes to indicate his aversion from it. "Sir, his definement suffers
no perdition in you; though, I know, to divide him inventorially would
dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw neither, in respect of
his quick sail. But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a
soul of great article; and his infusion of such dearth and rareness,
as, to make true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror; and who
else would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more."

I wonder that the psychologists have not greedily picked up this
obscure and fantastic passage as a specimen of his craft in feigning.

But Osrick belonged to the prosaic sort of minds which took up so
readily with the theory of Hamlet's madness; all of them incapable
of irony, therefore not competent to fly into his meaning; limited,
like the dodo and other wingless birds, to running along the plain
appearance. "Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him," says Osrick.

So Hamlet could sport, who went towards his death with a presentiment
which his soul was great enough to put aside, and also give him breath
to say how great it was: "We defy augury: there is a special providence
in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be
not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all." No crotchet of real or assumed madness could lurk in
the repose of such a man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: One interpretation of this word gives it a Jewish origin,
and makes of it the Dance of the Maccabees, established to commemorate
the martyrdom of the seven brothers of the Maccabees, together with
Eleazar and their mother, who went out to death in succession. This was
imitated by a solemn dance of priests and civil authorities, who went
out in turn and disappeared as if to death. Afterwards, in mediæval
times, the dance was emphasized by the introduction of the figure of
Death as the leader of it. Another interpretation derives the word from
the Arabic _Makbar_, pl. _Makabir_, place of interment.]




THE PORTER IN "MACBETH,"

THE CLOWN IN "TWELFTH NIGHT,"

THE FOOL IN "LEAR."


THE PORTER IN "MACBETH."

The vulgarity of the Porter's language, in the third scene of
the second act, repelled Coleridge, who pronounced it to be
an after-thought of some baser hand. "I dare pledge myself to
demonstrate," said he, that it was an interpolation of the actors.
Other critics have followed with the same feeling of condemnation. But
only Shakspeare could have risen above such a conventional estimate,
and have put this piece of solid consistency into that part of the
tragedy which it strengthens: there it stays in the only place where
Nature could have lent to it her justification. We can readily admit
that the undisguised lechery of Pandarus in "Troilus and Cressida," and
the brothel scenes in "Pericles," were subsequent additions to those
plays by a pen that was accustomed to deal in broad effects without
regard to the organic exaction of the other characters. Perhaps they
were fragments of older plays left over by carelessness, or, what is
much more likely, introduced as gags by the play-actors. But we can
spare them out of the legacy of Shakspeare because they are not in
the manner which he used when broadness served his purpose. When the
gross details are hung over and fondled lewdly, recurred to morbidly,
laid open with ingenious particularity till we detect the sickening
odor of the dissecting-room which rises from slashed and naked
subjects, we may determine at once that the scene preserves not one
stroke of Shakspeare's pen. The lines seem suffocating in a close and
tainted place. What a brisk draught ventilates the honest coarseness
of the Porter! what a light, bantering touch hits off the vice which
is needful to finish the portrait of Falstaff! Even Parolles, his
prototype, only ventures far enough to make a scene coherent with
Helena's unspoken thought.[8]

Let us see if Nature was not fortunate in finding the Porter at his
post at an hour when he was needed as never before.

The air around the castle of Macbeth "nimbly and sweetly" recommended
itself to Duncan's senses; and Banquo noticed that the swallow, most
confiding and unsuspicious of birds, approves the place "by his lov'd
mansionry." On every frieze, buttress, coigne of vantage, Nature had
colonized this domestic wing, as if to hint to the wayfarer "a pleasant
seat," peace and unviolated sleep within. But we remember that a raven
had croaked the fatal entrance of Duncan into the castle. The swallows
twittering in the delicate air cannot drown this omen of insecurity:
as we enter with the unconscious Duncan, the weird sisters slip by us
from their blasted heath, and the house darkens with a fated purpose.

It was an unruly night, and the owl clamored the livelong hours.
Towards morning, after the accomplishment of the murder, Lady Macbeth
snatched the bloody daggers from the hand of her husband to carry them
back into the chamber. The air that was interrupted at the lips of the
gracious Duncan seems breathless as he, appalled at the deed; and our
consciousness of it sinks into an awful silence. Just then a knocking
at the gate is heard.

De Quincey, in an essay "On the Knocking at the Gate," rightly notices
that it reflects "back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and depth
of solemnity," and he explains this effect. "When the deed is done,
when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes
away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard,
and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human
has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning
to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world
in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful
parenthesis that had suspended them."

Admirable as this criticism is to justify the profound art of
Shakspeare, it does not seem to me entirely to exhaust the effect
produced by the knocking. It not only makes known to us that human life
recurs, and thus emphasizes our sense of the unhuman world of murder,
but it also startles us with the sudden consciousness that the human
which thus recurs does it in entire ignorance of the scene at which
it knocks. That makes us catch our breath, to feel how thoughtlessly
life is about to stumble into the tremendous scene. What a contrast of
innocent unconsciousness,--so innocent, so remote from the event, that
we should think it was impertinent if our pity for the shock it brings
upon itself did not prevail! We wonder who will first discover what has
occurred, whether man or woman; somebody is doomed to blunder into the
ghastliness of that room where Macbeth murdered sleep. What will be
the sensation that thrills from the inhospitable bed around which the
angels of honor and loyalty ought to have watched with spotless wings?
Some one steps into this pool where all the safeguards and trusts of
human life lie drenched. How will he manage to escape from it, and will
the tongue be palsied "with the act of fear" to refuse to the lips
words adequate to express the villainy? And yet this must be done.

We therefore become aware of this additional feeling, that the life
which knocks at the gate, though unconscious, is pregnant with the
design of an overruling Power; just for a moment, there seems to be
the supernatural arrival of something with a commission to detect the
murder. Every knock smites the bare heart of Macbeth, who may well
exclaim, "Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st!"

Shakspeare makes another world for Macbeth,--a sequestered hell. The
knocking announces the existence and reappearance of another life, as
De Quincey notices; but he does not note the fine prolongation of the
Hell into the humorous fancy of the Porter who comes to open the gate.

To the old French taste, this Porter was one of the Shakspearean
violations of decency and tragic sentiment,--a vulgar fellow who has
been waked out of a drunken sleep, and who talks outrageous matter that
is the farthest removed from murder, so that solemnity is affronted and
abruptly leaves the hearts which it had just monopolized. But the more
we dwell upon Shakspeare's characters, "the more we shall see proofs of
design and self-supporting arrangement, where the careless eye had seen
nothing but accident."

The Porter, as if he had been privy to the transactions of the
night, translates each knock into a candidate for admission into
his quaint fancy of a hell, of which he keeps the gate. Fleay, in
his "Shakspeare's Manual," shows that the Porter makes allusions to
contemporaneous circumstances of the year 1606, when "Macbeth" was
first produced. "The expectation of plenty:" wheat, barley, and malt
were extraordinarily cheap. The "equivocator" is the Jesuit, Garnet,
who was tried for gunpowder treason in that year. "Stealing out of a
French hose:" the fashion of hose became short in 1606; yet the tailors
took the old measure of material and cabbaged the difference. So that
the Porter belongs to that year, and could not have been subsequently
interpolated.

"If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have often turning the
key. Who's there?" "An equivocator, that could swear in both the
scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's
sake, yet could not equivocate to Heaven! Oh, come in, equivocator!"
Yes, this is the very house for him to come to, where a treason has
just been committed which will be unable to equivocate to Heaven. "I'll
devil-porter it no farther: I had thought to have let in some of all
professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." If
the outer life is to gain admission at all again to this castle, this
grotesque hint of the hell within undoes the gate appropriately: by no
abrupt transition, and by the bridge of a perilous smile, human life
is reached again. The Porter delays by his successive fancies, till we
begin to grow impatient, like those emissaries of Heaven who shiver
at the gate. This impatience, humorously created for us, introduces
another human feeling to qualify our awe; and thus we rejoin our common
humanity.

When the Porter lets in Macduff and Lenox, he seems to have admitted
also a very garish and vulgar kind of day, that displays loosely some
infirmities of men, unconscious of the more awful crime within,--a
very broad and unequivocal daylight that lies sharply on all objects
without toning them. The Porter's disquisition upon drinking and
lechery is apparently superfluous and revolting, but it is really well
conceived; for we want something to carry our mood as far as possible
away from Duncan's chamber and from all thoughts about discovering
the deed, because Macbeth is about to enter. "Our knocking has awaked
him." Then our feeling, which has gained a temporary relief, is able
to take up again the awful clew, and to wait during Macbeth's feigned
unconsciousness till Macduff bursts upon us with his horror. Moreover,
the carousing which the Porter mentions was the cover to Macbeth's
opportunity, and just keeps the night alive in our memory, while we
think how innocently drunk the whole household was to provide a human
weakness for an act of death. Macbeth enters, whose wife conceived
the stratagem of the drinking, and soon the result of it arrives. An
after-clap of Hell settles back on the Porter's traces; but he has
performed his function by letting life and human nature in upon the
sexless and monstrous scene, and may now vacate his post.

Still, the Porter is conventionally vulgar, and cannot be accepted by
a taste that is more fastidious than the world itself is. But, if the
world chooses to be vulgar, why needed Shakspeare to have imported this
base touch of realism into his art? Only by the permission of Humor,
and the justification of an exigency to drag our feelings back to life
by the handiest strand, however coarse it may be. And after he had
invented that thrilling moment of the knocking at the gate, he cannot
get along without the house-porter, who is the only one awake enough to
let honest Nature in. So we must take him as he is, and admire the poet
who did not send the Muse of Tragedy to draw the bolt.

The Agamemnon of Æschylus reaches a breathless moment of suspense, when
Clytemnestra has left the scene to plan the murder of her husband, and
the Chorus, shuddering with its divination of the deed, expresses our
expectation. All at once a stifled exclamation struggles out from the
interior of the palace: the Chorus whispers, "Hush! who is it that
cries out, 'A blow'?" and the play soon closes with the sombre feeling
unrelieved. Nothing intervenes to assist the spectators back to life,
and to the other persons whose interests implicate them so deeply in
the plot. There is but one interest and one action in a Greek Tragedy,
and when that is reached the nature of the scene is exhausted; the poet
has no more to say, and is not conscious of any craving for variety
in his listeners. His play was an artistic embodiment of the current
religious ideas, and so far was secluded, as the modern pulpit is,
from manifold life. It is not possible to discover a place in these
solemn developments of Fate, where a feeling of Humor could intrude.
The Chorus, listening to the blow, intervenes instead of a Porter. It
is the voice of an audience conscious of the crime. So is a modern
audience conscious of Macbeth's crime, but that consciousness is
itself the Chorus, whose ancient function is distributed through the
silent hearts of the spectators, who are thus permitted to mingle in
every awful occurrence, and therefore need to be restored again to the
ordinary world of justice and emotion.

Shakspeare exhibits the supreme nature of his genius when he meets
this exigency which antique religion did not feel. He admits the free
play of life into its real closeness with all our moral and pathetic
emotions; but we never find that Humor weakens the religious purpose
of the play, as it would if our private anguish were unseasonably
interrupted by it, because our personal fortunes are not touched by
the tragedy. We are implicated in the scene only by our instinct of
observation and sympathy; that needs relief, but, if the blow struck
us and became a "fee-grief due to each single breast," we could endure
it as we do in real life, as we prefer to do, with a temper that keeps
all other strings muted but sorrow. So the Humor which we would not
tolerate when the tempest breaks upon our roof-tree, and is sullen
within every chamber, is no unwelcome surprise when the heart is so
keenly summoned by the mimic scene.


THE CLOWN IN "TWELFTH NIGHT."

The name of the Clown does not appear in the _dramatis personæ_,
and only once in the text, Act ii. 4, where he is called Feste. All
the dainty songs of the play are put into his mouth. Feste was the
name of a distinguished musician and composer, probably a friend of
Shakspeare. We may even surmise that he set to music one or more of his
namesake's songs. There is no play which employs the element of music
so frequently, or that speaks of it in the tender terms which only a
lover of melody can use. It is admitted into the plot as a confidant
and adviser, and allowed to sway the moods of the characters.

The Duke calls for Cesario (Viola) to repeat

                 "That piece of song,
 That old and antique song we heard last night."

The Duke has forgotten that Feste, and not Cesario, was the singer.
Fleay overlooks this touch of nature, and attributes the passage to an
older play or first draught, which appears uncorrected in the present
play. But the Duke is mooning about in his sentimental fashion, and
vaguely recollects that Cesario was presented to him as one that could
sing "and speak to him in many sorts of music." He had done so, no
doubt, so that the mistake was natural to the distraught mind of the
Duke, who seems to allude to it when he says immediately to Cesario,--

           "If ever thou shalt love,
 In the sweet pangs of it remember me;
 For such as I am all true lovers are,
 Unstaid and skittish in all motions else,
 Save in the constant image of the creature
 That is belov'd."

His obliviousness is indeed so profound that he blunders in dismissing
Feste when the song is over, saying to him, "Give me now leave to leave
thee." This, so far from being an imperfect reading, is a perfect
touch of his abstruse mood. It amuses Feste, who says aside, "Now the
melancholy god protect thee," &c. Every line and word of this beautiful
scene is unalterably well placed.

We see that the Clown adds a good voice to his other gifts; he does
every thing "dexteriously," and is in high demand for his companionable
spirits. For Sir Andrew and Sir Tobey his songs are blithe and free:
all the ballads and ditties that had vogue in Feste's time are at his
tongue's end, and he is always humming snatches of them. For the Duke
he has cypress sentimentalism, urges death to come away, and forbids a
flower sweet to be strown on the black coffin of the Duke's luxurious
woe. We can imagine what a face Feste pulled over the minor key which
so tickled the Duke, whose love was after all nothing but the spooning
of a professor of rhetoric. He can take off his sighing disguise as
quickly as Viola can transfer herself into woman's weeds. Olivia is
well aware of this, and having just lost her brother is in no mood for
a flirtation. She knows he is a noble and gracious person, but she has
read the first chapter of his heart, and "it is heresy." The Clown,
who is as usual Shakspeare's keenest and most amused observer, knows
this well and puts it into the neatest language: "The tailor make thy
doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal! I would
have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be
everything and their intent everywhere; for that's it that always
makes a good voyage of nothing." And this turns out true enough; for
the Duke with all sail set after Olivia, and a spanking breeze on his
quarter, tacks nimbly in the teeth of it the moment Olivia is married
by mistake, and Cesario becomes a woman. The only serious sentiment in
the play is the one so tenderly concealed in the disguise of Viola.

In Act iii. 7, Viola enters, meeting Feste, who is playing the pipe and
tabor. Her simplest remark he makes the pivot of a jest, and is never
tired of tossing words. He plays with them as a juggler with balls;
they all seem to be in the air at once. There never was such a jaunty
and irrepressible quipster. Yet when Viola says to him, "I warrant thou
art a merry fellow, and carest for nothing," his reply, "Not so, sir, I
do care for something," betrays the serious temper which lies under all
his fooling to furnish the appositeness of his remarks:--

 "For folly, that he wisely shows, is fit;
 But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit."

Viola, who says this, might adapt a text of Paul, and apply it to
Shakspeare's people,--"For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves
are wise."

Of all Shakspeare's clowns, he is the best endowed with a many-sided
mirth, as indeed he should be to pass lightly through the mingled
romance and roystering of the play and favor all its moods. The
sentiment of the Duke is as inebriated as the revelling which Malvolio
rebukes. Olivia's protracted grief for her brother is carefully
cosseted by her, as if on purpose to give the Clown an opportunity.

 CLO. Good madonna, why mournest thou?

 OLIV. Good fool, for my brother's death.

 CLO. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.

 OLIV. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.

 CLO. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in
 heaven.--Take away the fool, gentlemen.

All the characters, noble and common, have some weakness which
he intuitively rallies. The charm of the comedy lies in these
unsubstantial moods of the chief personages which consort with the more
substantial whims and appetites of the others. The only sobriety is
vested in the Clown; for all his freaks have a consistent disposition.
So the lovely poetry of the mock mourners alternates with the tipsy
prose of the genuine fleshly fellows. Their hearty caterwauling
penetrates to Olivia's fond seclusion, and breaks up her brooding.
Feste is everywhere at home. When he plays the curate's part, Malvolio
beseechingly cries, "Sir Topas, Sir Topas!" The Clown says aside, "Nay,
I am for all waters,"--that is, for topaz, diamond, gems of the first
water, all many-colored facets I'll reflect. And he does so in this
conversation which he holds with Malvolio, who says, "I am no more mad
than you are: make the trial of it in any constant question." Then
Feste airs his learning: "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning
wild-fowl?" and makes his question lead up to a sharp retort, when
Malvolio answers, "That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a
bird;" for then Feste says, "Thou shalt hold the opinion of Pythagoras
ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou
dispossess the soul of thy grandam." For it was a country notion that
the woodcock was the foolishest of birds; so he translates Malvolio's
grandam into one, and leaves him to inherit her absence of wits. And
Malvolio was so devoured by mortification and anxiety that he does not
notice when Feste cannot restrain his burlesquing knack, but makes
the pretended curate say that Malvolio's cell "hath bay-windows,
transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores toward the south-north
are as lustrous as ebony."

The Clown is not only quaint, droll, full of banter, sly with sense,
like clowns in the other plays, but he is the most ebullient with
spirits of them all, ready for the next freak, to dissemble himself
in the curate's gown and carry on two voices with Malvolio in the
prison, keeping him on the rack the while, or to carouse with the two
knights till daybreak, and delight them with manufacturing burlesques.
"Thou wast in very gracious fooling last night, when thou spokest of
Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus: 'twas
very good, i' faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman: hadst it?"
Feste resumes the burlesquing humor: "I did impeticos thy gratillity;
for Malvolio's nose is no whipstock: my lady has a white hand, and
the Myrmidons are no bottle-ale houses." As for "bottle-ale," the
phrase occurs once more in Shakspeare, 2 "Henry IV.," ii. 4, to
express contempt,--"Away, you bottle-ale rascal!" So Feste does not
think small-beer of the Myrmidons, or retainers of Olivia, who might
scent out his sixpence as quickly as Malvolio. Was the bottling of
ale just coming in, to the immense disgust of the loyal Briton, who
thought nobly of the ancient brew and would not have it save mightily
on tap? The words, "Pigrogromitus," "Vapians," "Queubus," sound like
the names which Rabelais manufactured to cover his sly allusions to
public personages; but they cannot be traced. It is just possible
that Shakspeare invented them to burlesque the words and style which
mariners and travellers brought home to vapor with to eager listeners
in the taverns: marvels of the East that would not stay in Damascus,
but came by caravan,--of Virginia, Guiana, and the "still-vex'd
Bermoothes," the "Anthropophaginian,"[9] men "whose heads do grow
beneath their shoulders," not positively discredited by Sir Walter
Raleigh; one-leg and one-foot savages, seen by early sailors to the
coast of Maine,--all the misunderstanding and exaggeration of a new
period of adventure and discovery of new lands were bountifully
nourished upon sack and canary in the London taverns. What legends
were fabricated at the Mitre in Cheapside, the Swan at Dowgate, the
Boar's Head near London Stone, the Ship at the Exchange, the Red Lion
in the Strand! These were haunts of Frobisher's and Drake's men; of
Sir Humphrey Gilbert's, fresh from Newfoundland in the only ship that
was saved; of Barbour's expedition to Roanoake in 1584; of Gosnold's,
in 1602, to Cape Cod and the islands in Buzzard's Bay. The sack grew
apprehensive and forgetive, and justified Falstaff's eulogy. Bermoothes
was not the only region vexed by devils and spirits, but every tavern
from Plymouth to London. A trace of Shakspeare's interest in these
London entertainments is found in the "Tempest," where Trinculo wishes
that he had Caliban in England for a show. "There would this monster
make a man: any strange beast there makes a man; when they will not
give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see
a dead Indian." Captain Weymouth was sent by Sir Ferdinando Gorges
and Chief Justice Popham, in 1605, to found a colony upon the coast
of Maine. He kidnapped five Abenaki Indians near the mouth of the
Sagadahoc, and carried them home. Three of these were kept by Gorges at
Plymouth, and the other two were sent up to London to the care of the
Chief Justice. One of these died there. The passage in the "Tempest" is
strong confirmation that Shakspeare went with the other cockneys to see
him.

Though Shakspeare empties all his own love for pure fun into this
clown, he makes of him the only cool and consistent character in the
play, and thus conveys to us his conviction of the superiority of an
observer who has wit, humor, repartee, burlesquing, and buffoonery at
command; for none but wise men can make such fools of themselves. Such
a fine composition is apt to be misunderstood by the single-gifted
and prosaic people; but this only piques the bells to their happiest
jingle; and a man is never more convinced of the divine origin of his
buffooning talent than when the didactic souls reject it as heresy.
All Shakspeare's clowns brandish this fine bauble: their bells swing
in a Sabbath air and summon us to a service of wisdom. Feste has no
passion to fondle, and no chances to lie in wait for except those
which can help his foolery to walk over everybody like the sun. Even
when he seems to be wheedling money out of the Duke and Viola, he is
only in sport with the weakness which purse-holders have to fee, to
conciliate, to enjoy an aspect of grandeur. His perfectly dispassionate
temper is sagacity itself. It discerns the solemn fickleness of the
principal personages. They are all treated with amusing impartiality;
and it is in the spirit of the Kosmos itself which does not stand in
awe of anybody. It seems, indeed, as if the function of fool, and the
striking toleration which has always invested it, was developed by
Nature for protection of those of her creatures who are exposed to
flattery and liable to be damaged by it. Not for shallow amusement have
rich and titled persons harbored jesters, who always play the part of
the slave of Pyrrhus, at proper intervals to remind them that they are
mortal. All men secretly prefer to know the truth; but the pampered
people cannot bear to sit in the full draught of it. Its benefit must,
however, be in some way conveyed to them. Bluff Kent is banished for
saying to Lear, in the plainest Saxon, what the fool kept insinuating
with impunity. Therefore, no genuine court has been complete without
its fool. The most truculent sceptre has only playfully tapped his
liberty. Timur the Terrible had a court-fool, named Ahmed Kermani. One
day, in the bath with a crowd of wits, the conversation fell upon the
individual worth of men, and Timur asked Ahmed, "What price wouldst
thou put on me if I were for sale?" "About five-and-twenty aspers,"
rejoined Ahmed. "Why," said Timur, "that is about the price of the
sheet I have on." "Well, of course, I meant the sheet." When the
business of kingship becomes decayed, the office of fool is obsolete.

Feste bandies words with Viola, and makes her submit to delicate
insolences: her distinguished air cannot abate him. He pretends to wish
to be convinced by Malvolio that the latter is sane, but concludes that
he will never believe a madman till he can see his brains. Feste keeps
his own head on a level keel as the sparkling ripples of his drolleries
go by. Shakspeare's intention is conspicuous in him to make all the
clowns the critics of all the other personages, and kept in the pay of
their creator.

When the play is over, the Duke plighted to his page, Olivia rightly
married to the wrong man, and the whole romantic ravel of sentiment
begins to be attached to the serious conditions of life, Feste is left
alone upon the stage. Then he sings a song which conveys to us his
feeling of the world's impartiality: all things proceed according to
law; nobody is humored; people must abide the consequences of their
actions, "for the rain it raineth every day." A "little tiny boy"
may have his toy; but a man must guard against knavery and thieving:
marriage itself cannot be sweetened by swaggering; whoso drinks with
"toss-pots" will get a "drunken head:" it is a very old world, and
began so long ago that no change in its habits can be looked for. The
grave insinuation of this song is touched with the vague, soft bloom of
the play. As the noises of the land come over sea well-tempered to the
ears of islanders, so the world's fierce, implacable roar reaches us in
the song, sifted through an air that hangs full of the Duke's dreams,
of Viola's pensive love, of the hours which music flattered. The note
is hardly more presageful than the cricket's stir in the late silence
of a summer. How gracious has Shakspeare been to mankind in this play!
He could not do otherwise than leave Feste all alone to pronounce its
benediction; for his heart was a nest of songs whence they rose to
whistle with the air of wisdom. Alas for the poor fool in "Lear" who
sang to drown the cries from a violated nest!


THE FOOL IN "KING LEAR."

The bauble of the Fool in "King Lear" rings us into a horizon that,
before we reach it, mutters with the premonition of madness; and we
wonder if any humor can find shelter with us underneath that blackening
sky. When the Fool joins our company, we search his features in
vain for a trace of Feste's and Touchstone's temper. That spring of
geniality has been stirred by the king's misfortunes till it is roiled
into irony; and we recognize the only tone that can take lodgings in
this tragedy. It makes rifts in the gathering tempest, not of clear sky
but of lighter cloud-racks, around whose edges the first lightnings
run. We have ceased to smile and begin to forebode. All cheeriness and
whim are getting blotted out so fast that we share the Fool's longing
for the shelter of the hut when heaven began to pelt that old gray
head, "crowned with rank fumiter," upon the heath.

His irony is tart; but commiseration for his master saves it from
ill-temper. Just as it threatens to become cynical, a song occurs to
him, which is a low call drawing him back, as the mother's voice lures
her child from the edge of a cliff ere it falls over:--

 "Then they for sudden joy did weep,
   And I for sorrow sung."

"When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?" It was not his
wont, then? By no means. This court-jester stood by when the latent
disease of the King's brain was suddenly unmasked by the sincerity
of Cordelia, whose love was more ponderous than her tongue. He saw
her transformed, in an instant of the King's first lesion, from a
daughter into an outcast. First, wonder at a blow which no one could
anticipate, and then pity at seeing that love's vessel thus pushed
over and its rareness spilled, has destroyed his appetite for mirth.
He unconsciously resorts to the Fool's alternative between jesting and
gravity, which is a fusion of both these qualities in irony; and he
catches at the ragged edges of old songs when he feels himself tumbling
into bitter aspersion of the King. He has, too, been affrighted by the
sudden and groundless vehemence which hurls the faithful old Kent into
exile as soon as he dared speak a word for Cordelia. What! Daughterhood
stamped out like a spider, life-long loyalty sent to the dogs! This
palace can dispense with jesting for the future; and our wits must
yield a different grain. Touchstone is the wise fool of life's comedy.
But Lear snatches at his fool's bauble, invests him with the pathos
of a broken sceptre and a crumbling reason, and may well inquire when
he learned to sing. "I have used it, Nuncle, e'er since thou madest
thy daughters thy mother." His songs insinuate so much unpalatable
truth that he tells the King to keep a schoolmaster that can teach his
fool to lie, and pretends that under the circumstances, with the King
undertaking to be the house-fool, lying might be an accomplishment.

No person--not even the shrewd, observing Fool--had detected in these
early inconstancies of the King the tokens of impending insanity. But
Shakspeare meant, no doubt, that the whim of abdication, the division
of the kingdom, and the absurd project to travel with a hundred knights
from one daughter's house to another, should hint to us that the
royal brain was breaking down. An expert in the phenomena of insanity
would have predicted what occurred so suddenly. But it shocked these
unprepared beholders, and curdled every smile on the Fool's face into
lines of mockery that ran full with tears. No king's misfortune was
ever so bantered by its own pathos, as love and loyalty, contrasting
with ingratitude, subsidized a Fool for the service of pity.

But he cannot long employ his Irony upon our hearts, for events develop
a dread earnest temper. There is no longer place for insinuation in the
scene. The fortune of Lear seems to challenge all the elements to match
it. As the reason topples, it appears to be clutching at the sky to
save itself, and brings it down in the winds and lightnings of midnight
to sympathize with its own eclipse. The Fool is cowed by the madness
and the storm as they intermingle; his brave innuendoes die away; and
he supplicates Lear, in plain language of human discomfort, to seek
some shelter, even under such a blessing as one of his daughters can
bestow, for that seems less inclement than the night. His vein runs
very thin during Lear's delusion that he has his daughters in court and
is trying them; and it soon disappears, swallowed in the quicksand of
the king's lunacy. Kingdom, friends, reason, family, are all crumbled
into this wreck of an old father, who pretends at last to hear the
soft and gentle voice which used to temper the pride of his state
and keep him human: he comes in to us hugging the hanged Cordelia to
his cracking heart, to feel that she will come no more; she, whom he
drove from his palace gate with violent misapprehension, will come no
more,--never, never, never! Oh, it has grown too piteous for the wisest
Fool: he can never share these scenes; his humor cannot lace these
thundrous lines. Do they swell to the measure of the firmament itself,
or is it our heart which is swelling to occupy that space? Yes: "Pray
ye, undo this button." It is the heart, too big for any thing that ever
made it smile. The lightnings of fate rend it into the drops of pity,
and they wash all tolerating smiles away.

Humor is too deeply implicated with our mortality, too warm a comrade,
too judicious a friend in our extremities, to choose such hours
of disaster to virtue for any task of reconciliation. Awful and
questioning spirits come; and Humor, yielding to them our hand, stands
aside to wait, but yields it warm enough to keep warm through any grasp
till it may be claimed again.

Shakspeare's instinct divined the precise moment when the bells of
the Fool's bauble could not compete with thunder, nor the balls upon
his cap draw off the bolt. But, while the muttering comes up from the
horizon and begins to be heard between the lines, the bells still
shake, as in the last scene of the first act, where they render more
sombre the expectation of what must finally come down upon our heads.
The recollection of Cordelia gives the King a lucid interval: it breaks
like a breadth of heaven into his brain, and into ours through that
little sentence, "I did her wrong."

"Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?" "No." "Nor I neither; but I
can tell why a snail has a house." "Why?" "Why, to put his head in; not
to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case."
Lear listens absently to the quaint chatter; for he detects the threat
which has been approaching from the distance, and is now quite near.

 "Oh, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet Heaven!
 Keep me in temper: I would not be mad."

After helping Kent and Gloster bear off the King just before old
Gloster's eyes are plucked from his head, the Fool disappears from the
tragedy, as if all light were to be quenched with such an act, and all
moods but terror to be stamped with those jellies under Cornwall's feet.

 "Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: All's Well that Ends Well, Act i. 7. Though I suspect
here either a fragment of an early form of the play that kept its
place in the stage copy and passed into print unchastened, or some
phrases interpolated by actors. Something has been dropped out between
Parolles's "Will you do any thing with it?" and Helena's recurrence
to Bertram's leaving for the court, "There shall your master have a
thousand loves;" so that the scene is in an imperfect condition.]

[Footnote 9: Reproduction of _anthropophagi_ as heard from some guest
by the host of the Garter Inn, in "Merry Wives of Windsor," iv. 5.]




WOMEN AND MEN:

MARIA, HELENA, IMOGEN, CONSTANCE.


WOMEN AND MEN.

Man draws near to woman with the fly-net of his analysis, thinking
to steal up and capture the secrets of her disposition. He finds a
distance drawn across his way which he never entirely passes. It
is the distance of sex. The greatest intimacy of marriage itself,
which blends two beings into one fate, and compels them to set up
housekeeping on the principle of mutualism, is still evaded by motives
and moods which the woman holds in reserve, not by calculation, but
through the instinct of a difference which the husband cannot entirely
penetrate. It is not that man reaches results chiefly by the processes
of judgment, and woman chiefly by a method which is not thinking so
much as it is a taste or touch of the objects she observes. But she
is removed from his scrutiny because the complexity of sex constructs
her soul, becomes the essence of her motives, decides her virtues
and her vices, and modifies the intellect itself. She contains all
qualities, but not in the masculine proportion. Sex also irrevocably
decides for the average man, as for the average woman, the plus and
minus of each attribute. Woman's mode of life must so defer to the
tendency of her sex, that a variety of objects are prevented from
pressing into her experience. She is less actively in motion from
place to place than man, who mingles with many crowds and learns to
reflect upon their actions. Her brain is not so multifariously stored
with facts and relations, because there are some scenes from which she
must always be remote. If, apart from sex, a considerable portion of
a person's training has been by hearsay, that person's judgments will
be sentiments rather than reflections; but sex decides that hearsay
shall enter largely into woman's training. The rude, fierce, cunning
competition of naked men in the palæstra, without blush or apology,
gave girth to the breasts which were bucklers before the glory and the
arts of Greece. Many a situation that is as coarse as a pugilist puts
us in prudent trim. Women derive from our education a benefit which
their muscle is too delicately draughted to procure. Events that do not
mince their speech give us a thorough knowledge of our mother-tongue.
We overhear the other people, weigh their words, enrich ourselves with
facts, or protect ourselves against omens. She is more likely to be
well-behaved than man, but less likely to be tolerant of ill-behavior.
When she feels particularly virtuous, she is apt to condemn swiftly and
fatally where man would suspend his judgment till all the qualifying
facts were put into the case. Human development has in this respect
conferred upon man a great advantage that dates from the barbaric rule
of the stronger, and has been re-enforced by the varied experience of
every generation. Just as woman is entering upon a more independent
career, she betrays a deficiency in the quality of humor. Man was
turned loose in the pasture to feed at random upon all the plants
that drew nutritious and poisonous saps: stramonium and clover were
indiscriminately cropped; but Heaven gave to its wild creatures tough
stomachs to begin with. They effect a compromise with such complacency
that literature is charmed to celebrate it; and the dew of humor
condenses beneath a long-suffering sky. A powerful and happy digestion
does not prefer the noxious weeds; but it has learned how to account
for them, and to measure their effects.

Women are not good readers of any kind of plays. The movement and lapse
of events in a novel are more congenial to their secluded life. And I
venture to impute to the average woman a thinly running vein of humor
as the reason why she finds such difficulty in admiring Shakspeare.
Many of the finest women can never conquer their repugnance. There
seems to be in it something of impatience at the dramatic intervals
and the movement by incessant colloquy, something of an equanimity of
passion, something of fright at the broad and powerful statement, which
flinches at nothing; blabs dreadfully of Juliet's clandestine feeling;
keeps Helena in contented ear-shot of Parolles, and lets her devise
an indelicate solution of the plot; shows the sweet Marianna of the
moated grange ready to help on another play with the same alacrity,
and leaves Nature everywhere, in the most passionate or vulgar phases,
to her absolute sincerity, and concedes to her the freedom of the
dictionary. Women do not like to be charmed along through scenes of
tender and lofty feeling to stumble over the sentences of porters,
carriers, camp-followers, fellows on a frolic; phrases that hiccough
a decided waft of sack; clauses that throw a leer in passing. Even
the high passionateness of kings and lovers, when it is the purest,
seems to the average woman to blaze with extravagance. To her it is
the overstatement that kidnaps true sentiment and brings it up for
the stage. She does not recall a moment of her life that could have
recognized such feeling, or have framed for her secretest thought a
corresponding whisper. Do her brothers and acquaintances smoulder with
these wraths and fervors inside of their demure suits of gray-mixed
and black? Are all the men who circulate in society, and enframe her
waist at balls, liable to attacks of this erysipelatous condition?
Does she sit at divine service with such neat packages of rend-rock in
the pew? So the Shakspearean ideal of the great passions of mankind
has to be watered for her through the modern novel, trickle by trickle
of protracted rhetoric, drop by drop of overflavored style. She turns
with resentful cheeks from Juliet's expectant mood, and manages to read
pages that are too sickly to kindle a blush. And yet perhaps they are
equivocal enough to have puzzled Dame Quickly and frightened Falstaff.
Certainly the equivoque has not lost its voice "with hollaing and
singing of anthems."

Some offences, chiefly those which concern propriety and chasteness,
are so repugnant to a woman's disposition that they excite a fanaticism
which sometimes is slow, and sometimes eager, to condemn the reputed
offender. That is to say, the same disposition is competent to
give credence to an accusation slowly, or to give it impetuously
and with loathing. If there be a case involving testimony, it is
not deliberately weighed, its intricacies patiently pursued, its
implications as well as its statements justly rated, and all the parts
of it fitted to an opinion of innocence or guilt; but there results
instead a state of feeling from previous opinions and assumptions,
which no testimony, however strong, can do much to reverse. Women,
indeed, naturally shrink from familiarity with the testimony, and do
not wish to reach an opinion by probing it. The defendant may enjoy
the immunity of a woman's assumption that the charge is in his case
incredible, and refuted by all her previous associations with his life;
or he may suffer from her want of any feeling derived from previous
knowledge of his life, or from considerations dependent upon personal
sentiment.

Woman's instinct of purity is specially intolerant towards the
unfortunate members of her own sex. She will not hear a word: she
is deprived of the power to weigh circumstance, environment, the
complicity of others, the wile and treachery of life. The outcast does
not even have the benefit of a trial. No court is held in which mercy
seasons justice, like one that was long ago extemporized over the
woman who knelt on the pavement of the Temple. The men in that crowd
were chiefly interested to convict the Master, and not the sinner. If
women were present, as is quite probable, they composed a jury that was
adverse to the ruling of the court, unless they fell into sympathy from
pique at the mock chastity of the men.

In the first scene of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," Hermia and
Lysander are in love with each other. Demetrius, who was once deep
in love for Helena, has transferred his midsummer inclination to
this Hermia, leaving Helena as deep in love with him as ever, but
finding Hermia full of disdain. Now Hermia's father would have her
marry Demetrius; so she and Lysander, to escape from this paternal
preference, agree to meet at night, and fly together from Athens to
a darling old aunt who lived at some Hellenic Gretna Green. At this
point, Helena enters, who loves Demetrius as much as he now dislikes
her. The lovers confide to her their purpose of flight; and Hermia, for
comfort, says that she will soon be beyond the reach of Demetrius. Then
Helena is left alone to her reflections, during which she says,--

 "For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
 He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
 And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
 So he dissolv'd, and showers of oaths did melt.
 I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
 Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
 Pursue her: and for this intelligence
 If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
 But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
 To have his sight thither and back again."

Coleridge frames, in a criticism upon this passage, a sweeping
indictment of the feminine disposition. Starting with a misconception
of the text, he appends to it a statement that does not seem to me
accordant with the facts.

He attributes to Helena a "broad determination of ungrateful
treachery," and then adds: "The act itself is natural, and the resolve
so to act is, I fear, likewise too true a picture of the lax hold
which principles have on a woman's heart when opposed to, or even
separated from, passion and inclination. For women are less hypocrites
to their own minds than men are, because, in general, they feel less
proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more of
its outward consequences, as detection and loss of character, than
men,--their natures being almost wholly extroitive."[10]

Now there is no treachery in the act of Helena, because there is no
damage in it to the runaways. If she supposed that Demetrius could
prevent the flight or prevail over Hermia's repugnance, she would never
have given the information to him. Her motive is entirely distinct
from treachery, and is rooted in a truly feminine hope of disgusting
Demetrius by showing the woman he loves running away with another man.
This may cure his passion, and possibly revive it for herself. But
she modestly says that even thanking her would be too great a strain
upon him. Still, so far from fancying that Demetrius can detach Hermia
from Lysander, she means to "enrich her pain,"--that is, deepen it,
by following to witness his despair at her rival's flight, then have
him back again. For then, perhaps, his feeling may return to her from
the point of appreciating her act which disenchants him. All this we
have to put down tediously to rescue Shakspeare's compactness from
Coleridge's misrepresentation.

But it gives me an opportunity to suggest that women are less
hypocritical to their own minds than men are, not because they feel
less proportionate abhorrence of moral evil in and for itself, and more
of its outward consequences, but because they have an organic instinct,
that is due to difference of sex, to be swayed first by passions and
inclinations that are entirely frank and unconventional, and afterwards
by motives arising out of abstract principles. Therefore they are
natively unconscious of something which men smile at or deplore, as
they call it insincerity. In the description of one of his characters,
Bulwer says, "That strange faculty in women which we men call
dissimulation, and which in them is truthfulness to their own nature,
enabled her to carry off the sharpest anguish she had ever experienced
by a sudden burst of levity of spirit."

Thackeray shows how this native trait can run to viciousness: "When I
say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every woman I
ever knew is a puzzle to me, as, I have no doubt, she is to herself.
Say they are not clever? Benighted idiot! She has long ago taken your
measure and your friends'. She knows your weaknesses, and ministers
to them in a thousand artful ways. She knows your obstinate points,
and marches round them with the most curious art and patience, as you
will see an ant on a journey turn round an obstacle. Every woman
manages her husband: every person who manages another is a hypocrite.
Her smiles, her submission, her good humor, for all which we value
her,--what are they but admirable duplicity? We expect falseness from
her, and order and educate her to be dishonest. Should he upbraid, I'll
own that he prevail; say that he frown, I'll answer with a smile: what
are these but lies, that we exact from our slaves?--lies, the dexterous
performance of which we announce to be the female virtues."

But, if a noble woman would defend her art of complaisance, she might
justly borrow the words of Queen Katherine, in that fourth scene of the
second act of "Henry VIII.," which is manifestly a portion contributed
by Shakspeare:--

                       "Heaven witness,
 I have been to you a true and humble wife,
 At all times to your will conformable:
 Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,
 Yea, subject to your countenance,--glad or sorry,
 As I saw it inclined. When was the hour
 I ever contradicted your desire,
 Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends
 Have I not strove to love, although I knew
 He were mine enemy?"

In cases that are not involved with passion, inclination, or some
personal and social coil, the moral judgment of woman is natively
far better than fear of detection. And, if a man prides himself upon
some superiority in this respect, he has something to conceal. What
social circle in the world is not made eminent by cases of a sense of
duty that sustains itself against inclination and personal respects!
Suffering heroism holds up ill-fated alliances and conceals them
nobly from the common eye; there is protracted sacrifice which puts
the finger of silence to quivering lips. There are not a few women
whom youthful sentiment, like a paid emissary, has decoyed into cruel
disenchantments, and there betrayed them to the stake: the fagots are
piled, the years contribute fresh fuel, but the flames extort no cry.
For the highest considerations of conscience, the tenderest maternity,
lights a counter-fire that shrivels the complaint. The world never
discovers that this _auto-da-fé_ is going on of a woman who is too
delicate and noble to dash the sparks of it among her neighbors for the
brewing of tea-table gossip, and the kindling of little bonfires of
sympathy.

But, in social and public transactions, the average woman can be
the bitterest partisan and the most reckless defyer of justice: it
is when her sentiment is involved, her pride is hurt, a specific
interest of house or person threatened, her egotism irritated. With
men, partisanship is the result of complex motives; with woman, it is
an unmixed, aboriginal passion. Bosom friends never know two sides to
a quarrel: the woman who is implicated is sure, when she makes her
statement to female intimates, of an absolute and abject belief in her
truthfulness. They will not take the trouble to learn, or even care
to inquire after, the position of the other party. If it be a man, he
will be perfectly conscious of this manɶuvre of nature without taking
much pains to set up a counter-movement, or to create a party of his
own. Manifold occupations supply a salutary rebuke of pettiness, and
help to drive the matter from his mind. If it be a woman, much time and
feminine resource will be lavished in self-exoneration. She will go to
and fro in a vigorous canvass of society, to create a clan and clothe
it in the plaid of her sprightly confidences. Its bucklers coldly gleam
in every assembly.

There are some vices which circulate through the world without invading
the seclusion of woman. She cannot imagine what they are; consequently
they remain so vague that she has no more blame for them than for the
nebulæ in Orion. Financial operations, for instance, are so intricate
that she shrinks from following, and so foreign to the course of her
life that they secure a languid attention. Her lover or husband can
easily make it appear to her that his violations of trust are either
the knavery and carelessness of others, or admissible procedures; and,
if she is as deeply in love as he is in offence, she will resort to
connivance rather than divorce. Jessica plunders her father, and then
calls out to her lover,--

 "Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains."

But, not being quite sure if she has taken enough, she returns to
gild herself "with some more ducats." It was a highly profitable
"irregularity:"--

               "Two sealed bags of ducats,
 Of double ducats, stol'n from me by my daughter!
 And jewels,--two stones, two rich and precious stones,
 Stol'n by my daughter!"

One of the stones was a diamond worth two thousand ducats, and another
was a turquoise which her mother gave to Shylock before marriage.
That she exchanged in Genoa for a monkey. A critic says of these
transactions, "We recognize a certain equity in their furtively taking
what we think he ought to have voluntarily bestowed." This anxiety
to protect Shakspeare from moral blame disregards some feminine
possibilities. Jessica's offence was the very one, the only one, of
which she was capable; and, like all such lapses, her act was due to
circumstances conspiring with latent tendency. We are not reconciled
to her behavior by recalling the pound of flesh; for the theft of the
jewels is as contrary to mercy as the stipulation in Antonio's bond.
But love and sex prevail: she behaves like any full-blooded nature who
has been defrauded of her rights, immured in a house with the "vapor
of a dungeon," cut off from amusements and sympathies, from gondolas
and serenades. She spends money foolishly after she gets it, thanks to
the father who scrimped her. It depends upon how deeply we mean to hate
Shylock whether his howls over the transaction of the monkey delight
our ears.

There are many things which we have not allowed woman to understand:
she has been stinted in her education and secluded in her pursuits
beyond the organic requisition of her sex. Public affairs of the
highest importance pass through her mind like the blurred impression
made upon her by the multifariousness of a daily newspaper; and we know
what candid awkwardness balks the attempt to seize and unsnarl the
vital points of the morning sheet. The marriages and deaths, being in
large type and a conventional place, compete with the advertisements
of low-priced cottons and flannels, and are only forgotten when the
column that flatters with the latest fashions storms the well-dressed
heart. Perhaps the same sheet announces the last pathetic moment
of the Crimean campaign, which men follow with the eager interest
of participants, as they are pledged to the cause of either party
because they estimate the weal or woe of human races. Perhaps the
Franco-Prussian war is creating an historic epoch in the politics
and religion of Europe, involving new adjustments of the social and
democratic life, making Luther's half battles whole ones, and leading
all the bitter experiences of France into the solution of a republic.
It is safe to say that the majority of women are indifferent to the
closely printed columns which men follow with almost the literal
precision of the compositors who set them up. Perhaps the statement may
be hazarded that the emancipation of woman depends considerably upon
her rivalry with man at the newsstands, and her patient sifting of the
contents of her purchase. The proposition is not so fantastic as it
may appear. I have been astonished at the repugnance of sprightly and
intelligent women for the labor that the genuine news of the day from
every nation requires, as it deserves, to be extracted from papers of
value and dignity; for each throb of honest news carries forward the
second-hand that marks the hours of mankind. Woman prefers to know
the interests of the planet by hearsay, to sit over her fine task and
listen to some man who has sopped up each crisis: he distils the day
into a few drops of her luxury. It evaporates like the scent upon her
handkerchief. She will hardly derive the benefit of discussing it. Her
native sense ought to be furnished with a just appreciation of public
affairs, enlightened observation of them, well-balanced abhorrence of
all the iniquities, sustained and practical reflection upon the great
proceedings of the world. If the claims of the household can never
afford her time for this, she must decline the peril of increasing
masculine ignorance by the weight of a single ballot.

But, in private and domestic life, what Aladdin's lamp she rubs in
secret to enrich her day! When a woman has a good deal of common-sense,
she never uses it to ponder with. It is a daylight that pervades
all at once without arriving by degrees. It is wonderful to see her
swiftness in unknotting man's perplexed forehead with her talent that
is used to snarls. It was not the result of a process of inferring and
considering: she is the most considerate when she taxes herself the
least to be so. And, if you ask her how she reasons upon any subject,
she might reply as Julia did when pressed to give her reason for
thinking Proteus the best man:--

 "I have no other but a woman's reason:
 I think him so because I think him so."

A woman will tell you that probably she drops out stages, and does not
have to pass through all the terms which detain a man; so that the
process is like evaporation,--a broad and insensible deduction. This
is a constant surprise to man, who supposes that his logical ability
must be superior in all exigencies, because it is so essential in
science and the classification of the world, and wherever he trains
facts to observe their proper sequence. But woman's brain vaporizes
syllogism, and a subtle æther vibrates. Her limitation is a great
superiority on its appropriate field.

Hermia tells Theseus that Lysander is a worthy gentleman. The Prince
replies:--

                       "In himself he is;
 But, in this kind, wanting your father's voice,
 The other must be held the worthier.

 HER. I would my father look'd but with my eyes!

 THE. Rather your eyes must with his judgment look."

But that is past expecting or desiring, for there is often a better
judgment in her tact.

It is also a reason for the inability of man to thoroughly fathom all
her moods and motives, for it is the advantage which sex procures for
her. We sometimes understand her secret convictions as little as we do
the minds of children, who are as removed from us by time as she is
by sex. It is a distance equally difficult to surmount; for though we
too have been children, and suffered or rejoiced in secret, we have
entirely forgotten how it was all done, or with what sequences of moods
and partial reasonings our experience was gained. If, therefore, there
be always something of audacity in the attempt to analyze the natures
of women, in life itself or in Shakspeare's living characters, the
confession must soften the offence, and, if there be failure, pardon
it.

Those gestures of the female intelligence which we may call intuitive
afford her an advantage in her intercourse with the other sex. Notice
how Shakspeare's women read the men and understand them better than the
other men do. Those who are most interested to know the disposition of
their associates are not the first as a matter of course to discover
it; but it is frequently, and in grave junctures, revealed by the swift
instinct of some woman. Men are not conscious when they are observed
by women, because the survey is made so silently. We are as little
conscious of the unobtrusive forenoon which envelops every act and
feature and sets them in plainness. The glance of an observing woman
does not pierce a man at any spot: it surrounds the whole of him at
once impalpably. Or sometimes it is one swift flit of her face across
your own, like the shadow of a bird's wing. It is gone before you
can declare that she looked at you. But the glance was an estimate:
it cost her scarce a second to peruse every cubic inch of you, and
audit a hundred years of ancestry. The glance is withdrawn, and goes
into obscurity, like an instantaneous sun-picture, there to deepen
into distinctness. Almost every woman has set up a gallery of these
impressions, which she shows rarely, and to her trusted intimates
alone. But there you are preserved,--a simpleton, a rowdy, a gallant,
a rogue, or a gentleman; one who respects, who honors, or who thinks
lightly of her; one who is capable of valuing or of depreciating;
one whose hand is clean enough to touch or nettlesome to roughen her
delicacy; one whose secret and unspoken effluence is salubrious,
or somewhat doubtful, to be kept at bay, to be considered while
you are the most profuse of honorable sentences. In the long run,
you will generally succeed in justifying all her silent estimates.
She took you unawares, in a moment when your lip did not move with
your tongue, or the eye motioned to her something dubious, or the
whole face was a daybreak of clarity and honor. Ponder well, and
lend it second-thoughts, when a woman bids you, upon the motion of
her instinct, be cautious--or be confiding, be profuse or chary, be
still over-ears in love or cured of that distemper. To a young man
the freedom of a good woman's estimate of other men supplements the
university; for he is a pupil who is fathomed previous to being taught.

Are our steps dogged then, and all our proceedings watched by
non-commissioned detectives, who enjoy the immense advantage of
being born in every house, and furnished with a passport into every
other? Is a badge concealed in every reticule, to be displayed when
the occasion comes to arrest us, which may be at the moments of our
critical feelings, when confidence, and not exposure, is vital to us?
A fine woman has not the consciousness that belongs to spies: she is
guiltless of the act and the intent to watch us. Men deliberately set
themselves to the work of scrutiny, and pay out all the line they have
to fathom an associate, and bring up his mud or gold-sand sticking to
the sinker. It does not always reach the grounds of his being. But
clear-headed women envelop other natures as the air which simply exists
to drench all objects through their pores, by the stress of miles of
heaven's blue piled on it. As every unconscious breath we draw compels
the air to enter and circulate through us, so all our involuntary moods
and actions invite the woman's perception. Who is not willing to exist
immersed in this frank element that is without a motive?

But if some obscure caprice in a woman is always ready to steal out
and nibble at her judgment, or if some obliquity faults her intrinsic
nature, she can mistake you as rapidly as otherwise she might correctly
hit. Nothing can be more unjust and cruel, more bitterly fostered, more
viciously proclaimed, or virtuously insinuated, than the impromptu
misinterpretations of a shallow or prejudiced woman. She may not be
deep enough to be dangerous; but her prejudice saturates the mind,
and there is no margin of a woman left. She plies her pea-blower in
all companies: the little projectiles carry breath enough to tingle.
They hit the people who ought to be your friends with a blow aimed by
something that is unlike yourself, and which you are not capable of
becoming. It is yourself soured in her spleen, poisoned by her spite.
Some unsatisfied emotion degenerates into a damaged judgment.

If the instinct of womanhood be vitiated in a person of strong
character, who insists upon being admired, and sweeps into her net
all the adoration that is afloat, or if she is unsexed by any kind of
mean ambition, her touch for man will be blunted. She will probably
report his cutaneous defect, and overlook his spiritual substance. In
treasuries and mints, the selection of women is made to count the
coin, because by the mere handling they can detect and throw aside
the light weights and the spurious metal. In the test to which women
subject men, the hands must be unsophisticated, and the blood of a born
lady, high or low, must feed the subtle finger-ends.

When Sir Toby Belch says that Sir Andrew hath all the good gifts of
nature, Maria's quick taste answers, "He hath, indeed,--all most
natural." A great many men are boozily unconscious of the traits of
their companions; but all women know each other thoroughly; and they
tacitly allow for each defect, unless some spiteful moment aggravates
them. To say that they know each other like a book is to overestimate
the great majority of books. The more delightedly they greet each
other, the more keenly are they remembering mutual frailties. Perhaps
those of the charming morning-caller will transpire when her call is
over. To your surprise, you learn that she is intriguing; that, indeed,
she will not stick at a falsehood,--well, an indirection; that she is a
very pushing woman, and quite capable of fawning if any social thrift
will follow. And this absent friend atones for the constraint of her
call by unbosoming her hostess to some other listener, who is pleased
to learn that the fabric of the world will not crumble so long as both
of them have daughters and sisters, who must get into society where
marriage benedictions are pronounced, or where style, at least, is
piety.

How nicely Maria decants the essence of Malvolio, without spilling
or clouding, when Sir Toby asks her, "Tell us something of him"! Now
Maria wants to marry Sir Toby, so she bends to every breeze of his
humor, but is never overset: she could not misrepresent Malvolio even
to please Sir Toby who has been so rated for overdrinking. She tells
the simple truth of her observation: the steward is "the best persuaded
of himself; so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his
ground of faith, that all that look on him love him." Sir Toby first
sees Malvolio in his true aspect, and exclaims with admiration, "She's
a beagle, true bred!" So is every sound woman who is not called off the
track by the small game of feminine crotchets and conceits.

Queen Margaret, the wife of Henry VI., has a mind so distempered by a
hankering for political distinction that she misreads the grief of the
good Duke Humphrey, the king's uncle, when she succeeds in degrading
and banishing the Duchess. And she asks the King,--

 "Can you not see? or will you not observe
 The strangeness of his alter'd countenance?"

She interprets the sombre mien, the fixed look, and the stiff gait
of the sorrowing Duke into evidence of a rancorous and treasonable
purpose. But the King knows better.

 "Our kinsman Gloster is as innocent
 From meaning treason to our royal person,
 As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove."

He sees in Humphrey's face "the map of honor, truth, and loyalty." The
Queen's ambitious discontent with the popularity of Humphrey discolors
all his actions, so that she half believes he is at work to win the
heart of the common people, that he may supplant the King. This half
belief is flung by her upon the face of Humphrey, into the very eyes of
his loyalty, and embosses it with the leprosy of her slander.

The English people were scandalized by the interference of Alice Perers
with the politics of the reign of Edward III. She was a "fair piece of
sin," for whose sake Edward anticipated his dotage. When Parliament
interfered to break up a scandal that astonished even the court of
France, Alice was perfectly ready to take an oath never again to see
the King; for she knew that he valued her counsels because he drivelled
over her person. So she returned from exile in time to misrepresent
the most honest and outspoken man in Parliament, Peter de la Marr,
who was well acquainted with the back-stairs policy which she would
fain import into the government of England. As history bids her shift
across its light in the various outlines of her domineering temper, to
show her to us seated on the bench with the judges, suggesting to them
what their ruling must be, or as she drives a trade between the court
and foreign envoys, and mistranslates to the King the bias of popular
opinion, we perceive a woman whose facile sex is merely a sop to drug a
king in order to control his policy. The pages of royal and republican
annals are mildewed with these old spots of decayed womanhood. Like
dead flowers put to be pressed against some sweet or lofty rhyme, their
musty petals mark the place where a single vice enlisted all the fine
perception of the sex against honest manhood and the spirit of the age.

Bertram, in "All's Well that Ends Well," is under the influence of
Parolles, "a snipt-taffata fellow," who goes buzzing around like a
"red-tailed humble-bee" in a vile yellow suit all stuck over with
bows and trimmings. Bertram has been often advised to cast him off:
"There can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is his
clothes; trust him not in matter of heavy consequence." Bertram is a
raw boy for discernment, and insists that Parolles is very valiant, and
has a good knowledge of the world. His friends are obliged to lay a
plot, and invite him to be witness to Parolles's cowardice and knavery:
not till then will he confess to the crudeness of his judgment.

But Helena, though well disposed to like a man who is Bertram's
companion, has read him thoroughly, and, moreover, has the instinct to
perceive that the man's knavery is so inbred that it suits him better
than honesty. Her observation is full of subtlety:--

           "I know him a notorious liar,
 Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
 Yet these fix'd evils sit so fit in him,
 That they take place, when virtue's steely bones
 Look bleak in the cold wind."

The "evils" have a congenial place in such a temperament: a bleaker one
would discourage the finest virtues. His nature fortunately cannot be
reformed, since reform would turn a most satisfactory and harmonious
miscreant into a scrubby gentleman. "And that's the humor of it," as
Nym would say. Shakspeare puts this rare breadth of judgment into the
mouth of a woman.

Imogen's step-mother, the Queen and wife of Cymbeline, is a
strong-minded woman, who "bears all down with her brain." She rules
the king by force or craft, and has arranged to marry Imogen to her
own shallow-pated son Cloten. This ancestress of all the plotting
step-mothers carries poison in her heart: her relatives may expect to
find it in their food; for she is curious in distilling the essences
of noxious herbs, under a scientific pretext to watch their effects in
creatures not worth the hanging. But the compound that is ostensibly
for rats is intended to dispossess Imogen of all her watchful liegemen,
including her husband; and then, after getting her married to Cloten,
the "mortal mineral" was meant to waste the King by inches to a grave
that should be a royal footstool for her son.

Now the King has no suspicion of the simmering deviltry that he
embraced. When all her projects are discovered, he exclaims,--

                   "O most delicate fiend!
 Who is't can read a woman?"

Not he, certainly; for he had been fooled in the time-honored way of
crafty women.

                               "Mine eyes
 Were not in fault, for she was beautiful;
 Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart,
 That thought her like her seeming."

At the point of death, she confessed to her physician the whole of
her unsexed intent. She never loved the King as Lady Macbeth loved
her lord, but only affected the greatness got by him: she was wife to
his place, but abhorred his person. Who but a woman could play that
game with such an air of jaunty probability that invested her blackest
kisses! Imogen's husband was a scorpion to her, ranked among the vermin
which she meant to kill for pastime. And she purposed to lull the King
into security by "watching, weeping, tendance, kissing," while her
poison was vacating his throne. At the last, she only repented that the
evils she hatched were not effected, "so, despairing, died," a martyr
to an unfulfilled ideal. She is really the Lady Macbeth of the popular
conception, being fiend-like from ambition. It would not have been
Shakspearean if such a woman had been duplicated to furnish a wife to
Macbeth. One hated with all her baffled spite, and the other loved with
all her heart, her King.

Shakspeare would have us notice that the clear-sighted Imogen has
privately read her step-mother, and lives with suspicions for her
constant warders. The King, having banished Posthumus who was secretly
married to her, has turned her over to the jailership of the Queen, who
tries to cajole her:--

 "No, be assured, you shall not find me, daughter,
 After the slander of most step-mothers,
 Evil-ey'd unto you."

Then she grants the married pair a stolen interview, in order that she
may whip out and bring the King in to discover them. She knows the King
will be displeased; but she calculates that after his first anger is
cooled he will load her with favors to atone for his impetuosity:--

                   "I never do him wrong,
 But he does buy my injuries to be friends;
 Pays dear for my offences."

What a capable woman, with this new patent for depleting a husband's
pocket by wringing his heart! What an extraordinary endowment of a
husband's heart to connect its spasms with the purse-clasp!

Imogen feels the manœuvre of the Queen when she leaves to hurry up the
King; and she says to Posthumus,--

 "O dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant
 Can tickle where she wounds!"

Why, then, if Shakspeare endowed her with this penetration, does she
not at a glance unmask Iachimo when he comes pretending that Posthumus
has been false to her in exile, and proffering himself that she may
take revenge in kind? Because she has such a heart of trust in her
husband that both her ears cannot hastily abuse it. The conflict
between Iachimo's counterfeit news and her loyal memory occupies the
whole field of her being, and keeps out the base design. She listens to
Iachimo with ears attuned by the high praises which her husband sends
by letter to introduce a friend "of the noblest note." Iachimo is the
creature of her husband's admiration, sent to be admired, suspicion
disarmed in advance, not a sentry left on duty before her frankness.
His hints of a dishonorable purpose cannot be taken by a mind that is
unable to conceive dishonor. So her absolute spotlessness drives him to
the plainest speech; for such an artless and unconscious woman never
tasked his lips before. When the revelation comes, like a hideous
scrawl of flame across her clear firmament in the very high noon of her
confiding, the heaven of purity rains down at once, and there he is,
swimming for life in the flood of her disdain. Then he saw womanhood in
one "awe-inspiring gaze" that might have prompted Shelley to exclaim,--

 "Her beams anatomize me, nerve by nerve,
 And lay me bare, and make me blush to see
 My hidden thoughts."

What an angelic impossibility of hearing is Imogen's! She has nothing
that ever dreamed to itself of the covert meaning of his words. Without
a second's interval of parley, not even time enough for natural
astonishment, one peremptory instant annihilates his hope.

It is not every woman, even of the irreproachable kind, who wields so
prompt a lightning of her chastity. And here Shakspeare has marked the
difference between unconsciousness and prudery. I think that Isabella
would have understood Iachimo much earlier, for the matter of her
virtue was constantly in her thoughts, as a thing to be guarded against
an undermining world. Her indignation is voluble; and she undertakes to
reason in a priggish fashion with Angelo. But Imogen simply calls her
servant that Iachimo may be taken in an instant out of the room. Many
a woman whose life has been without a stain is still less intolerant
than Isabella, and more complaisant than Imogen. Race and climate are
largely implicated in these natural differences.

When Madame de Sévigné heard of her husband's infidelities, it was
through the interested malice of her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, who was in
love with her. He proposed that she should seek to be revenged: "I will
go halves in your revenge; for, after all, your interests are as dear
to me as my own." She quietly replied: "I am not so exasperated as you
think."

Iachimo said,--

                                   "Revenge it.
 I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure,
 And will continue fast to your affection."

Imogen's white-heat of honor shrivels up the wit of the French lady.
Her mind can make but one motion, to cry out, "What ho, Pisanio!"

 "Away!--I do contemn mine ears, that have
 So long attended thee."

Thou dost solicit a lady

                     "That disdains
 Thee and the devil alike."

Iachimo now pretends that he was only making trial of her by a false
report and by a counterfeited overture,--and all for the sake of the
love he bore her husband. This is quite enough: her frankness returns
as suddenly as it was dismissed. For, as Iachimo well said,--

                     "The gods made you,
 Unlike all others, chaffless."

And that is a statement of the limit placed by Nature to her womanly
shrewdness of observation.

In the historical dramas, Shakspeare seldom introduces women in order
to make them convey to us impressions of character, traits of mind or
heart. They are not so much feminine shapes as persons implicated in
the play by the accident of relationship to the men. The parts are not
particularized by them. Lady Percy, with one or two light touches of
eager inquisitiveness, hints her fond and simple love. Queen Katherine
fills out the proportions of a pathetic figure. But in "Henry V." Mrs.
Quickly monopolizes all the point and savor: the Queen of France and
her daughter are only lay-figures of the plot. In "1, 2 Henry IV.," it
is the same. In "Richard II." the Queen seems merely born to this,--

                           "That my sad look
 Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke."

And her gardener plants a bank of rue

 "In the remembrance of a weeping queen."

But, in "King John" both the grief and the character of Constance are
more personally set forth, and we become aware of her distinctive
quality. Queen Katherine, in "Henry VIII.," also puts an accent,
different from that of Constance, upon her misfortunes; and her grief
reveals another mood of the feminine nature; so that she attains to a
separate consideration.

None of the women in the historical plays stand by the side of the men
so emphasized as the mother of Arthur is: she agitates his claims with
an impetuous sincerity that ought to have kept him alive to reign.

A high-minded man who claims his rights, and a high-minded woman who
does the same, express themselves in different styles. The feminine
style is shown in Constance with great discrimination. Both sexes
can hate injustice, and may be opposed to compromises. Both can have
indignation for a crime. But see how Constance puts into these moral
feelings a scorn and a swiftness of dissent, urged by a volubility
more native to a woman than to a man. Woman is apt, indeed, to be
too voluble: each minute of her phrases breeds new ones; so she does
not stop to notice that her indictment is shorter than her breath.
Therefore men are apt to notice and to complain that her indictment
does not reach up to the tide-mark of her breath. But the invective of
Constance is the swift weapon-play of maternity: it flashes through
every guard, touches rapidly to and fro, and draws blood at every
unexpected touch.

A man's moral disposition has not been nourished and toned by the
additional organs which impose wifehood and motherhood upon a woman.
In her, more nerve centres are involved, with an exquisite sensibility
for pain and pleasure which the average man's life seldom reaches.
His bosom is not ample enough to contain such throbs of acquiescence
or revolt. Every fount of feeling is twinned in woman, and sweet
as the milk is, mingled by love, so sharp and bitter is its flavor
made by hate. Her nerves revenge the violence of acts which she
supposes dishonorable: she can fight with glances more searching and
words more unequivocal than the cooler man will furnish. No doubt
that his disdains, too, can summon all his blood to blush and lower
magnificently on the cheek. But her blood seems richer in the red
corpuscles: it wins, therefore, and is more visited by, the air of
heaven. There is no blush so daunting, no look so penetrating to
dissolve, no silence of a surprised conscience so unanswerable. And
when she grieves, it seems as if the eyes were re-enforced, for all the
founts of motherhood are weeping.

This ability to vindicate the right and to repudiate the wrong can
easily become absurd to the spectators when it is charged with some
excess of temper. Literature does ample justice to the termagant vein,
and shows that it is ludicrous because it devotes a high degree of
choler to a low measure of affront. In pantomimes, an enormous gun
is pointed toward the audience, with extravagant anticipation of its
exploit on the faces of the performers. For a moment we are cowed, but
laughter fills the vast space between the faint puff and the noise we
expected.

I presume that Xantippe felt justified in making the home of Socrates
so unpleasant that he preferred the market, the forum, and the
leather-dresser's shop, because she thought he neglected her for all
those places, and wasted time, and kept her drudging, while he ran to
find men and make their coarse grain revolve to sharpen his soul's
edge against it. Perhaps, as Socrates was famed for falling into brown
studies, which sometimes lasted all day, with contempt for food, it
was a case of chronic absence of mind on the subject of dinner; for
that is as vital as τὁ πρεπὁν καἱ καλὁν, the ethically proper and the
beautifully true; and no household can dispense with it,--in fact,
children cry for it. Perhaps he supped many a time upon the hemlock of
her tongue, and became so acclimated to the draught that the last cup
in prison tasted sweetly.

Shakspeare shows the exaggeration of the protesting temper in woman by
means of the little spat between Queen Eleanor and Constance, in ii. 7.

A woman's language becomes exacerbated because she is so inadequate
to protest by actions. The weakness rolls itself into a bristling
defence of words. Men do not drip so profusely into words because they
are reservoirs of force and competency. They know that by fair means
or foul they can effect purposes from which women are debarred by
seclusion, strangeness of habit, and innate reserve. Among women there
is a certain resentment at this civic and social disability which does
not stint expression.

When, however, a noble woman with a level countenance repudiates an
unjust charge, she transfers herself from the bar to the bench, and
unseats her summoners. Their purpose quails before this innocence that
is so weak, yet grows so overpowering, as in the beauty of Madame
Roland and the prison-blanched majesty of Marie Antoinette. The rebuke
pulls down the accuser's eyes from their threat, and they seem to go
wandering into corners furtively for refuge. Joan of Arc burns in court
before the deluded men who claim her as an imp of witchcraft have time
to pile their fagots: the passionless chastity gives out blinding
sparks when thus enforced; the cheeks of bystanders are reached by
them and set aglow. No man who has been unjustly dealt with, and
selected for foul practice, can reach such palsying dignity of behavior
that turns the axe's edge or holds the arm suspended in mid-resolve.
There is a high manly scorn which is beyond refuting: it can kindle
admiration in unwilling minds, and compel baseness to pause and to
confer. But woman's beauty, planted in the breastplate of an untainted
heart, becomes a petrifying image; and whoso meets the ruthless look
will remember it even in the moment of a consummated revenge. Nothing
helps bad men at such a sight but the poor subterfuge of flying into a
rage, as if to muster in that way momentum enough to huddle her off, to
get her where the condemning head shall fall before its eyes or lips
can utter another protest. They shear it at the neck, never reflecting
that they thus untether it to range in other skies, to unkennel heaven
sleuth-hounds at last and drag them down.

 "I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
 For grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.
 To me, and to the state of my great grief,
 Let kings assemble: for my grief's so great
 That no supporter but the huge firm earth
 Can hold it up: here I and sorrow sit;
 Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: This word was issued from Coleridge's private mint,
but never got into circulation. He invented some words, not to avoid
circumlocution, of which there is quite enough in his style, but to
save trouble by extemporizing tallies for his thought, as surveyors
use the nearest sticks on their line. The ecclesiastical word,
"introit,"--a passing from within to enter the church,--hinted to him
"extroit,"--a starting from without. He means that women proceed from
social convention, and not from interior thought.]




LORD BACON AND THE PLAYS:

SHAKSPEARE'S WOMEN:

LOVE IN SHAKSPEARE.


LORD BACON AND THE PLAYS.

A consideration of the theory that Lord Bacon wrote the plays which
are attributed to Shakspeare comes in here more conveniently, because
it will appear that Bacon's knowledge of women and his experience
of the passion of Love, as expressed in his works, are so meagre
and so colorless when contrasted with the plays that the fact might
stand alone, with scarce a comment, to refute the theory which is so
elaborately defended. In its proper place this will appear. In the mean
time, some notice may be taken of a few points of the theory which seem
to have gained a recognition so far as to produce scepticism in many
intelligent minds.

Books enough are published in various languages filled with
preternaturally far-fetched conjectures concerning Shakspeare. Many of
them are devoted to proving that he must have been brought up to this
or that profession. Lord Campbell has shown the extent of the poet's
knowledge of legal terms, and his aptness in placing them. A surgeon
claims him on the ground of his knowledge of the technical terms used
in medical art. Bucknill and others, on the same ground of technical
knowledge, prove that he must have been trained as a mad-doctor. A
musician refers to his love of music, botanists to his accuracy in
grouping flowers according to their seasons, and Hastings is convinced
that he was bred a bird-fancier. Each investigator discovers his own
specialty in the teeming pages, and insists upon apprenticing the poet.
The doctor points to the line in "Hamlet,"--

 "And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,"--

and asks, with an air of conviction, how any one at that period,
who had not been bred to the profession, could have understood the
ginglymoid structure of the knee! The Worshipful Master of the
Bard-of-Avon Lodge claims masonic fraternity with him, thinking that
allusions to masonic terms and customs are scattered through the plays,
but chiefly on the strength of Hubert's words in "King John,"--

                   "They shake their heads,
 And whisper one another in the ear,
 And he that speaks doth grip the hearer's wrist;"

for that action is the symbol of the sublime degree! Dr. Farmer
anchored his theory that Shakspeare was in his youth, and during the
unaccounted-for years after he left Stratford, a sharpener and dealer
in skewers, upon these lines from "Hamlet:"--

 "There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
 Rough-hew them how we will."

These skewers were of the kind then used to fasten bales of wool. But
Hugh Miller, who began life as a stone-cutter, finds in those lines a
clear indication that the poet was bred to be a stone-mason! And at
last a practical printer by the name of Blades proves that he worked
at the printer's trade; for he speaks about "printing kisses" and the
print of hoofs. In "Love's Labor Lost" is the clause, "I will do it,
sir, in print;" and in the "Winter's Tale," "I love a ballad in print."
Blades even apprentices him to the printer Vantrollier, who at the
time enjoyed the monopoly of printing a certain class of books. Up to
the present date, the number of professions and employments to which
Shakspeare was trained amounts to twenty-four. No doubt some one is
preparing to show that he must have been a fishmonger, and the lines
which invite his attempt are quite as apposite as any of the above: "A
fish: he smells like a fish;" "The luce is a fresh fish, the salt-fish
is an old coat;" "They are both as whole as a fish;" and, more decisive
than all, "The fish lives in the sea." By all means, let us have the
sixty-eight allusions to fish and fishing in Shakspeare elaborated into
one final theory, that he spent four years on a herring-smack; for how
otherwise could the Clown in "Twelfth Night" have told Viola that a
pilchard was a big herring?

There is another kind of criticism to which the plays have been
subjected that imputes to them all the after-thoughts of later times.
Ulrici derives from them an evangelical scheme of Christian ethics;
a Roman Catholic claims the poet as an ardent adherent of the Pope;
another commentator attributes to Shakspeare a deliberate purpose to
write up the Protestant Reformation and write down the Pope, and finds
a trace of Shakspeare's contempt for Romanism in "I Henry IV.," iv. I,
where the troops of the Prince of Wales are described as--

 "Glittering in golden coats, like images."

Sievers[11] thinks that the main thread of all Shakspeare's poetry was
the "reproduction out of the nature of man of the Protestant scheme of
Christianity"! It is shown particularly in the "Merchant of Venice"
and "Hamlet." Tschischwitz's[12] book is as deterrent as his name. It
is an attempt to develop Shakspeare's views upon the relation between
ruler and people,--to show that he considered the state and kingdom
to rest upon reciprocity of duties and upon the principle of piety.
This is only another specimen of the terrific after-thoughts which the
Germans force back upon Shakspeare. Gervinus calls him the perfect
representative of modern Protestantism; Vischer concluded that he was
a Pantheist; Bernays will not allow to him any religion at all; while
Dr. Reichensperger, of the German Parliament, gives reasons in his
book[13] for believing that he was an Ultramontanist! And Thomas Tyler,
of the University of London, considers that Hamlet was a forerunner of
Schopenhauer, and thoroughly pessimistic, because the calamity in the
play does not respect personal character, and the future retributions
and compensations are not clearly made out![14]

It would be a dreary business to construct a catalogue of all these
modern slights to the memory of Shakspeare. They turn his plays
into a system of theology. Some critics declare that his object was
to make celibacy ridiculous and marriage honorable; some labor to
prove that the plays are treatises upon the Christian doctrines of
justification by faith and the salvation of man; some point to his
Baconian method of induction; and others reject the whole over-done
business of interpretation, because they simply claim for Bacon
himself, the authorship of all the plays: as if Shakspeare were turned
inside out, wrung dry, macerated and dispersed, by two centuries of
vigorous comment, and it became necessary to begin operations upon a
fresh person. These operations have enriched literature with its most
grandiose specimens of futility.

With respect to this last effort of modern criticism, it might suffice
with many to repeat an observation made by Lowell, who said that, if
any person was disposed to believe that Bacon wrote the plays, he could
set himself right by reading Bacon's paraphrase of the Psalms. One
dose of that would settle the supremacy of Shakspeare back upon the
seat of reason.

The following verse is a specimen of the average workmanship expended
on this paraphrase:--

 "So shall he not lift up his head
   In the assembly of the just.
 For why? The Lord hath special eye
   To be the godly's stay at call;
 And hath given over righteously
   The wicked man to take his fall."

Half a score of lines may be found of a better quality than those above
exhibit; but the bad ones have been purposely selected as yielding the
only sensible and conclusive test. The writer of the plays could not
have been guilty of them. Some things we know to be impossible,--that
Sidney should display the white feather; that a gentleman should ever
once practise a scurvy trick; that a woman all compact of grace,
animate with the instinct of fitness, should ever make a vulgar
gesture; that the genius which interfused the plays should ever
have gone to rot on the Lethean wharf of those prosaic lines. Nay,
the question whether Bacon composed the plays grows pale before a
greater one,--If he did compose them, what debility suggested to him
this undertaking of the Psalms? There they already stood, in their
tender, majestic English, simple as Hamlet's soliloquy and Macbeth's
regrets,--a mother-tongue that resents the adulterate touch. We have a
right to call upon those who espouse the Baconian theory of the plays
to account for the existence of the paraphrase.

Lord Bacon wrote some lines commending the natural defence of an
upright conscience. So did Shakspeare. Let us compare them:--

 "The man of life upright, whose guileless heart is free
 From all dishonest deeds and thoughts of vanity;
 The man whose silent days in harmless joys are spent,
 Whom hopes cannot delude nor fortune discontent,--
 That man needs neither towers nor armor for defence,
 Nor secret vaults to fly from thunder's violence."

In the second part of "Henry VI." are found the lines which are
memorable to all English-speaking people:--

 "What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
 Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just;
 And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel,
 Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted."

We have plainly another case of paraphrase to be accounted for; and
we can understand why Bacon, who used to send sonnets to Elizabeth
to soften her heart towards Essex, should lament, "But I could never
prevail with her."

The badness of Bacon's efforts at poetry has suggested to me the
possibility that some of the didactic passages in the plays which
Shakspeare altered and amended for the theatre, were left as they came
from his pen; just as other passages from the playwrights of that day
may be found streaking the rich Shakspearean lode, recognized by their
inferiority or difference of style, but no longer imputable to the
culprits by name. Pages of this un-Shakspearean matter may have drifted
from Bacon's pen into the original crudeness of some of the plays,
particularly into those which set forth periods of history.

One is tempted to make this surmise serve to explain a famous argument
which the Baconians derive from a letter written by a friend to Bacon
in acknowledgment of the present of a volume which he had lately
published. This friend was Tobie Matthew, a devoted adherent of
Bacon, who had done him important service from time to time, and who
consequently was frequently saluted with the little pots of incense
which Tobie swung adoringly before his patron. Now Bacon wrote him
a letter dated the 9th of April, the year not given; but it must
have been after January, 1621, because Matthew's reply addresses the
Viscount St. Albans, and Bacon did not receive that title previously
to the above date. Bacon's letter accompanied a copy of a volume.
Matthew's reply acknowledges this "great and noble token" of his
"lordship's favor." And the Baconians claim that this token was the
Folio of the Plays, published in 1623; and they point triumphantly
to the postscript to Matthew's letter, which runs thus: "The most
prodigious wit that ever I knew of my nation, and of this side of the
sea, is of your lordship's name, though he be known by another;" that
is to say, a few intimate friends, like Matthew, knew perfectly well
that Bacon wrote the plays, but suffered them, for prudential reasons,
to appear under the name of Shakspeare, who doubtless had some hand
in them. The temptation is, I say, to account for that postscript by
supposing that Matthew was acquainted with those inferior passages
which may have strayed into the plays from the pen of Bacon, that he
appraised them with the judgment of a toady, and exaggerated their
quantity as well as quality. This method for breaking the force of
Matthew's postscript I reject, for the simple reason that it is not
only strained, but superfluous; for Bacon published his "History of
Henry VII." in March, 1622, the "De Augmentis" in October, 1623, and
the "Apothegms" in December, 1624. One of these books, probably the
first of them, and the first which Matthew had received from Bacon
since he was made Viscount St. Albans, was sent; and Matthew took the
first opportunity to flatter Bacon with his title in connection with
his genius, saying in the postscript, "A most prodigious wit is my
friend Bacon, though he now passes by the other designation as Viscount
St. Albans."

It is alleged that Bacon did not wish to be reputed a poet, lest his
preferment and prospects at the Court should be impaired. It seems to
me that he needed not to dread the imputation of having written poems.
Veins of a lively fancy run through the prose of his great treatises,
and he was largely endowed with the scientific imagination; but his
verses are dry as a remainder biscuit. The divine art was not in those
days imputed to any man on such pretences.

One advocate of the Baconian theory thinks that the poems of "Lucrece"
and "Adonis" were dedicated to Southampton, under the name of
Shakspeare, as an arranged and designed cover, for the real author.
But why, supposing this, was Shakspeare selected as the cover? A man
selected for such a purpose must have been deemed by contemporaries
competent to have written the poems, else there could have been no
cover in using his name.

Did Ben Jonson, who was intimate with Bacon, know the secret of the
authorship of the plays, and thus know that the manuscripts in use
among the players must have been copies, and yet say, in praise of
Shakspeare, "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an
honor to Shakspeare, that in writing (whatever he penned) he never
blotted out a line"? Jonson could never have written so in the secret
conviction that Shakspeare did not compose the lines, some of which
Jonson _wished he had_ blotted.

With respect to the saying which was common among the players, the
following points deserve consideration: First, it may have been a
generalization carelessly made by admiring friends and comrades;
second, what did they really know about it? They only saw the acting
copies made for the theatre whose property they were. They knew nothing
about Shakspeare's preliminary sketches and studies, the first drafts,
the tentative outlines and passages. Third, the total absence of
suspicion among them that he did not write the plays, but only copied
them from some unknown author's manuscript, is unaccountable. Every
probability would be against it. Among the players who knew Shakspeare,
saw his daily life, computed how and where he spent his time, gauged
him as a companion and a wit, such a secret would soonest leak out and
spread all over London, or his reputed authorship would be soonest
exploded and treated as a joke. For they and Jonson best knew the
man. And this probability was not rebutted by Lord Palmerston; when,
alluding to Jonson's remarks, he jauntily said, "Oh, these fellows
will always stand up for each other!" for what reasons existed for
protecting Shakspeare by reticence or by elaborate lying?

In the discussion, which has lately been renewed, upon the authorship
of the plays, the points which are chiefly relied on by the Baconians
are these: 1. The plays are _too great_, and out of all proportion
to the obscurity which rests upon Shakspeare's life, and to the
insignificance of his contemporary fame. 2. They are filled with all
kinds of classical allusion, professional information, legal, medical,
horticultural, scientific, to an extent which an obscure play actor
could not possibly comprise within the limits of his ragged and scanty
education. 3. The plays contain remarkable parallelisms with passages
in Bacon's works, and coincidences of thought and expression.

These are the points of chief consequence which claim the plays for
Bacon. To the critics who make this claim it is wonderful that one
man from Stratford, so little known and prized, of whom no account of
education and career survives, should have sent down to posterity,
side by side with the great works of Bacon, compositions which are
parallel in greatness and abreast of them in fame. They are too great
for any one man of that epoch, unless that man be the greatest and
wisest of his day. But how much more wonderful is the problem which, by
implication, these critics set before us,--namely, to account for the
fact that Bacon should have produced not only Shakspeare, a miracle
for one mind, but himself besides! It taxes the resource of miracle
less sharply to refer the plays back again to Shakspeare.

For which shall we prefer? To accredit Bacon with the authorship
because he knew all the law and science which the plays include; or to
accredit Shakspeare with it because he possessed all the poetic flow,
imagery, and plastic art, all the passion and humor, which the plays
include? Of the two sets of endowments, which could have resulted in
the plays? Not the first without the second. But the second, then,
being absolutely essential, must make the first to be also an essential
accessory, whether we can or cannot account for the possessorship of it
by Shakspeare. Because we can, from the published writings of Bacon,
derive the fact that, however poetic his prose may sometimes be, and
fertile in apposite wit and fancy, it does not supply the peculiar
imagination, and, least of all, the genial sense of humor, which reigns
through all the plays. If the more important qualities be impossible
to Bacon, a sufficient accessory acquaintance with terms of law, facts
of science, and scraps of classic learning may not be impossible to
Shakspeare.

Let us ask, too, would Bacon have taken the risk of writing for the
theatre? His relations with the Queen, his desires for office and
persistent struggles to attain it, his exigency to keep a clean record
with the Cecils and his other jealous rivals, are supposed to have
been the motives for concealing his authorship. The opinion of public
circles would have tainted him with the "vulgar scandal" of being a
playwright. No doubt it would, and have effectually barred advancement.
For he was known, watched, dreaded, appraised, opposed by too many
people. His secret would not have waited two centuries for another
Bacon to discover. How much worse for the aspiring statesman would
have been an exposed concealment. The more exacting the motive for
concealment appears, the more exacting appears the motive for doing
nothing that required concealment.

All which Bacon did for the Court, from a politic disposition, in
getting up masques and entertainments, was openly done. The labored
and jejune speeches, and other matters, which he prepared for masques,
have come down to us. He could be tolerated in this, and not in writing
for the theatre, because a writer of plays could not wrest from public
opinion the grave and stately responsibilities which he was eager to
assume. Other lawyers of the day wrote for the stage; but they were not
born in the line of England's chancellors.

And in those days the emoluments of a playwright were too trifling to
attract a man like Bacon, who managed to keep himself so deeply in debt
that once, at least, he breathed the air of a spunging-house. Nothing
but place, retainers, royal donations of rented estates, and official
fees, could save him from the moneylenders.

As it is supposed that Shakspeare was not well acquainted with
the Latin writers, we are asked to account for the appearance of
classical quotations in the plays from writers who had not yet been
translated. In the "Taming of the Shrew," iii. 7, there is one from
Ovid's Epistles. If Bacon wrote the play, we may suppose that he quoted
directly from Ovid. Then why, in Act i. 1 of the same play, did he
not quote a Latin line directly from Terence, instead of taking it
from Lily's Grammar where the quotation is not correct? And suppose
Shakspeare never did nor could read Ovid: it was easy enough for him
to pick up those two lines for the fun in iii. 1, even if we reject
the opinion that attributes large portions of an earlier form of the
play to Marlowe. If Shakspeare only knew Latin through Lily's Grammar,
he might have taken Terence from it; but Bacon's scholarship was above
that.

A large part of the plot of the "Comedy of Errors" was drawn from
the _Menæchmi_ of Plautus, a play which Bacon frequently quotes. On
the supposition that Shakspeare was unacquainted with it, we easily
account for his knowledge of the plot. A previous play, called the
"Historie of Error," acted in 1577, was derived from the same comedy
of Plautus; and William Warner's translation of it was freely handed
about in manuscript for some time before the appearance of the "Comedy
of Errors," though it was not entered at Stationers Hall till June,
1594.[15]

There is a curious parallelism between the fourth scene of Act iv.
of the "Winter's Tale," where Perdita shows her tender knowledge of
flowers, and Bacon's Essay on Gardens which was not printed till
1625. So it appears that both men were acquainted with the same facts
concerning the succession of flowers through the months of the year.
And there is nothing strange in that; for the flowers took their same
times to bloom for Shakspeare in Stratford as they did for Bacon near
London, or in the retreats of Gorhambury. But it is only enough to
contrast the exquisite lines of Perdita with Bacon's cataloguing prose,
in which not one epithet save "pale" and "yellow" appears, to feel
quite sure that the flowers breathed no charm into Bacon's fancy.

                                   "O Proserpina,
 For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
 From Dis's wagon! daffodils
 That come before the swallow dares, and take
 The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
 Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold
 Bright Phœbus in his strength."

If precious articles at public vendue--Gobelins, rare Palissys,
Majolicas, and Sèvres ware--happen to tally with an auctioneer's
list of the sale, does it seem quite credible that they were all the
production of the auctioneer? "Merciful, wonder-making Heaven!" What a
myriad-minded auctioneer!

Indeed, does any one dare to say that Shakspeare and Bacon did not
compare notes upon many subjects? Many of the reputed parallelisms are
indirect traces of such an intercourse; and it is not a sufficient
objection that Shakspeare is nowhere mentioned by Bacon. Neither are
Spenser and Marlowe; and we know that he was acquainted with Ben
Jonson. Did Ben Jonson and Shakspeare never go to Gray's Inn together?
Shakspeare helped Johnson to write his tragedy of "Sejanus;" and the
latter was frequently with Bacon during the period of composition? I
love to think, as it cannot be disproved, that Shakspeare met high
themes of speculation, Nature's curious secrets, and choice allusions
of learning, amid the books and apparatus of the philosopher, where
problems dear to both these men were discussed. Such an intercourse as
this, which varied his close companionship with Essex and Southampton,
would be quite sufficient to account for the coincidences which support
the Baconian theory: there is, for instance, the passage in "Troilus
and Cressida" that puts into Hector's mouth a queer bit of didactic
anachronism. Reproving Paris and Troilus, he says,--

           "You have both said well;
 And on the cause and question now in hand
 Have gloz'd,--but superficially; not much
 Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought
 Unfit to hear moral philosophy."

Aristotle really alluded to "political philosophy;" and when we find
that Bacon made the same mistake in his "Advancement of Learning,"
printed before the play, we think we can see that book in Shakspeare's
hand, or overhear with him the error lapsing in the flow of
conversation. But perhaps the passage which includes it was one of the
parts of "Troilus and Cressida" which did not proceed from Shakspeare's
pen. Certainly there was not poetic license enough in Bacon's mind
to plant a seaport in Bohemia, and make Aristotle a contemporary of
the Trojans. Neither would he have affronted his historical sense and
hurt his reputation as a scholar by importing into "Henry VI.," and
attributing to Jack Cade and his followers, the socialistic doctrine
and mad behavior which Holingshed shows to have belonged to Wat Tyler
in the reign of Richard II. It is also strange that the scholar, Bacon,
should have put into the mouth of a person in "Coriolanus," i. 4, line
57, that allusion to Cato,--

                 "Thou wast a soldier
 Even to Cato's wish."

M. Porcius Cato was born B.C. 234: the play belongs to B.C. 490. And
if anybody knew when Galen was born, A.D. 130, it was Bacon; yet
Menenius, in the same play, ii. 1, line 128, says, "The most sovereign
prescription in Galen is but empiricutic." But Shakspeare's main object
was to write a play, and co-ordinate his groups. So he paired off his
characteristics with each other to gratify the poetic exigency of the
play, and not always to render strict tribute to the Muse of History.

Can anybody positively deny that Shakspeare stole away from the Mermaid
more often then his fellow-actors and poets relished, to spend the
evening with Essex at Gray's Inn, perhaps while Bacon was busy upon
his "Characters of Julius and Augustus Cæsar" in 1607-8,--for not long
after that the famous tragedy appeared; perhaps to urge him with the
happy suggestions of friendship to write his Defence of Shakspeare's
own dear Essex? There was, indeed, that "semblable coherence" between
the spirits of the philosopher and the poet which qualified them to
be mutual instructors; and the mobile and apprehensive intellect of
the poet could absorb without books the thoughts that filled the air
round Bacon's head. The structure of Shakspeare, open at every pore to
every influence, was pervaded with the conversations of his age: the
interchange made a thoroughfare of him; and, as it passed, he detained
all the nutriment that his imagination craved, and let the rest
escape. He lived amid this impromptu wit and knowledge of illustrious
friends, saturated with their atmosphere, passing it through the
deep-breathing lungs to redden, and transmitting it by magnificent
pulses to the hearts of his spectators, purged of superfluity,
sweetened by gentleness, drenched in grace. By every sense, with
the nerves of every touch, he appropriated character, love, theory,
and life. London was library and university; and poetic intuition
was the tutor of his soul. So--whether jesting at the Mermaid, and
growing forgetive upon the sack; visiting the haunts of travellers
and mariners to pick up strange tales; listening to the multifarious
comment of a Bacon, and turning over his rarities of books; or lounging
by the river-side with Southampton, the centre of a group of the most
advanced, curious, brilliant men of the Elizabethan age--he became, in
person, the coincidence which pervades the dramas; and all inquisitions
upon the amount of literary culture which he achieved, or surmises
about his earlier employments, become impertinent, if they are not made
ridiculous, as his great, receptive, broad-domed soul covered over
London's world and drew up its variety.

There is a kindred gift in Robert Browning, which makes its confession
thus:--

 "If we have souls, know how to see and use,
 One place performs, like any other place,
 The proper service every place on earth
 Was framed to furnish man with; serves alike
 To give him note that, through the place he sees,
 A place is signified he never saw,
 But, if he lack not soul, may learn to know."

The soul of the true artist being cosmopolitan, any place can become
the centre of his circumference; for he is already outside of the world
which his neighborhood is too little to embrace. Perhaps his neighbors
are penurious step-dames who make scanty provision for emotion, and
detest passionate experiences of every kind. But his imagination cannot
starve. It implies all "the pomp and circumstance of glorious" life,
just as the genius of creation involved and anticipated ourselves, who
dress for it a perpetual banquet though no man sees it feeding, and
none offer it their alms. The artist's soul transmutes the refuse of
factories, the sweepings of coal, bone-parings, and street-scraps into
the brilliant colors which, like clarions, precede Beauty's procession
and summon the spectators.

If Lord Bacon wrote the plays, he must have conceived the female
characters which invest them with such dignity and graciousness. To
have done that required a comprehension of the varieties of the female
disposition, such as could be derived only from personal contact and
experience. To have seized some broad features of the plays, Bacon must
have been acquainted with many degrees of social state beneath his
own. We can trust Shakspeare in the tavern and its purlieus as frankly
as we would the Persian poets, Saadi and Omer Khayam, who saw in the
full cup a symbol of the divine afflatus. But we cannot imagine that
Bacon was a frequenter of those London haunts where Dick the Butcher
took his ale before Jack Cade decreed that the three-hooped pot should
have ten hoops, and made it felony to drink small-beer; where Falstaff
leered and tossed his ballast over in a sea of sack; where Parolles
vapored, and Bardolph blushed, and Pistol's English grew tipsy; where
Sir Andrew and Sir Toby roared catches, and Feste and the other clowns
made excellent fooling into the small hours; where Bottom mildly
exhaled at the head of the table at which Flute, Snout, and Starveling
took their pots after the shop-shutters were up; where Dame Quickly
maundered, and Mistress Overdone and Doll Tear-street made largess
of their brassy smiles. A poet may convert the tavern-bench into a
wool-sack: "This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre,
and this cushion my crown." But a Queen's Solicitor and future Lord
Chancellor could not risk pawning the wool-sack for a tavern-bench.
Even the gift of poetry would not have so badly endangered his
prospects.

Bacon knew the wives and daughters of his friends and associates. He
was at home in the families of the Pakingtons and Barnhams and Hattons.
He doubtless noted the peculiarities of Lady Rich, Mistress Vernon,
Elizabeth Throckmorton, and the other women of that crowd upon the
steps of the throne. So many of these were cast in the same mould,
that he would have been meagrely provided with female types, leaving
us unable to account for the great range of character which fills the
scene, from awkward Audrey to queenly Hermione, from Mistress Overdone
to Imogen, from the Pander's wife to Marina, from Phebe to Perdita.

Moreover, search Bacon's writings upon this matter of knowledge of
woman to find, if you can, hints and passages which are parallel with
the plays in temper or language. Look for traces of that fervor which
devotes the plays to the great central passion, and consecrates them
with so many moods and styles of womanhood. Ransack his letters in
vain for any deep consciousness of sex like that which makes every
play personal and vital with something that cannot be put aside. Read
his Essay on Love, and contrast its dry, pragmatic tone with the
pages which palpitate with Juliet, or those over which Viola tenderly
broods and Helena frankly shines. Can we imagine that essay to have
been a treasured favorite of Desdemona, or to have beguiled Ophelia
during the absence of her prince, or to have served Cleopatra except
to hang on Antony's hook for a sinker, as for jest she hung the salted
cod? Isabella might have safely furnished a copy of it to every nun
in her convent; but Imogen, for all her "pudency so rosy," would not
have taken it to bed with her, to read three hours and fold down
the leaf where she left off. The warmest expression which Bacon was
ever overheard to make is preserved in a speech in praise of love,
written probably for a masque. The speaker says: "In the melting of a
horse-shoe, can a mighty dead fire do as much as a small fire blown?
In shaping metals, can a mighty huge weight do as much as a blow? It
is motion, therefore, that animateth all things: it is vain to think
that any strength of Nature can countervail a violent motion. Now,
affections are the motions of the soul. Let no man fear the yoke of
fortune that's in the yoke of love."

But the details which defend the Baconian theory are too numerous to be
met and properly treated unless one had a volume's space at disposal.
Each one is trivial; and the total effect of the theory depends upon a
nice and patient construction of a cumulative argument, such as lawyers
know how to use. Probably the majority of adherents to the theory will
come from the legal profession, or from the class of minds that is
trained to appreciate the importance of all the little points of some
routine. But so long as the court before which this case is argued must
have for judge a quick perception of the exigencies of the imagination,
which include the delicacy that tests differences of intellectual
structure and the broadness that adopts all vices, passions, whims, and
humors, the details need not be separately pursued: their refutation,
if still possible, is anticipated and made useless by the comprehensive
verdict of an imagination that is kindred to the plays.

It is not entirely just to say that the contributions of men who favor
the theory are specimens of literary futility. They are frequently
valuable to the scholar of Shakspeare by throwing unexpected
side-lights upon the plays: they also furnish suggestions to the
interpreter. They have amassed a quantity of collateral information
of Shakspeare's epoch which the critic will thankfully acknowledge
as he uses it. The minute and laborious research which Judge Holmes
has expended upon his volume, the literary, historical, and social
parallelisms which he discloses, the philosophy and style of thinking
of Elizabeth's age, put the lover of Shakspeare under obligation.


SHAKSPEARE'S WOMEN.

For many years before the time of Shakspeare, it had been customary
upon the continent to assign to women the female characters of plays.
But we do not find any trace of the employment of women upon the
English stage till 1632. It is a mistake of Colley Cibber that no
actresses had been seen on the stage previous to the Restoration. A
French company that included women appeared in a play at Blackfriars
in 1629, and were soundly hissed for this innovation upon British
prejudice. In 1641, during the Puritan interdiction of plays, the
actors drew up their "Stage-players' Complaint,"--"Our boys, ere we
shall have liberty to act again, will be grown out of use, like cracked
organ-pipes, and have faces as old as our plays." In 1660, a play was
acted entirely by men. In 1661, the same play was acted with the help
of female actors. After women had effected a lodgement upon the English
stage, they still divided for a while with men the female characters.
But, during the life of Shakspeare, squeaking tongues and downy cheeks
used to "boy" the greatness of his female parts.

We can understand how this custom must have helped both the audience
and the actors through the frequently broad dialogue of the coarsest
plays of that period, where things and situations are mentioned with
a frankness and precision which cannot now possibly be reproduced,
except in the sugar-coated fashion of the Offenbachian revival. Women
wore masks when they attended the theatre, and needed not to be at the
expense of blushing. The slight disguise lent to them the illusion
of being neuters in the crowd. The world was then unsqueamish and
forced no scruples on the playwrights, whose coarseness differed from
Shakspeare's in being lugged in for its own sake. His plots always
countenance his freedom and adopt it. There is Shakspearean motive
for every wanton page, as there is, too, genius in it, which other
writers could not ape nor rival. Each feeling is so essential to the
intercourse of his characters that he cannot disguise it: it is a state
of nature that gambols like a child among its elders, more likely to be
smiled at than reproved. The texts of the poet's frankness survive, but
not as deliberate outrages to the modern womanhood which would fain not
speak nor hear them; and they do not justify the expurgated editions
which unfix them from their natural connections with the chastity and
married honor involved on every page and in the drift of every play.

When his plots disguise female characters in the dress of boys and
pages, it was more effectively done because his actors, thus resuming
their natural mien, could so easily sustain the dramatic contrivance
with the advantages of sex. And this is something which our modern
female actors cannot imitate. At least, they do not appear to be
interested to make the attempt, because they are misled by vanity to
set off their little rounded waists and the feminine charm of figure
and movements. Perhaps it is not vanity, but an instinct of womanhood,
which lays this embargo on her mimic power.

An exception must be made of Mrs. Kean; for a play was always the thing
to catch her conscience, and engage it to lend the utmost reality to
the scene. As Wilford, in the "Iron Chest," she never forgot to assume
the perfect stride and motion of a man; and as the disguised Viola,
when the thought hit her that Olivia had fallen in love with her, she
slapped her cap, and threw out her right leg with all the jauntiness of
a boy, as she exclaimed, "I am the man!"

But, in general, the figure, gait, and instinctive movements of the
actress continually betray the Imogen, the Viola, the Jessica, the
Julia, the Rosalind, who may well say, "I could find in my heart to
disgrace my man's apparel, and to cry like a woman." Portia says to
Nerissa,--

               "I'll hold thee any wager,
 When we are both accoutred like young men,
 I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two,
 And wear my dagger with the braver grace;
 And speak, between the change of man and boy,
 With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps
 Into a manly stride."

But, when Shakspeare's smooth youngsters reassumed their characters
as women, how the great poet must have been inwardly fretted with the
incongruous presentation of the tone of masculinity in each passion,
of the boy's smutch on the bloom of each emotion, the elbows wearing
ragged holes through delicate sentiment, the scraggy shoulders and
strong collar-bones working out of every tender phrase! He was forced
to see a Cleopatra without "the entire and sinuous wealth of the
shining shape" that held

                             "A soul's predominance
 I' the head so high and haught, except one thievish glance,
 From back of oblong eye, intent to count the slain."

It was Antony's Egypt without the fine malice and insinuation, stripped
of the abjectness of her love which, grovelling for pardon at having
wrecked her lord, makes him arrest her heart again to indemnify him for
all his fortunes that had gone to pieces; as he answers to her cry for
pardon,--

 "Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates
 All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;
 Even this repays me."

Could all Shakspeare's training have infected a boy's imagination with
Juliet's ardent frankness, which tipped those lines with the sparkle of
first love, and launched it from the balcony into the night, to be one
star the more? And what boy or man could have returned to Shakspeare
that motherhood of scorn which whitened the lip of Constance,--could
have picked up and handed back to him the gauntletted verses of her
defiance? His imagination must have wilted in that dryness of the
actors; it was a limbo for the infants of his soul, out of which they
never graduated: the tender grace of Perdita, doting over flowers as
if they had natural instincts like her own, which ought not to be
dismissed but rather claimed; the moan of distracted Ophelia, using
flowers for tokens; the airy coquetries of Beatrice and Rosalind; the
concealment preying on the bud of Viola's cheek; the gathering madness
discharged in showers of pity on Cordelia's; the fell chastity of eye
which made Iachimo's looks peruse the ground. All the distinctive
temperament in the gestures, tones, allusions, of Shakspeare's women;
all the difference of sex to which the verses strive to connect each
emotion as it rises, to hold it a moment on the face, to detain it
in the eyes, to send it scurrying by; that struggle of shyness with
desire, the tremor of a heart that has a secret threatening to climb
into sight, the anxious reticence that reaches to pull it down; the
love that whets itself upon ambition's stone to the point of murder,
and makes its hands of one color with the husband's; the swaying,
queenly gait, the sinuous arms that would embrace when words were
done, as Hermione descends slowly from the pedestal; the impromptu
charm of Miranda's modesty when she would not wish any companion in
the world but Ferdinand; the reverie of Desdemona, as she unpinned her
dress to the tune of "Willow, willow, willow," and started at the
wind, thinking it was Othello's knock, expectant but bodeful,--all the
generic traits which differentiate Shakspeare's women from all the
other women of literature, according as women themselves naturally
furnish those traits, could never have been personated by any man.

How fortunate it is for a grateful posterity that it has been
enabled to repay to Shakspeare a portion of its heavy debt to him,
by committing his female characters to women of various talents and
temperaments, some of whom are the brightest offspring of their age!
Could he have foreseen, when the women of his fancy were consigned to
the beardless tenors of London, that the true woman would eventually
route these wretched eunuchs, claim the scene, appropriate her own
verse, and infuse the whole unsuspected genius of her sex into his
conceptions, to give them new births in the travailing of her bright
endowments? That was a perfect forecast of the imagination which, with
only youths for actors, whose chief advantage was the callowness upon
the cheek, could have written the parts which have laid an attachment
upon the finest women of the last two hundred years, and taxed all
their passion, wile, and infinite variety. He must have written in a
divining sense that Nature, piqued by the revelations of her deepest
mystery, would have to summon at length its representatives to mediate,
and, taking these things of heaven, show them unto men.

In some respects, the conceptions of Shakspeare have not found the
later actors and actresses to be profitable allies, in so far as they
have put a private stamp upon their favorite characters, and have
levied duty upon his fancy that prefers free-trade even to direct
dealing clear of middlemen with every heart. So does every sect
hang over the great stream of the Bible, see its own face reflected
there, and languish for it. Shakspeare's pages surprise actors with
their own temperament, and make them long to embody it. So that our
Shakspearean impressions are decided for us, and descend to our
children through the style or school of great histrionic families,
in the same way that congenital traits travel out of the past into
the future: the traditional studies of great theatrical performers
propagate themselves. Their excellences cannot be ignored, and they
quite plausibly vindicate themselves as pure Shakspearean intentions.
We accept these renderings, and soon become disturbed to have them
challenged and displaced. It is a great but willing tribute which we
pay to the genius of the artist when we confide the imagination of
Shakspeare to his interpretations; just as we despatch our diamond to
be ground and set. He sends it back to us flashing from facets which
describe his individual skill.

But, in consequence of this genial submission of the spectator to the
impressive portraiture, there arises a prejudice that Shakspeare could
not have conceived otherwise, and that the character cannot and ought
not to be repealed. In this way, for instance, some famous women have
accustomed us to a Lady Macbeth who is full of grandeur, in whose
solid and sombre person a suppressed cruelty smoulders. The verses
protrude like claws of tigers; they clutch and rend: you may expect to
overhear the lapping. The lower jaw of this conception is too square:
the teeth of it are too relentlessly closed upon a victim. There is
not an unoccupied space on cheek or brow where love can colonize; for
all the space is pre-empted by a ravin to glut a lust for power. The
woman's husband is only a lackey who must be whipped with scorpion
phrases up to the deed that makes a queen of her. She detects a flavor
of the milk of human kindness in him; and it makes her scowl till she
shrieks to have the ministers of darkness turn her own milk to gall.
She is the woman to carry back the daggers with the bluff composure of
a butcher, and hoping to find that Duncan still bleeds, so that she may
gild the faces of the grooms. You would not come upon her rampaging at
midnight with a candle, rubbing at imaginary stains, and conning her
secrets with fixed glassy eyes; for she is firmly constructed to know
the blessedness of a bed and the balm of being conscienceless. Of such
a wife Macbeth might well have said, "She should have died hereafter;"
but she would not have found any time at all for such a weakness. I
cannot discover the Lady Macbeth of Shakspeare in this too robust
delineation.

Another kind of misrepresentation has issued from another quarter
whence it should have been least expected. Some of the noblest women
of modern times have filed a complaint against Shakspeare's women,
and brought them into the court of the latest ideas, charged with the
crime of being characterless, mere puppets of the will of the dominant
sex; not the tutors, indeed, but the feeders of his riot, complaisant
creatures who accept the purpose of the universe to keep men supplied
with love, and whose most prominent traits are those which protect and
confirm the union of the sexes. It is alleged that Shakspeare "never
foretold a better woman than he saw," because "he lacked an ideal of
humanity and life:" he withheld from her the personal consequence
which belongs to strong individualities who detach themselves from
their age to view, scrutinize, and remodel it. It is astonishing to
read what Mrs. Farnham,[16] whose life was most unselfish and heroic,
has said about Shakspeare's ideas of women, that "he authorized in his
sentiments all manner of passional, sensual, and drunken usurpation of
man over woman, every kind of force to degrade her which the law did
not punish; and only felt bound to satirize and speak coarsely of _her_
after it had been exercised; men, who repeated such experiences never
so often or basely, being no less heroes for his dramas, fit to lead in
council, rule in honorable war, and receive the homage of society. The
leading characteristics of woman, as he portrayed her, are sensuality,
and fickleness, its uniform attendant in either sex; capriciousness,
vanity, desire to be loved, more for the power than the pure
happiness of it; a disposition to exercise that fleeting, petty power
tyrannically,--so far, to play the man on the child's scale; weakness,
helplessness indeed, against temptation, and a paramount selfishness
which is only modified, or very rarely turned into generosity,
towards the man whose love permits her to love in return; for which,
and chiefly, in its narrowest, most material sense, she seems in his
estimation to have been created."

It is not possible to misread the plays of Shakspeare more profoundly
than this. They have been viewed in the color of some exclusive ideas
concerning the nature and the mission of woman, in whose advocacy the
writer spent a noble life. Not finding in any of the plays precise
statements that reflect the most advanced sentiments upon the Woman
Question, and discovering that Shakspeare was neither morally nor
politically a partisan, and that neither position nor reflection
impelled him to anticipate modern ideas on social subjects, the writer
declares that he was not the poet of woman because he was not her
prophet. A criticism more destructive than this of the Shakspearean
delineations cannot be made. In fact, no _doctrinaire_ of ethics,
politics, theology, can suitably approach Shakspeare with a critical
purpose.

Nature seems to have draughted many of her women in the mind of
Shakspeare before she embodied them to play their parts. Already there
existed Antigone, Medea, Electra, and the ensky'd Beatrice; but these
did not exhaust her capacity of womanhood. They seem only sketches of a
few single features, portraits of isolated qualities that waited to be
combined. Medea was the hate of a mortified and neglected love; Electra
was the unsleeping persistency of a daughter's revenge; Antigone, the
divine constancy of a daughter's affection; Ismene, the weakness of a
common mind; Alcestis, the extravagant submission of a tender wife:
they are all single strings of the old Greek lyre, never tuned to sweep
into a perfect octave. The note which Alcestis emits is merely her
willingness to die. Imogen sounds the same at the command of a husband
who suspects her honor. But it wakes the harmony of other strings,
and we listen to a chastity that is as spirited and deadly as it is
submissive; to a love that is as eager as it is refined; to an honesty
that exposes the discord of double dealing by chiming with a simplicity
that scarce knows how to suspect; to a purity that is as unconscious as
a girl, while it is as haughty as a man. The chords are rich and solid,
and support the theme of her character through all its movements.

So women began to exist for the first time in literature. Shakspeare
discovered woman, and took note of her generic peculiarity which
upholds the specific differences of individual women. They all came
forth to him as surely as flowers to the sun. He solicited each
jealously interfolded sheath, and drew out of it the heart of its
color. All of them are rooted in the common ground of sex; but each
one lifts into the blossom her signals of a temper and modulation that
are peculiarly her own. So that, although "each woman is a brief of
Womankind," she is also a woman who must be designated by some one of
Shakspeare's famous names.

In fact, genius was never penetrated with the varieties of woman's
temperament till Shakspeare, picking up a few rustic specimens in
Stratford, ran away with them to London, taking down there honest,
red-fisted Audrey; Phebe, the village coquette, a little above her
condition, who reads and quotes tender love-lore, and learns to
despise a swain; Mopsa and Dorcas, doting on ballads, watchful after
pedlars to chaffer with across the hedge for tapes and ribbons; and
Juliet's gossipy, free-spoken, easy-minded Mrs. Gamp. With this humble
retinue, his imagination travelled down to the great city, and seemed
to have introduced them soon, past all the barriers of etiquette,
into Elizabeth's circle of ladies, where they went into the service
of high-born qualities, and retailed to him the very heart-secrets of
their mistresses. The dames of wealthy citizens sat in full costume
for his "Merry Wives;" the noble partners of his friends and patrons
yielded each to him a whisper of their chasteness, their high-spirit,
their control, their tenderness.

       "In the blazon of sweet beauty's best
 Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,"

he mastered Beauty of the form and soul, and gave to each her portion,
from Imogen to Cleopatra,--

 "The worser spirit, a woman color'd ill."

One could not, of course, claim for Shakspeare that his pages include
all the varieties of women which Nature is capable of producing. He has
no daughters of the people, like Egmont's Clara and Faust's Margaret:
they are conceptions of a later date. But they are implied in the
quality of his women; and we incline to think that Nature will not be
able to invent a fresh style of woman, or to modify the standard types,
unless she sets out with that essential peculiarity, the Womanliness,
which Shakspeare has described. As all the instruments of an orchestra
are tuned upon a single pitch, and as all future modifications of
the instruments must defer to the same if they mean to take rank in
harmony, so all the women who are still possible to Nature must accord
with her influential note. Shakspeare is content to strike that.
Through all the chords which cluster around his different characters,
we detect it: he seems to be making tuning-forks on the same pitch,
but of various materials, to emphasize it to the ear. His plays take
from it a consonant vibration that extends through scenes and lapses
of time during which no woman's face appears. The tonic of her heart
is diffused beyond the limits of her person; as when Ophelia's bloom
clings to the fate of Hamlet, even while she waits in death for him
to reach her funeral-rite. So the beautiful soul of Cordelia, that
is little talked of by herself, and is but stingily set forth by
circumstance, engrosses our feeling in scenes from whose threshold
her filial piety is banished. We know what Lear is so pathetically
remembering: the sisters tell us in their cruellest moments; it mingles
with the midnight storm, a sigh of the daughterhood that was repulsed.
In the pining of the Fool we detect it. Through every wail or gust
of this awful symphony of madness, ingratitude, and irony, we feel a
woman's breath.

Since Shakspeare's day, new countries have been discovered and peopled;
new colonies have carried his mother-tongue around the earth; the
language of woman, like the girdle of a goddess, is a zone drawn round
all other climates to hold them in the clasp of her charm. The wider
culture and the opportunities derived from modern wants have already
increased the number of her gifts, and set her person in fresh shadings
of character. Perhaps Macaulay's New Zealander, who is expected to
meditate in the future over the ruins of London, will turn out to be
a woman, of a variety which Shakspeare has nowhere precisely drawn.
But, if all his plays should by that time have shared the fate of an
extinguished England, there would she sit, the survivor in the direct
line of descent from his essential Woman; by virtue of her sex the
Sibyl foretelling the women who will be possible to Nature.

 "Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo:
 Jam redit et Virgo."

Woman, as she resembles man, was of less consequence to Shakspeare than
woman in herself, apart from what she can do, can earn, or can aspire
to. He merely received the feminine side of Nature into his recreating
thought, the essential Woman, without respect to the exigencies of any
period or style of culture,--the only She, such as woman must remain
to the end of time underneath all her activities and requirements. Her
sex is the unalterable decree which she can cast no ballot to vote
away from her, and assume no profession to raze it from the eternal
tablets of her distinction. All the purely modern questions which
relate to her career; the efforts to equalize with man's her wages, to
multiply her opportunities, to claim her interest in the politics of
human rights, to secure her alleviating presence in the rude scenes
of republicanism,--successful as these tendencies may be,--cannot
transform Woman; and she will not step out of her Shakspearean Self. On
the figured coast of his page her Essence stands, as yet without the
right of suffrage, limited to household cares, or raised to queenly
ones; as learned as Portia can become, but not yet admitted to the
profession which she mimicked; provided for by the various dexterities
of man, and still undriven by the modern threat of starvation into
risking a single quality that is her birthright. There she stands; the
modern world, stooping at her feet, will have to yield some of the
reputed exclusiveness of men, but only such traits of it as Imogen,
Cordelia, Beatrice, Portia, will select. In all this complicated period
of over-crowded cities, over-stimulated competition, vices overfed,
employers over-purse-proud, and politicians over-careless, there is
no strait cruel enough to compel the essential woman to choose a
career which would have unsexed one of Shakspeare's plays. I have no
fear. Stand aside: cease that frantic bracing of the masculine back
against so many doors of prescription. Throw them wide open, and let
Shakspeare's stately crowd pass up and down to scan the vista through
them. Come, patient, chaste, obedient, high-spirited Imogen, too docile
Ophelia, frank Perdita, warm Julia, bright and witty Beatrice, whose
tongue is a pen already, or the etcher's tool; come, thou accomplished,
grave, acute, and self-possessed Portia; thou unsophisticated Miranda,
who would fain share thy lover's toil; thou shifty, prompt Maria, hater
of humbug; thou tender Viola,--come, choose how many of these men's
garments you will continue to wear, preferring to be women. Not one
of them, I venture to declare, which your eternal instinct will feel
to cramp or to disguise the form. "Dost thou think," says Rosalind,
"though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my
disposition?"

Perdita, I think, if she were not discovered to be a king's daughter,
might take to floriculture, and earn a living by it. She would no
longer keep her dainty pique against the gilly-flower, but learn to
marry

 "A gentler scion to the wildest stock,"

and thus mend Nature. She would prefer to be "Flora peering in April's
front," along meadows which Proserpine might have roved through, far
from the university and the din of scholarships. And pray restrain
Ophelia from the commission of suicide by joining a nunnery; but do not
save her life to put her to a trade that turns upon any other knack
than simple beauty. A woman who can enthrall a Hamlet will esteem it no
derogation to pluck from his memory a rooted sorrow. It is a profession
quite as sanative as Helena's, whose father had taught her the use of
curious drugs, and bequeathed to her "prescriptions of rare and prov'd
effects." But let Ophelia be simply beautiful, be surprising like the
first May-flowers, be winning like unobtrusive violets; let her exhale,
like slopes that are brown with needles of the pine. Preserve the maid
who held Hamlet's princely heart in the hollow of a moist and rosy
hand: let her survive among us to hold others, to unwrinkle brows of
speculation with a finger-tip, to unknot the snarls of business and
ferocious care with kisses which the street will not overhear. Out of
all her craze may she gather up again and redistribute the flowers of
her shy disposition, "for remembrance; pray you, love, remember;" and
some for herself too, "we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays."

Do not tempt Ophelia to drown herself again

 "With annoyance of charity schools or of districts."

Turn over all such business to that pragmatic and correct Isabella:
she will do better in it than in making a whole nunnery miserable with
posted notices of the dangers to virtue and of rules for being severely
let alone. But Ophelia,

 "Live, be lovely, forget them, be beautiful even to proudness,
 Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you;
 Live, be uncaring, be joyous, be sumptuous; only be lovely,--
 Sumptuous, not for display, and joyous, not for enjoyment;
 Not for enjoyment, truly; for Beauty and God's great glory.
 Built by that only law, that Use be suggester of Beauty,
 Nought be concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment,
 Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish."


LOVE IN SHAKSPEARE.

The great motives and impulses of human nature do not find themselves
made obsolete by Shakspeare's genius: we meet the central passion of
Love animating every play, and modified by the various characteristics
of his women. They appear in the plots, as in the world, to discharge
that great function of their being. Steele once said of a woman, "To
have loved her was a liberal education,"--a happy phrase which has
done duty since in other connections. There must have been floating in
Steele's mind the verses of Biron in "Love's Labor Lost;" at least, the
pith of his sentence is there anticipated:--

 "For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
 Have found the ground of study's excellence,
 Without the beauty of a woman's face?
 From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
 They are the ground, the books, the Academes,
 From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
 For where is any author in the world
 Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?"

"Without love I can fancy no gentleman," says Thackeray.

When Shakspeare shows his characters in love, the passion is as fresh
and uncompromising as if it were still the morning of the world.
His verse "dallies with the innocence of love, like the old age."
The curious considerations of the modern novelist were not then
invented. His lovers trump up no obstacles out of over-nice and subtle
reflection: all that hampers them is circumstance, a family feud, a
transparent jealousy, a disguise of fortune, a father's will, or a
conspiracy. They do not take themselves apart before us, as lecturers
do their manikin, to show how cunningly morbid the organs may become.
There is no mesh of motives woven around and across, so intricately
that if the lover breaks from one of his own threads he can catch
himself by another, and keep worrying the poor fly of his feeling.
Shakspeare's women love without sparing a moment for analysis: the rose
is crushed to the bosom, a glory of stamens, petals, and perfume, whose
names are unknown and unheeded; for the botanizing of emotions was the
æsthetic of a later day when men cull a herbarium from their mothers'
graves. In this regard Shakspeare is as direct as the Greeks, though
far more vital. He puts into his live people the passion which the old
chorus used to hold up like a placard:--

 Love, thou invincible battle![17]
 Love, thou router of lucre,
 To capture the softness of youth
 And lodge in the bloom of its cheeks!
 'Tis all one to thee if thou farest
 By sea, or dost loiter in farm-yards.
 It helps not to be an immortal;
 Mankind is no refuge from thee
 Who art of men the first madness.
 Thou dost ravish the just of their judgment,
 Dost snatch them to blame;
 Thou art the bicker that vexes
 The blood in the hearts that are kin.
 Vivid the promise of bride-bed
 Thou kindlest on eyelids of virgins,
 Great prescripts of past time undoing;
 So sports Aphrodite, and rules.

Shakspeare has inherited the antique single-mindedness, undisturbed
by all our modern after-thoughts of sentiment. His heroines do not
understand what refinements of torture a cultivated soul can invent
to make itself wretched. They are frank and instantaneous; as when
Miranda puts her heart into Ferdinand's hand, so sweetly unconscious of
all that the action involves. She only knows that she has "no ambition
to see a goodlier man," no arts to use to win him, no starting to
overtake the passion with a pack of doubts.

                 "Hence, bashful cunning,
 And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!
 I am your wife, if you will marry me."

The only game she plays with him is chess, but she does better than
stale-mate him.

Beatrice, for all her cleverness, shows that she loves Benedick in the
first words she utters in the play. For she asks if he has returned
from the wars, and gives him a fencing-term for a nickname, to pretend
a profound unconcern; then disparages him in a most lively way, and
asks whom he has now for a companion, seeming to allude to men, but
expecting to know by the answer if his affections have become involved
with any woman. And when he fences her wit with his bachelor banter, it
piques her secret admiration. She has no other subtlety beyond her wit:
she uses it to misprize the wedded state, and to mock indiscriminately
at men,--a very common and transparent stratagem of a heart that is
deeply engaged; and, beneath all the gay and flippant manner, she feels
hurt because she thinks that Benedick is really cool and does not feign.

There is nothing but the mask of night upon Juliet's face to hide, the
blush which her lips acknowledge. "Farewell compliment. Dost thou love
me?" The bud of love becomes a beauteous flower in its first spring
day, for it is too impatient to levy on the lagging warmth of summer;
and the sudden heat sends every drop of Juliet's blood rushing into
the frankest words that maiden ever spoke. She has not even mental
device enough to hush what the most passionate women, of a type less
frigid than our own, are quite content to feel if there's love enough
to justify. So the verses which come fluent from Juliet's lips do not
scald like the insinuations of some modern novels which plot random
passions and ingeniously dally with them. Shakspeare has no pages of
this elaborate suggestion. His mental style was like the archer's bolt
that quivers in the middle of the boss: he never could have learned
this modern practice of the boomerang, which dips, skims, makes
ricochets, lingers, doubles corners, and plays back into the sender's
hand.

 "A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon
 Than love that would seem hid: love's night is noon."

The finest of his ladies cry out with the sudden smart.

 "Cæsario, by the roses of the spring,
 By maidhood, honor, truth, and every thing,
 I love thee so, that, maugre all my pride,
 Nor wit, nor reason, can my passion hide."

Perhaps this is not a style that might be safely cultivated in our
female boarding-schools, unless all the Cæsarios were Violas in
disguise. But it is Love's ideal sincerity as it lives in Poesy's world
to quicken sluggards and scorch prurience to death.

His love is not only unsophisticated: it is as virile, sumptuous,
adventurous, intense, as the age which crushed the Armada as if
it were a cluster to infuse new blood into England. It shares the
intrepidity of all the sea-kings, but declines their ruffling and
bluster. It is colored like the costumes of the nobles, who vaunted
their rich stuffs and set the dull streets aglow like a parterre of
flowers, before we began to exchange doublets and slashed satin for the
hypocritic pantaloon. Its manner is free, reliant, full of respect and
of a proudness of honor: sometimes it lets the flashing blade be seen
at a touch of the ruffled wrist; sometimes it subdues all the grand
state into deference, cap in hand, till the plumes sweep the ground
clean before the beloved object. It has been reared in Anglo-Saxon
bluntness. It is as broad and light-pervaded as a forenoon; but
sometimes it is like those forenoons which appear to have saved over
afternoon shades from yesterdays, they are so toned with the pearliness
of a refraining light. It has risen early, and its elastic steps brush
dew, and its freshly opened eyes are dawns. We seem to have returned
with these lovers to a long-past epoch of the world, when Love had been
just invented and put on trial among men and women of heroic mould and
simple manners, who let the new passion flood them to the brim of their
brains and turn every sense into its heralds. They report something so
antique as to be young; and our jaded nerves respond to the tonic of a
feeling that is for the first time tried. So deeply does Shakspeare's
genius dip the heart into the old stream that makes invulnerable and
immortal.

He sets forth the passion as it defies races, passes frontiers
unsearched, and makes all the sects religious. The Catholic maiden,
who has overheard that St. Bartholomew would have a bloody eve, puts
the white sign of safety round the arm of her Huguenot lover; but the
fingers of his sword-arm pull it off, though all the binding love in
her face pleads for the dear deceit, and justifies it to all of his
heart that is not dedicated to die with comrades. Her religion,--what
is it but the sacrament that converts her adored one into the body and
the blood of her life? Henceforth High Mass must celebrate for her a
double sacrifice.

Shakspeare contrived to rear a race of women whose physical soundness
was unimpaired. Before the gymnasium and the health-lift were invented
at the peevish persuasion of dyspeptics and invalids, who die by inches
of fried food, furnace-air, fricassees of high-school programmes, and
ragouts of French novels, his women earned their health on horseback in
the broad English fields: they called it down to them out of the sky,
where the hawk struck the heron and returned to perch upon the wrist;
they came upon its track in the sylvan paths which the startled deer
extemporized; they overtook it in long stretches of breezy walks upon
the heathery downs and in the hawthorn-bounded lane. The country's
Nature was their training-room, and its unsophisticated habits their
masters. They saw the sun rise, and could not afford time to outflare
the setting crescent with gaslight streaming from overheated rooms;
nor did the stately minuet ravage like the German which is sustained
into the small hours upon rations of beef-tea and various liquors.
They drank small-beer for breakfast, and knew the taste of herrings
before the Turks invaded the nerves of Christendom with coffee, and
the Chinese began to tan its stomach with the acid of teas. At twelve
o'clock, a cup of malmsey, with a wedge of venison-pasty, scared up no
megrims in constitutions which had followed the deer through the forest
into the larder, and had pulled it down there with dexterous hands
into the dish. Imogen was a prime cook, dressed vegetables in various
devices to make them dainty to the eye, and flavored broth fit for
Juno. She never caught cold on the floor of the cave. The forest was as
courteous to her as the court.

Not one of Shakspeare's women utters one line that is inspired by any
form of hysteria: the perfect balance of the functions was not yet
impaired; so that no nerve-centre could exercise a petty tyranny, nor
suggest the morbid fancies and curious superfluities which dedicate so
many late romances to St. Vitus, the patron of spasm.

In an admirable book upon "Sex in Education, or a Fair Chance for the
Girls," I found embedded in an excellent vein of common sense the
following obscure statement, quoted from another author: "Peripheral
influences of an extremely powerful and continuous kind, where they
concur with one of those critical periods of life at which the central
nervous system is relatively weak and unstable, can occasionally set
going a non-inflammatory centric atrophy, which may localize itself
in those nerves upon whose centres the morbific peripheral influence
is perpetually pouring in." Here be words almost as depressing as
the ills which the flesh of the modern woman is heiress to; but that
legacy cannot be traced as far back as the poetry of that age when
the Queen rode along the line of her English soldiers at Tilbury
Fort, while Dorcas and Mopsa helped to stack barley to malt the ale
for her maids of honor. I doubt if Shakspeare was familiar with many
cases, transpiring in the town or the country, of women demolished by
"morbific peripheral influence."

So the bodies of his women mature like all the nature out of doors,
and become capable of entertaining the great passion with its own
strenuous, unconscious innocence, with its honest ardor, with its
native directness. Obscure ailments do not warp his verses, nor twang
sick pathos out of their nerves. And we seek the society of these
unsensational women, just as we seek Shakspeare's verse itself; with
the same hope to earn repose for the soul which has been so taxed by
the strained rhetoric of later writers. For relief, we recur to the
pregnant moderation of Shakspeare's style. Pyrotechnics tire the eye,
and send the dazed spectator groping home, as they seem to make more
darkness by exploding. One reason for the revival of interest and love
for Shakspeare may be found in a natural reaction from artifice and
over-wrought expression. The heated mind has discovered an oasis and
deep well that wait in this sirocco-stricken age with coolness for our
hearts. How eagerly we run toward this shadowed margin where his great
power is greatly tempered to our human feeling! His vivacity has been
so bred by repose that it never strays beyond the line where stimulus
becomes inebriation. He not only despises the abrupt effects which are
darlings of the modern pen, but he resolutely refuses to represent
abruptness; and his fancy makes its rapid time by even and placid
motion; as a great sea-bird, with outstretched wings, in which you
scarcely can detect a winnow, will follow the speed of your ship and
be seen constantly poised just above the stern. All his figures have
the same breadth and floating quality: they take you, as on an expanse
of Fortunatus's carpet, upon a great journey silently. They are not
apothecary's expedients to raise a blister by sharp surprise, to lash
up a jaded taste by some cantharides of metaphor and simile, to rouse a
torpid skin by acupuncture, or dull a heavy pain by injected morphia,
as our modern practitioners of the ideal do, who have abused tired
Nature's sweet restorer and the digestion that should wait on appetite.

And every gesture of Shakspeare, even when he has violence to describe,
is not violently made; but the most tremendous deeds are emphasized
by having their bluster chidden and their outcry hushed; so the great
midnight lifts a finger of silence, but shudders none the less, and
sinks to awful depths with the crime which has fastened itself upon her
secrecy, as if to drag her dumbly out of the sweet heaven down to a
place of horror. While Macbeth goes to Duncan's chamber, and the wife
listens to hear death follow, the verse turns over the business of
shrieking to the owl: an elemental dread from the unsounded depth of
human feeling puts an accent on the scene.

Since Shakspeare's time, our rhetoric has been slowly raising its
pitch, just as the musical instruments had been doing it until a
congress was called to reduce to a normal note of _C_, with two hundred
and twelve vibrations in a second, the pitch that had become so
exaggerated. Handel was content to write a minor third below even that.
What a pity that a congress of the best minds could not impose a normal
pitch upon the shrieking muse, the new Calliope, who goes by steam!

Observe the level, unobtrusive nature of Shakspeare's Sonnets and of
the songs in the plays. The difference between them and our later
scaling of the falsetto is like the difference between the moderately
strung violins of Salo and Amati and the violin of the present day.
Those antique violins were made to accompany soprano voices which had
no ambition to reach high _C_, as all men's ears were then content with
the medium register. "Their gently veiled, yet satisfactorily clear,
silver tone, of virgin character," describes the songs of Shakspeare,
and the sentiment for music which is scattered through the plays. In
the middle notes almost every thing that is worth having in music is
to be found. Behind those bars the melodies which can be domesticated
under man's roof and by his hearthside are patiently waiting to be
led forth and be installed. Shakspeare used to listen lovingly to the
cheerful, healthy madrigal of Elizabeth's age, so wholesome in effect,
so downright sincere in expression, so full of the robust, sensuous
life of those brave English days, when human habits and emotions dwelt
in the middle register of life, and there found Nature's own fulness
and harmony, the finely blended color of passion and thought. But
nowadays the daffodils that used to

                                       "Take
 The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
 Or Cytherea's breath;...
 ... bold oxlips, and
 The crown-imperial,"

have been plied with guano, dosed with new-fangled liquid manures, till
their cosmetic and perfume announce a kind of harlotry: we ogle, sigh,
languishingly sniff, and die of a rose in a rheumatic pain.

The gamut of feeling among Shakspeare's women is the clear and perfect
octave which built the English glee and madrigal, whose untutored
music was "the food of love." And love was entirely welcome, like the
daylight; not put off and played with as if by the effeminacies of
some Asiatic musical scale, whose eighth and quarter tones cannot be
distinguished by a well modulated ear.

 "What is Love? 'tis not hereafter;
 Present mirth hath present laughter;
   What's to come is still unsure;
 In delay there lies no plenty:
 Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
   Youth's a stuff will not endure."

Does this have a crude ring of the bivouac to any ear which has been
accustomed to the macaronic variations of modern artists, who torture
the great theme and force its simple blitheness through the brass
crooks of a keyed cornet? 'Tis an honest love whose month is ever May,
when the pipe of Pan is breathed upon by the clear west wind through
the budding willows. Nothing competes with it but the throstle and
song-sparrow: they seem to be weaving sacred nests out of the tones,
to gather them into domestic privacy. Climb, count with delight the
jealously guarded eggs, and do not blow them for your cabinet.

Nature was so prodigal of health to Shakspeare's women that it
overflowed the clay banks of their bodies, and spread in a freshet
of gayety. Beatrice and Rosalind never tire of keeping in the air
the light shuttlecock of their wit. It floats in an æther of animal
spirits; and, if it now and then touches earth, Nature promptly
lends it a rebound. They engage in a masked revel to conceal their
emotions. Will Orlando and Benedick penetrate the disguise and claim
the lips that mockingly escape thus? If these women suspect their
hearts to be distilling a sigh, laughter sparkles into the recess and
exposes the illicit business. It is just like the men to roam about
in disordered attire, with blue, inclement features, shaking with the
"quotidian-tertian" of their love-turn. If they do not go about thus,
it is all the same: then they are rallied for not being in Cupid's
fashion. "Your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded,
your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you
demonstrating a careless desolation." The gladness of these women would
be cautioned at the lorn sight to defend themselves from infection.

Orlando sticks his rhymes up in the forest, like a bill-poster of
Radway's Ready Relief, deforming the sturdier oaks. Rosalind goes
about pulling them down, and is in the best of spirits when Touchstone
declares that he could "rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners,
and suppers, and sleeping-hours excepted:" his verses have the regular
butter-woman's jog-trot. She was never so nearly berhymed to death
since she was an Irish rat in the time of Pythagoras. But, for all
that, she is full of bliss to discover that this fancy-monger of rhymes
is Orlando; and she is dying to know "what did he? What said he? How
look'd he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me?
Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see
him again? Answer me in one word." To be sure, she wears a double
disguise of wit and male attire; so when Orlando says to her, "Fair
youth, I would I could make thee believe I love," it is easy for her to
reply, "Me believe it? You may as soon make her that you love believe
it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess she does;
that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to
their consciences." But when, pretending to ridicule his emotion, she
tells him that "men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten
them, but not for love," he protests that Rosalind's frown might kill
him. "By this hand," she says, "it will not kill a fly." So all the
exuberant frolic of these fine women is the sparkle of healthy brains:
the heart's-blood of love does not trickle through hepatic sentiment,
but is briskly pumped through the lungs up into the head, flashes from
the eye, and becomes a ruddy zest upon the tongue.

Benedick complains that the Lady Beatrice said he was the prince's
jester, that he was "duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest,
with such impossible conveyance, upon me, that I stood like a man at a
mark, with a whole army shooting at me. While she is here, a man may
live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose,
because they would go thither."

When, however, she overhears Hero giving her wit a bad character for
scorn and inhumanity, her woman's heart revolts at the suggestion, and
her self-communion runs thus tenderly:--

 "What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
   Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much?
 Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
   No glory lives behind the back of such.
 And, Benedick, love on, I will requite thee;
   Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand."

So the keen, swooping falcon settles at last composedly upon his wrist:
love draws a hood over the bright, fearless eye, and claps the jesses
upon her spirits. But at the very moment of capture, her strong wings
fillip him: "I yield upon great persuasion; and, partly, to save your
life, for I was told you were in a consumption." That tone has in it
the promise of lively times for Benedick. He will never be able to
train the delight of liberty out of this falcon, who will slip her
jesses still, and circle overhead, but not forget to return. He told
her once that, as long as she had no mind to love, "some gentleman or
other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face." But, though love has
pared her talons, Benedick will not find matrimony to be dull.

Portia's whole temperament is joyous, even when she pretends that her
little body is aweary of the world. Not one of Shakspeare's women shows
such a perfect balance of the senses and the soul. Not a muscle of the
body ever owned to being tired; not a function ever behaved ill enough
to clog her gayety. It flows with mild and even sparkle through all the
varied scenes, like a sunlit runnel that carries gilded dimples into
woods and through them without lingering to have them catch a damp from
shadows. Even the judicial fitness of her great language in the scene
with Shylock does not sprinkle chancellor's wig-powder over her cheek.
The style has the bloom of health, as it always is with her, "rosy,
clear-ringing. How warm with joy are her words! How beautiful all her
images, which are for the most part borrowed from mythology!" And we
notice that her fancy always selects the classic allusions which are
most vital with thought, freshness, sentiment. "If I live to be as old
as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as Diana, unless I be obtained by the
manner of my father's will." And when she watches Bassanio, as he is on
the point of choosing among the caskets, what is he like? she thinks;
and the mighty youth of Greece supplies her thought:--

                                 "Now he goes,
 With no less presence, but with much more love,
 Than young Alcides, when he did redeem
 The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy
 To the sea-monster; I stand for sacrifice,
 The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,
 With bleared visages, come forth to view
 The issue of th' exploit. Go, Hercules!
 Live thou, I live."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: W. Shakspeare, Sein Leben und Dichten dargestellt, 1866,
xvi. 534.]

[Footnote 12: Shakspeare's Staat und Königthum, nachgewiesen aus der
Lancaster Tetralogie. 1866.]

[Footnote 13: Shakspeare in Verhältnisz zum Mittelalter und der
Gegenwart.]

[Footnote 14: We do not forget nor undervalue the labors of Schlegel
and Tieck; the dissertation upon "Hamlet" in "Wilhelm Meister;" the
admirable contributions through several years to the "Jahrbuch der
Shakspeare-Gesellschaft;" the articles in the "Shakspear-Museum" and
other German periodicals; the edition of Shakspeare translated by such
men as Bodenstedt, Delius, Gildemeister, Herwegh, Heyse, &c., many of
them distinguished for poetic talent. The attack by Benedix upon the
"Shakspeare mania" has brought out excellent comment from Noiré and
Dr. Wagner. Wagner's editions of the plays, with notes and commentary,
are good: so is Dr. Jacob Heussi's "Hamlet." The essays of Karl Elze,
of E. Hermann, Kreyssig, V. Friesen, Otto Ludwig, and several other
contributors to the _Jahrbuch_, cannot be neglected by scholars of
Shakspeare: they are sharply distinguished from the dilettante work
of Fulda and others, and from the subjective excess of the writers
named above in the text. The English lover of Shakspeare cannot afford
to indulge an indiscriminate dislike of the German revival. The
Shakspeare-Lexicon of Dr. Schmidt is a magnificent piece of work.]

[Footnote 15: Fleay's "Shakspeare Manual," p. 25, a most serviceable
book.]

[Footnote 16: In a volume entitled "Woman and her Era."]

[Footnote 17: Antigone, 792, Ἑρωϛ ἁνἱκατε μἁχαν.]




PORTIA.


PORTIA.

In the elements which compose the character of Portia, Shakspeare
anticipated, but without intention, the intellect of those modern women
who can wield so gracefully many of the tools which have been hitherto
monopolized by men. But the same genius which endowed her with a large
and keen intelligence derived it from her sex, and, for the sake of
it, he did not sacrifice one trait of her essential womanliness. This
commands our attention very strongly; for it is the clew which we must
start with.

She is still a woman to the core of her beauty-loving heart. Coming
home from the great scene in Venice, where she baffles Shylock, and
swamps with sudden justice the scales that were so eager for the bonded
flesh, she loiters in the moonlight, marks the music which is floating
from her palace to be caressed by the night and made sweeter than by
day. Her listening ear is modulated by all the tenderness she feels
and the love she expects; so she gives the music the color of a soul
that has come home to wife and motherhood, till her thoughts put such
a strain upon the vibrating strings that they grow too tense, and
threaten to divulge her delicate secret. So she cries,--

 "Peace! Now the moon sleeps with Endymion,
 And would not be awak'd."

Her graceful passion takes shelter in the old myth whose names
personify her thought. And her style of speaking reminds us of the more
polished ladies of Shakspeare's time, who delighted in the masques and
revels in which the persons of the old mythology were charged to utter
gallant sentiments. She is a woman of Juliet's clime, and not without
her frankness; but she has been brought up in England, and her feeling
and her judgment are English through and through.

She has been forbidden by her father's testament to make free choice
of the man whom she will love. But she could as soon be divested
of her intellect as of her power and wish to love. There is not a
single drop running through all her fairness that has caught a chill
from the quarter of her brain where wit and wisdom ponder in their
clear north light. Her mind is strong, but not the mind of a man, and
with no traits more masculine than her frame itself, which is love's
solicitor:--

                   "Here are sever'd lips,
 Parted with sugar breath."

And even in her strict speech to Shylock we can feel the light draught
of it, tempering the inclemency of her superb and unexpected threat:
the Jew quails under the sentences which rain on him, golden, grave,
serene. And they compel us to observe that pure sex has given the pitch
to her strong, fatal wisdom. We cannot detect any thin and stridulous
quality, like that of the well-gristled Duchess of Gloster, who repaid
a box of the ear with these two lines:--

 "Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
 I'd set my ten commandments in your face."

If among the points of a well-nurtured woman there be those that are
feline, they are generally retracted into velvet sheaths, and scarce
surmised to be there till a scratch is made so silently that you have
no evidence of it but your blood. But if Old Probabilities should
overhear a woman blustering in a fashion as follows,--

 "Though in this place most master wear no breeches,
 She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unreveng'd,"--

he would at once order cautionary signals. When a man scolds in the
pulpit or a woman on the platform, the planets shudder, shrink, and
grow more crusty.

Bassanio had caught a throb from the soft breath of Portia which seemed
to be a herald of the beauty he describes afterwards when the lucky lid
is lifted,--

                         "Here in her hairs
 The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
 A golden mesh t' entrap the hearts of men,
 Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes!
 How could he see to do them? Having made one,
 Methinks, it should have power to steal both his,
 And leave itself unfurnish'd."

She knows that this portrait of herself lies in the leaden casket; so
that whenever a suitor comes to speculate upon the chance of finding
it, how that sweet breath must break into flurries of dread which call
into the eyes a distant alarm! For, before her father died, she had
seen Bassanio, and secretly preferred him; and we hear him tell Antonio
in confidence that

                     "Sometimes from her eyes
 I did receive fair speechless messages."

No doubt he did; but they escaped to him just like prisoners' glances
that are in vague quest of some confederate instinct, and slip through
a grating; for she was double-locked in durance of shyness and enforced
seclusion, and, "in terms of choice," could not be

                           "Solely led
 By nice direction of a maiden's eyes:"

kept aloof and sacred by an oath to a dying father, yet so perfectly a
woman that too little rather than too much betrayed her; for, as she
says, "a maiden hath no tongue but thought."

The princely suitors file before the caskets, pondering how to match
her picture with herself. She has all the captivating glamour of a pure
blonde.

                           "Her sunny locks
 Hang on her temples like a golden fleece;
 Which makes her seat of Belmont, Colchos' strand,
 And many Jasons come in quest of her."

While these Jasons agitate her heart by deliberating over the metals
of the caskets, the real suitor lies hidden underneath the lead of her
manner, and seems to stretch forth a forbidding hand. To the Prince of
Arragon, while the cornets relieve her by executing all the flourish,
she coldly says,--

 "Behold, there stand the caskets, noble prince:
 If you choose that wherein I am contain'd,
 Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemniz'd;
 But if you fail, without more speech, my lord,
 You must be gone from hence immediately."

This is much more curt than the style of her address to the Emperor of
Morocco, who, although wearing "the shadow'd livery of the burnish'd
sun," had something too of its warmth and openness in the manner of his
wooing.

                     "I would not change this hue,
 Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen."

That went straight to her woman's heart. "I am black, but fair," it
said; and, like Desdemona, she could see "Othello's visage in his
mind." But Desdemona's heart was fancy-free. Portia not only had a mind
that could not be fancy-led, but her heart was lying in Bassanio's
hand, where its life woke, like the gem whose color kindles better at
the touch of warmth. Still, the recognition of the Emperor's frank
passion came forth, toned at once by respect and courtesy:--

       "If my father had not scanted me,
 And hedg'd me by his wit, to yield myself
 His wife, who wins me by that means I told you,
 Yourself, renowned prince, then stood as fair
 As any comer I have look'd on yet."

She may safely say as much as that. And, when he fails, she smooths her
exit from his mind by the kind phrase, "A gentle riddance." Then she
marks the difference between the women whose hearts can reflect and the
Desdemonas of mere sentiment. The former have a firm partition that
prevents the mingling of venous and arterial blood: this in the latter
has never been quite closed, or is too thin, and liable to be ruptured
by emotion. So Desdemona,

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

broke, as she said, into "downright violence and scorn of fortunes."
She "did love the Moor to live with him." Portia, on the contrary,
says, "Let all of his complexion choose me so,"--it is a hint of the
natural aversion of all natures who are representatives of one distinct
type from mixing their love with those of another. But I cannot agree
with a criticism of John Quincy Adams to the effect that Shakspeare
wrote the tragedy of "Othello" on purpose to show the disastrous
consequences of miscegenation. Desdemona's weak point is the only
fatality in the play. She began by deceiving her father, and secretly
made a match which broke his heart. But if she had not recurred to
deceit again, and lied to her husband about the handkerchief, his
smouldering jealousy would have never blazed. Want of frankness was her
contribution to Iago's plot, the element that made it a success. Portia
stood to her oath, and ran all risks.

Portia has the strong sense to expect that the majority of her noble
admirers will be taken by appearance. She is not quite sure, but has
an instinct, that these gentlemen who are after her are also after her
pretty property of Belmont, and will be likely to choose the metals
responsive to this temper. Bassanio frankly acknowledges to a friend
that he would like to repair his broken fortunes; but Shakspeare
shows him to be a lover before he gives this mercenary hint; and he
has reason to surmise that Portia loves him. This unspoken mutuality
dignifies his quest; as if Shakspeare himself would not admit the
charge that he is a fortune-hunter. And it is noticeable how little
consequence we attach to Bassanio's character. We do not care to see
him in any action, or to have him show a worthiness to be Portia's
lover. He is but the lay-figure of her love: there is so much of her
that there must be a great deal of him, and he may be spared the
trouble of appearing at full length. And we never suspect her of
belonging to that tribe of bright women who, either from instinct or
calculation, marry good-natured, well-mannered numskulls, and never
have reason to sue for a divorce. Shakspeare ennobles Bassanio when the
divining soul sees through the leaden lid.

But what if one of the other suitors should also have a noble heart
whose pulses feed discernment, one as fine and unconventional as
herself! There is just hazard enough to affront her cherishing of the
absent Bassanio. She does not relish the moment when her heart, richer
than the princes know of, goes into the lottery. However, when her
father made his will, it doubtless occurred to her that his choice of
metals came from a life's experience of the calibre of the average man,
and was meant affectionately to protect her till the true gentleman
should come. As Nerissa says, "Your father was ever virtuous; and holy
men, at their death, have good inspirations; therefore, the lottery
that he hath devised in these three chests, of gold, silver, and
lead (whereof _who chooses his meaning_ chooses you) will, no doubt,
never be chosen by any rightly but one whom you shall rightly love."
Fortunate is the man who wins a wife because he chooses Heaven's
meaning in a woman! Luckless the wife who is not chosen by some implied
Heaven in a man!

The written scrolls which are enclosed in the caskets show that her
father anticipated acutely the ordinary motives of mankind. The suitors
imagine that they are reflecting in a superior style as they give their
reasons for taking to the gold or the silver; but they are realty
biased by the common sentiment, as Portia sees:--

 "Oh, these deliberate fools! When they do choose,
 They have the wisdom by their wit to lose."

So one by one they slaughter themselves and clear the way.

How Shakspeare's verse celebrates Bassanio's approach to Belmont? It is
like a gracious prelude conceived by her secret preference, escaping to
guide him to her where she lies under a spell which he must break.

There enters a messenger, sumptuous in blank verse, like the tabard of
a herald whose message is desired.

 "Madam, there is alighted at your gate
 A young Venetian, one that comes before
 To signify the approaching of his lord.
                 ... I have not seen
 So likely an ambassador of love:
 A day in April never came so sweet,
 To show how costly summer was at hand,
 As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord."

The lover has reached the enchanted palace, and is in haste to liberate
its inmate. Portia might have said, with the antique grace that always
clothes her speech, that he came to attack, like a new Perseus, those
menacing metals which rivet her in reach of danger, to lift her
passionately out of fetters. How she struggles not to show her love,
and thus she shows it!--

 "There's something tells me (but it is not love)
 I would not lose you; and you know yourself,
 Hate counsels not in such a quality."

An ordinary woman might have enmeshed him in a cocoon of delicate
coquetries: any woman dead in love, and a little less than strict to an
oath, would have managed in some way to provoke that lead casket into
twinkling a hint to him. But she is too honest for either. A woman with
a soul as tender as it is firm, here she stands dismayed as Destiny
is about to rattle its dice upon her heart: happiness, and a future
worthy of her, all at stake. For though her mental resources might
compete with any fate, she is all woman, made to be a wife, and without
wifehood to feel herself at one essential point impaired,--all the more
defrauded because so well endowed. How she clings for support to the
few moments that yet stand before his choice! She wishes there were
more of them to stay her.

 "I pray you tarry; ...
                 ... for, in choosing wrong,
 I lose your company; therefore, forebear awhile."

She has no courage now: love, when it stole her heart, found that trait
too, and added it to the booty.

     "Lest you should not understand me well
 (And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought),
 I would detain you here some month or two,
 Before you venture for me."

The noble lady's plea fills us with admiring pity: we admire to see the
strong, beautiful woman so downcast with this new emotion which Heaven
has quartered upon her life; but we pity, because perhaps it will be
doomed to dwell alone. And then the more spacious the lodging, the more
dreary the echoes of these few sweet hours.

Has she said too much? She has a chase after this frankness to make a
struggle to detain it, but it overcomes and gets away:--

                       "Beshrew your eyes,
 They have o'erlooked me, and divided me:
 One half of me is yours, the other half yours,--
 Mine own, I would say; but, if mine, then yours,
 And so all yours!"

This freshet of disclosure does not carry away maidenly reserve, for
that is transferred from her person and locked up in the coyness of
the caskets: in them there lurks a threat, a possible disaster, which
lends some pathos to her frankness, and prevents it from forfeiting our
respect.

Now Bassanio, who lives upon the rack, denies her plea for delay:
"Let me to my fortune and the caskets." How profoundly she surmises
that music might lull the watching Fate, so that he could pass to his
Eurydice! She bids the music play:--

 "As are those dulcet sounds in break of day,
 That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear,
 And summon him to marriage."

Bassanio must be attempered to his choice; the song's key must have
an instinct for the proper casket's key. Unconsciously she breaks her
oath; for what benign influence selected the song that is now sung?
Some star, whose tenant was her father? Or was it Nerissa's doing, who
determined to convey a hint to the lover? Or did Gratiano hit upon it,
who had got from Nerissa a promise of her love if the choice went to
suit her? A hint, indeed! It is the very breadth of broadness, and a
lover is not dull.

 "Tell me, where is fancy bred,--
 Or in the heart, or in the head?
 How begot, how nourishèd
     Reply, reply.
 It is engender'd in the eyes,
 With gazing fed; and fancy dies
 In the cradle where it lies.
   Let us all ring fancy's knell:
 I'll begin it,--Ding, dong, bell,
   Ding, dong, bell."

A song that did good sexton-service, for fancy's knell is rung indeed.
The strain reminds Bassanio of notices in his experience: that error
hides its grossness in ornament; vice assumes some mark of virtue;
beauty is for sale by the weight, and is a show which cunning puts on
to entrap wise men: in short, as the song says, fancies[18] come by
gazing, have no life deeper than the eyes, and die where they are born.
The strain wakes up his mind into its nobler attitude. "So may the
outward shows be least themselves." This fortune-hunter, after all, is
Portia's counterpart. The melody woven out of air glides into his hand
and becomes a clew to bliss. Oh, the woman thrills! in touching the
lead his hand has clutched her heart, and forces from her words that
are outbreaks of that which is everlastingly the Woman. They assail,
they challenge man to say what is so great as love. This polished,
clear, sagacious, gifted, balanced woman dares man to say love is not
greatest of all.

 "How all the other passions fleet to air,
 As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair,
 And shudd'ring fear, and green-ey'd jealousy!
 O love,
         Be moderate, allay thy ecstasy;
 In measure rein thy joy, scant this excess.
 I feel too much thy blessing; make it less,
 For fear I surfeit."

Thus the lips which an oath had sealed melt apart in the first kiss,
and her heart, like a fluid ruby, rushes through.

Shakspeare's women never trickle into tepid acceptances: their _Yes_
to love is not puckered in a mouth shaped by "prisms and propriety;"
it is not a whisper through a closet key-hole, which the lover,
overhearing, doubts may possibly be _No_. The Duke, in "Twelfth Night,"
steals rhetoric to utter Shakspeare's feeling about great-hearted and
full-blooded women:--

 "How will she love, when the rich, golden shaft
 Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else
 That live in her! when liver, brain, and heart,
 These sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd
 (Her sweet perfections) with one self king!"

Yet Portia, whom Nature made capable of this rapture, had wit enough to
invent comedies of life and character, judgment enough to devise the
best ways, acumen that astonished Venetian subtlety, as it baffled
Shylock so neatly that the surprise of wit is imparted to us. No
modern parson could speak with such sweet gravity of persuasion upon
the quality of mercy; no bright schemer of novels could spice her
conversations with such raillery, or construct them upon such instinct
for character, as we notice in the scene where she amuses Nerissa with
those sketches of her various lovers' foibles. What does such a woman
want for tools,--pencil, brush, goose-quill, or tribune? She is made
to have her choice of occupations. Does she have a call to utter the
great truths of morals and religion? Undoubtedly, Nature has ordained
her. Therefore, thou Reverend D.D., with all respect for dulness which
is miraculous, that pulpit where you labor like a vessel water-logged
is wanted: we people in the pews are faint with emptiness on board
your craft, and despair of making any harbor. Persuade him, O Portia,
to cede that domain to you: we would fain have the droppings of the
sanctuary like the gentle dew from heaven upon the earth beneath.

Here is another Daniel come to judgment! We would say, let another
judge's seat be placed for her, if we did not observe that it was
love which enlisted her wit to screen the friend of her lover. Here
again Shakspeare has derived her public attitude from the emotions
which her sex involves: the triumph of the court-room is a stratagem
inspired by inclination. In a panel of jurors, how many women we
should have to challenge on the ground of unfitness by reason of the
element which makes up every verdict of our life! She is disqualified
by that exquisite superiority. Her private feeling is liable to be so
profoundly interested that sometimes she acquits or condemns, not as a
judge, but as a person. Her element, which attains to equilibrium in
the world's broad atmosphere, might, if condensed into the Leyden jar
of a court-room, explode with singular effects. Upon the bench it might
happen that she would make our bail too light, or refuse it altogether.
By common consent, Justice has always been a woman; but it was found
necessary to blindfold her, that she may not see into which scale to
throw a heart.

But this heart of woman, so liable to hurried action, is the centre
of her bravest and least calculated gestures. Her profession is that
of heroine. Wherever it be natural to recoil, she flouts Nature and
declines the job of shrinking. Portia and Helena might be two sisters
of the healing art, gratefully welcomed by their own sex's modesty,
but self-possessed and prompt wherever suffering tears down the pales
of convention; sisters of mercy, hunting after wounds in the rear of
battle, dressing maimed soldiers down the sighing wards of hospitals,
appalled at no hurt the most hideous, repelled by no festering squalor;
the mates of man in courage and dexterity. Let a university be founded
for their training.

What shall a Portia undertake to do? That which is level to Portia's
capacity. _Must_ she do it? That is as she herself may decide. But we
let our women do the dirty drudgery of kitchens, expose themselves to
the publicity of saloons, grow sallow and stooping over spindles, and
spend all day dodging poverty behind a counter. We pay our money to see
them exercise their various talents on the stage, where no exigency
of the plot surprises us, no shifts of costume seem inappropriate, no
want of it amazing. Oh, we gentlemen are such sticklers for propriety,
so interested to keep our women well sequestered! She must not speak
in public, but she may sing: Jenny Lind's open mouth does not look
indecent, but Lucretia Mott's is an outrage of our modesty! Where will
you draw a line through the crowd of competent intelligences? I would
draw it very quickly by putting cleverness in the place of dulness,
though many a preacher and schoolmaster, many a vapid lecturer, would
have to budge. Why should inferiority in a swallow-tail be so valued
and protected against superiority in skirts? Napoleon said, "Careers
are open to talents;" but he dreaded lively and gifted women, and got
them out of the country, wisely suspecting that their insight would
fathom his weakness. But no country can flourish till the talents and
morals of women mix with its affairs. I cannot see why dulness is more
respectable in a man than in a woman. Does it hurt our feelings more
to see a woman fail in any public attitude than to see a man do it?
No doubt it does; for we cannot entirely disenchant those youthful
reveries in which woman, though so close to us, seemed to hover upon an
unapproachable horizon, a shape that commanded loyalty from our sense
of harmony and proportion,--nothing in excess, nothing in defect; an
embodiment of a perfect tone's vibration that thrilled in our ideal of
life and promised it a future. We could not tolerate any discrepancy
with the allurement of this mystery. Our own sexual distinction
enhanced it to the pitch of astonishment and reverence. We could not
bear to see her clothed and adorned in a way to jar the taste which
she first woke in us. We cannot bear it now. No pretext of convenience
in locomotion, whether by horseback, rail, steamer, velocipede, or
mangle, can rub out of our preference the lines which trace the reserve
that protects our youthful dream. And how can this being, only half
suggested yet clearly not ourselves, put a scrawl of crudity in place
of those fluent curves that describe something less angular than we
are? The gestures of her mind, when they are publicly displayed to
throw a glove into the mob of us from the edge of a platform, must
always indorse our preconception. Any thing harsh, some acidity of
tone, sentences that stride or bandy with arms akimbo, will pique the
unconverted world into taking up her glove to crush and not to kiss. So
we cannot bear to see a woman pushed forward into premature expression
which the gift will not confirm. A man's stupidity does not inflict so
great a hurt on our imagination. Distance doth breed divinity; and we
shrink to find a woman capable of dulness, and yet able to show it.
All this may be conceded to be a natural instinct which men will not
abandon. But its root is in regard for woman; so that men should be
the first to sound a trumpet before the lists to champion her genius,
whatever it may be, and to see that fair play is enforced in the
tournament. Shall the gifted woman enter the lists? Let her poverty,
if not her preference, consent and decide.

But a woman, however poor she may be, and burdened with claims upon
her relationship, cannot try to do what Portia did not need to do
unless her talent can justify the attempt. If she presumes upon the
deference which man spontaneously pays to her sex, or calculates that
curiosity will be piqued to see her exhibition, she cannot, even with
the help of her natural allies, flowers, costume, and manner, long
conceal some inadequacy for the part she aspires to play. Then she will
wreak discredit upon the independence of woman; and, if that be the
special cause which she advocates, her presence on the platform will
be an advertisement of its failure. For mankind, which has invented
the motto for woman which styles her the weaker sex, does not like to
be taken at its word, and will not sit patiently where this weakness
bores it. It withdraws into the retreats where this accredited weakness
is a delight and power. Of course, wherever masculine ineffectiveness
appears, men are put out by it, except in a meeting-house; and there
it is tolerated in deference to numerous tea-drinkings, marriages and
funerals, and hours of pastoral gentleness; and the imminent inadequacy
of speech is arrested by the organ. But the platform has neither
tradition nor liturgy: the gaze of the audience is a _mitrailleuse_
that sweeps it. There is no rose-window to throw a tint on bloodless
speech. Men compromise no truth of their own, and damage no cause when
they refrain from listening; for man is already the proprietor of all
that he desires, and more than he deserves. This is not the case with
woman,--not, at least, in the regions where there are too many mouths
and too scanty subsistence; nor in those where cultivated women cherish
an interest in equality of opportunities; nor in those where the public
law discriminates against them; nor in those where woman dislikes the
liberty to be taxed without the right to vote upon the taxing. It is
all the more incumbent upon women to be jealously careful that their
self-respect, at least, should be adequately represented. They defeat
their own thought when they applaud the thin speech which sometimes
lends its want of voice to it. It is a "childish treble" that "pipes
and whistles in its sound." There is no reason, because its piping
and whistling were never tolerated before, that the new chance should
confer immunity upon it. The liberty of later times must not be, for
either sex, an unchartered libertine. Truth, eternal nature, the laws
of mind and the moods of feeling, combine to take a mortgage upon it,
whose interest must be paid in coin that is accepted as legal tender by
the gifts that hold it. Recognizing this, perhaps the time will come
when a superior womanhood shall remand masculine incapacity swiftly to
the oblivion it deserves, whenever it mars blocks of marble, squanders
paint, debauches music, or drones an absurd bass about God, Religion,
and the awful morals. Pray Heaven to have woman restrained from the
dilettantism of modern times!

When Portia's heart unties the spasm of joy that tightened round it
at Bassanio's choice, it beats again with the grave and sweet dignity
that is as native to her as her playful wit. Her mind recognizes the
serious change that must befall her fortune: in the first moment of it
there comes a deep humility that makes her speech kneel at the feet of
the man whom she will marry. For her great superiority is free from the
taint of conceit, save "a noble and a true conceit of godlike amity."

We sometimes discover that gifted women are over-consciously aware
of the effect which they produce. While we admire the iris on the
peacock's neck, a bridling runs through it as if to set the colors in a
better light, and our attention is divided by the motion. The orator's
greatest gift is self-absorption. It strips his person to clothe his
thought. His morals seem to gather luminosity out of the air, to become
visible to men. The moment that the speaker listens to his own words,
and snatches time between them to make the audience captive to his
little private ovation, the people are less absorbed, begin to study
the cut of his garments, and nod to each other how well they fit. Then
the thought that was beginning to condense goes back like Ariel to
the elements. When a woman's excellence reads on our faces that it is
delightful, and begins also to be delighted, it throws a shadow: as we
stand in it she seems less chaste than we thought her. All of Portia's
talents share the inviolable reserve of her person, which seems to
convey its modesty into the unspoken thought. How adorable is her
humility!--

 "You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,
 ... an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd:
 Happy in this, she is not yet so old
 But she may learn; and happier than this,
 She is not bred so dull but she can learn;
 Happiest of all, in that her gentle spirit
 Commits itself to yours to be directed,
 As from her lord, her governor, her king."

Does this language seem to you slavish and old-fashioned? And do you,
madam, declare that you never saw the man yet for whom you would so
demean yourself? Then I shall know that just at present you are not in
love. Perhaps you never have been; for it is the perfect language of
a woman's first hours which follow love's declaration, when she feels
that her life and soul are to be made complete by marriage. She storms
herself with questions never before suggested. What could he see in
her? What has she got with which to repay this exquisite flattery, this
shuddering delight at being summoned out of millions of her sex? The
first impulse is to spill the soul in a libation to the deity of the
hour: let the whole of it drench my lover; let me not dare to reserve a
portion to teach me a first selfish lesson. All, all is yours, my king!
Come, drain it at the chalice of my lips!

An emotion far shallower than this is quite enough in any age to trump
up a marriage with; but it is a funeral bak'd meat growing colder still
at the wedding-breakfast. It is often frozen stiff before it gets
there. Half-ripened girls fancy that their simmering preference will
have the sun-burst of love; but the blossom is still in its sheath:
when it matures, that first greenness is pushed off. But, if it was
rubbed off, the blossom, exposed to unseasonable air, grows rusty, and
lifts up a vapid invitation to some splendor to nod and mingle sweets.
Shakspeare has no language of conventional avowal: no acceptances that
are inspired by respect, calculation, immaturity, acquaintanceship,
water his page with insipidity. His pen is love's shaft, and always has
somebody's blood upon the tip.

So do not include Portia's sublime deference in your modern programme
of reform. Man would grow less worthy of woman, less obedient to her
inspirations, if that fell into disrepute. It is the first unstudied
stratagem of love,--one that so humbles man into a greater deference
that she can no longer call him lord. She listens in turn to his
emotion: every line lifts her into equality, with the gesture that
kings make when they acknowledge:--

 "Madam, you have bereft me of all words,
 Only my blood speaks to you in my veins;
 And there is such confusion in my powers,
 As after some oration, fairly spoke
 By a beloved prince, there doth appear
 Among the buzzing pleased multitude;
 Where every something, being blent together,
 Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy,
 Express'd, and not express'd."

This is the quality in Shakspeare's courtships which convinces us
that all his marriages will turn out happily. And he makes it plain
in all his plays that he is a devotee of marriage. Portia is quite
competent to lead a single life, and might earn a brilliant living if
fate stripped her of wealth. Being without a particle of ambition,
she would have to be driven by poverty into setting up housekeeping
with her gifts. But no woman is fine enough to persuade Nature
to grant her exemption from the pain of love. There will always
be exceptions,--an Olympia Morata, a Cassandra Fédélé, Florence
Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Maria Mitchell, Clara Barton,--natures
of great constancy, who are absorbed in scholarship, poesy, or good
works, with a temperament that has an even graciousness toward all
men, and just pauses short of honoring one exclusively. Or, perhaps,
the genius of such women was the gradual rally of time around an
early disappointment, whose story never will be told, when something
baffled a first love,--as the pearl-oyster, stimulated by some foreign
substance that has intruded into its retreat, slowly coats it all over
with nacre, till beauty incorporates the secret ill. Man covets it, but
can never fix the date when the trouble of a fine soul began to revenge
itself so nobly.

Still, it gives us pleasure when the best gifts are surprised,
captured, seized away to consecrate privacy and become a fount of noble
inheritance. Their publicity shall thrill and elevate a later age.

"When virtue leaps high in the public fountain, you seek for the lofty
spring of nobleness, and find it far off in the dear breast of some
mother, who melted the snows of winter, and condensed the summer's dew
into fair, sweet humanity, which now gladdens the face of man in all
the city streets."

Or if, in middle life, some truth, some moral, claims a woman's hand,
and offers second marriage, men will gladly listen to a tone whose
grave, sweet temper, pitched by first love and married happiness,
pervades all her experience.

So Portia, who could, when it was needed, "turn two mincing steps into
a manly stride," doffs the lawyer's robe, and, returning, is met by
music and conducted to a palace that was not till then a home.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: Sometimes in Shakspeare the word _fancy_ means a genuine
passion: here it hints only at a passing sentiment.]




HELENA; OPHELIA.


HELENA.

The character of Helena, in "All's Well that Ends Well," furnishes a
striking contrast to Ophelia, and tempts the student of Shakspeare
to bring both types of womanhood into one field of view. Ophelia
loves the Lord Hamlet, who is her "expectancy and rose of the fair
state,"--one to be proud of, cling to, and adore. But, when her
father's interference begins to draw her into the contrary current
which sweeps her life away, she develops no power of resistance. Even
her love is not strong enough to stem the stream that rushes suddenly
from subterranean caves to cover her feet and climb to her heart. She
has no will for withstanding her father's resolution: her passion has
not yet ventured out of its girlish stage, to gather strength and be a
threat to her docility. She submissively returns the Prince's cherished
words and presents, lets the old father rule her, and goes crazed.

But Helena, though also loving one above her rank, being only a
physician's daughter, cannot bear the idea of giving up Count Bertram.
Her love is not at first returned; but she contains love enough to
furnish both hearts, and she actually follows him to court, to make a
captive of him, hoping to light a mutual flame. Such a procedure as
that stood not within the capacity of Ophelia. No doubt it offends
our conventional feeling; so that Helena must not only succeed, but
manifest pure and noble qualities on the strange road she takes toward
success, if she would gain our sympathy. The play begins quite early
to canvass for our favor by showing that she is a noble woman who
proceeds thus, and it is in the interest of a love that intends to be
pure and legal. It is death to be without Bertram; and love will dare
all things, risk life itself, to save the life of love. Why not in
a woman as well as in a man? Nay, more likely in her case, for that
special reason of womanhood, that positive instinct to be dependent,
and to find life at once swallowed up and blessed by something or some
person outside of Self. A modern woman, who desires to be independent,
is eager to find something upon which she may depend. The Self of the
average woman does not really subsist and reach perfect consciousness
until the lover makes the claim of another Self upon it. For that
which at first appears to be a threat of absorption, annihilation of
the individual, turns out to be the bliss of being rendered back. It
is only by the loss of mere individuality that an immortal person is
established.

What kind of a woman is this one who sallies forth to turn a man into
a husband? Shakspeare endows her with natural traits so positive
that they claim no repose, are contented with no proficiency, and
continually project improvement. "Her dispositions she inherits, which
make fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous
qualities, there commendations go with pity, they are virtues and
traitors too; in her they are the better for their simpleness; she
derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness." That is to say, not
content with being well-born into an amiable disposition, she meditates
the career of character. Such a mind allied with purity justifies
itself, and can venture behavior which a weak person would be wrecked
upon; in whom, therefore, the attempt would be culpable. Conventional
manners are the haven within whose break-water the weak ride at safety,
where nothing tests and strains their shallow build. When Helena
goes to court on the pretext that the King's malady can be cured by
a prescription that her dying father confided to her, the King, who
prefers male doctors, puts her off and under-values her capacity; but
she persists with a sincerity so sparkling, a tone so prompt and clear,
a will so hard to repulse, that the King perceives no ordinary woman:--

 "Methinks, in thee some blessed spirit doth speak
 His powerful sound within an organ weak:
 And what impossibility would slay
 In common sense, sense saves another way.
 Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate
 Worth name of life, in thee hath estimate,
 Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, honor, all
 That happiness and prime can happy call."

So this ennobled daughter of a doctor aspires to wed the noble son of a
countess. Shakspeare attacks the social etiquette of his own age and of
all secluded circles. Helena should be filled with grief for the father
lately dead; but her "imagination carries no favor in it, but only
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."

Then she gives a touch of woman's petulance at being so ensnared:--

                   "'Twas pretty, though a plague,
 To see him every hour; to sit and draw
 His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
 In my heart's table,--heart too capable
 Of every line and trick of his sweet favor."

How frank and strong is the expression of her love! The lines are
chiselled by a delicate distinctness: they suggest her profile. The
verse has the high instep of a woman who can be haughty enough to crush
the blossoms of this new, surprising sentiment.

She does not half listen to the gossip of Parolles. It is the absent
Bertram who is drawing her thoughts to wander in the distance, to be in
imagination for him

                     "A thousand loves,
 His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
 His faith, his sweet disaster."

It is a pity "that wishing well had not a body in 't."

Now as Parolles departs, saying, "Get thee a good husband, and use him
as he uses thee," Helena shows us the originality of her character by
compelling love, that is usually of a habit so timid and retiring, to
put it off and become adventurous. She chides the weakness of sitting
still to mope and be macerated by passion. Something must be done to
justify and consecrate it, to vindicate Nature's scope: she already
claims Bertram by divine sanction of her feeling. No matter whether he
knows it or not, she knows he is that other part of her which her clear
soul misses; and Fate shall not be pardoned if it leaves her less whole
and rounded than she ought to be. Hitherto she is but half a person,
and that half is disabled at the discovery. Love fills her with this
rebuke of incompleteness, till she cannot tolerate thus being half-born
into the world. When love takes hold of such determined minds, who are
capable of willing and well endowed to confirm the will in action,
the feminine traits acquire a bravery which inspires an invention not
inconsistent with womanhood. She must find some way to reach the court,
and put love's halo round his person: perhaps it will be absorbed and
mingle with his blood. When the heart pronounces strongly, its meaning
is sure to gather on the countenance and lend to conduct the purple of
victory. So Helena will not have a secret, to prey like a worm upon the
damask buds of all her youth. "Fortune," she said, "was no goddess,
that had put such difference betwixt their two estates; love, no god,
that would not extend his might only where qualities were level." She
will not risk leaving the business to Heaven, and sit half made up till
Providence may by chance observe her plight.

 "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
 Which we ascribe to Heaven: the fated sky
 Gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull
 Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
 Impossible be strange attempts to those
 That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
 What hath been cannot be."

Still, with all this venturesome disposition to help the piecing-out of
destiny, she is a true woman, who must relapse from the boldest project
into the secret humility of loving, and of looking up to the orb around
which the heart revolves. And how honest she is! for she had a father
whose "skill was almost as great as his honesty." So she acknowledges
her passion to Bertram's mother, as if to let us see that her action is
not a plot, and her motive nothing short of womanly.

                     "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.
                 ... Thus, Indian-like,
 Religious in mine error, I adore
 The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
 But knows of him no more."

In this admirable scene, the Countess does not repel, but rather seems
to undertake the part of Nature's good-will for any love that is real
enough and full enough for two.

 "Even so it was with me when I was young:
   If we are Nature's, these are ours; this thorn
 Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong:
   Our blood to us, this to our blood is born;
 It is the show and seal of Nature's truth,
 Where love's strong passion is impress'd in youth."

Nature is not a member of society, and pays small heed to the
prescriptions of a set. She does not ponder dowries and settlements,
nor hunt up the title-deeds of clothes and houses; and does not snuff
up the wedding-breakfast across the sacrament that mixes the blood of
two hearts.

                   "Strange is it, that our bloods
 Of color, weight, and heat, pour'd all together,
 Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
 In differences so mighty:
                    ... Good alone
 Is good without a name."

It has not yet occurred to Bertram that Helena entertains for him an
affection which he might duplicate. When he departs for the court, he
only says to her, "The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts
be servants to you," little conscious how implicitly they would serve
her. His soul is preoccupied with the image of Maud, the fair daughter
of Lafeu.

 "I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
 Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue."

Beyond her beauty there stretched a long perspective of contempt for
all other women. Maud was too near to him, and blocked up the outlets
of each eye, that no glances might get forth to scour the region which
was so fruitful with Helena, to forage for her heart and gather it,--

                             "Thence it came,
 That she, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself,
 Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye
 The dust that did offend it."

He is at first superior in rank and inferior in nature, his blood
and virtue contending for empire in him. She is still the woman whom
Nature has elected for him, notwithstanding his surprise and contempt
when she summons him out of the crowd of courtiers in pursuance of
the boon she had craved of the King, if he recovered by the use of
her prescriptions. In her the voice of Nature spoke more truly than
Bertram's passing inclination. As she claims the precious fee, the
blushes in her cheeks whisper,--

 "We blush that thou shouldst choose: but, be repuls'd,
 Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever;
 We'll ne'er come there again."

Bertram feigns compliance with the wishes of the King; but, determining
to get rid of her, he hurries from the marriage rite to the Florentine
wars. There was a technical marriage of two persons who are not yet
wedded, for he does not yet deserve her. The shadow of her plebeian
origin is large enough to obscure her merit; so that poetic justice
requires that he must wait till she is appreciated, when he will find
that he has gained every thing in yielding every thing to the supremacy
of pure womanhood. He flings himself away to the wars, exclaiming,
"Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France."

When she perceives that she is the cause of his expatriation, her
decision is made to leave France, so that he may be free to enter
it again. She becomes a pilgrim, with bared feet, to do penance for
ambitious love, wandering here and there, keeping out of the way that
he may be recalled from the dangers of war:--

 "He is too good and fair for death and me;
 Whom I myself embrace, to set him free."

By and by, Bertram, believing that she is dead, is overwhelmed with an
access of love for her. His awakened conviction "cries to see what's
done." Supposing that she is departed, he finds that she is for the
first time present. Although he has been full of faults, and does not
hesitate to screen himself by the most ungentlemanly prevarications,
there is a strain of his nature that sounded when he thought that death
had snapped her string. The vibration woke the tone of Helena, and
married him to her without a priest save death. "Sweet Helen's knell"
became the joy-peals of her marriage morn. Then he receives his true
patent of nobility; for her soul converts him to a man.

In this play, Shakspeare has followed the incidents of an old story;
but, in doing so, Helena grew upon his hands to be so fine that we
dislike to see her submit to a certain one of the circumstances of that
borrowed plot. And we wonder that Shakspeare should not have shielded
her by a better invention.

We are not satisfied to know that such incidents were very common in
the novels of that day, whence Shakspeare derived many of his plots;
for the greatest moments of his genius have taught us reverently to
demand of him more than that he should be content to take the old
threads and weave the old strand over. We expect to follow them as
clews that lead through subtle labyrinths of Nature where the heart
has stored its secrets. Whenever we venture with him on that raft of
some light tale of Boccaccio, we are not surprised if we drop into deep
water whose cresting waves admonish Shakspeare to brace and fortify the
slim float he started on. We do not relish the idea that Shakspeare is
mainly interested to work out a plot into a good acting play, and so
takes the nearest coarse things that may suit such a purpose. It is
true they have been immersed till they are encrusted all over with his
imagination, and their cheapness is concealed. The Chinese drop a shot
into the shell of a pearl oyster, and by and by reclaim it all cased
in an iris. It seems to be a drop distilled from many sunsets; but the
kernel is still a shot. Shakspeare dips the coarse narratives of the
Italian writers into his many-colored verse; and they are turned into
necklaces to heave on the breath of fair women, and signet-rings to
stamp the sense and sovereignty of manhood. But we expect of Shakspeare
something more than cunning ornament. The splendor of his poetry
does not dazzle us so that we cannot look for hidden meanings and
transcendent allusions to the soul of things, as we so often find in
him.

But in her character Shakspeare clearly rose to a conviction that love
may put such emphasis upon a woman that she must declare herself,
notwithstanding the tradition of the sex, that the man's love must have
the opening word. Yet, upon reflection, have not women always spoken
before men ask them? The shyest and most timorous heart that scuds to
covert at every rustle of discovery has already put man upon its track.
Some conniving hour has dropped a softer tone into the voice which she
never heard from her own tongue before. It surprises her into a faint
blush, and surprises him into a sudden observation; as when a new
planet steps into the field of view, and startles the watcher with one
more world. It was but a blush's shadow, such as a bubble drops on the
bed of a clear brook; but it goes athwart his eyes. As they look whence
it came, he sees it has already pulled down the lids of hers and set
them for a snare. She has spoken: she has made a declaration. With all
the enterprise of Helena, she could not have advertised herself more
fully.

There are many dialects and methods of expression; and every woman
will instinctively pronounce her mother-tongue. From Viola to Helena
stretches a whole chromatic scale of tones which do not transcend
the holding bars. Helena was not a type anticipating some future of
an inverted relation of the sexes, when, perhaps, even _seven_ women
might have Scripture for laying hold of one man. But she bravely
testifies of woman the faculty of a love so sacred, and improvised by
a heart so firm and true, so inspired with its own destiny, that she
perceives through a man's indifference what a man so often perceives
through hers, through a firmament barred by sullen cloud-racks, the
clear heaven that will be corresponsive to the heart. Helena cannot
be daunted by the weather. While the storm lasts, the upper blue is
confided to her keeping against the next fine day. But we shall see
Ophelia cower beneath the broken roof of reason, while the heart is too
weak to shore it up against the wild pother that is breaking round her.


OPHELIA.

Looking across the intervale of our prosaic concerns, we descry
the outlines of Hamlet, as they build on the horizon a symmetry,
enticing depth, weird masses, and a lonely top. We try to recognize
the distinctions of this grand object which has been lifted there for
ever to attract the curiosity of men. It is too remote to be minutely
pictured: the shadows that apprise us of its deep seclusion veil
the openings of paths by which it is to be explored. Stretches of a
livelier color report to us the verdure and perfume of youth: the
clouds that fling their pensive intervals upon it pass off pursued
by gladness. But we perceive whole tracts that slope inwardly to
sombreness where the fancy is interrupted by awe and vague surmise.
Whither will those rifts lead us? Into what places visited by nothing
human, whence we hurriedly return, looking back with a sense of some
invisible pursuit, as if the forest shuddered with an adjuration which
overtook, beneath the ground, our feet? What various latitudes are
repeated along that height, with a zone for every season! It is shaped
by all the weathers of the year: it groups within itself the smiles,
the terrors, the fitful moods of Nature, and puts them into a distance
of sublime effect.

While we are observing it, there grows thither, as if deposited out
of the day, a softening tint; one hardly knows if it be light, or
color, or a vapor, or how it be compounded of them all. But it envelops
the whole outline, and spills over into every opening, a gracious
refinement, an investiture not easily described, a light touch of
gentle qualities which decline to be quoted in the dry list of the
appraiser. It is the tender lady, the maiden with the delicate bloom
of love and the remoteness of it,--the impalpable Ophelia. To detain
and handle is impossible, not because, like some rare sphinx-moth,
the downy wings flutter into hiding; for she is motionless as a stain
of color, restful as a summer afternoon when all the noises sleep:
she is a sentiment that broods without a stir upon the lofty Hamlet;
she gives no sound to challenge your attention, and is unable to goad
her exquisite reserve into any marked behavior. But this shyness is
broad enough to cover Hamlet's variety all over, and does not let one
of his features straggle beyond its subduing purple. She is the tone
of the whole wide landscape that stretches between your soul and his.
What need has she to multiply words, to intensify her shape upon the
background of the action? Small need has she to borrow the saucy wit
of Beatrice, to make up her lips with the pertness of Rosalind, or
compress them with the firmness of Helena. They just suit the touch
of Hamlet's lips when his unbend from gathering the speech of solemn
thoughts. She offers them, and his cloud empties of its density.
She draws off the accumulated sparks of reason, makes him safe and
domestic, steals into him with content that even he cannot measure, up
to the time when a father's death untuned his prophetic soul. She will
learn to prattle about flowers, but, alas! not steeped like Perdita,
in glad midsummer; not to beguile her lord, but to deck the bride-bed
of her fate. She wears her rue "with a difference." But, in the mean
time, she may neglect Lord Hamlet's books, and keep her mind guiltless
of entertaining views. She would have no fancy for going to school of
Portia, perhaps no taste to learn the "neat cookery" of Imogen. Her
hands are well fashioned to soothe the hours when "the pale cast of
thought" wishes to escape from itself into some fair, open nature, and
to feel its flattery. Because she is not a character, she is a tune:
she is

 "That old and antique song we heard last night."

The waters will soon pull "the poor wretch from her melodious lay
to muddy death." So, for a while, let her be the mood she is, the
sentiment that Heaven made her, to glint through palace-windows across
the marble floors and gild Hamlet's high-strung nerves. That noble
mind,--

 "The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
 The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
 The observ'd of all observers,"--

is not playing at the feet of a fatuous woman, with silly, pretty
face, and bird-like chatter of a soulless brain, to marry that misery
at last. Many a superior man ties such a bunch of plumage, with the
minutest mouthful of a body inside of it, into his buttonhole; when
it falls out, the tie drags it, feebly fluttering, across the ground.
But Ophelia has an instinct deep enough to fathom "the courtier's,
soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword;" and he as instinctively
surrenders his depths to that survey, which is none the less sufficing
because it is so artless. No: it is all the more competent to
correspond to his wide temper; the only ladyhood in the land for its
only prince.

Fair flower, half-drooping, half-springing from a cleft in Elsinore's
grim platform, where wafts of ghostly air shudder out of the midnight
of the frosty ocean, and the fate-sisters who take the breath of
heroes are at hand. At length the dreadful secret mingles with her
fragrance, which then comes to us distempered. She does not know what
has happened; but in the sudden death and private burial of her father,
slain by her own lover, she, sitting amid the relics of a rejected
love, listening across the "sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh"
of her old lover's soul-chime, intuitively feels 'that there are

     "Tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart;
 Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,
 That carry but half sense."

With what a small outlay of dramatic contrivance has Shakspeare drawn
the pathos of Ophelia's fate! It begins to infect us as soon as we
discover that she loves; for her lover receives the visits of a
murdered father. We know, but she does not, the cause of the apparent
unsettling of the Prince's wits. We can anticipate into what tragedies
that ghost beckons her Lord Hamlet, while she walks unconsciously
so close that her garments, perfumed with rare ladyhood, brush the
greaves of the grisly visitant. Her helplessness is not cast in a
faint, outline against the background of these palace treacheries
and lusts; but it appears in startling vividness, because she is so
pure, so remote from all the wicked world, so slenderly fitted out to
contend with it. Tears are summoned when we see how simple she is, and
fashioned solely for dependence: a disposition, not a will; a wife for
Hamlet's will, but poor to husband one of her own.

What will become of her? What becomes of the vine when lightning splits
its oak? The clipping tendrils and soft green have lost their reason
for existing when the wood which centuries have grained is blasted
in an hour. She will shrink into herself, will sicken, grow sere,
rustle to and fro. Her leaves will blab loose songs to every wanton
wind. To wither is all that is left to do, since all that she could do
was to love, to climb, to cling, to cloak ruggedness with grace, to
make strength and stature serve to lift and develop all her beauteous
quality.

She is free to love, yet bound by old-fashioned duty toward her father;
and he belongs to the old fashion of supposing that a prince can only
amuse himself, no matter what sweet protestations flow into her ear.
She cannot believe it; nor, when her flighty brother serves her with
long-winded cautions on the same subject, does she hardly seem to
listen. Her answers are so short that she plainly does not share his
solicitude. In fact, she is highly amused to see him play the prig with
the consequential air which only a brother can assume. Between the
lines there are peals of girlish laughter, not printed, as she turns
upon him with the advice to take himself into custody. This amusement
ripples through her retort:--

                             "Good my brother,
 Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
 Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
 Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
 Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
 And recks not his own rede."

The old songs which Ophelia had picked up by no means decide that she
was passionate enough to justify so much advice on the point. Some
nurse who crooned over her, some book of old ballads, such as Autolycus
might leave at the door, was responsible for the scraps which floated
into her unconscious girlhood. It frequently happens to an unwary, half
developed youth that things not excessive in decorum get established
in the memory. They are kept strenuously secret, unless something
demoralizes the brain. When madness tears her modesty all to tatters,
they escape, and wander without a rag of clothing through her talk.
They do not betray that she was ever less than a true lady. She rebukes
Hamlet during the mock play, when the expectation of unmasking the
king ferments in him with the flightiest remarks, and his tongue rides
a steeple-chase over the bounds of courtesy. She will not listen, and
says to him, "You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play."
However, she knows her lord to be a gentleman; for she has often
silently felt the effluence of an honest man whose manners and morals
were noble. She pays no consideration to the family caution.

It is noteworthy how Shakspeare defends Ophelia from our censure while
she is chanting those free ditties of an olden time. We listen to them
in company with the pitying King and Queen: the air seems to gather
pity to tone the rude surprise. She was naturally full of sensibility;
so, when she enters in the first mad scene, entirely insensible to her
misfortune, it both increases our sadness and calls upon us to create
what should be her sane feeling. When that is done, the songs borrow
all the chasteness of misfortune. We are absorbed in sorrow to see how
distraction could violate her sacred privacy: thinking more of that
than of the words, the coarseness eludes us. We are all bound up in the
brother's feeling at this sight, who cries,--

                     "O rose of May!
 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!"

And the King says, "How do you, pretty lady?" Yes, that she is, through
it all. If she had her wits, and were using them to persuade us to
revenge her, it could not move like these piteous, tender improprieties.

 "Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
 She turns to favor and to prettiness."

For she sings without smirching a single petal of the daisies and
pansies, which she so softly distributes, with such an appeal of
forlornness, to bid their fragrance disinfect her language, or to speak
for her in the natural key of her wonted maidenhood. So every heart
exhales in the pity that plays the magic of distance and softens the
unsightliness of her ruin.

Shakspeare has given most touchingly rational applications to her
distribution of the flowers. The flowers themselves are culled in
fancy: she holds no actual nosegay in her hand. She recalls, together
with the long-unheeded songs, all that she learned in girlhood about
the symbolic meanings of flowers; and a light irony invests some of
them. It is plain that the rosemary, for remembrance, is ideally
bestowed upon Laertes, with pansies too: "A document in madness;
thoughts and remembrance fitted." Rosemary was supposed to have the
quality of strengthening the memory. The volatile Laertes will have
need of it, and of as many thoughts as he can muster. The fennel ought
to be handed to Horatio, and the columbines should be intended for the
king: the one is a symbol of flattery and is exchanged among courtiers,
but Horatio never learned the useful trade; the others are expressive
of ingratitude and cuckoldom. Was Hamlet's father slain because of
that? The columbines were earned betimes! There's rue for the queen;
for she has great need of repentance. There's rue for herself too.
Both need it; but the queen with a difference, as her moral condition
differed from Ophelia's. We may call it an herb that leads to grace.
There's a daisy. She recognizes it, but ought not to keep it for
herself. And there is no other maiden present. It represents frivolous
and light-thoughted girls. She would give Laertes some violets, if they
had not all withered when his father died. These delicate allusions
make us think that before the distraction set in Ophelia had inklings
of the foul concerns around her. All the more hopeless, then, became
the overthrow of reason.

Hamlet is too finely endowed to sport with her inclining maidenhood.
She has no more calculation than a flower. She lets her beauty bend
towards him without timidity; for she likes that he should sip the
chalice which he will not rudely shatter. After every visit he used
to leave behind him a sense of honor which occupied her heart when
his lips had ceased protesting. Yet she will defer to the father,
with the instinct, perhaps, that more favorable dispositions will
transpire. Polonius, the old stickler for the conventions of royalty,
is thoroughly possessed with the idea that the Prince, from that point
of view, cannot be intending marriage. Some over-subtle critics will
have it that the old schemer is secretly chuckling over the idea that
a match may be made, but that he dreads the king. If Hamlet can only
be brought to the decisive point, and held there, the temper of the
court will be of little consequence. But what method shall be employed
with a prince who so loves to push off upon his moods of feeling to
let them get unhitched and float him from corresponding facts? A
double contrivance occurs to Polonius,--to protect his daughter from
the possible waywardness of a prince, and to pique him into making a
declaration of alliance. This is a delicate operation; for the king
will jealously scrutinize his movements. It seems as if he was merely
protecting his daughter, and keeping faith with his king, when he urges
her not to receive the letters which besiege her door, nor to admit
him any longer to her presence. Then the sly old rat, not yet gone to
burrow behind the arras, hopes to gnaw into the King by attributing
Hamlet's strange behavior to love for Ophelia. And he has so nicely
arranged matters, by prohibiting letters and visits, that when the
King, bending severe brows upon him, asks, "How hath she received his
love?" he can reply, with a flush of honor, "What do you think of me?"

I cannot find that the context will justify this theory. It is
contradicted by the evident alarm and sorrow which the old man displays
when Ophelia describes the piteous plight of Hamlet after his repulse;
for what does Polonius know about a "father's spirit in arms" laying
waste the Prince's soul? No: he must be deep in love; and Polonius must
hasten to report it to the King.

We recur to the plain theory that Polonius supposes that a king's son
is out of the star of her unaspiring thought, and that such a match
would be against the stomach of the Court. He will cling to his lord
chamberlain's staff and totter with it to the end. The daughter,
respecting his fears, inflicts this harsh repulse upon Hamlet. How
we pity the Prince, who is turned away from her dear house whither
he would have longed to repair, weighed down with his awful secret,
to place his heart upon her restfulness, and let its rhythm soothe
the cracking nerves! Yet she "did return his letters, and denied his
access," perhaps the very morning after he had sworn the platform oath.
There's nothing to depend on left in Denmark. Who next is false? What
truth or feeling escapes the monstrous irony?

But mark how quickly Ophelia's love jumps at the father's plan to bring
them again together, as if by accident, in order that the King and he
may observe, by the nature of the interview, whether he is mad from
love of her. And when he thrusts a book into her hand, that she may
have the pretence of reading when Hamlet enters, she gladly adopts the
whole device; for has she not just heard the Queen confess that she
hopes Hamlet loves her?

   "For your part, Ophelia, I do wish
 That your good beauties be the happy cause
 Of Hamlet's wildness; so shall I hope your virtues
 Will bring him to his wonted way again,
 To both your honors."

Can she believe her ears? Hamlet's own mother hopes, as she afterwards
confessed directly above Ophelia's grave, that she may become the
wife of Hamlet. Then all the scruples of Laertes and her father are
groundless. However indisposed the King may feel to such a match, she
has a suitor in the heart of the mother. Welcome the opportunity,
welcome any stratagem, even that of taking his remembrances from her
bosom, to have them returned to her,--a woman's wile to receive them
back more rich than ever with smiles of a recovered love.

The more common theory is that Ophelia does not suspect the mother's
inclination for such a marriage. The Queen's language is guarded, and
capable of two interpretations; but she spoke in the presence of the
King. Measure the extent of her meaning by the depth of Ophelia's
grave. Still, it is commonly thought that Ophelia understands the
Queen to expect of her to make Hamlet realize the hopelessness of
his passion, trusting to have his disorder dismissed with his love.
In that case, she is merely yielding to the father's suggestion that
these remembrances of his shall be returned; and the old plotter has
arranged this for the King to witness. Filial deference cannot stoop
lower than this sad enforcement; but her whole life has been the
non-assertion of a will. She,

           "Of ladies most deject and wretched,
 That suck'd the honey of his music vows,"

and who longed to

 "Bring him to his wonted way again,"

is still so docile, so subject to the pervading influence of her
father's house, that she declares to Hamlet she has wished for a long
time to redeliver his gifts and letters, "of so sweet breath composed."
And when we hear her say,

                         "To the noble mind,
 Rich gifts wax poor, when givers prove unkind,"

we have a glimpse of the interview that was brought on by him when, as
she was sewing in her chamber, he forced himself into her presence, in
disordered dress, and with a manner as if he would dismiss her from his
heart. It wounded and distressed her:--

                           "Oh, woe is me!
 To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!"

It need not seem unnatural that the fair girl is so obsequious to the
father's will. We find no mother in the house: she is gone, and the
only daughter and only son transfer their love of a mother to the
bereaved father, and cling to him with a devotion that includes a
special submissiveness. They live very much withdrawn into themselves,
and mutually dependent. The gentle daughter consults in her solitude
the wishes and humors, even the whims, of the father, whose capacity
for giving sound advice she perceives to have greatly aged. She loves
to be retired within the old mansion, whose still life suits a maiden
shyness. We come upon her sewing in her chamber, thinking of Hamlet.

         "As patient as the female dove,
 When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,"

she sits drooping in silence, remembering her lord, but remembering too
that, when her father pooh-poohed her talk about the Prince's affection
for her, and bade her look out for herself, she sighed and said, "I
shall obey, my lord." She is very much absorbed in contriving solace
for a lonely father. So, when she learns that he has been killed, and
that the blow was dealt by Hamlet, by what freak of accident she cannot
understand,--but "a young maid's wits" prove to be "as mortal as an
old man's life,"--the daughter suddenly empties every thing out of her
heart except affection for the cherished, fatuous old father: her love
for Hamlet is spilled out through that rent in the arras, as we can
notice when all her pretty, distracted singing yields not a tone that
might be an echo of the sweet episode in her poor little life. For
otherwise, when madness broke up her maidenly reserve, and permitted
us to pry into the dispositions of her soul, we ought to have found
there a love for Hamlet as deeply seated as devotion to a father; but
it never was so deep, and never had time enough to surmount all other
considerations. Therefore the sad wanderings bury the father over and
over again, finding a fresh grave for him each time:--

 "He is dead and gone, lady,
   He is dead and gone;
 At his head a grass-green turf,
   At his heels a stone.
 White his shroud as the mountain snow,
   Larded with sweet flowers;
 Which bewept to the grave did go,
   With true-love showers."

"We must be patient; but I cannot choose but weep to think they should
lay him in the cold ground. My brother shall know of it;" and on the
strength of that she culls out rosemary for him.

 "They bore him bare-fac'd on the bier,
 And in his grave rain'd many a tear;

Fare you well, my dove!" says this loyal daughter. We echo it, but with
a difference: she is this dove to whom we bid farewell. For already "in
the distance one white arm is seen above the tide," clutching at the
branches of a willow growing askant a brook; and our pulse premeditates
the funeral strain that goes graveward while her Prince is looking "at
the skull as though Death had written on it the history of man."

Poor maiden, to be churlishly suspected of making an end of herself,
when we know that "an envious sliver broke" and let her into that
coffin strewn with flowers,--the tributes, not to womanhood in its
capacity to resolve, to outlive destiny, to outdo circumstance with
patience, to contrive escapes from disaster, but simply "sweets to the
sweet," turned as they were to immortal amaranths when Hamlet's breath
endowed them:--

 "I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
 Could not, with all their quantity of love,
 Make up my sum."

Then, too late for her, but not for us, to atone for her chariness of
language and action, all her gifted simplicity is revealed to justify
the silent past and to ennoble Hamlet for his heart's choice of such an
unambitious soul. What freighted her might have kept Hamlet riding on
a steady keel upon any ocean that was not phantom-haunted. Death casts
up her freight underneath the cliffs of this stern tragedy, and we are
wreckers all along the shore to recover strays from the sail that love
had chartered.

When the procession enters the churchyard, Hamlet steps aside to
be unperceived. There is not a trait in this scene which does not
illustrate Ophelia's character, and reflect a tender worth upon it.
Hamlet wonders who it is, what person of estate whom they follow, "and
with such maimèd rites." When Laertes steps forward, Hamlet praises
him to Horatio. This deepens our feeling of his unconsciousness that
it is a brother who is burying that beloved sister. 'Tis our common
fashion of noting, with slightly raised sympathy, the mourners in a
train that bears away nothing particularly dear to us. "What ceremony
else?" Nothing more: the stubborn old priest will not venture his own
salvation on another word for her whose "death was doubtful." Where
he got that notion does not appear in the play. It is like Malcolm's
crotchet that Lady Macbeth took herself off "by self and violent
hands." But notions are the sheet-anchors of formalists. The priest
drops his, swings round, and becomes immovable. He complains, with the
whine of a man who has been imposed upon, that "here she is allow'd
her virgin crants, her maiden strewments," and even a bell! If the sour
old ritualist could have had his way, he would have pitched "shards,
flints, and pebbles" over her. It is not only pity which increases, but
respect, with every line: it takes her part, and magnifies her nature.
There must have been more of her than we used to think. So, when the
requiem is denied, Laertes pronounces it for all when he says,--

 "A minist'ring angel shall my sister be,"

as she always had been. And our sentiment recalls the dominant
excellence of her character. If ever the priest himself should come
to grief, and lie howling in that place which is paved with good
intentions and bad practices, she would be the first to toss him a
sprig of "herb o' grace o' Sundays."

When Laertes lets fall the word "sister," Hamlet appears to utter
nothing but ordinary surprise,--"What! the fair Ophelia?"--and his
action goes no further. Some critics have inferred, from this absence
of manifested emotion, that Hamlet never really loved Ophelia, and that
his subsequent passionate outbreak was only inspired by pique at seeing
Laertes take on so with leaping into the grave as if to fill it with
hyperboles of language. It is said that, at the very instant of hearing
her name, a lover would have exclaimed bitterly, would have rushed
forward into the funeral group to agitate its grief afresh with his
own, would have sunk into some gesture of abandonment. Romeo might have
improvised such a scene, but Hamlet was a different style of lover: he
was always "ill at such numbers. His emotion smouldered underneath all
the refinements of intellect and conscience, and rarely gleamed through
the scruples of his will. When it did gain a moment's mastery, as in
that scene of surrendering love,--

 "He raised a sigh so piteous and profound,
 That it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
 And end his being,"

it palsied the tongue, and only advertised itself in the pathetic eyes
which fell to such perusal of Ophelia's face, "and to the last bended
their light" on her.

Let us try to conceive the situation at the grave. Hamlet has been
absent in England during Ophelia's distraction. Returning, he strolls
into a churchyard, amuses himself with the old grave-digger, withdraws
aside when the train approaches, so as not to be recognized by the
King. Then comes the discovery that Ophelia is dead. There was always
in Hamlet's brain that time allowed for the transit of a message
between his feeling and his deed. The line connected with a great many
intermediate tracts, in each of which there was delay. Nothing but an
unsyllabled fluid of conjecture passed all along the way. Dead? How?
Was that glad girl the one to take her own life? Why? There was just
time enough for him to hear that confession of his mother,--

 "I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife."

What a remembrance, extorted from death, of the old love that he never
could conceal from the mother's instinct which was so fond and clear!
He listens thus to despair reclaiming former hopes, and it draws his
spirit backward, so that the body cannot move and the tongue dare not
break this sacred silence of his retrospection. Therefore, Laertes
has plenty of time to rant like Pistol in a tavern. His exaggerated
action plunges into the grave of Hamlet's reverie and breaks it up.
The Prince is forced into disgust at hearing a man vaunt love against
his own. All scruples are shrivelled up in anger; and he instinctively
assumes the tone he hears. The old ironical disgust for sham makes
the imitation perfect. Afterward, to Horatio, he acknowledges that he
forgot himself:--

 "But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
 Into a towering passion."

And this passion broke open his respect and prudence, and let loose the
first cry of his love that had ever reached the ears of others. Else
it would have lain buried with Ophelia in the silence of her lover's
breast.

It was too much,--to discover at such a moment what used to be his
mother's expectations; to see the sprinkling of those flowers that
should have been for marriage; to have the old conviction return, that
marriage was impossible for him,--a man whose bed, watched by a ghost,
could have no other tenant; to recall how he ousted love, that revenge
might occupy. It was too much for this heart of sensitive and noble
strain to see the dead girl, and catch through the rant of Laertes that
her prince had indirectly caused her death. His solid flesh could
not melt: the coffin chilled it. But how long could he listen to this
man, whose affected furor showed him to be a person incapable of deep
passion? It fans all that smoulders in him into smoke and flame. In the
rage of a temperament whose trick it always was to baffle itself, and
in the bitterness of being reminded by her cold beauty that he had
to surrender it while it was too young to die,--it is too masterful.
He bursts into Laertes's vein with its own style,--

                       "Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
 I'll rant as well as thou,"

but soon checks himself with a half apology, and subsides.

How mobile and impressible he was, notwithstanding his large capacity
of reason! The latter aided him to dissimulate and to keep his
projects waiting; but the other traits nourished a fancy that easily
turned to mimicry of whatever was transpiring; as when he assumed,
half-consciously, the dandified phrasing of Osric, and played with
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. This plastic fancy jumped to the high
stilts of Laertes, and it stalked to "make Ossa like a wart."

But his bosom secret has escaped. He turns away, is followed by
Horatio, to whom, before the next scene opens, we hear him (though
no folio nor quarto ever lisped a syllable of it) pouring out the
confidences of a fruitless passion to the only honest man of all the
crowd, the still and trusty comrade. This Shakspeare would have us
understand, I think, by giving Hamlet to say to Horatio, as they enter
the next scene together, "So much for this, sir." So much for what? we
think. Then it dawns upon us that the only other interest of the moment
must have been Ophelia's death.

And we recollect that Horatio was absent at the time of her death,
having gone to meet Hamlet near the sea-coast. So both of them were
ignorant of the occurrence. But now Horatio has been making inquiries
during the time that elapses between the burial and the next scene.
He picks up all the particulars, and has been detailing to the eager
Hamlet all that we know. And Hamlet's entry upon the next scene is
timed exactly when Horatio has ceased narrating. There is nothing more
to tell. Hamlet enters, saying, "So much for this, sir. Now you shall
see the other." That is, I will relate what has happened to me also,
and how a divinity has shaped my ends to this return. And his brief
life is claimed again by the native land on which a ghost has left the
tracks of a murder; for great Heaven has not yet hunted it down. So

               "Lay her i' the earth;
 And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
 May violets spring,"

to renew the breed which withered with the death of her father.




MACBETH.


MACBETH.

It is the opinion of Fleay that "'Macbeth,' in its present state, is
an altered copy of the original drama, and the alterations were made
by Middleton." Thomas Middleton wrote twenty-three plays. Among them
was "The Witch," written, perhaps, in 1613, and published in 1617.
Shakspeare's "Macbeth" was first played in 1606. It appears in the
Folio of 1623 for the first time in print, as a more finished acting
copy than the other plays. The divisions of acts and scenes and the
stage directions are carefully marked. The death of Shakspeare occurred
in 1616. It is possible that Middleton was the person who prepared the
Folio copy of "Macbeth." Scarce a trace, however, of his own style
can be suspected; for there is only occasionally a verbal similarity
of the charms and incantations employed in "Macbeth" and "The Witch"
of later date. In Act iii. 5, the burden of the song, "Come away,
come away," and, in Act iv. 1, the song, "Black spirits," &c., are to
be found in "The Witch:" the latter is merely indicated as a stage
direction in "Macbeth." In Act i. 1, we are reminded of Middleton in
"I come, Graymalkin!"[19] and "Paddock calls." He may have shoved his
"Malkin" into that first chant of the witches, and spoiled its metre.
But although the introduction of Hecate, in Act iii. 5, is said to be
not Shakspearean enough in relevancy to the play, it is altogether too
Shakspearean in style for Middleton, who never could have written,--

 "Great business must be wrought ere noon:
 Upon the corner of the moon
 There hangs a _vaporous drop profound_;
 I'll catch it ere it come to ground:
 And that, distill'd by magic sleights,
 Shall raise such artificial sprites
 As by the strength of their illusion
 Shall draw him on to his confusion."

And we must notice that Hecate thus introduces and accounts for the
"artificial sprites,"--the apparitions which deceive Macbeth in Act
iv. 1, and entice him to "be bloody, bold, and resolute." This scene
is certainly Shakspeare's. It is therefore probable that he would have
preceded it by some inkling of the deceptive nature of the armed head,
the bloody child, and the child crowned.

On the ground of an apparently un-Shakspearean style of metre in Act
i. 2, which introduces the wounded sergeant, several commentators
credit that scene also to Middleton. It is said to be too slovenly and
bombastic for Shakspeare.

It is unsafe to limit the critical treatment of Shakspeare's verse to
metrical or verbal tests. Æsthetic emergencies will sometimes overrule
the decisions of the sharpest critics who construct Shakspeare out
of reputed peculiarities of his style. He escapes from them to be
raggeder than we think is personal to him, broader than our taste can
tolerate, more thin or more fulsome than his grandest tone, whenever
occasion summons traits which fit into a deeper consistency than that
of style. Then, if the critic of metrical and verbal niceties is not
also a human observer, or is too much preoccupied with his theory of
the Shakspearean method, he will be apt to disparage some prescriptions
of Nature.

It is also a very common procedure to illustrate the excellences of
Shakspeare by comparing them with the inferior work of the contemporary
dramatists. Either Shakspeare at his best ought to be matched with
the other playwrights at their best, or else we ought to concede that
his occasional weaknesses, which are like theirs, are not theirs,
but his own. It is absurd to keep Shakspeare posturing incessantly
in the finest attitude of the several periods of his style. During
the Elizabethan age, England's soil stood thick with true poets whose
fragrance often makes us suspect that Shakspeare is near. It is
dangerous to be too positive upon the matter of sentiment as well as
style. Take for an instance this:--

                   "I am so light
 At any mischief, there's no villainy
 But is a tune methinks."

That lightness of heart is Middleton's. It is stray pollen from the
garden of Shakspeare. But nothing is fructified: there is no tune in
the villainous stuff which precedes and follows.

The wounded sergeant easily justifies his mangled metre and ragged
pomposity of style. We should suspect a more polished messenger of
shamming faintness from loss of blood. He talks exactly as a common
soldier should who is fresh from the great fight, puffed up with
"valor's minion," and steadying himself upon reeking lines to deliver
his message of victory. Middleton could not have so caught the color of
the moment.

It is also supposed that Middleton wrote the scene, because when Ross
enters he tells the King that

 "Norway himself, with terrible numbers,
 Assisted by that most disloyal traitor
 The thane of Cawdor, 'gan a dismal conflict."

A discrepancy is charged between this and the report of Angus, in Scene
3 (acknowledged to be Shakspeare's), who enters with Ross, and says,
concerning the thane of Cawdor,--

                       "Whether he was combin'd
 With those of Norway; or did line the rebel
 With hidden help and vantage; or that with both
 He labour'd in his country's wreck, I know not."

Perhaps Ross did not either. But he knew that Cawdor "assisted." He did
not say that he was personally engaged in the fight.

The opening chant of the witches is denied to Shakspeare by one critic,
because it seems to occupy the opening scene merely to inform us that
they are to meet somewhere again; and by another it is attributed to
Middleton because it does not flow in the usual trochaic manner of
Shakspeare, and contains imperfect lines. Middleton may have Paddock
and Graymalkin for his share in the attempt to spoil this grand chant,
whose accent ought to have sung Shakspeare's feeling into the critic's
ear; for so the foot of Fate would fall in order to pitch the key of
the tragedy, and lead its crime into our presence. Its measured step
seems to issue out of some foreboding by Macbeth of his ambition's
purpose. The weird sisters are not merely enjoying a thunderstorm, and
wondering when they shall meet again in similar favorable weather.
Their lips put a stress of destiny upon every syllable. The poet's pen
unconsciously follows in their traces.

The same metre is employed in the "Tempest" and "Midsummer-Night's
Dream," by Ariel, Oberon, and Puck, when they are on sublunary
business. But they

 "Foot it featly here and there:"

the lines skim or flutter, and do not tread. The accent is not so
persistent: it does not sound like the hinge on which a pause swings
open to admit the foot of a thing that is burdened with a solemn
message. On the blasted heath of Macbeth, the verses of Ariel would be
like a strayed butterfly:--

 "Where the bee sucks, there suck I."

He spurs the omen out of owls and bats, and rides them away from the
chill of the evening, "after summer, merrily." Prospero, hearing him
sing, says, "That's my dainty Ariel." Puck likewise, too mercurial for
chanting, carols with a broom on his shoulder to make a clean sweep of
mischief:--

 "And we fairies, that do run
   By the triple Hecate's team,
 From the presence of the sun,
   Following darkness like a dream,
 Now are frolic."

The lines go lilting like a little boat over the accent which can
hardly raise a ripple. It is a supernature in the best of humor,
beguiling or blessing men and women in a dulcet style.

But the witches chant holding torches of the lightning while the
thunder slowly scans their verse:--

 1 WITCH. When shall we three meet again,
           In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

 2 WITCH. When the hurlyburly's done,
           When the battle's lost and won.

 3 WITCH. That will be ere set of sun.

It will be on the same day, then, to intercept Macbeth as homeward
his ambitious mood hurries. The battle, which the rebels against
Duncan's rule have just lost, Macbeth has won. What else has he won?
His thoughts, out-travelling his body's utmost speed, will change
into witches by the way and inform him. Hitherto his fateful Self has
remained vague and disembodied. Now it will meet itself, and hear it
utter a threefold "Hail!"

For thus I conceive that when Macbeth's crime had fully infected
Shakspeare's imagination, and was urging it into the appalling
swiftness of the first scenes of this tragedy, he endowed Macbeth
with its own shaping quality. The witches were not decoys of another
world to lure him into acquaintanceship with crime. They were his own
intention grown to be so ravenous that it framed a prelude to his deed,
as the condition of starving sets a phantom banquet before a person's
eyes. Shakspeare had no need of them to start the business of his play
or to keep alive his plot. Macbeth and his wife did their own tempting
so thoroughly that spirits might applaud and refrain from interfering.
But these witches were characters of the second-sight which Shakspeare
imputed to Macbeth, a distinguishing trait born into Macbeth's mind
from the conception of this tragedy. The prosaic supernature of the
old chronicle, on which the play is based, is transformed into a
psychological peculiarity.

So we observe that these weird sisters were no posters of vulgar ill,
horsed on nursery broomsticks, to deliver murrain in the fold and
rheumatism at the hearth, in gratification of a vicious whim. But they
became vulgarized into this whenever Macbeth was absent from the scene.
Then they shrank from Fates to hags, such as Banquo's undistempered
eyes saw them, withered, hairy-faced, laying chappy fingers upon
skinny lips,--old women dreaded by the common people for reputed
powers of bewitching. All such Celtic superstitions breed nobly in
Macbeth's fancy: he knows all about the village gossip. The eldritch
women are the nearest hint of supernature which he had; but his kingly
anticipations tolerate no common pranks from them. When Macbeth is
absent, Shakspeare shows what stale witcheries they traffic in. The
critics blame the incongruity, or attribute it to some interpolating
pen. But Shakspeare rightly intended to place in contrast with
Macbeth's fantasy the popular material of his age in which it worked.
So we hear the witches relating their trumpery exploits. This one has
been killing poor people's swine. Another threatens to water-log a
shipmaster because his wife refused to give her chestnuts. They put
their spiteful heads together, and gloat over a drowned pilot's thumb.
When Macbeth enters, this ghastly twaddle is hushed by a domineering
thought which meets in these crones his "all-hail hereafter."

In the scene which follows the banquet, Shakspeare brings the witches
and their mistress Hecate together. The stage direction, "Enter Hecate
to the other three witches," simply includes her as one witch more. She
has a Greek name that was representative of the Moon in her baleful
and haunting phase. But on this Northern heath she displays a genuine
Celtic temper, and scolds the witches for having unbidden dealings
with Macbeth; while she, "the close contriver of all harms," was never
called to bear her part. Of course not, as Macbeth's imagination had
no personal _rapport_ with her; and all that Shakspeare wants of her
is to keep the popular witch-element upon the stage, and set it to
creating "artificial sprites" in collusion with the greater incantation
in Macbeth's heart. The witches provide him nothing but the cave and
the cauldron. The scene never rises into dignity until he arrives.
Three old women, hovering around a kettle, throw in a number of
nauseous curiosities which they have got by foraging in disreputable
quarters: they stir the slab gruel to verses which are as realistic as
a wooden spoon; yet neither Middleton nor any other of Shakspeare's
contemporaries, save Marlowe perhaps, could have written them. But
mark how the tone alters when Macbeth comes to conjure with them. What
is it they do? "A deed without a name." Then there is only one more
culinary interruption; but we shudder and cannot sneer, for it uses an
ingredient furnished by a man who has committed crimes against nature:
the spell catches the drippings of a murderer's gibbet. Macbeth's
secret divinings of the future fill the scene: the visions incorporate
his own anxiety. Out of his perturbed soul rise the armed head,
the bloody child. He reassures himself with the phantom of a child
crowned, with a tree in his hand, and misinterprets it into a "sweet
bodement" of safety, so long as trees do not take to travelling. But
the recollection of Banquo is the great disturber: that spirit sits at
every feast of solace which the King partakes. His heart "throbs to
know one thing:" Will Banquo's issue ever reign? The King's flaming
soul throws shadows on the screen of his dread,--a show of kings,
Banquo first and last, eight of them between Banquo blood-bolter'd and
Banquo crowned. But the Banquo that smiles is bathed in blood. Blood
let it be, then.

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

But no critical theory can hold a work of imagination to a strict
account. You may clap John Locke into the witness-box and riddle him
with cross-questions: the same court has no authority to put a poet
on oath to justify himself in every line; he is satisfied to let the
drift of his thought be traced through the material in which he works.
Quartz that is found in certain localities is as good as gold, and
rewards us for suspecting it. We need not strain Shakspeare's page into
too minute an adaptation to our views in order to avoid rejecting it.
If he convinces us that Macbeth and his wife have composed the tragedy
before his pen touches the paper, the witches may appear just what we
and Macbeth choose to have them,--at one moment concocters of country
spells to give him a drench of murder, at another moment concocted
themselves by a spell which his soul has brewed.

This spiritual gift is the main cause of all his practical hesitations.
His strongest passion discharges and exhausts itself in a pulse of
fantasy; as the electric fish lies awhile torpid after the transmission
of a shock. In his case, there is imperfect connection of the motor
nerves that run between imagining and doing; so that his milk of human
kindness has time to mingle with his mood. When his wife has grown sick
and incompetent to stimulate, dire necessity alone can do it for him;
as we see after he has had the vision of Banquo's line of kings, when
somebody informs him that Macduff, his most formidable enemy, has fled.
This is his self-chiding:--

 "Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits:
 The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
 Unless the deed go with it.
 But no more sights."

Macduff's "wife, children, servants, all that could be found," are
slaughtered by him. It is a deed that, making his fortunes more
impaired than ever, betrays to us how feverish and impolitic his course
becomes. Far better for him if he had not let the desperate crisis
of his fate drive him out of the land of dreams. Shakspeare lets us
hear Macbeth chiding the brag of his imagination when he says, "But
no more sights." He has had enough of them,--too much time wasted in
those presentiments which never have the element of prevention. On the
contrary, it is a common experience that something is so sure to happen
that it can impart to us a fruitless forefeeling of itself, as Henry
IV. felt the blade of Ravaillac in his side a week before it struck
him. Macbeth will humor no more sights. That is the key to Shakspeare's
conception of the character. We are to understand that henceforth
Macbeth is cured of his hallucinations.

Now let us return to the first scene provided with this pass-key. It
unlocks that and all the subsequent supernature which had a relish
for his society. We feel that the witches express the moral condition
of Macbeth's mind, its tumultuous hesitation that is on the point of
settling into the definiteness of crime,--"Fair is foul, and foul is
fair." All moral discriminations are huddled together and dislocated by
the upheaval of his subterranean motive.

He really sends these witches forth to a blasted heath, the
avant-couriers of his own visit thither, and of a longing that gains
substance and direction the more he entertains it. It is strong enough
to be an object behind his retina; and it throws out shapes to limn
themselves upon the air into which they make themselves and vanish.
And they can appear only at that period of his evil brooding when it
gathers and swells, too big for his brain, bursting its barriers to
become external. After the actual murder of Duncan has occurred, the
brain of Macbeth is depleted for a while: the ominous forms wait till
Banquo's ghost can recruit them.

Macbeth has an imagination so keen and unbridled that it outruns the
limits of thinking, to become projected outside of his bodily eye in
shapes and objects that occupy the focus of his criminal intent. His
crimes become ocular deceptions, because they are so palpably real to
his mental vision, sharpened as it is by the ambitious sympathy of
a wife whose temperament outraces action. Murder is Macbeth's owner
before he is conscious that he has made himself the chattel of his
wife's suggestions. That same creative fancy built forth into the air
the handle of the instrument which he has fated himself to use: he
marshalled it the way that he intended to go. No supernatural smith
has forged the fatal weapon: it is tempered in the current of his own
plastic mind.

But although Macbeth has this mobile imagination, like that which

         "If it would but apprehend some joy,
 It comprehends some bringer of that joy;"

and though he has become one of those madmen who

               "Have such seething brains,
 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
 More than cool reason ever comprehends,"

he is still capable of reverting to this cool reason, at least so far
as to appreciate that his desperate dreams are the poetry of desperate
consequences which will tax all his waking powers. When the apparitions
vanish, in Act iv. 1, one of the witches gives a voice to Macbeth's
perturbation; but why

 "Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?"

It was but the voice of revulsion from amazement, to "cheer up his
sprites" and summon resolution.

When Macbeth originates any thing out of himself, that Self is not
daunted, for it is too deeply compromised in fact and fancy. But when
some phenomenon threatens him from a quarter that is outside the limit
of his own creative power, as when Birnam Wood is descried coming
toward Dunsinane, he is puzzled, and says:--

 "I pull in resolution; and begin
 To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend,
 That lies like truth.
 I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun."

Nothing has disturbed him till he appreciates that some agency which
he does not control can transplant a forest at his castle gate. The
apparition of the witches scarcely lifts his eyebrows. "Speak, if you
can," is the calm greeting. When he starts, and seems to fear "things
that do sound so fair," it is because the shapes he conjures become
suddenly endowed with tongues, and he hears his own ambition syllabled.
For a man is not proof against shrinking at the first moment that lends
to the "airy nothing" of his desire a distinct name and purpose. He is
astonished at the audacious phrasing of his hopes, and he resents at
first what seems definite enough to be an impeachment from something
not himself; yet not until that moment was it really his Self. What
phantoms have thus leaped out of vacuity into the midnight chambers of
desire! What voices have drawn the startled answers of a crime that did
not suspect this overlooking! But when the man's Self has undergone
this real birth, and the secret parturition becomes a breathing child
of consciousness, he soon accepts his own new self, and forgets that
it was irritated into a cry by the first salutes of the atmosphere.
Casting away all repugnance, Macbeth exclaims to his wicked wishes,
before they have a chance to vanish,--

 "Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more!
                   ... Speak, I charge you!"

So the dagger that wavers in the heated air of his soul does not
surprise him,--"Come, let me clutch thee!" Really, he expected to grasp
it; for it was precisely the kind of instrument he thought of using,
the very shape and workmanship thereof. There's nothing to perturb
until he draws from his belt its counterpart, yet sees the other still
solid in the air. That sets him to pondering: his

       "Eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
 Or else worth all the rest."

But, in spite of that, the murder in his brain reddens, sprinkles the
blade and dudgeon with drops of blood, "which was not so before." Now
when the illusion becomes the most intense, it is dispersed, as if the
brain's own climax swelled to breaking. The collapse reminds him that
the deed still waits to be accomplished: his dagger is yet clean. But
its form is the bloody business which he has on hand to get through
with before sweet morning. It seemed so clearly cut in his mind, and
stayed so long before he could turn it out, that he thought it worth
describing to his wife, as she indicates to us when at the banquet she
calls his vision of Banquo

                               "Proper stuff!
 This is the very painting of your fear;
 This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
 Led you to Duncan."

Now when the ghost of Banquo enters to occupy Macbeth's chair, the
actor of the king's part need not strain himself to put on the highest
degree of an appalled feeling. "Are you a man?" whispers his wife; and
Macbeth gives the true tone to his share of the scene when he answers,--

 "Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that
 Which might appal the devil."

He starts, to be sure; but he simply remarks, "The table's full." "Here
is a place reserved, sir." "Where?" he exclaims, so little annihilated
by the painting of his own consciousness. It has dazed him, as when
a mirror shifts distant sunlight full into the eyes: they blink, and
judgment cannot readjust the sight. So he dimly asks, "Which of you
have done this?" He is not "distilled to jelly with the act of fear,"
but simply amazed at this reproduction, so quick and palpable, of the
deed just described to him by the hired murderer who, by doing that,
put those "twenty trenched gashes" into his mind, whence they dripped
over the chair of state. His talent for this spectral extemporizing has
been indulged too often to overtake him with a special wonder. This
unexpected Banquo may be dared, and even threatened:--

 "Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
 Thy gory locks at me."

His wife blames his "flaws and starts" at such a moment of festivity
when ceremony ought to be the sauce to meat; but they are not the
ague-fits of a man who is dropping to pieces at a dreadful sight. The
image of his guilt absorbs and diverts his behavior from the guests in
a way that suggests to them a sudden flightiness:--

 "Prythee, see there! behold! look! lo! how say you?
 Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too."

This is not bravado trying to steady itself in a breeze of horror.

In order to break Macbeth down, and fully identify him with the deed
of which Banquo was the horrible shadow, his temperament required
that the ghost should vanish and reappear at the moment when he
recovers composure. Shakspeare has marked, by Macbeth's sudden change
of demeanor, that he was usually familiar with these coinages of his
brain. To whatever ecstasy his feeling rose, with or without his wife's
complicity, Shakspeare would have us understand that Macbeth was
so fluent with these bodiless creations that he had naturalized the
night-side of his mind. Therefore, Banquo must re-enter precisely when
Macbeth drinks to the general joy, and to the dead man in particular.
Shakspeare knew the moment when to spill Macbeth's wine and all his
hardihood by putting out a disembodied hand to strike the goblet from
his grasp. It was the very nick of time, but it was in the man's own
temper.

Let us see how it was. The alteration of demeanor from astonishment to
the abjectness of a guilty terror slips out of Macbeth's conviviality
into the company, as he calls for wine and drinks "love and health
to all." At the rim of his goblet he can even banter with his
consciousness of murder: he is in a frame to enjoy proposing the health
of

     "Our dear friend, Banquo, whom we miss;
 Would he were here!"

Now this pretence of desiring Banquo's presence uses up what resistance
Macbeth has to spare. No sooner are the words out of his mouth than
he imagines how they might be answered: the imagining it is the vivid
answer. When you try jauntily to job off suspicion before other
persons, the cheek grows pale with dread of being contradicted. A
door is thrown ajar by this wind of pretending that nothing has been
committed. Come on, there! the villain cries. Has any thing happened?
Is anybody outside? Let him enter and take a look around! Sure enough,
'tis there: his mind's eye sees it enter. Even when the small faults
of social life are denied or disclaimed by us, a ghost is raised upon
the face, a dubious semblance of your guilt in the evasive eye, or just
a flicker in the corner of the mouth. Most people overestimate their
strength to make a flat denial of misdeeds when their soul is reflected
in the polished mirrors of watchful eyes. There is a non-committal look
which collars a man, puts him in the dock, and sends him to jail before
he knows that he has been apprehended.

Prosaic men with no imagination to defy can preserve a smug complacency
after the commission of a crime, because they cannot vibrate to it.
Give a stroke to their thick temper, and it only answers with a thud.
Their face is an emotionless Sahara, over which no showery gusts
or smiles of April linger. But Macbeth was delicately strung: the
slightest stir of the invisible air was registered by a vibration. When
the ghost slips out of his own phrase, 'twas too pat,--this coming at
the toast, "to the general joy of the whole table," at this pretence
of thirst to drink a dead man's welfare; too nicely timed for flesh
and blood to bear; too suggestive of continual liability to see the
eyes glaring across the brim of any moment. Observing how easily the
awful figure can thicken out of invisibility, he cries, "Take any shape
but that!" And his mind is desperate to exorcise it into an "unreal
mockery," and vainly struggles with his own personifying power.

 "It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood."

It is a cold, calculating vengeance, marrowless, bloodless, but alert
in a shape against which Macbeth's nerves at any time may stumble, on
the midnight staircase, in the gallery's pale shimmer, in sleep between
his wife and his embrace, and always at his own suggestion of a phrase,
a dream. His fancy never yet inflicted such a frightful recoil of an
offended Heaven. It comes at his own invitation; for he had said in the
forenoon of that day,--

 "To-night we hold a solemn supper, sir,
 And I'll request your presence;"

to which Banquo acquiesced,--

               "Lay your highness'
 Command upon me."
               "Fail not our feast."
 "My lord, I will not."

On the way to it he was a little delayed by being murdered; but, though
late, he does not fail.

This tragedy was slowly conceived during the married life of Macbeth
and his Lady. Their ambitious desires spent years in collusion before
an heir of opportunity was born to them. The rapid and breathless
action of the earlier scenes makes clear to us that it does not flow
from any sudden resolution. The past years topple in the wave that
combs to break into this sweeping surge. The movement of the play
is unnatural, unless we admit that the married couple have grown
familiar with many projects, all of which make them languish for
occasion. Macbeth has revelled in the idea that if the chance offered
he possesses every other quality to supplant Duncan,--ambition,
audacity, swiftness, all good fortune, except a turn of circumstance.
He discovers at the juncture that his wife is the only aptitude he can
contribute to it. She remembers his profuse suggestions with a touch of
scorn. Is he a man?

                      "What beast was it, then,
 That made you break this enterprise to me?
 When you durst do it, then you were a man;
                ... Nor time, nor place,
 Did then adhere, and yet you would make both;
 They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
 Does unmake you."

Strenuous in fantasy, "infirm of purpose." The sudden crisis betrays
the secret pinings of past years for such an hour. The whispered
conferences swell into a din: it shouts to tell us how their pillows
touched, when darkness brooded in vain upon eyelids that were set wide
open with a stare at a gleam of greatness far outside their chamber.
We overhear, without ever having played eavesdropper, the anxious
interchange of feeling beneath the garden aspens, which might catch
their tremor from these two beings who passed hankering to and fro;
he encouraging a reverie, she trying to chastise it into action with
the valor of her tongue. Thus the years passed, while he alternated
between the grand loyalty of many a fight and the treachery which grew
warm upon the bosom of his wife. Much given to pondering and pleased
with vivid day-dreams, he sought no way to realize them. Well as she
knew this musing vein of his, and much as it displeased her spirit of
action, she will have to be re-enforced by opportunity. Then the deed,
now rusting in its sheath of speculation, may possibly leap forth. His
mind did not have the coupling which makes up wishing and doing into
one train; so the doing stands some distance off idle on the track.
The track which emerged from Hamlet's resolution met so many diverging
lines at the controlling switch that he was in doubt upon which to run:
at length, impatient chance unlocked the switch, and set the rail for
a disaster. When Macbeth's wishing became linked to acting, he was not
over-nice about his route. The subtle Hamlet considered till he could
not start. The inconsiderate Macbeth, when he ceased to vapor and began
to move, blundered with a full head of fantasy into ruin.

When a man's brain is well charged with blood, his powers are unified;
but Macbeth's current was addicted to the lobes of figment to some
defrauding of the rest. His wife's brain blushed all at once, and
expanded to give the measure of her structure; so that her hope,
implicating the whole of her, had all the substantiality of a deed. She
was already the deed from which Macbeth's ambition swerved. He spawned
spectres: she gave birth to men-children only. A woman inspired through
and through with love for him, discontented with the slowness of his
fortune, longing to touch the top and finish of her own; a helpmeet,
whose unextinguished bridal ardor kept burning up all scruples as fast
as her lover could rake them together. He, the still perfect object of
her pride and passion, must become great: he must be lifted to a place
whence all his qualities shall shine beyond cramped horizons with their
petty crowds. She would kiss him into the compass of a throne, if
lips could waft her soldier so far. Her whole soul, imagining him in
statelier guises, grows so impatient to speak out its action, that love
itself becomes for a moment inarticulate, though it is all the time the
life-blood of her hope; as when he returns to her after the perils of
the campaign which overthrew rebellion, her embrace is grave, as if her
arms enclosed the coming state: they do not radiate the touch of love.
He is not her darling husband, but

         "Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
 Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter!"

His letters transported her not only beyond the "ignorant present,"
but beyond him, away beyond the familiar circle of his arms, to which
she had so often committed soul and body,--away so far that she does
not feel him. "The future in the instant" is embracing her; and it is
against that splendor that her heart-beats break.

The first exclamation which follows the reading of his letter betrays
this passionate attachment: "_and shalt be_ what thou art promis'd."
There runs through the tone a vibration from her own desire, no doubt;
but it is dominated by exulting love, and bursts into a chord. The time
has come: he shall, he must be, what he has always longed to be. The
weird sisters are in luck when they promised so fairly to a man who is
so profoundly loved. 'Tis the good will of Nature that I love him.

Yet she knows him thoroughly. So close is her appraisement of him that
she instinctively postpones love to the immediate exigency,--that
is, to pour her spirits in his ear, to beat down every thing that
might intercept him when putting forth that one decisive hand-grasp
toward the crown. She fears his nature, because scruples hamper
his unscrupulous ambition. They are not entirely, as she conceives
them, the results of inborn mildness. He has a politic disposition
which grows all the more considerate as he sees the widening of his
popularity. He will proceed no farther against Duncan, because

 "He hath honored me of late; and I have bought
 Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
 Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
 Not cast aside so soon."

He discusses the project of murdering Banquo in the same way:--

                           "Though I could
 With bare-fac'd power sweep him from my sight,
 And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,
 For certain friends that are both his and mine,
 Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall,
 Whom I myself struck down."

His wife must needs have sore dealings with such a non-committal
spirit:--

                   "Thou'd'st have, great Glamis,
 That which cries, 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
 And that which rather thou dost fear to do,
 Thou wishest should be undone.'"

He wants to win a game to which his hand does not entitle him; and the
desire to win is as great as the dread of cheating.

This tainted mood of her beloved husband makes her almost frantic.
Dreams satisfy her thirst as the mirage quenches the craving of a
caravan. Here comes my Macbeth and--"thou'rt mad to say it"--Duncan
with him,--a lifetime's opportunity: 'twill never come again. Heaven
drives Duncan "under my battlements,"--yes, _mine_, for this night
only; Macbeth's at every other time, but mine this once, to hold out
with against my husband's mood. The raven himself is hoarse with
chiding his delay. What need the tone of my language be, when the
bird croaks Duncan's fatal entrance? Let it be unsexed. Here I tear
every rag of woman's garments from it, in this my frenzy of dread lest
Macbeth elude Fate's purpose:--

                     "Come to my woman's breasts
 And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
 Wherever in your sightless substances
 You wait on Nature's mischief."

For love's sake her tongue becomes unlovely; and the delicate woman,
with blue eyes sparkling like an electric firmament, and that little
hand, snatched out of its old dalliance and clenched as if to drive a
weapon, is transformed by the spirit of some ruthless Medea who has
lent herself to contrive and enjoy another murder.

It has been said that Lady Macbeth did not reflect upon consequences
as Macbeth did, because that is not the way of her sex. But the sex
varies in this respect. The average woman is less selfish than we
are, not from a feebler gift for calculation, but from a stronger
capacity of love; for sex was invented before arithmetic. Macbeth
reflected, not merely because he was male, but a selfish male, eager
to be great, yet admiring to be popular: he would drive the sharpest
bargain with Destiny. His wife's impetuous movement of love oversets
and spills out her calculation. Many a woman is capable of regarding
all the consequences of an act, but she must not love too deeply: if
she does, she will stick at nothing. If there be motive enough, she
can turn a lover into a criminal, and then, with perjury, deceit,
unblushing cheek, will screen him: they twain are one, for better,
for worse. They are too deeply compromised to haggle about salvation.
The very intercourse of sex devotes a woman: she has become flesh and
blood of another. This complicity of nature engages the most imperious
nerve-centres of her life. Were she aware of this beforehand, as she
is not, it would not be evaded nor entitled bondage. If her lover has
been always above her suspicion, the discovery on his part of some
ill-doing is seldom violent enough to tear this bond: her revulsion is
against a prying world that is no better than it should be; and she
will help to secrete what she is too proud to have attributed to him.
It is one article in the creed of a detective that a man's wife is more
baffling than circumstance, more loyal than conscience. She is chaste
clear through and single-hearted. Only when love itself is wounded
and disgraced will she resign the culprit lover to the scorn of men;
but not always even then, for it is her concern, and earth and heaven
may keep out of it. But let him forge, she will secrete him, smuggle
him out of the country, join him afterward to comfort him. Let him
counterfeit any thing but love, and she will help to put the spurious
values on the town. Let him come home with murder on his cheek and
blood upon his garments, she, fainting, will cleanse the stain that
falls athwart her vision like a lurid sunset of her peace. Selfishness
would turn informer, but perfect love casts out the fear of becoming
that! Do you say this, too, is criminal? I say nothing, because it
is my concern only to refer you to the facts. She is a partner, for
better, for worse,--married and interpenetrated by the husband's
fate. For love is charity: _it rejoiceth not in iniquity_, and yet it
"beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth
all things."

Thackeray imagines the officers calling upon Mrs. Dodd, wife of that
clerical scoundrel of the reign of George II.: "is my wife, Mrs. Dodd,
to show them into the dining-room, and say, 'Pray step in, gentlemen!
My husband has just come home from church. That bill with my Lord
Chesterfield's acceptance, I am bound to own, was never written by his
lordship; and the signature is in the doctor's handwriting'? I say,
would any man of sense or honor or fine feeling praise his wife for
telling the truth under such circumstances? Suppose she made a fine
grimace and said, 'Most painful as my position is, most deeply as I
feel for my William, yet truth must prevail; and I deeply lament to
state that the beloved partner of my life _did_ commit the flagitious
act with which he is charged, and is at this present moment located in
the two-pair back, up the chimney, whither it is my duty to lead you.'
Why, even Dodd himself, who was one of the greatest humbugs who ever
lived, would not have had the face to say that he approved of his wife
telling the truth in such a case. If ever I steal a teapot, and _my_
women don't stand up for me, pass the article under their shawls, whisk
down the street with it, outbluster the policeman, and utter any amount
of fibs before Mr. Beak, those beings are not what I take them to be."

A bronze lioness was dedicated to Leæna, a girl of humble birth,
beloved by Aristogiton, who, with Harmodius, conspired to kill the
tyrant Hippias. She "was sentenced to the torture, and, that the
pain might not wring from her any confession of the secrets of the
conspiracy, she bit out her tongue." Some scoffer will say, What
greater sacrifice _could_ a woman make?

But she earned, and ought to have had, a verse in the poem of
Kallistratus,[20] to wreathe around her name the myrtle-bough of the
two patriots.

In "Far from the Madding Crowd," a novel written by Thomas Hardy,
Bathsheba has hotly denied being in love; but she resents being taken
in earnest by her confidant. "O God, what a lie it was! Heaven and
my love forgive me! And don't you know that a woman who loves at all
thinks nothing of perjury when it is balanced against her love?"

Lady Macbeth has the kind of wifehood which devotes itself. Hurried by
her husband's hopes, she throws herself without reserve into the abyss
they dig at her feet. All her character is lavished to consolidate his
state. She is not a vulgar murderess, because her soul is without a
flaw of egotism. She is not a perfect woman; but she is most perfectly
and irrevocably married. The imperfect wives are egotistical, from
various motives. They have some knack or talent which craves airing,
and earns the superficial admiration which is the discord of a
household. Harlots are not the only women who live upon the street.
Lady Macbeth's mind has no specialty, no gift that itches to be
noticed, no facility save that of aggrandizing at any expense the man
she loves and is absorbed in.

To be perfectly married, and perfectly bound up in a husband for weal
or woe, does not imply loss of personality. Lady Macbeth is still
immensely personal, even in the devotion of her love. For love alone
_preserves_ the person such as she intrinsically is. A feebler love, a
more imperfect attachment, may favor idiosyncrasy, and permit the woman
to assert some traits in isolation instead of letting them be merged in
the total influence of her attachment. Greater love hath no man--and no
woman--than this, that an individuality lays down its life to sustain a
personality.

So when Macbeth tells her that he cannot proceed any farther in the
business, for Duncan is in the castle, "in double trust," as king and
guest,--and, besides, he does not like to risk the golden opinions he
has lately won,--her language is an affront to the womanly sentiments
which always charmed Macbeth and drew from him such phrases of
fondness: all the horrors of this tragedy cannot frighten them from his
lips. She is "my dearest love," the "dear wife," and "dearest chuck."
After the murderer has told him that Banquo is slain, he falls into
musing which she strives to dispel: her words recall to him what a
"sweet remembrancer" she is.

Therefore she hammers stern sentences out of the "undaunted mettle" of
her love. They are iron levers to swing him out of the slough of his
moods: disdainful smitings on the lover's cheek, they are, to bring
them up to regal purple:--

                "Shame itself!
 Why do you make such faces?"
                "Fie! for shame!"

She could never be capable of risking this style if she had not
been wont to soothe his ear with words selected by choice moments
of inclination. She would fain recur to them, but there must be a
coronation first. When the day comes, there will be bystanders and
observers, else she would bend over him with the old-time prattle and
remarry him as king.

But, "if we should fail," he suggests, revolving possibilities. What
deliberate forethought of contempt her answer yields, if it be properly
emphasized,--"_We_ fail!" That is, I'll parrot your phrase, and say
"_we_," but out of disdain. Of us two, the one who fails will not be
myself. _We_, indeed! there's one too much of us for that. Only screw
_your_ courage to the point, and _we_, as you say, will not fail.

If this fortitude which pulls Macbeth through a murder leaves her in
our imagination unsexed and brutalized, we deprive ourselves of reasons
why he should have loved and married her; for the clouds of moral
disaster which whirl around him cannot conceal from us a fine and noble
disposition. It breaks through the gathering obscurity in the delicate
considerations which urge him to be a loyal host to Duncan; in the
imagination so sensitive to life's fitful fever, so shaken nightly
by terrible dreams, as she was too; so quick to mark the objects
of Nature, and clothe them in poetic feeling; so melted by tender
recollections, and capable of noble regrets that call a pause to ruin
just as it breaks, a lull that lasts long enough for us to see how much
will be ruined:--

                           "My way of life
 Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
 And that which should accompany old age,
 As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
 I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
 Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."

What sort of a woman was she, in whose behalf tenderness struggled
with despair at last, when he was remembering what a soul had gone
delirious, who was too nice for her own fortitude, eminent to be
shattered, worse than sick, "as she is troubled with thick-coming
fancies"!

"Cure her of that," he replies to the Doctor, but in a tone that repels
rather than invites his skill; for those "thick-coming fancies" started
from Duncan's room, where he lay looking like her father. Fatal first
moment, beyond the reach of medicine! The Doctor has dark misgivings as
to the cause of her sleeplessness, though he never heard that midnight
cry, "Sleep no more," which the parting soul of Duncan gave as it
awoke and fled through the inhospitable palace. Macbeth murdered then
the innocent sleep which might have been Nature's resource, but which
no doctor can restore. Cure her of that? Cure me first of the infection
that was caught at Duncan's bedside, and which spread to the partner of
my night-horrors: we are both far gone beyond a doctor's art.

Still he pleads--"Canst thou not minister?"--in piteous forlornness
against the better judgment which, when it recurs, prompts him to
"throw physic to the dogs." It is a plea which seems to visit the
chamber of the wife who ruined herself for love. It is the visit of a
yearning that her heart might be cleansed in the oblivion of innocence.

 "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote
 Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff,
 Which weighs upon the heart?"

If he had married a female butcher of the strongest-minded type, there
would have been no fees to pay for doctor's attendance, and the bloom
of regret would have been rubbed from Macbeth's language. Such a wife's
muscle would have been perilous to any stuff that conscience might
venture to suggest. A virago who could dash out the brains of her
smiling babe as easily as nurse it,--more easily, forsooth, for how
could Nature have endowed her person with the founts of maternity?--was
not the kind of woman Shakspeare selected for the ruin of Macbeth.

If the poet had intended Lady Macbeth to be a fury, a person of
abnormal wildness and cruelty, who had exhausted love and craved
the fire-water of ambition, he would have prepared us to throw such
a conception over her, by hinting some motive or circumstance for
this divergence from the normal feminine nature. On the contrary, he
purposely neglected the opportunity which the old story furnished
toward the warping and poisoning of a woman's mind. The historical
Lady Macbeth was the grand-daughter of Kenneth IV., who fell in the
fight against Malcolm II., Duncan's father. Shakspeare has carefully
suppressed any allusion which might recall the bitter family feud to
unsex her and make revenge an element of her ambition.

Her shape, complexion, tone of voice, and style of feeling cannot
be constructed for us out of the brawn of those lines which she
throws out from the shoulder to hit Macbeth's irresolution. They
do not provide us with the essence of her material. If we build a
woman out of that literal clay, she would be square-shouldered,
big-limbed, stout-bodied, sharp-boned, and pachydermatous, with a skin
of bronzed leather tightened over knobs of cheek-bones, hairs woven
in a wire-mill, and eyebrows like two heavy dashes from the circus
charcoal. Prometheus would connive with Billingsgate to o'er-inform
that clay. We confess that such a female lingers among the traditional
properties of theatres; but she is too shop-worn to dare again the
blaze of footlights. We would not so defame a Jason, and blast his
life by constructing the mother of his children out of the language
which the jealous, frenzied moment drove by heart-spasms from her lips.
Still less can we subject Macbeth to the matrimonial luck of such a
ferocious contrast. How truculently married would numerous husbands be
if their wives' temper corresponded to the abandoned use of language
which domestic virtue sometimes will employ, when every hair upon the
head, both native and naturalized, seems twisted into the coils of a
fell purpose to turn a thing of beauty into a fury for ever! The gust
passes, the familiar features of the landscape reappear, and the lips
transpire with mellower salutes; as when Lady Macbeth, who has been
regretting that her husband should stay so much apart, greets him with
the blandishing rhythm of those two lines:--

 "How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
 Of sorriest fancies your companions making?"

There the old feeling strays out beyond the flaming swords which
forbid paradise to follow in the track of this tragedy. The mutual
crime closes a double gate, and posts inexorable sentinels against the
endearments of the past.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: _Grau Mariechen_: Malkin is endearing diminutive for
Mary: the cat is Little Gray Mary.]

[Footnote 20: Ἑν μὑοτου κλαδἱ τὁ ἑἱφος φορἡσω,--In myrtle will I wear
my blade.]




BLONDE WOMEN.

LADY MACBETH.


BLONDE WOMEN.

Those colors of complexion and of hair which mark a feminine type
that is distinct from the brunette announce also a different style
of temper and action. Virtue and vice, in these two types of women,
differ in quality and in mode of manifestation. If we construct too
strict a theory upon this difference, it will savor of affectation: a
great many exceptions might spring up to discredit it, and to threaten
its advocate with being called fantastic. He would spend all his time
in lame refutations, and lose the benefit of a moderate statement. We
must be content to observe in general that there are distinctions of
behavior between the blonde and the brunette, which are by no means
cutaneous, but reside deep within the temperament. The superficial
color and the physical structure announce what methods and gestures
we may expect, but do not guarantee that our expectation shall be
invariably fulfilled. Shares of goodness and of faultiness are
impartially distributed to both kinds of women; but subtle differences
of color and movement describe the transactions of their conscience and
their passion.

The poets instinctively build fair-haired and fair-colored women around
deeds which have the flavor of risk and daring; as Tennyson, who
describes Godiva when she is disrobed to ride through Coventry that
she may strip a burdensome tax from her husband's subjects:--

                   "She shook her head,
 And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
 Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
 Stole on, and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
 From pillar unto pillar."

So the brave and constant Imogen has eyes which are the "blue of
heaven's own tinct;" and the flower that is like her face is the "pale
primrose:" through her complexion the veins show like "the azur'd
harebell."

Dante's forerunner, who is celebrated in Browning's "Sordello," is
beloved by Palma, whose influence continually resists his poetic
day-dreams. He, speculating too finely upon his relation to the
politics of the epoch, and always wondering what way were best for him
to take to benefit men,--through what party, Guelf or Ghibeline, he
might approach his aspirations,--is obliged to turn for manhood and
consistent purpose to Palma:--

                     "Conspicuous in his world
 Of dreams sat Palma. How the tresses curled
 Into a sumptuous swell of gold, and wound
 About her like a glory! Even the ground
 Was bright as with spilt sunbeams."

Julia, in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," iv. 4, hangs jealously over the
picture of Sylvia, her unconscious rival:--

 "And yet the painter flatter'd her a little,
 Unless I flatter with myself too much.
 Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow:
 If that be all the difference in his love,
 I'll get me such a color'd periwig.
 Her eyes are gray as glass; and so are mine:
 Ay, but her forehead's low, and mine's as high."

All the light-complexioned women may be classed as blondes, whether the
pure red and white that strive for ascendency be pacified by golden
hair, or whether a more even tint of the cheek find its correspondence
in hair of chestnut hue. There are also women of high vitality,
with gifts never too forthputting because blended into a harmonious
disposition, who contribute still a fresh tone to this chromatic scale;
for their heads wear the crisp aureole of another shade that seems to
invite you, as William Blake, the painter, invited his city friend,
to a "thatched roof of rusted gold." Beneath these roofs we can take
shelter, fearing no catastrophe, unless the rich and winning manners
bring one on. In Bellini's portrait of Cassandra Fedeli,[21] the famous
improvisatrice, whom the Venetians crowned early in the sixteenth
century, this gracious style of woman is preserved.

There is a kind of brunette whose eyes are black as the sloe-berry,
with the pupil and the iris melted together: they are couched
underneath sombre hedges of eyebrows, and silently keep a good
look-out. "The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman:" so can the
princesses of the same color be ladies, but their style may ambush
wickedness enough to task the most adventurous resources of a criminal
lawyer. You will notice, however, that their scheming minds are endowed
with little sprightliness. Intrigue does not put forth a sparkling
surface that is swept by the light thrills of various moods that blow:
the social prattle lacks the tone of charming simplicity and ease. The
face is subject to lowering weather when one of these women meditates
a poisoning: there is one clinch of the teeth as the limbs collect
to make a fatal spring, one glance askant at the person whom she is
diplomatically entertaining with arrangements for his ruin. They cannot
so readily nurse a fell purpose with a melting air of maternity which
transpires in every line of the face and limbs, as the victim is held
cosingly to the fatal breast. He is clutched a little too menacingly,
and has time for a suspicion concerning the nutriment he is about to
draw.

But when blonde women have a talent for mischief, they delicately
distinguish themselves from the brunettes in the style of it. For
downright, unadulterated mischief, let us be commended to the blonde
women of the Indo-Germanic races. And frequently it is merely
organic, with no more premeditation or sense of consciousness than a
stinging-nettle has. They know how to be unaffectedly unscrupulous, as
Miss Rosamond Vincy was in "Middlemarch," with a gay versatility that
is rare in women of a differently-tempered color. Your _riant_ blonde
can drop a bolt from a clear sky, and scatter your long-projected
picnic with sudden misery. As you look up, it is hardly credible:
how or when did the weather change? You almost doubt the evidence of
sense. Darnley must have been blown up by accident. There will always
be two parties relative to any transaction which implicates a blonde
woman, because her resources of demeanor are so ample, she can recur
to them so nimbly, she can meet gathering suspicions with such angelic
refutation in her smile, and the sluice-gates of emotion are so nicely
hung that a touch of taper fingers can let into the scene a freshet of
disclaimer that sweeps your rubbishy doubts away. Not a smut escapes
from the internal simmering to settle upon the snow-white guarantee
of appearance. She reminds us of that adaptation to machines which
exercise a driving-power, by which they are enabled to consume their
own smoke and cinders. Her transparency of skin, and the freshness of
color that spreads up to the temple's whiteness like an after-glow
upon the glacier, lend the proper blush to all her actions. She enjoys
the constant advantage of a face that has the traditional tint of
innocency: when delicate culture and mobile gifts are behind, sportive
moods come out to make a charming din that just drowns the blab of
mischief.

If the poets have assigned good and noble actions to the blonde women
of the imagination, the same function working in legendary lore has
attributed from the most ancient times, and with striking persistency,
mankind's woes to golden beauties. "Lilith, the first wife of Adam,
was a cold, passionless, splendid woman, with wondrous golden hair.
She was created Adam's equal in every respect, therefore properly
enough refused to obey him. For this she was driven from the Garden
of Eden; and Eve was made to order out of one of Adam's ribs. Then
the Golden-haired Lilith, jealous, enraged, pining for her lost home
in Paradise, took the form of a serpent, crept into the garden, and
tempted Adam and Eve to their destruction. And from that day to this,
Lilith, the cold, passionless beauty with golden hair, has roamed up
and down the earth, snaring the sons of Adam and destroying them.
You may always know her dead victims; for, whenever a man has been
destroyed by the hands of Lilith, you will always find a single golden
hair wrapped tight around his lifeless heart."[22]

A late poet unwinds into verse the fatal hair around his heart:--

 "Seeing thy face, with all thy fluctuant hair
   Falling in dull gold opulence from thy brow,
   Watching thy light blue eyes, now fired, or now
 Laughterful, or now dim as with despair,
 I wonder, friend, that it should be God's care
   To have made at all (what matter when or how?)
 A being so sadly, desolately rare,
   So beautifully incomplete as thou!

 "O rank, black pool, with one star's imaged form!
   O deep, rich-hearted rose, with rot at core!
 O summer heaven, half-purpled with stern storm!
   O lily, with one white leaf dipt in gore!
 O angel shape, whom over curves and clings
 The awful imminence of a devil's wings!"

Greek genius understood of course that when Pandora was endowed with
gifts, Aphrodite took a double handful of the golden foam off Cyprus,
whence her own blondness rose, and gilded Pandora's clay. What a pity
that the mischievous Hermes put a thieving flattery into that gracious
form! It ran into the fingers with an instinct to baffle man's
profoundest forethought. In one of her Greek aspects she was called
Ἁνησἱδωδοϛ, bestower of presents, like those of Ceres, colored like the
golden-bearded rye and corn.

Lydgate married Miss Rosamond, that piece of unexceptionable blondness,
whose temper during matrimonial crises was so cool and even as
to amount to the highest provocation. A perfectly well-regulated
bit of Nature's chasteness was this wife, who went about the town
prevaricating and misrepresenting when her husband's affairs had
become involved, telling fresh fibs to cover the flanks of her first
ones; thus building a track that shunted him off into ever new
embarrassments. Infantile bloominess of flesh and even-tempered eyes
were nothing but the skim of tortuous pride; and a lie dropped from her
lips the prettiest product in the world.

Shakspeare fancied that Caliban's mother, Sycorax, was a "blue-eyed
hag." Bianca Capello, a woman of solid and whole-souled powers of
mischief, was the "golden-haired" sorceress of Venice.

The women of the Huzules, a Sclavonic tribe that has settled in the
Carpathian range, are vastly superior to the men. The blonde type
predominates. They ride horses astride, and in morals are perfect
Messalinas, filling the villages with intrigues which frequently have
most tragic terminations.

So was Helen Jegado a pure blonde. She lived in the time of Louis
Philippe; and a great many persons fell victims to her genius for
murder. No less than twenty-five are positively known to have been
taken off by her. She managed wonderfully to use two innocent women to
cover these crimes and to be suspected instead of herself. At the place
of execution she exonerated them.

Charlotte Corday's hair "seemed black when fastened in a large mass
around her head: it seemed gold-colored at the points of the tresses,
like the ear of corn,--deeper and more lustrous than the wheat-stalk in
the sunlight." Her variable eyes were "blue when she reflected, almost
black when called into animated play." Her skin had the wholesome and
marbled whiteness of perfect health.

Rebecca Sharp had "a knack of adopting a demure _ingénue_ air, under
which she was most dangerous. She said the wickedest things with the
most simple, unaffected air when in this mood, and would take care
artlessly to apologize for her blunders, so that all the world should
know that she had made them."

Ninon de l'Enclos, and Madame de Chevreuse, the famous conspirator who
baffled two cardinals with an admirable mixture of pluck and cunning,
were pure blondes. Such women court their objects and pursue their
schemes in a manifold and sprightly fashion: their magnetic power flits
to and fro, many-colored, subtle, silent, swift as an aurora. They have
complicated the policy of courts and sown dissension in cabinets. They
misrepresent a statesman's secrets, set one clique against another,
stir about in society till it becomes one stupendous snarl; and perhaps
you cannot point to a spot upon their reputation. They give slander
itself no opportunity to lie as they can do, while they immaculately
defy truth to brand as counterfeit the phrases of their charming
insincerity. Look at the smooth brow that sheds your scrutiny: there's
not a crease nor wrinkle on it where suspicion may lodge to fester. The
eyes embrace you with the frankness of Joab, who took Abner aside to
speak with him, quietly, asking, "Art thou in health, my brother?" and
smote him there under the fifth rib, and left him far from well.

Among blonde women we can easily observe two kinds, which may be
called, for brevity, the lunar and the solar. The one kind seems as
if blanched by sunlight that has been reflected: it wilts from defect
rather than excess of warming power. The passions are low-toned, like
the body: a sort of scrofulous habit seems indicated by a too delicate
and thin complexion; it lurks in the lifeless yellow or chestnut
of the hair, in the unsound teeth and the languid speech. There is
little valor for mischief in them, as there is little ambition for
achievement. Their virtue seems only a temper that is kept faint as if
by constant exudation of the blood.

But the Mary Stuart of history and the Lady Macbeth of Shakspeare
belong to a different type. We know that the former had a delicate
exterior, auburn hair, and beaming blue eyes: her tone of speaking was
gentle and sweet, excellently soft and low. Mrs. Siddons, whose style
and color were altogether different, became so saturated with Lady
Macbeth as to be convinced she must have been a blonde. We think that
Shakspeare implies and justifies this delicate perception, and turns
it into history. Both the queens of Scotland represented the kind of
blonde women who are fired by sunlight: it crisps the golden or the
chestnut hair, becomes quicksilver in the veins, hits every brain-cell
with its actinic ray, and chases over the yielding hair in ripples like
a blown wheat-field. The voice is low, but ever clear and even,--a
fabric closely woven throughout, capable of sustaining the strongest
moments of the soul, and of vibrating with them: the whole gamut of
passion may be swept by it, from the enticing whisper to the peal of
defiance. It is a trumpet, made of silver, and not one note of it is
brassy; but it pierces the distance none the less directly, and summons
Macbeth by sonorous phrases out of the mist and pointlessness of dreams.

But Nature drew the character of Mary Stuart from elements less simple
than were used by Shakspeare in constructing Lady Macbeth. Mary, to
all the culture of her times, added various tastes and a delicate
susceptibility for art: she loved music, plays, minstrels, games, and
was passionately devoted to the chase. Her great pace in hunting, her
fiery dash through the underbrush, was observed and has been long
remembered. Once, having been thrown from her horse, the attendants
found her on the ground, gayly laughing as she put up the dishevelled
hair.

In the cold autumn of 1562, she went in person upon an expedition
to punish a Highland clan. She jested with fatigues and hardships,
"and was as much at her ease," says Froude, "galloping a half-broken
stallion over the heather as when languishing in her boudoir over a
love-sonnet." She said "she wished she was a man, to know what life
it was to lie all night in the field, or to walk on the causey with a
Glasgow buckler and a broadsword."

She reminds us of Bathsheba in the novel which has been already quoted.
Talking with her maid Liddy, she said, "I hope I am not a bold sort
of maid,--mannish?" she continued, with some anxiety. To which Liddy
replied, "Oh, no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish that 'tis
getting on that way sometimes."

At the age of nineteen, the delicately nurtured woman set sail from
France for Scotland, to begin that long, indomitable struggle to
succeed Elizabeth, and to break the Reformation in England. The wiliest
and most inflexible of Queen Elizabeth's counsellors shivered their
weapons against the guard of her swift tact, until imprisonment, which
was twice escaped from, and death,--

                   "That fell arrest,
 Without all bail,"--

became England's last resource against this dangerous, lovable,
bewildering, fateful woman. Her bronze effigy in St. Mary's Church
at Warwick lifts features whose clearly cut delicacy implies her
resolution, and the magnetic power of all her loves and plots.

Her attachments were sometimes inspired by politics, sometimes by
sentiment. All her mental and emotional ability was pledged to honor
drafts which came in the interest of the Pope, of France, of hatred
of Protestantism, of desire to govern England. She was in a frame
of constant pique at the influence and reputation of Elizabeth. The
Scottish reformers kept her skirmishing talent well employed. Defending
her amusements or her mass against John Knox, she braved him till his
bitter speech gathered into brine in her eyes. But, as it flowed, the
lines of resolution upon her face were etched more clearly. She could
lend her person to Bothwell with the hope of consolidating a party.
With power and beauty at command, she lavished every wile to control
the transitional epoch into which she was born. Her life was a series
of shifts and dramatic surprises. But no dark recollections ever
disturbed her sleep; nor did she carry a candle through the midnight of
a shattered mind, to throw light upon suspected murders.

In love she was less constant than Macbeth's wife, who felt but one
great passion, and had no art nor culture to lavish in retaining its
object. She might have said,--

 "I am as true as truth's simplicity,
 And simpler than the infancy of truth."

We shall find this sun-lighted heart less capable of endurance than the
other blondes of history.


LADY MACBETH.

To make and share a husband's fortune was her only motive, and the
only driving-power she could supply to that was love: her character
was most inartificially contrived out of one or two broad elements of
womankind; a Semele to invite the solar ray that consumed her. To be a
woman was her sole resource.

Let us notice, therefore, how prompt was her first inspiration, and how
quickly it recoiled exhausted from its terrible victory.

A full-blooded virago who has murder in her heart, but supposes that
any chance to commit it is a long way off, would not betray emotion if
Fate suddenly tossed a chance into her lap. Lady Macbeth's nerves are
not well padded against such a shock. The husband's letter astonishes
and exalts her soul; but the old desires, never before so animated,
seem fruitless as ever, since neither time nor place concur. In the
height of this turmoil, an attendant enters to say, "The King comes
here to-night." The tidings appal her: has Providence gone mad, to
trust Duncan with her in this temper? The man is mad to say it.
Coming! To-night! "And when goes hence?" Her looks and speech recoil
from the coincidence. Then she breaks into that soliloquy which is
not the ranting of a mannish murderess who is in a frenzy to get at
her victim. The lines quiver with the excitement of a delicate nature
that is overstrained and dreads to fail. Vexed and chagrined at
womanly proclivities which will be apt to follow their bent against
her purpose, she invokes spirits to unsex her, to make thick the blood
that runs too limpidly and warm, and clot "the access and passage
to remorse." It fills us with dismay to see how far a susceptible
womanhood can be transported by a vehement passion; as when, toward
nightfall, the dweller upon a soft inland stream sees the freshet's
discolored water come down, thick with the fruits of gentle husbandry
and the quenched hearths of homesteads, with piteous wrecks of
innocence clinging round them.

Soon after those shrill cries, as of a string too tightly drawn,
have escaped from her, the King arrives at the castle. Contrast the
dry color of her language when, as hostess, she welcomes him: we are
surprised at its constrained and measured politeness. Her soul seems to
have collapsed into the dullest prose:--

                       "Your servants ever
 Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt,
 To make their audit at your highness' pleasure,
 Still to return your own."

It is the talk of a book-keeper to his employer. Has something bereft
the fine woman of her tact? No, the fineness of the woman fell
instinctively into a protective tone. Her consciousness has been so
acutely set to the key of crime that she knows the least touch will
sound it. The secret is torture to the mind, but must be borne; as a
guilty man, who overhears the pursuit drawing close to his cramped and
insupportable place of concealment, turns rigid with stifled groans.
So, when Duncan says,--

             "See, see! our honor'd hostess!
 The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,
 Which still we thank as love."
             "Fair and noble hostess,
 We are your guest to-night,"--

the courtesy, so mild and royal, is a threat that comes too near the
pent-up feeling: she grows preternaturally still and cold.

The Amazonian female would have failed in tact through absence of
anxiety, as her language effervesced with the congenial occasion. Such
a largess of blank verse would be scattered as certainly to raise
suspicion in the observant Banquo, who has heard the witches' promise.
The awkward parsimony of Lady Macbeth's words might be credited to the
suddenness of the visit, to a stately dread of seeming over-pleased at
the "late dignities" and over-covetous of more, or to the constraint of
feeling unprepared to entertain so many people.

But the other style of woman, as the victim approached, would cram
him with fulsomeness to make him fat for slaying, somewhat in this
fashion:--

 Most gracious highness! the poor wife am I
 Of thy good soldier, now the Thane of Cawdor,
 But ever less the more thou raisest him.
 He should be here: he'd say the castle's thine,
 And wring its service to some decent welcome.
 Alas, I can but kneel, and droop my lips,
 And let them flutter ere they light upon
 My perch, thy hand; this violence to plot,
 Scarce this, against thy person venturing here;
 But see, my knees invoke great Heaven's rest
 Upon thy stay and slumber; all good angels
 Hie hither to encamp around his bed.
 Enter, my lord; treason has bled to death,
 And roofs are sacreder than oaths.

The impetuous language and action which hurry along the following
scenes, and sweep reflection from every holding-ground, are not the
result of an excision of psychological leading-matter by Middleton, or
any one else who worked for the theatre and reduced the length of the
play to bring it into acting limits. A miner strikes his pick through
a thin partition behind which subterranean waters have been slowly
gathering: they deluge his tunnel and sweep him away. In Shakspeare's
mind the hidden precedent of the tragedy's action accumulated. The
first scratch of his pen let it loose to flood the scenes. There was
no preliminary warning. The psychological filtration through his brain
from the sources of his plot bursted in like a freshet that explains
itself without recalling separate rills.

Nor was the swift and unheralded action inspired solely by Lady
Macbeth's impatience to be the wife of a king. All women run after
their thoughts more eagerly than do the men. They are Atalantas without
a weakness for the golden apples which are sent across the path to
break up their desire for winning. But, if Atalanta secretly prefers
a suitor, she will chase his golden apple. For whenever personal
preferences divert a woman from her course, it is because they, too,
grow in the Hesperides of her imagination. Men deliberate, study the
ground, observe the obstacles, cluster round preponderating judgment
and wait for its direction. Women are not heedless: they also can
deliberate until the heart has become too deeply involved; but, when
the heart is set upon something, they are the swift-footed couriers
of the Ideal, and their only turnpike is as the bird flies. If there
be any virtuous advantage to be gained, any scheme to carry out, any
enthusiasm that beautifies the distance, they go across-lots for
it, not minding that they may stumble upon brooks unprovided with a
stepping-stone or fallen tree. They fret at obstacles, and instigate
the neighborhood against them. They advocate with ardor, consult no
selfishness, want to override every thing with the moral feeling that
what is worth doing at all ought to be done quickly. Macbeth seizes
this trait by his reflection that it would be all very fine if it were
done when 'tis done: her quickness would then justify itself to his
consideration. For good or evil all women who can be inspired with
purposes speak in her ideal tone:--

                         "Art thou afeard
 To be the same in thine own act and valor
 As thou art in desire? Would'st thou have that
 Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
 And live a coward in thine own esteem;
 Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'
 Like the poor cat i' the adage?"

Women can shame a partner into valor by venturing the worst affront
when they cry,--

                       "From this time,
 Such I account thy love;"

that is, I account it like thy drunken hope which wakes up penitent and
pale. When a husband hears himself scorned in this style, he does not
believe his own ears, but instinctively translates the phrases to mean,
"From this time, count upon my love." For the ideal, in the moment of
its greatest rage and dread, betrays the immortal attachment which is a
man's breath, his superiority, his sole success.

She does not give Macbeth time to observe that to murder Duncan will
exact of him the murder of Malcolm also, who is designated by the King
to succeed him. She is in no temper to reflect that the taking-off
of Duncan will plunge the husband into ever-renewing complications:
her transport carries him away to fruitless crime. But the first blow
spends her terrible ardor and disenchants her of murder. She can force
it upon her husband, but is not endowed with the complexly woven tissue
of talents and motives that can sustain reaction. His muscle drags him
through successive scenes of feigning, inures him to the contemplation
of fresh murders, and keeps his foot well planted to thrust and
parry the foes of his own making. She is all made for love, and for
the uttermost that love can suggest: there is no masculine fibre in
her heart; it is packed with the invisible, fine-strung nerves of a
feminine disposition. And they have been stretched to such a tension
that, since no solider flesh sheathes and protects them as they relax,
we see them ravelled: they no longer sustain the firm heart-beat and
regulate the blood. There are symptoms, even before the murder is
committed, that her strength threatens to be inadequate. She must have
recourse to wine, to borrow courage from it that may last till morning;
and her mood is so intense that the light body can absorb large
draughts of it:--

 "That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold."

It does not, however, cancel a susceptibility, which was unusual with
her, to the weird influences of night and loneliness. It was unusual;
for I think it to be no fancy, but a well-attested experience, that
the blonde women are the least affected by the physical influences of
darkness: they have a certain clarity to repel this infection that
penetrates so many darker-looking people,--a certain nonchalance that
is manifested even in girlhood's nursery, and prevents spooks from
being rocked in the same cradle. Being free from the frailness which
is latent in a tendency to project startled feelings into ghostly
phenomena, they do, as a general rule, find it easy to translate the
queer noises and conspiracies of the darkness into their plain prose.
They keep the obscurest entry free from the litter which gathers from
tales of superstition: from garret to cellar there's not a nook where
creepiness can make a goblin-nest. Up and down lonesome staircases they
can go without a light, prowl unperturbed into the uncanniest corners,
hurry to investigate the cause of a low moan with a warm heart for a
candle, enter the room of the dead without laying a reluctant hand upon
the lock or pausing to summon fortitude.

One of these women was Lady Macbeth, who never before experienced, what
her husband always had in liability, those paintings of his fear, those
flaws and starts, that objectivity of over-wrought imagination. But now
this scene, which treads upon the threshold of the murder, shudders
with the proximity of something bodiless on the corridors and stairs a
spectral gleam is congealing into shapes not known to this world; the
wild weather of the "sore night" has hunted the moon and stars out of
the heaven; the rain rushes at the panes to get vindictive entrance;
the wind utters personal threats at these violators of "the Lord's
anointed temple;"--

                       "The obscure bird
 Clamor'd the livelong night."

How finely seated in its place is that word "obscure"! Substitute
for it the various reading, "obscene," and you destroy the sense
which Shakspeare would convey of a creature heard but seldom seen at
any time, sitting so moveless in the dark: not a leaf prates of its
whereabout; the mysterious hooting seems to be one of the unexplained
things of Nature.

Lady Macbeth's breath itself is intent to listen,--"Hark!" Then, as her
novel tremor passes off, she interprets it:--

 "It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
 Which gives the stern'st good-night."

Far away, through innocent hamlets, human watchmen go their rounds,
and let their "All's well!" mix with the dreams of inviolate chambers.
Here is a different bellman to invite an eternal hour to murder sleep.
She listens again, and her nerves are tightened by the hand of silence.
"He is about it." How awfully does Macbeth's voice come struggling back
into this stillness, where the wife begins to feel something personal
in the air! So does he. "Who's there? What, ho!" And she expects to see
something that was not invited:--

 "Alack! I am afraid they have awak'd,
 And 'tis not done: the attempt, and not the deed,
 Confounds us."

Shakspeare makes us aware that Macbeth, after killing Duncan, must pass
along a passage and descend some stairs to the next story. What a walk
of a few moments, protracted into endless awe, with Duncan disembodied
close at his heels! The brave soldier's feet weaken at the distance
which his own soul creates. Will he ever annihilate a space that is
made by a crime and reach his wife again?

 "I have done the deed! Did'st thou not hear a noise?"

They listen, looking sidelong at each other:--

 "I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry.
 Did not you speak?
                     When?
                           Now.
                                 As I descended?
 Ay.
 Hark! Who lies i' the second chamber?"

The scene is full of pauses of startled listening: it waits with a
husband absent upstairs upon an errand, retreats with him through a
haunted corridor, thenceforth for ever haunted, and shudders in us as
midnight never shuddered before; and the crickets, those carollers of
a sacred hearth, cry, as blood drips through it and quenches their
content.

When Macbeth relates to her his sensations while he was upstairs, the
amen that stuck in his throat, the voice that threatened him with
nights devoid of sleep and that still cried, "Macbeth shall sleep no
more," Lady Macbeth, intuitively feeling that she could dare no more,
and could not risk another thought with her imagination, said,--

 "These deeds must not be thought
 After these ways: so, it will make us mad."

The deed is done, but to her surprise it will not do for her too
curiously to consider it. But no, the deed is not yet neatly finished.
Macbeth, in his hurry to elude the dead man, has brought the bloody
daggers with him. She must carry them back for him: not for his newly
bought kingdom would he return along that entry and through that
ghastly door. The exigency recalls the fair woman to her native temper.
To put the needed finish to her night's business, she resumes her
wonted contempt for darkness and the sight of the dead:--

                     "The sleeping and the dead
 Are but as pictures."

While she is absent, there comes that knocking at the gate which appals
Macbeth; and we quake with him in that moment which lets into the
tragedy a human world again.

This world, unconscious of the hell which husband and wife have
inaugurated within the castle, has been travelling all night to reach
it. What morning redness salutes Lenox's and Macduff's eyes!

 "Ring the alarum-bell!
                         Malcolm! awake!
 Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
 And look on death itself! Up, up, and see
 The great doom's image! Malcolm! Banquo!
 As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites,
 To countenance this horror. Ring the bell!"

Thereupon Lady Macbeth enters: she has had time to see what color
Duncan's blood imparts to water, in the little act of washing the hands
which became memorable to her, and seared into the brain as if with
a brand heated in nether fires. No constraint of alarm caused her to
enter, but she is driven in by the terrible affinity of her feeling:
she belongs to the scene,--a part of it which cannot be left out. She
must hear what is said, observe what occurs, keep her appointment with
the death which she solicited. This fascination of spilt blood, this
woman's instinct to see her husband through the first surprise, this
dread of some defect in his behavior, this solicitude to repair it by
some spirit of her own, takes her into a scene which deals one stroke
too much upon her emotion. For the morn broke rapidly, as if to resent
the criminal advantage which the midnight took. She has had no chance
to calculate what effect this murder will have upon human sensibilities
when they are taken by it unawares. She sees the awfulness of it
suddenly reflected from the faces and gestures of Macduff, Banquo, and
the rest. It beats at the gate, across which she has braced a woman's
arm, and breaks it in; and a mob of reproaches rush over her. What
have those delicate hands been doing? What is this hideous issue of
her slender body, just born, stark naked, in the horror of these men?
Nature, in making her, was so little in the male mood, so intently
following the woman's model, that it left out the element which
carries Macbeth through this scene. To hear her husband describe his
simulated rage in butchering the grooms, and draw that painting of
Duncan in his blood,--

 "And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
 For ruin's wasteful entrance,"--

it is too much, and 'tis plain she is not needed. "Help me hence,
ho!" her sex cries. It is the revulsion of nature in a feminine soul.
Love has exhaled all its hardihood into the deed which is just now
discovered. She, too, has only now really discovered it. The nerves
part at the overstrain of seeing what the deed is like, and drop her
helpless into a swoon.

She recovers, but her mind wakes to the necessity of playing a part, to
the harassing assumption of royal demeanor to hide a slavish dread, to
the cruel demands of courtesy, to the effort to sustain her husband's
state, to the counterfeit composure of the banquet:--

               "Better be with the dead,
 Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie
 In restless ecstasy."

She does not say this; but Macbeth avows it for her, since they are
partners

 "In the affliction of these terrible dreams
 That shake us nightly."

Banquo would have been safe enough from her; for the scheming love
has been too rudely handled. But he is not safe from Macbeth, who
does not reflect that, while Malcolm is out of his reach, 'tis a
superfluity of naughtiness to slay Banquo and Fleance. His wife might
have counselled better, but he did not dare to confide his temper of
murder to her. Henceforth, murder is become a necessary of their daily
life. But her feeling that nought is had and all is spent does not
involve a threat of Banquo's person. She broods in spiritless reaction,
and tells Macbeth that "what's done is done." He broods in dangerous
recklessness, feeling that it is not yet done:--

 "Thou know'st that Banquo and his Fleance live."

She does not perceive what he is darkly hinting, and merely replies
that they cannot live for ever. He judges hastily that they must die at
once; and "there's comfort yet." But he does not venture to be explicit
with her, because, if she cannot detect the murder in his words,--

                         "There shall be done
 A deed of dreadful note,"--

it is because there is murder no longer in her heart. He does not dare
to risk his resolutions openly with her returning womanhood. So, when
she unconsciously asks, "What's to be done?" he cannot muster courage
to expose his thought:--

 "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
 Till thou applaud the deed."

Then his imagination, excited by the dire policy which he premeditates,
shudders into language that recalls to us her own when she unsexed
herself to make a man of him: it is his turn to be demonized, and she
simply marvels at his words.

So she goes to the feast where Banquo is expected, without his ghost
in her heart: not a hint reaches her of what has happened. It is plain
that she misconstrues the distracted behavior of Macbeth; and when he
says, "If I stand here, I saw him," she could only suppose that it was
the ghost of Duncan which was the painting of his fear: so that she
bravely carries Macbeth through the brunt of the guests' wonder, and
passes to that night's tormented sleep without a fresh spectre in its
train. For Macbeth was either too dispirited or too considerate to tell
her; so he lets the news wait till another day divulges it.

When the guests have departed, Macbeth is still absorbed by the
terrifying possibilities of disclosure that were suggested by the
apparition. Banquo, who can so easily become visible, may hint the
manner of his death to somebody, to any thing, making the dumbest
object voluble with it,--may even make a stone move to hit the
murderer, or a tree's branch point speakingly to him, "the secretest
man of blood." But his wife says nothing either to refute the fear or
to make him ashamed of it. What palsy has been laid upon that ruffling
tongue? It is not silent, as some critics fancy, because her love
sets in to pity and to spare him; nor silent because the exigency has
passed away, nor because Middleton struck out some speech of hers,--but
silent simply from exhaustion. See, between the lines of Macbeth's
mood, how the overtaxed woman droops, utterly frayed away, although
the guests relieve her by departure. Exhaustion so preoccupies her that
love itself is too faint to pity or to cheer, and her only thought is
to get to bed. She has begun to feel the drift of a hopeless future,
against which she has no strength, by contending, to regain the old
mooring-ground where they cut loose and allowed an unseen current to
clutch the slim bark. Neither curiosity nor self-interest can rouse her
when Macbeth mentions that he has strange things in head which he means
to carry to performance.

 "You lack the season of all natures, sleep,"

is all that her tired nature has left to say.

Her fortitude just eked her out to reach the gracious action that
dismissed the guests, as she wished "A kind good-night to all!" Yes,
good-night to all,--to us also. She gains the shelter of her chamber:
then she entirely disappears from the action of the tragedy, to sicken
in seclusion with the consciousness that her fatal love has purveyed
successive murders for her household. She can be of no further use to
Shakspeare now: such a terrible requisition of genius has exhausted
her; she is removed from our view and consigned to the offices
of women. For the courage that was screwed to the sticking-place
was screwed by love's wrest one turn too far. But another kind of
woman--massive, cruel, prompted by unmixed ambition, guided by
pure hatefulness--would have had no trouble in assuming the dogged
resolution with which Macbeth began henceforth to outface Fate. Not so
this soul, who has known "how tender 'tis to love the babe" that milks
her.

 "The tackle of her heart is crack'd and burned;
 And all the shrouds wherewith her life should sail
 Are turned to one thread, one little hair."

She will soon be "a clod and module of confounded royalty."

For she has been the cause of all; she has thus changed and compromised
the man whom she hoped to help to majesty and safety; she, the
determined guider of the first blow, must see that wound become a
widening crack in the walls of love and honor, to bury what she hoped
to shelter; and she has grown powerless to shore them up, or to let
them fall upon herself and not upon him. The breaking heart pulls down
her wits into its ruin.

Her undaunted mettle was but the over-bracing tonic of a moment, which
punishes the structure it exalted.

 "A little water clears us of this deed:
 How easy is it, then!"

So she and Heaven differed; and the husband found it was not easy. A
piteous self-arraignment of love is quite as potent to destroy her as a
conscience that can sleep no more.

Night after night, her gentlewomen attend the repetition of scenes
which she enacts, like a shadowy pageant in Hades of bygone life.
Sleep's hammer tolls the castle-bell: "One, two! why, then 'tis time
to do't." How Duncan bleeds! Who would have thought it of so old a
man? And "here's the smell of the blood still:" how the fastidious
woman, who loved the "perfumes of Arabia," sickens at it! The little
hands fumble in the spectral water: they are not sweetened; the damned
spot still clings. What! are these hands never to be clean again? But
there's no time for washing out this deed; for, hark! there's Innocency
knocking at the gate. Here no porter will be needed to usher dread
disclosure into this sighing heart. "What's done cannot be undone." And
what a reminiscence of her sense of wifehood and of the sacredness of
pure domestic ties she wakens when she says, "The thane of Fife had a
wife: where is she now?" Sent by her first impetuous push into Duncan's
grave.

In the "slumbery agitation" of the last night which shuts her from our
view, she stretches a winsome hand toward the air-drawn husband of her
dream: "Come, come! come, come! give me your hand! to bed, to bed, to
bed!"

So, not long after, a cry of women struggles through the castle, and
bids Macbeth's desperate engrossment know that the "brief candle" of
her night-walking sorrow has gone out. He has no time to permit his
queen to die, but she has slipped from his arms. Alas! another shape
of Nature's womanhood by Nature destroyed. Malcolm may suspect that
she destroyed herself, but Shakspeare furnished no pretext for that
palace rumor. And it so disconcerts the pathos which he intended should
accumulate around the temper of her crime that many commentators
suspect the scene, upon this and other considerations, of having been
tampered with. Malcolm may call her "fiend-like," if he will. 'Tis
pardonably honest English from a son who slept one night so near to a
murdered father. What was to Malcolm a righteous phrasing of the deed
does not cover Shakspeare's implication of the mood which led to it.
The great poet delivers to us a sprig of rosemary, for remembrance of
Nature in a woman, but enjoins us to tie it up with rue.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: Brought from Italy by Mr. Jarves, and now in the
possession of J.W. Bigelow, Esq., New York.]

[Footnote 22: Report of M.D. Conway's striking lecture upon the History
of the Devil.]




Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son.




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