Chapter IX: Motives and Development of Shakespeare's Poetry (2)

"O, that I were as great
As is my grief, or lesser than my name!
Or that I could forget what I have been!
Or not remember what I must be now!
Swell'st thou, proud heart? I'll give thee scope to
beat...."

Elsewhere we find the same inexorable conqueror, Bolingbroke, as Henry IV, triumphant on several occasions against different enemies, now infirm and approaching death, raving from lack of sleep, and envying the meanest of his subjects, blindly groping in the vain shadows of human effort, as once his conquered predecessor, and filled with terror, as he views the whole extent of the universe and the

"Revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea!...
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth,--viewing his progress through
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,--
Would shut the book and sit him down and die."

And hearing of some friends becoming estranged and of others changing into enemies, he is no longer indignant nor astonished:

"Are these things then necessities?
Then let us meet them as necessities."

Henry V meditates upon the singular condition of kings, upon their majesty, which separates them from all other men and by thus elevating, loads them with a weight equal to that which all men together have to carry, while taking from them the joys given to others, and depriving them of hearing the truth or of obtaining justice.

He feels himself to be more than a king in those moments when he tears off his own kingly mask and mirrors himself in his naked reality as man. Facing the enemies who are drawn up on the field of battle and ready to attack him, he murmurs to himself the profound words:

"Besides they are our _natural consciences._
And preachers to us all; admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end."

Death reigns above all else in these dramas, death, which brings every great effort to an end, all torment of burning passion and ambition, all rage of barbarous crimes, and is therefore received as a lofty and severe matron; in her presence, countenances are composed, however ardently she has been withstood, however loudly the brave show of life has been affirmed. Death is received thus by all or nearly all the men in Shakespeare, by the tortured and elegiac Richard II, by the great sinner Suffolk, by the diabolic Richard III, down to the other lesser victims of fate. The vileness of the vile, the rascality of rascals, the brutal stupidity of acclaiming or imprecating crowds, are felt and represented with equal intensity, without once permitting anything of the struggle of life to escape, so vast in its variety.

The personages of these plays arise like three-dimensional statues, that is to say they are treated with full reality, and thus form a perfect antithesis to the figures of the romantic plays. These are superficial portraits, vivid, but light and vanishing into air; they are rather types than individuals. This does not imply a judgment of greater or lesser value or a difference in the art of portraying the true; it only expresses in other words and formulas the different sentiment that animates the two different groups of artistic creations, that which springs from delight in the romantic and that due to interest in human action. A Hotspur, introduced upon the scene of the romantic dramas, would break through them like a statue of bronze placed upon a fragile flooring of boards and painted canvas. He is the true "formal" hero, volitional, inrushing, disdainful, impatient, exuberant; we walk round him, admiring his lofty stature, his muscular strength, his potent gestures. He is like a splendid bow, with its mighty string drawn tight to hurl the missile, but wherefore or whither it will strike, we cannot tell. He is all rebellion and battle, yet his wit and satire is worthy of an artist; he loves, too, with a pure tenderness. But wit and satire and the words of love, alike, bear even the imprint and are hastened by impetuosity, as of a man engaged in conversation between one combat and another, still joyful and hot from the battle that is over, already hot and joyful for that which is to begin. "Away, away, you trifler," he says to his wife, "you that are thinking of love. Love! I love thee not,

I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world
To play with memmets and to tilt with lips:
We must have bloody noses and cracked crowns,
And pass them current too. Gods me, my horse!
What say'st thou, Kate? What would'st thou have
with me?"

His parallel (perhaps slightly inferior artistically), is the Roman Coriolanus, as brave, as violent and as disdainful as he, a despiser of the people and of the people's praise; he too rushes over the precipice to death and is also a "formal" hero, because his bravery is not founded upon love of country, or upon a faith or ideal of any kind, one might almost say that it was without object or that its object was itself. Nor, on the other hand, is Coriolanus a superman, in the sense suggested by the works of some of the predecessors and contemporaries of Shakespeare. He is not less tenderly demonstrative towards his mother or his silent wife (_"my gracious silence"_), than is Hotspur to Kate, or when, yielding to a woman's prayers, he stays the course of his triumphant vengeance. It would be tedious to record all the personages of indomitable power that we meet with in these historical dramas, such as the bastard Faulconbridge, in _King John,_ and most popular of all, though not the most artistically executed, Richard III, replete with iniquity, who clears the way by dealing death around himself without pity, and dies in the midst of combat with that last cry of desperate courage, "A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!" At their side stand, not less powerfully delineated, and set in relief, those queens Constance and Margaret: deprived of their power and full of maledictions, terrible in their fury, they are either ferocious or shut themselves up in their majestic sorrow. Queen Constance, when she sees herself abandoned by her protectors in the face of her enemies, who have become their allies, says, as she lets herself fall to the ground:

"Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up: here I and sorrows sit;
Here is my throne: bid kings come bow to it."

This gallery of historical figures is most varied; we find here not only the vigorous and proud, the sorrowful and troubled, but also the noble and severe, like Gaunt, the touching, like the little princes destined to the dagger of the assassins, Prince Arthur and the sons of Edward IV, down to the laughing and the credulous, to those who defy prejudice to wallow in debauch.

Sir John Falstaff is the first of these latter, and it is important not to misunderstand him, as certain critics have done, especially among the French. They have looked upon him as a jovial, comic type, a theatrical buffoon, and have compared him with the comic theatrical types of other stages, arriving at the conclusion that he is a less happy and less successful conception than they, because his comicality is exclusively English, and is not to be well understood outside England and America. But we must on the other hand be careful not to interpret the character moralistically, as an image of baseness, darkly coloured with the poet's contempt, as one towards whom he experienced a feeling of disgust. Falstaff could call himself a "formal" hero in his own way: magnificent in ignoring morality and honour, logical, coherent, acute and dexterous. He is a being in whom the sense of honour has never appeared, or has been obliterated, but the intellect has developed and become what alone it could become, namely, _esprit,_ or sharpness of wit. He is without malice, because malice is the antithesis of moral conscientiousness, and he lacks both thesis and antithesis. There is in him, on the contrary, a sort of innocence, the result of the complete liberty of his relation toward all restraint and towards ethical law. His great body, his old sinner's flesh, his complete experience of taverns and lupanars, of rogues male and female, complicates without destroying the soul of the boy that is in him, a very vicious boy, but yet a boy. For this reason, he is sympathetic, that is to say, he is sympathetically felt and lovingly depicted by the poet. The image of a child, that is to say of childish innocence, comes spontaneously to the lips of the hostess, as she tells of how he died: "Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a fine end, and went away, an it had been any Christom child...."

Shylock the Jew also finds a place in the historical gallery, for the very reason that he is a Jew, "the Jew," indeed, a historical formation, and Shakespeare conceives and describes him with the characteristics proper to his race and religion, one might almost say, sociologically. It has been asserted that for Shakespeare and for his public Shylock was a comic personage, intended to be flouted and laughed at by the pit; but we do not know what were the intentions of Shakespeare and as usual they matter little, because Shylock lives and speaks, himself explaining what he means, without the aid of commentaries, even such as the author might possibly have supplied. Shylock crying out in his desperation: "My daughter! O my ducats!..." may have made laugh the spectators in the theatre, but that cry of the wounded and tortured animal does not make the poetical reader laugh; he forms anything but a comic conception of that being, trampled down, poisoned at heart and unshakeable in his desire for vengeance. On the other hand the pathetic and biassed interpretations of Shylock that have been given during the nineteenth century, are foreign to the ingenuousness of a creation, without a shadow of humanitarianism or of polemic. What Shakespeare has created, fusing his own impressions and experiences in the crucible of his attentive and thoughtful humanity, is the Jew, with his firm cleaving to the law and to the written word, with his hatred for Christian feeling, with his biblical language, now sententious now sublime, the Jew with his peculiar attitude of intellect, will and morality.

Yet we are inclined to ask why Shylock, seen in the relations in which he is placed in the _Merchant of Venice,_ arouses some doubt in our minds; he would seem to require a background which is lacking to him there. This background cannot be the romantic story of Portia and the three caskets, or of the tired and melancholy Antonio. The reader is not convinced by the rapid fall of so great an adversary, who accepts the conversion to Christianity finally imposed upon him. But apart also from the particular mixture of real and imaginary, of serious and light, which we find in the _Merchant of Venice,_ it does not appear that the characters of the strictly historical plays find the ideal complement which they should find in the plays where they appear. The reason for this is not to be found in the looseness and reliance upon chronicles for which they have so often been blamed, since this is rather a consequence or general effect of Shakespeare's attitude towards the practical life, described above. This attitude, as we have seen, lacks a definite ideal, is indeed, without passion for any sort of particular ideals, but is animated with sympathy for the varying lots of striving humanity. For this reason, it is entirely concentrated, on the one hand upon character drawing, and on the other is inclined to accept somewhat passively the material furnished by the chronicles and histories. On the one hand it is all force and impetus, while on the other it lacks idealisation and condensation. The marvelous Hotspur appears in the play, in order that he may confirm the glory of youthful Prince Hal, that is to say, that he may provide a curious anecdote of what was or appeared to be the scapegrace youth of a future sage sovereign; that is, he is not fully represented. Coriolanus runs himself into a blind alley; and even if the poet portrays with historical penetration, the patricians and plebeians of Rome, it would be vain to seek in the play for the centre of gravity of his feelings, of his predilictions, or of his aspirations, because both Coriolanus, the tribunes and his adversaries are looked upon solely as characters, not as parts and expressions of a sentiment that should justify one or other or both groups. Finally, Falstaff is sacrificed, because, like Hotspur, he has been used for the purpose of enhancing the greatness of the future Henry V; for this reason, he declines in prestige from the first to the last scenes of the first part of Henry IV, not to speak of the _Merry Wives of Windsor,_ where we find him reduced to being a merely farcical character, flouted and thrashed. And when his former boon companion, Prince Hal, now on the throne, answers his advances, familiar and confidential as in the past, with hard, cold words, we do not admire the new king for his seriousness, because we are sensible of a lack of aesthetic harmony. Aesthetically speaking, Falstaff did not deserve such treatment, or at least Henry V, who inflicts it upon him, should not be given the credit of possessing an admirable moral character, which he does not possess, for it cannot be maintained that he is a great man, lofty in heart and mind, when he shows us that he has failed to understand Falstaff, and to grant him that indulgence to which he is entitled, after so lengthy a companionship. Falstaff's friends know that poor Sir John, although he has tried to put a good face on his cruel reception by his young friend, is unconsolable in the face of this inhuman estrangement, this chill repulse:

"The king hath run bad humours in the knight,
His heart is fracted and corroborate."

And Mistress Quickly, although a woman of bad character and a procuress, shows that she possesses a better heart and a better intellect than the great king, when she attends the dying Sir John with feminine solicitude. The narrative, of which we had occasion to quote the first phrase above, continues in the following pitiful strain:

"'A parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning of the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. 'How now, Sir John,' quoth I, 'what, man! be o' good cheer.' So 'a cried out 'God, God, God,' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him 'a should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So 'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone." And since the friends of the tavern have heard that he raved of sack, of his favourite sweet sack, Mistress Quickly confirms that it was so; and when they add that he raved of women, she denies it, thus defending in her own way the chastity of the poor dead man.

4

THE TRAGEDY OF GOOD AND EVIL

The three aspects, with which we have hitherto dealt, compose what may be called the _lesser_ Shakespeare, in contradistinction to the _greater_ Shakespeare, of whom we are about to speak. By "lesser," we do not wish to suggest that the works thus designated are artistically weak and imperfect, because there are among them some true masterpieces, nor that they are less perfect by comparison with others, because every true work of art is incomparable and contains in itself its proper perfection. What is intended to be conveyed is that they are "less complex," in the same way as the sentiment of a mature or an old man is distinguished by complexity of experiences from that of a young man, which is not for that reason less genuine. There are major and minor works in this sense in the production of poets and of all artists; and in this sense the greater works themselves of the various historical epochs stand to one another in the relation of greater or less richness, although each one is an entire world and each is most beautiful and incomparable in itself. In the case of Shakespeare, the distinction has already been approximately made by the common accord of readers and critics. It is among things accepted and we have acted upon this assumption.

Whoever, for example, passes from the most excellent "historical plays" to _Macbeth,_ is immediately sensible, not only of the diversity, but also of the greater complexity, proper to the new work which he has begun to study. In the former, we find a vision that might be described in general terms, as psychological or practical; in the latter, the vision is wider, it seems to be almost philosophical, yet it does not exclude the particular psychological or practical vision of the former, but includes it within itself. In the historical plays, we find individuals, powerful yet limited, as we find them when we consider the social competition and the political struggles of the day; in the great plays, the characters are more than individuals; they represent eternal positions of the human spirit. In the former, the plot hinges upon the acquisition or loss of a throne, or of some other worldly object; in the latter, there is also this external gain or loss, but over and above it the winning or losing of the soul itself, the strife of good and evil at the heart of things.

Evil: but if this evil were so altogether and openly, if it were altogether base and repugnant, the tragedy would be finished before it had begun. But evil was called _greatness_ for Macbeth: that greatness, which the fatal sisters had prophesied to him and the destined course of events immediately begins to bestow, pointing out to him that all the rest is both near and certain, provided that he does not remain passive, but extends his hand to grasp it. It shines before Macbeth, as a beautiful and luminous idea shines before an artist, assuming for this warlike and masterful man, the form of power, supreme, sovereign power. Shall he miss the mark? Shall he fail of the mission of his being? Shall he not harken to the call of Destiny? The idea fascinates him: _nothing_ now _is but what is not_ in his eyes; it also fascinates and draws along with it his wife, his second self, who has instantly and with yet more irresistible violence, thrown herself into the non-existing, which creates itself and already exists.

"Thy letters," (she says), "have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant."

The idea, for her, is visible to the eye, it is "the golden circle," which "fate and metaphysical aid," appear already to have placed upon her brow. The two tremble together, as at the springs of being, in the abode of the mysterious Mothers. They are both doers and sufferers in a process of things, in the appearance of a new greatness: they tremble in that experience, at that creative moment of daring, which demands resolute dedication of the whole man.

But the obstacle towards the realisation of their daring plan, is not a material obstacle, nor is it the cowardice that sometimes attacks the bravest; it is a good of a different sort, not less vigorous, but of a more lofty quality, gentle and serene, planted in the heart of Macbeth and called by the name of loyalty, duty, justice, respect for the being of others, human piety. Thus he feels himself thrown at once into confusion by the idea that has flashed before him, so great is the savage desire, which it has set alight in his breast, and such on the other hand the reverence which the other idea inspires into his deeper being, and against which he prepares for a desperate struggle. The supernatural challenge keeps undulating in his mind, now divine, now diabolical: _cannot be ill, cannot be good._ But his wife, in whom the power of desire displays itself as absolute and whose determination of will is rectilinear, knowing not struggle or only struggles speedily and completely suppressed, his wife, is ready to take his place, when he shows his weak side, or at the moments of his vacillation. In the logical clarity of vision that comes to her as the result of the clearness of view with which she contemplates the achievement of her end, she has discovered an element of danger. It is concealed in the "milk of human kindness," circulating in the blood of Macbeth, whereby he would attain to greatness, without staining himself with crime. Having discovered the cause of the weakness, she applies the remedy. This does not consist in making a frontal attack upon his moral consciousness, or by negating it, but in exciting or strengthening the will for action, the will pure and simple, taking pleasure in itself alone, by making it feel the necessity of expressing in action what seems to it to be beautiful and delightful, and by making it ashamed of not knowing how to remain at the level of the desire which it has encouraged, of the plan that it has formed. Macbeth holds back troubled, because, though he is as bold as man can be in facing danger, he yet feels that the deed now required of him would take away from him the very character of man; but for his wife, that deed would make of him more than a man. The sophistry of the will, to the aid of which comes the conquering seduction of desire, exercises its irresistible action and the deed is accomplished.

It is accomplished, but with it, as Macbeth says to himself, nothing is accomplished or concluded: the same atrocious discord, which appeared with the first thought of the crime, and which has accompanied its preparation and execution, continues to act, and Macbeth is never able to get the better of it, being incapable both of achieving insensibility to the pricks of conscience and at the same time of repentance. He persists in his attitude of the first moment, drunk with greatness, devoured with remorse. He neither can nor will go back, and does go forward; but he goes forward, increasing both the terms of the discord, the sum of his crimes, and the torment of his conscience. No way of salvation opens itself before him: neither the complete redemption of the good, nor the opposite redemption of the completeness of evil; neither the tears that relieve the ferocious soul, nor absolute hardening of the heart. If he had to blame anything for his course of crimes and torments, he would blame life itself, that _fitful fever,_ that stupidity of life, which is

"a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing."

And if there is any image that attracts him from time to time, filling him with the suavity of desire, it is that of sleep, and beyond that, the great final, dissolving sleep, which Duncan, whom he has slaughtered, already enjoys. Thus Macbeth consumes himself, and his other self, his wife, consumes herself also, in a different way, because what was in him an implacable call, to which he could do violence, but could not suppress, presents itself to his wife as the fascinating idea had presented itself to her, in sensible images, and therefore as an obscure rebellion of nature. For this reason, the woman from whose hand the dagger had fallen, when she faced the sleeping Duncan, who seemed to her to be her father, wanders in the night, vainly seeking to remove from her small hands the nauseating odour of blood, which, it seems to her, still clings to them. Both are already dead, before they die, owing to these bitter, long, continuous, internal shocks and corrosions. Macbeth receives the news of the death of her who was his wife, of her whom he had loved and who loved him, with the desolate coldness of one who has renounced all particular affections, and the life of the affections themselves. Yet he will not die like a "Roman fool," he will not slay himself, but will provoke death in battle, still seeking, not death, but victory. For even in his last moments, the internal conflict in him has not ceased, even in those instants, the impulse for greatness rules him and urges him on. To kill himself would be to admit that he was wrong, and he does not admit to himself that he was wrong or right: his tragedy lies in this incapacity to hold himself right or wrong; it is the tragedy of reality contemplated at the moment of conflict and before the solution has been obtained. Therefore he dies austerely, representing a sacred mystery, covered with religious horror.

In _Macbeth,_ the good appears only as revenge taken by the good, as remorse, punishment. It is not personified. The amiable king Duncan glides along on the outside of things, unsuspectful of betrayals, without an inkling of what is passing in the mind of Macbeth, whom he has rewarded and exalted. The honest Macduff, reestablisher of peace and justice, is a warrior pitted against a warrior. Lady Macduff and her son are innocent victims, who flee the knife of the murderers in vain. The boy with his childish logic expresses his wonderment that the good in the world does not choke the evil and replies to his mother, who says that the honest man must do justice upon wicked men and traitors: "Then the liars and swearers are fools; for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them...."

In _King Lear,_ that tempestuous drama, which is nothing but a sequence of betrayals and horrible torments, goodness is impersonated and takes the name of Cordelia, shining in the midst of the tempest, as when the sky is dark and we look, not upon the darkness, but upon the single star that is scintillating there.

An infinite hatred for deceitful wickedness has inspired this work: egoism pure and simple, cruelty, perversity, arouse repugnance and horror, but do not directly lead to that tremendous doubt as to the non-existence of goodness, or still less as to its not being recognisable and separable from its contrary, since that moral deceit, which takes the appearance of rectitude, generosity, loyalty, and when it has realised its purpose, discovers itself as impure cupidity, aridity, hardness of heart, which alone were present throughout. Poor humanity, which has thus allowed itself to be deceived, enters into such a fury, when it has discovered its illusion, both against itself and against the world that has permitted so atrocious an illusion or delusion, as to reach the point of madness. And humanity goes by the name of King Lear, proud, imperious, full of confidence in himself and in his own power and strength of judgment, quite sure that others will agree with his wishes, all the more so, since he is their benefactor and they owe him, not only obedience, but duty and gratitude. King Lear is a creation of pity and of sarcasm: pitiful in his cries of injured pride, of old age deserted, in the shadow of the madness that is falling upon him. He has been sarcastically, though sorrowfully, realised by his creator, because he was mad before he became mad, and the clown who keeps him company, has been and is more serious and clear-sighted than he. But the creative impulse of Shakespeare goes so deeply into the heart of reality, or rather it creates so great a reality, that he neglects everything suggestive of the obvious, vulgar side of things, as seen from an average and mediocre point of view. King Lear assumes gigantic proportions in his sorrow, in his madness, in his piteousness, in his sarcasm, because the passion that shakes him is gigantic. The figures of the two deceitful daughters who are opposed to him, are also gigantic, especially Goneril, to whom Regan, who is somewhat the younger, gives relief. Goneril's are the guiding mind and the initiating will; she it is, who first counsels and instructs her sister, who first faces and dominates her father, and who first recognises her own equal in the iron will of the evil Edmund, loving him and despising her own husband, so weak in his goodness, strives with her sister for the loved one, finally slaying her sister and immediately afterwards, herself. Regan has here and there a fugitive moment, not of piety, but of hesitation and almost of suggestion, and shows herself to be the less strong, just because she always allows herself to be led by the other. Each of them, although both are thus powerfully individuated, express the same force of egoism without scruples, untamed and extreme in its boundlessness. Their personalities are concentrated, felt and expressed, with the whole-hearted hatred of an expert.

Yet we come to think that in this tragedy the inspiration of love--of immense love--is equal to or greater than the inspiration of hate. Perhaps intensity of hatred, making more intense the attraction of goodness, helped to create the figure of Cordelia, which is not a symbol or allegory of abstract goodness, but is all compact of goodness, of a need for purity, for tenderness, for adoration, which has here thrown its real and unreal appearance, an appearance which has poetical reality. Cordelia is goodness itself in its original well-spring, limpid and shining as it gushes forth: she represents moral beauty and is therefore both courageous and hesitating, modest and dignified, ready to disdain contests, where they are of no avail, but also ready to fight bravely, when to do so is of service. Hers is a true and complete goodness, not simply softness, mildness and indulgence. Words have been so misused for purposes of deceit that she has almost abandoned that inadequate means of communication: she is silent, when speech would be vain or would set her truthfulness on the same level as the lies of others. But since she has clear knowledge and a fine sense of her own self and its contrary, she does not allow herself to be confused or enticed by false splendours. _"I know you what you are,"_ she says, looking her sisters in the eyes, as she takes leave of them. And since goodness is also sympathetic intelligence, she understands, pardons and lovingly assists her old father, so unjust and so wanting in understanding toward herself. And since goodness cannot adopt the form of blind passion, even in the act of defence and offence, and even when it refuses to tolerate evil, is forced to bow to the law of severe resignation, which governs the world, and thus entrusts her with its best duty, so Cordelia does not burst into a rage against the wickedness of her sisters, when she hears how King Lear has been driven out and despised, but at once resigns herself to patience in the affliction, "like," as says one who has seen her at that moment, to

"Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
Were like a better day."

There are other personages in the play, who affirm the reality of good against the false assertion of it: the pure and faithful Kent, the loyal though unintelligent Gloucester, the brave Edgar, the weak but honest Duke of Albany, the husband of Goneril, who says:

"Where I could not be honest,
I never yet was valiant."

Finally the perfidious Edmund, when he sees himself near death, hastens to accomplish a good action and to pay homage to virtue. But all these belong to the earth: Cordelia is on the earth, earthly herself and mortal, but she is made of celestial substance, of purest humanity, which is therefore divine. It has occurred to me to compare her with the Soul, whom Friar Jacob likened to the only daughter and heiress of the King of France, and whom her father, for that he loved her infinitely, had adorned "with a white stole," and her fame flew "to every land."

No greater spiritual triumph can be conceived than that of Cordelia, throughout the drama, from the first scene to the last, although she first appears as denied and rejected by her father, and later, when she comes with arms to the aid of the unfortunate Lear against the infernal sisters and the treacherous Edmund, is conquered, thrown into prison and there strangled by the hangman. Why? Why does not goodness triumph in the material world? And, why, thus conquered, does she increase in beauty, evoke ever more disconsolate desire, until she is finally adored as something sacred? The tragedy of King Lear is penetrated throughout with this unexpressed yet anguished interrogation, so full of the sense of the misery of life. The king, acquiring new sensibility in his madness, as though a veil had been withdrawn from before his eyes, sees and receives for the first time in himself, suffering humanity, weeping and trembling, like a child, defenceless, ill-treated. The fool, who accompanies him, sings, along with much else, his prophecy to the effect that when calumnies cease, when kings are punished, and usurers and thieves give up their trade, then all the kingdom of Albion will be in great confusion. But the sorrow of sorrows is that of Lear, when, having found Cordelia, he dreams of being ever after at her side, adoring, and sees the prison transformed into a paradise: they will sing, he will kneel before her, they will pray, and tell one another ancient tales. But she is brutally slain before his eyes and her dead body lies in his arms, as he vainly strives to reanimate it, and he too dies, uttering the last cry of desperation:

"Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never!--"

In the tragedy of _Othello,_ evil takes on another face, and here the sentiment that answers to it, is not condemnation mixed with pity, not horror for hypocrisy and cruelty, but astonishment. Iago does not represent evil done through a dream of greatness, or evil for the egoistic satisfaction of his own desires, but evil for evil's sake, done almost as though through an artistic need, in order to realise his own being and feel it strong, dominating and destructive, even in the subordinate social condition in which he is placed. Certainly, Iago, in what he says, wishes it to be believed or makes himself believe that he is aiming only at his "own advantage," as Guicciardini would have said, and that he despises those who have different rule of conduct and manage to live honestly, the _honest knaves._ But the truth is that he does not obtain any material advantage for himself, and that the path he has selected was not necessary for that object and does not lead to it. Feelings of vengeance for injustices and affronts suffered lead to it still less, though at times he says they do, and wishes it to be believed or tries to believe it himself. What results from his acts is evil as an end in itself, arising from a turbid desire to prove himself superior to the rest of the world, to delude and to make it dance to the tune of his own mind, and in proof of this to bring it to ruin. The fact that he gives various reasons, with the object of justifying and of explaining his acts, demonstrates that he himself failed to understand that peculiar form of evil which possessed his spirit. None of those about him suspect him: not Othello, a simple, impetuous soldier, who understands open strife and plotting, but both in war and between one enemy and another. He is quite unable to conceive this refined and intellectual degradation. Desdemona, too, a young woman newly married, rejoicing in the happiness of realized affection and disposed to find everyone about her good and to make everyone happy, is unsuspicious, as also is Cassio, who trusts Iago, as a brave and loyal comrade, and his wife, the experienced Emilia, who knows him from long habit. The epithets of "good Iago," of "honest Iago" ring through the whole play and are a bitter and ironical comment underlining the illusion that possesses them all. He is weaving, without reason, and as it were for amusement, a horrible web of calumnies, of moral and physical tortures and of death: a good and generous man, rendered blind and mad with jealousy and injured honour, is thus led to murder his innocent and beloved wife. Pity and terror arise together in the soul, as we see Othello poisoned drop by drop, excited, changed Into a wild beast: one feels that in Desdemona the warrior possessed all the sweetness and all the force of life, the happiness on which reposed all the rest, and that in her person he had found all that one can conceive as most noble, most gentle and most pure in the world. When he suspects that she has betrayed him, not only is he pierced with sensual jealousy, (this too there is, certainly), but injured in what he holds sacred, and therefore the death that he deals to Desdemona is not simply vengeance for the shame done him, but above all expiation and purification, as though he wished to purify the world of such impurity, and to cleanse her from a stain, which irremediably defiled her. "O, the pity of all this, Iago! O, Iago, the pity of all this!" He kisses her before he kills her, kissing his own ideal, which he lays at that moment in the sepulchre. But he still trembles with love, and perhaps hopes somehow to get her back and to be united with her forever, by means of that bloody sacrifice. Desdemona is not aware of the fury raging around her, sure as she is of her love and of Othello's. Owing to her very innocence, she affords involuntary incentives to the jealousy of Othello and easy occasion to the artifice of Iago. Her very unconsciousness makes her fate the more moving. Such is the infamy of the crime thus accomplished against her, that the prosaic, shifty wife of Iago becomes sublime with indignation and courage, when she sees her dying, rising to poetic nobility and defying every menace. Transpierced by her husband, she falls at the side of her mistress and dying sings the willow song, which she had caught from the lips of Desdemona. Othello also dies, when the deceit has been revealed to him. The leader whom Venice had held in great honour and in whom she had reposed complete faith, charging him with commands and governments, is now nothing but a wretch deserving punishment. But in slaying himself, he returns in memory to what he was, substituting that image of himself for his present misery, and using the memory of the warrior that he was, to drive the sword deeper into his throat.

On the other hand, the rallying-point or centre of the whole play is not the ruin of the valiant Othello, not the cruel fate of the gentle Desdemona, but the work, of Iago, of that demidevil, of whom one might ask in vain, why, as Othello asked, why he had thus noosed the bodies and souls of those men, who had never nourished any suspicion of him?

"Demand me nothing; what you know, you know
From this time forth I never will speak word."

This was the answer to the poet from that most mysterious form of evil, when he met with it, as he was contemplating the universe: perversity, which is an end and a joy to itself.

5

THE TRAGEDY OF THE WILL

The tragedy of the good and evil will, is sometimes followed, sometimes preceded by another tragedy, that of the will itself. Here the will, instead of holding the passions in control--making its footstool of them--allows itself to be dominated by them in their onrush; or it seeks the good, but remains uncertain, dissatisfied as to the path chosen; or finally, when it fails to find its own way, a way of some sort, and does not know what to think of itself or of the world, it preys upon itself in this empty tension.

A typical form of this first condition of the will is voluptuousness, which overspreads a soul and makes itself mistress there, inebriating, sending to sleep, destroying and liquefying the will. When we think of that enchanting sweetness and perdition, the image of death arises at the same instant, because it truly is death, if not physical, yet always internal and moral death, death of the spirit, without which man is already a corpse in process of decomposition. The tragedy of _Anthony and Cleopatra_ is composed of the violent sense of pleasure, in its power to bind and to dominate, coupled with a shudder at its abject effects of dissolution and of death.

He moves in a world all kisses and caresses, languors, sounds, perfumes, shimmer of gold and splendid garments, flashing of lights or silence of deep shadows, enjoyment, now ecstatic, now spasmodic and furious. Cleopatra is queen of this world, avid for pleasure, which she herself bestows, diffusing around her its quivering sense, instilling a frantic desire for it into all, offering herself as an example and an incitement, but while conferring it on others, remaining herself a regal and almost a mystical personage. A Roman who has plunged into that world, spoke then of her, astonished at her power, demoniac or divine;

"Age cannot wither nor custom stale
Her infinite variety."

Cleopatra asks for songs and music, that she may melt into that sea of melody, which heightens pleasure:

"Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love!"

She knows how to toy with men, keeping their interest alive by her denials:

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

Her words express sensual fascination in its most terrible form:

"There is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss; a hand that kings
Have lipped, and trembled kissing."

All around her dance to the same tune and imitate the rhythmic folly of her life. Note the scene of the two waiting women, who are joking about their loves, their future marriages, and the manner of their deaths, with the soothsayer. Listen to the first words of Carminia, so mirthful and caressing in her playful coquetry: "Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost most absolute Alexas, where's the soothsayer that you praised so to the queen? O, that I knew this husband, which, you say, must charge his horns with garlands!" ...

Anthony is seized and dragged into this vertiginous course of pungent pleasures, as soon as he appears. In his inebriation the rest of the world, all the active, real world, seems heavy, prosaic, contemptible and displeasing. The very name of Rome has no longer any power over him.

"Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: one dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man."

As he folds Cleopatra in his arms, he feels that they form a pair who make life more noble, and that in them alone it assumes real significance.

This feeling is not love: we have already called it by its proper name: voluptuousness. Cleopatra loves pleasure and caprice, and the dominion, which both of them afford her; she also loves Anthony, because he is, and in so far as he is, part of her pleasures and caprices, and serves her as an instrument of dominion. She busies herself with keeping him bound to her, struggles to retain him when he removes himself from her, but she always has an eye to other things, which are equally necessary for her, even more so than he, and in order to retain them, she would be ready if necessary to give Anthony in exchange. Anthony too, does not love her; he clearly sees her for what she is, imprecates against her, and enfolds her in his embrace without forgiveness.

"Shed not a tear; give me a kiss:
Even this repays me."

Love demands union of some sort between two beings for an objective end, with the moral consent of both; but here we are outside morality, and even outside the will. We are caught in the whirlwind and carried along.

Anthony it is, who weakens and is conquered. He has lived an active life, which, in the present moment of folly, he holds of no account. He has known war, political strife, the government of States; he has even been brushed with the wing of glory and of victory. He tries several times to grasp his own past and to direct his future. He has not lost his ethical judgment, for he recognizes Cleopatra as she really is, bows reverently before the memory of Fulvia, and treats his new wife Octavia, whom also he will abandon, with respect. For a brief moment, he returns to the world he once knew, takes part in political business, comes to terms with his colleagues and rivals. It would seem that he had disentangled himself from the chain that bound him. But the effort is not lasting, the chain encircles him again; vainly and with ever declining power of resistance, he yields to that destiny, which is on the side of Octavius, the man without loves, so cold and so firm of will. Bad fortune dogs every step of the voluptuary: those that surround him remark a change in his appearance from what he was formerly. They see him betray this change by uttering thoughts that are almost ridiculously feeble, and making inane remarks. They are led to reflect that the mind of man is nothing but a part of his fortune and that external things conform to things internal. He himself feels that he is inwardly dissolving, and compares himself to the changing forms of the clouds, dissolved with a breath of wind, like water turning to water. Yet the man, who is thus in process of disaggregation, was once great, and still affords flashes of greatness, bursting forth in feats of warlike prowess, accompanied with lofty speech and generous actions. His generosity confounds Enobarbus, who had deserted him and now takes his own life for very shame. Around him are yet those ready to die for sake of the affection that he inspires. Cleopatra stands lower or higher: she has never known nor has ever desired to know any life but that of caprice and pleasure. There is logic, will, consistency, in her vertiginous abandonment. She is consistent also in taking her own life, when she sees that she would die in a Roman prison, thus escaping shame and the mockeries of the triumphant foe, and selecting a death of regal voluptuousness. And with her die her faithful handmaids, by a similar death; they have known her as their queen and goddess of pleasure, and now as despising _this vile world_ and a life no longer worthy of being lived, because no longer beautiful and brilliant. Carminia, before she slays herself takes a last farewell of her mistress:

"Downy windows close;
And golden Phoebus never be beheld
Of eyes again so royal! Your crown's awry;
I'll mend it, and then play."

The tragedy of the will, which is most poetically lofty in _Anthony and Cleopatra,_ is nevertheless morally a low form, that is to say, it is simple and elementary in its roughness, such as would manifest itself in a soldier like Anthony, the bloody, quarrelsome, pleasure-seeking, crapulous Anthony.

It shows itself in an atmosphere far more subtle with Hamlet. Hamlet, the hero so refined intellectually, so delicate in taste, so conscious of moral values, comes to the action, not from the Roman forum or from the battlefields of Gaul or Pharsalia, but from the University of Wittenberg. In _Hamlet,_ the seductions of the will are altogether overcome; duty is no longer a condition, or a vain effort, but a spontaneous and regular attitude. The obstacle against which it strives is not external to it, it is no inebriation of the senses; it is internal, the will itself in the dialectic of its becoming, in its passage from meditation to purpose and from purpose to action, in its becoming will, true, concrete, factual will.

Hamlet has with reason often been recognised as a companion and precursor of Brutus in _Julius Caesar,_ a play which differs from the "historical tragedies," more substantially even than _Anthony and Cleopatra,_ which is restricted to the practical activity. _Hamlet_ attains to a more lofty significance. Here too we find a tragedy of the will in a man whose ethical conscientiousness is not internally troubled, for he lives upon a sublime plane; and here too the obstacle arises from the very bosom of the will. Brutus differs from Hamlet, in that he comes to a decision and acts; but his action is accompanied with disgust and repugnance for the impurity with which its accomplishment must be stained. He reproves, condemns and abhors the political end towards which Caesar is tending, but he does not hate Caesar; he would like to destroy that end, to strike at the soul of Caesar, but not to destroy his body and with it his life. He bows reluctantly to necessity and with the others decides upon his death, but requests that honours should be payed to Caesar dead, and spares Anthony contrary to the advice of Cassius, because, as he says, he is a priest bound to sacrifice the necessary victim; but he is not a butcher. Melancholy dogs every step toward the achievement of his end. He differs here from Cassius, who does not experience like scruples and delicacy of feeling, but desires the end, by whatever means. He differs too from Anthony, who discovers at once the path to tread and enters it; cautious and resolute, he will triumph over him. He finds everywhere impurity: Cassius, his friend, his brother, behaves in such a way as to make him doubt his right to shed the blood of the mighty Julius, because, instead of that justice, which he has thought to promote and to restore by his act, he now sees only rapine and injustice. But if the spiritual greatness of Brutus shrouds him in sadness, it does not deprive him of the capacity for feeling and understanding human nature. His difference with Cassius comes to an end with his friend's sorrow, that friend who loves and admires him sincerely, and yet cannot be other than he is, hoping that his friend will not condemn too severely his faults and vices, but pass them over in indulgent silence. The reconciliation of the two is sealed when Brutus reveals his wounded heart, as he briefly tells his friend of Portia's death. He enfolds himself in his grief. Brutus is among those who have always meditated upon death and fortified themselves with the thought of it. His suffering is not limited to virtue forced into contamination; for he is haunted by doubt unexpressed. He feels that man is surrounded with mystery, the mystery of Fate, or, as we should say, with the mystery surrounding the future history of the world; he seems to be anxiously asking of himself if the way that he has chosen and followed is the best and wisest way, or whether some evil genius has not introduced itself into his life, in order to drive him to perdition? He hears at night the voice of the evil genius amid the sounds and songs that should give rest and repose to his agitated spirit. He prepares himself to face the coming battle, with the same invincible sadness. It is the day that will bring to an end the work begun on the Ides of March. He takes leave of Cassius, doubtful if he will ever see him again, saying farewell to him for ever:

"If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made."

O, if man could know the event of that day before it befell! But it must suffice to know that day will have an end, and that the end will be known. Mighty powers govern the world, Brutus resigns himself to them: they may have already judged him guilty or be about to do so.