irregularity, express the suddenness | speare does just the contrary, because and the breaks of the inner sensation; his genius is the exact opposite. His trivial words, exaggerated figures.* master faculty is an impassioned imag There is a gesture beneath each, a ination, freed from the shackles of quick contraction of the brows, a curl reason and morality. He abandons of laughing lips, a clown's trick, an un- himself to it, and finds in man nothing hinging of the whole machine. None that he would care to lop off. He ac of them mak ideas, all suggest images; cepts nature and finds it beautiful in its each is the extremity and issue of a entirety. He paints it in its littlenesses, complete m.mic action; none is the its deformities, its weaknesses, its exexpression and definition of a partia cesses, its irregularities, and in its and limited idea. This is why Shak- rages; he exhibits man at his meals, in speare is strange and powerful, obscure bed, at play, drunk, mad, sick; he addı and creative, beyond all the poets of that which ought not to be seen to that his or any other age; the most im- which passes on the stage. He does moderate of all violators of language, not dream of ennobling, but of copying the most marvellous of all creators of human life, and aspires only to make souls, the farthest removed from regu- his copy more energetic and more lar logic and classical reason, the one striking than the original. most capable of exciting in us a world of forms and of placing living beings before us. III. Let us reconstruct this world, so as to find in it the imprint of its creator. A poet does not copy at random the manners which surround him; he selects from this vast material, and involuntarily brings upon the stage the habits of the heart and conduct which best suit his talent. If he is a logician, a moralist, an orator, as, for instance, one of the French great tragic poets (Racine) of the seventeenth century, he will only represent noble manners; he will avoid low characters; he will have a horror of menials and the plebs; he will observe the greatest decorum amidst the strongest outbreaks of passion; he will reject as scandalous every low or indecent word; he will give us reason, loftiness, good taste throughout; he will suppress the familiarity, childishness, artlessness, gay banter of domestic life; he will blot out. precise details, special traits, and will carry tragedy into a serene and sublime region, where his abstract personages, unencumbered by time and space, after an exchange of eloquent harangues and able dissertations, will kill each other becomingly, and as though they were merely concluding a ceremony. Shak* See the conversation of Laertes and his sister, and of Laertes and Polonius, in Hamlet. The style is foreign to the situation; and we see here plainly the natural and necessary process of Shakspeare's thought. Hence the morals of this drama; and first, the want of dignity. Dignity arises from self-command. A man selects the most noble of his acts and attitudes, and allows himself no other. Shakspeare's characters select none, but allow themselves all. His kings are men, and fathers of families. The terrible Leontes who is about to order the death of his wife and his friend, plays like a child with his son: caresses him, gives him all the pretty pet names which mothers are wont to employ; he dares be trivial; he gabbles like a nurse; he has her language and fulfils her duties: "Leontes. What, hast smutch'd thy nose? They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, capWe must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, cap tain, tain: ... Come, sir page, lain! There are a score of such passages | difference of the two poets and the two in Shakspeare. The great passions, civilizations: 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 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, ardor, 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, Postkumus, 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, and you may measure the *One of Molière's characters in Tartuffe · "Capulet. How now, how now, chop-logic What is this? Proud,' and ' I thank you,' and I thank you not ;' Thank me no thankings, nor proud me ne And yet not proud,' mistress mirion, you, prouds, next, But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church, or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Out, you green-sickness carrion! cut, you ɔa gage! 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! disc bedient wretch ! I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thurs day, Or never after look me in the face : Lady C. You are too hot. C. God's bread! it makes me mad: A gentleman of noble parentage, me: And then to have a wretched puling fool, This method of exhorting one's child to marry is peculiar to Shakspeare and the sixteenth century. Con tradiction 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 thei dirty names, and compel the thoughts to particular images of physical leve * Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5 conceiving themselves to bo The talk of gentlemen and ladies is full | not Ít 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 conversations. Kindly politeness is the slow fru: of advanced reflection; it 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 humor, 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,† with a great reputation for wit and politeness, whose smart retorts create amusement 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 . . . (the word is there). Benedick says: ... "I will go... to the Antipodes . rather than hold three words' conference with this harpy. I cannot endure my Lady Tongue. 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." t 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." § They have a vocabulary of foul words as complete as that of Rabelais, and they exhaust it. They catch up handfuls of mud, and hurl it at their enemy, 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). Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 1. Their actions correspond. They go without shame or pity to the limits of their passion. They kill, poison, vio late, 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 Jach Cade's sedition* to gain an idea of this madness and fury. We migh 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. They destroy, kill, butcher each other; with their feet in the blood of their victims, they call for food and drink; they stick heads on pikes and make them kiss one another, and they laugh. "Jack Cade. There shall be in Englano seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny... There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all don-stone, I charge and command that, of the in one livery. And here sitting upon Lon city's cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing bu claret wine this first year of our reign. Away, burn all the records of the realm: my mouth shall be the parliament of England. And henceforth all things shall be in common. ... What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the dauphin of France? ... The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders, unless he pay me tribshall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have ute; there shall not a maid be married, but she it. (Re-enter rebels with the heads of Lord braver? Let them kiss one another, for they Say and his son-in-law.) But is not this loved well when they were alive." ↑ Man must not be let loose; we know not what lusts and rage may brood under a sober guise. Nature was never so hideous, and this hideousness is the truth. Are these canniba' manners only met with among the scum? Why, the princes are worse. The Duke of Corn wall orders the old Earl of Gloucester to be tied to a chair, because, cwing to him King Lear has escaped: "Fellows, hold the chair. Second Part of Henry VI. iv. 6. Gloster. He that will think to live till he Give me some help! O cruel : O you gods! other too. Cornwall. If you see vengeance, Servant. I have served you ever since I was a child; I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean? Corn. My villain ! stand up thus. Where is thy lustre now? Regan. Go thrust him out at gates, and let His way to Dover." distinct living figures, illuminated by an intense light. This creative power is Shakspeare's great gift, and it com municates an extraordinary significance to his words. Every phrase pronounced Hold your hand, my lord: by one of his characters enables us to see, besides the idea which it contains and the emotion which prompted it, entire character which produced itthe aggregate of the qualities and the the mood, physical attitude, bearing, look of the man, all instantaneously, with a clearness and force approached by no one. The words which strike our ears are not the thousandth part of those we hear within; they are like sparks thrown off here and there; the eyes catch rare flashes of flame; the mind alone perceives the vast conflagration of which they are the signs and the effect. He gives us two dramas in one: the first strange, convulsive, curtailed, visible; the other consistent, immense, invisible; the one covers the other so well, that as a rule we do not realize that we are perusing words: we hear the roll of those terrible voices, we see contracted features, glowing eyes, pallid faces; we see the agitation, the furious resolutions which mount to the brain with the feverish blood, and descend to the sharp-strung nerves. This property possessed by every phrase to exhibit a world of sentiments and forms, comes from the fact that the phrase is actually caused by a world of emotions and images. Shakspeare, when he wrote, felt all that we feel, and much besides. He had the prodigious faculty of seeing in a twinkling of the eye a complete character, body, mind, past and present, in every detail and every depth of his being, with the exact attitude and the expression of face, which the situation demanded. A word here and there of Hamlet or Othello would need for its explanation three pages of commentaries; each of the half-understood thoughts, which the commentator may have discovered, has left its trace in the turn of the phrase, in the nature of the metaphor in the order of the words; nowadays in pur suing these traces, w: divine the thoughts. These innumerable traces have been impressed in a secord, within the compass of a line. In ie next line there are as many, impressed Such are the manners of that stage. They are unbridled, like those of the age, and like the poet's imagination. To copy the common actions of everyday life, the puerilities and feeblenesses to which the greatest continually sink, the outbursts of passion which degrade them, the indecent, harsh, or foul words, the atrocious deeds in which license revels, the brutality and ferocity of primitive nature, is the work of a free and unencumbered imagination. To copy this hideousness and these excesses with a selection of such famillar, significant, precise details, that they reveal under every word of every personage a complete civilization, is he work of a concentrated and all>owerful imagination. This species of nanners and this energy of description ndicate the same faculty, unique and excessive, which the style had already indicated. IV. On this common background stands out in striking relief a population of • King Lear, iii. 7. just as quickly, and in the same compass. You can gauge the concentration and the velocity of the imagination which creates thus. "Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st tho here, This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter. Do that good mischief which may make tais Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban, He These characters are all of the same family. Good or bad, gross or delicate, witty or stupid, Shakspeare gives them all the same kind of spirit which Others, like Ajax and Cloten, are zere is his own. He has made of them like men, and yet it is pure mood that imaginative people, void of will and Shakspeare depicts in them, as in Cal reason, impassioned machines, vehe-iban. The clogging cerporeal machine mently jostled one against another, who the mass of muscles, the thick bloc were outwardly whatever is most nat- sluggishly moving along in the veins of ural and most abandoned in human these fighting men, oppress the intell nature. Let us act the play to our-gence, and leave no life but for animal Iselves, and see in all its stages this passions. Ajax uses his fists, and declanship of figures, this prominence of yours meat; that is his existence; if he portraits. is jealous of Achilles, it is pretty much as a bull is jealous of his fellow. permits himself to be restrained and led by Ulysses, without looking before him: the grossest flattery decoys him. The Greeks have urged him to accept Hector's challenge. Behold him puffed up with pride, scorning to answer. anyone, not knowing what he says or does. Thersites cries, "Good-morrow, Ajax ;" and he replies, "Thanks, Agamemnon.' He has no further thought than to contemplate his enormous frame, and roll majestically his big stupid eyes. When the day of the fight has come, he strikes at Hector as on an anvil. After a good while they are separated. "I am not warm yet,' says Ajax," let us fight again." Cloten is less massive than this phlegmatic ox; but he is just as idiotic, just as vainglorious, just as coarse. The beautiful Imogen, urged by his insults and his scullion manners, tells him that his whole body is not worth as much as Posthumus' meanest garment. He is stung to the quick, repeats the word several times; he cannot shake off the idea, and runs at it again and agair with his head down, like an angry ram: Lowest of all are the stupid folk, babbling or brutish. Imagination already exists there, where reason is not yet born; it exists also there where reason is dead. The idiot and the brute blindly follow the phantoms which exist in their benumbed or mechanical brains. No poet has understood this mechanism like Shakspeare. His Caliban, for instance, a deformed savage, fed on roots, growls like a beast under the hand of Prospero, who has subdued him. He howls continually against his master, though he knows that every curse will be paid back with 'cramps and aches." He is a chained wolf, trembling and fierce, who tries to bite when approached, and who crouches when he sees the lash raised. He has a foul sensuality, a loud base laugh, the gluttony of degraded humanity. He wished to violate Miranda in her sleep. He cries for his food, and gorges himself when he gets it. A sailor who had landed in the island, Stephano, gives him wine; he kisses his feet, and takes him for a god; he asks if he has not dropped from heaven, and adores him. We find in him rebellious and baffled passions, which are eager to rise again and to be satiated. Stephano had beaten his comrade. Caliban cries, "Beat him enough: after a little time I'll beat him too." He prays Stephano to come with him and murder Prospero in his sleep; he thirsts to lead him there, dances through joy and sees his master already with his "weasand" cut, and his brains scattered on the earth: |
