Chapter LVIII: Section III: Shakespeare's Language And Manners

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. Shakespeare does just the contrary, because his genius is the exact opposite. His master faculty is an impassioned imagination, freed from the shackles of reason and morality. He abandons himself to it, and finds in man nothing that he would care to lop off. He accepts nature and finds it beautiful in its entirety. He paints it in its littlenesses, it deformities, its weaknesses, its excesses, its irregularities, and its rages; he exhibits man at his meals, in bed, at play, drunk, mad, sick; he adds that which ought not to be seen to that which passes on the stage. He does not dream of ennobling, but of copying human life, and aspires only to make his copy more energetic and more striking than the original.

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. Shakespeare'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, 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? _Polixenes._ If at home, sir, 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."[641]

There are a score of such passages in Shakespeare. 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 a habitual duty, to dream of some stale pleasure or some ordinary annoyance, that is in which we employ all our time. Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare 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. Shakespeare'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 Shakespeare 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,[642] and you may measure the difference of the two poets and the two civilizations:

"_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, 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 honorable parts, Proportion'd as one's thoughts 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."[643]

This method of exhorting one's child to marry is peculiar to Shakespeare and the sixteenth century. 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. Shakespeare'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.[644]

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 humor, deal one another hard blows; so it is pretty well with the conversation of the lords and ladies of Shakespeare who are in a sportive mood; for instance, Beatrice and Benedick, very well bred folk as things go,[645] 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."[646]

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."[647]

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, not conceiving themselves to be smirched.

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. Shakespeare lugs upon the stage all the atrocious deeds of the Civil Wars. These are the ways of wolves and hyenas. We must read of Jack Cade's sedition[648] 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. 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 England 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 in one livery.... And here sitting upon London-stone, I charge and command that, of the city's cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing but 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 tribute; there shall not a maid be married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have it. (_Re-enter rebels with the heads of Lord Say and his son-in-law._) But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive."[649]

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 cannibal manners only met with among the scum? Why, the princes are worse. The Duke of Cornwall orders the old Earl of Gloucester to be tied to a chair, because, owing to him, King Lear has escaped:

"Fellows, hold the chair. Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot. (_Gloucester is held down in the chair, while Cornwall plucks out one of his eyes, and sets his foot on it._) _Glou._ He that will think to live till he be old, Give me some help! O cruel: O you gods! _Regan._ One side will mock another; the other too. _Cornwall._ If you see vengeance-- _Servant._ Hold your hand, my lord: I have served you ever since I was a child; But better service have I never done you, Than now to bid you hold. _Regan._ How now, you dog! _Serv._ If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean? _Corn._ My villain! (_Draws and runs at him._) _Serv._ Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger. (_Draws; they fight; Cornwall is wounded._) _Regan._ Give me thy sword. A peasant stands up thus. (_Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him._) _Serv._ O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left To see some mischief on him. O! (_Dies._) _Corn._ Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now? _Glou._ All dark and comfortless. Where's my son?... _Regan._ Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover."[650]

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 every-day 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 familiar, significant, precise details, that they reveal under every word of every personage a complete civilization, is the work of a concentrated and all-powerful imagination. This species of manners and this energy of description indicate the same faculty, unique and excessive, which the style had already indicated.