"Leontes. What, hast smutch'd thy nose?

They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, captain,
We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain:
Come, sir page,

Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain !
Most dear'st! my collop . Looking on the lines
Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil

...

Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd,
In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled,
Lest it should bite its master.

How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
This squash, this gentleman! . . . My brother,
Are you so fond of your young prince as we
Do seem to be of ours?

He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter,
Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy,
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all :
He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood." 1

There are a score of such passages in Shakspeare The great passions, with him as in nature, are preceded or followed by trivial actions, small-talk, commonplace sentiments. Strong emotions are accidents in our life: to drink, to eat, to talk of indifferent things, to carry out mechanically an habitual duty, to dream of some stale pleasure or some ordinary annoyance, that is in which we employ all our time. Shakspeare paints us as we are; his heroes bow, ask people for news, speak of rain and fine weather, as often and as casually as ourselves, on the very eve of falling into the extremity of misery, or of plunging into fatal resolutions. Hamlet asks.

1 Winter's Tale, i. 2.

what's o'clock, finds the wind biting, talks of feasts and music heard without; and this quiet talk, so unconnected with the action, so full of slight, insignificant facts, which chance alone has raised up and guided, lasts until the moment when his father's ghost, rising in the darkness, reveals the assassination which it is his duty to avenge.

Reason tells us that our manners should be measured; this is why the manners which Shakspeare paints are not so. Pure nature is violent, passionate: it admits no excuses, suffers no middle course, takes no count of circumstances, wills blindly, breaks out into railing, has the irrationality, ardour, anger of children. Shakspeare's characters have hot blood and a ready hand. They cannot restrain themselves, they abandon themselves at once to their grief, indignation, love, and plunge desperately down the steep slope, where their passion urges them. How many need I quote? Timon, Posthumus, Cressida, all the young girls, all the chief characters in the great dramas; everywhere Shakspeare paints the unreflecting impetuosity of the impulse of the moment. Capulet tells his daughter Juliet that in three days she is to marry Earl Paris, and bids her be proud of it; she answers that she is not proud of it, and yet she thanks the earl for this proof of love. Compare Capulet's fury with the anger of Orgon,1 and you may measure the difference of the two poets and the two civilisations:

Capulet. How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this? 'Proud,' and 'I thank you,' and 'I thank you not ;' And yet not proud,' mistress minion, you,

Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,

One of Molière's characters in Tartuffe.-TR

But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church,

Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.

Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage !
You tallow-face!

Juliet. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

C. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch !
I tell thee what get thee to church o' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face:

Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
My fingers itch.

Lady C. You are too hot.

C. God's bread! it makes me mad :

Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play,
Alone, in company, still my care hath been
To have her match'd: and having now provided
A gentleman of noble parentage,

Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts,
Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man;
And then to have a wretched puling fool,
A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,

To answer, 'I'll not wed; I cannot love,
I am too young; I pray you, pardon me,”-

But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you:

Graze where you will, you shall not house with me:
Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.

Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:

An you

be mine, I'll give you to my friend;

An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,

For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee."1

This method of exhorting one's child to marry is peculiar to Shakspeare and the sixteenth century.

1 Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5.

Contradiction to these men was like a red rag to a bull; it drove them mad.

We might be sure that in this age, and on this stage, decency was a thing unknown. It is wearisome, being a check; men got rid of it, because it was wearisome. It is a gift of reason and morality; as indecency is produced by nature and passion. Shakspeare's words are too indecent to be translated. His characters call things by their dirty names, and compel the thoughts to particular images of physical love. The talk of gentlemen and ladies is full of coarse allusions; we should have to find out an alehouse of the lowest description to hear like words nowadays.1

It would be in an alehouse too that we should have to look for the rude jests and brutal kind of wit which form the staple of these conversations. Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and everyday discourse; it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others; it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross. This is why it is absent from the manners of the drama we are considering. You will see carmen, out of sportiveness and good humour, deal one another hard blows; so it is pretty well with the conversation of the lords and ladies of Shakspeare who are in a sportive mood; for instance, Beatrice and Benedick, very well bred folk as things go,2 with a great reputation for wit and politeness, whose smart retorts create amusement

1 Henry VIII. ii. 3, and many other scenes.

Much Ado about Nothing. See also the manner in which Henry V. in Shakspeare's King Henry V. pays court to Katharine of France (v.2).

for the bystanders. These " skirmishes of wit" consist in telling one another plainly: You are a coward, a glutton, an idiot, a buffoon, a rake, a brute! You are

a parrot's tongue, a fool, a Benedick says:

to the Antipodes

(the word is there).

words' conference with this harpy.
my Lady Tongue.

I cannot endure

Don Pedro. You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

Beatrice. So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I

should prove the mother of fools." 1

We can infer the tone they use when in anger. Emilia, in Othello, says:

"He call'd her whore; a beggar in his drink
Could not have laid such terms upon his callat.” 2

They have a vocabulary of foul words
that of Rabelais, and they exhaust it.
handfuls of mud, and hurl it at their
ceiving themselves to be smirched.

as complete as They catch up enemy, not con

Their actions correspond. They go without shame or pity to the limits of their passion. They kill, poison, violate, burn; the stage is full of abominations. Shakspeare lugs upon the stage all the atrocious deeds of the civil wars. These are the ways of wolves and hyænas. We must read of Jack Cade's sedition3 to gain an idea of this madness and fury. We might imagine we were seeing infuriated beasts, the murderous recklessness of a wolf in a sheepfold, the brutality of a hog fouling and rolling himself in filth and blood. 2 Act iv. 2.

1 Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 1.

Second Part of Henry VI. iv. 6.