Chapter VI: Introduction: Proposition (5)

The two main ideas of Shakespeare's portrait, the idea of an artist in crime and the fascination of invincibility which Richard bears about with him, are strikingly illustrated in the wooing of Lady Anne. [=i.= ii.] For a long time Richard will not put forth effort, but meets the loathing and execration hurled at him with repartee, saying in so many words that he regards the scene as a 'keen encounter of our wits.' [115.] All this time the mysterious power of his presence is operating, the more strongly as Lady Anne sees the most unanswerable cause that denunciation ever had to put produce no effect upon her adversary, and feels her own confidence in her wrongs recoiling upon herself. [from 152.] When the spell has had time to work then he assumes a serious tone: suddenly, as we have seen, turning the strong point of Anne's attack, his own inhuman nature, into the basis of his plea--he who never wept before has been softened by love to her. From this point he urges his cause with breathless speed; [175.] he presses a sword into her hand with which to pierce his breast, knowing that she lacks the nerve to wield it, and seeing how such forbearance on her part will be a starting-point in giving way. [from 193.] We can trace the sinking of her will before the unconquerable will of her adversary in her feebler and feebler refusals, while as yet very shame keeps her to an outward defiance. Then, when she is wishing to yield, he suddenly finds her an excuse by declaring that all he desires at this moment is that she should leave the care of the King's funeral

To him that hath more cause to be a mourner.

By yielding this much to penitence and religion we see she has commenced a downward descent from which she will never recover. Such consummate art in the handling of human nature, backed by the spell of an irresistible presence, the weak Anne has no power to combat. [=iv.= i. 66-87.] To the last she is as much lost in amazement as the reader at the way it has all come about:

Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,
Even in so short a space, my woman's heart
Grossly grew captive to his honey words.

[_Ideal_ v. _real villainy_]

To gather up our results. A dramatist is to paint a portrait of ideal villainy as distinct from villainy in real life. In real life it is a commonplace that a virtuous life is a life of effort; but the converse is not true, that he who is prepared to be a villain will therefore lead an easy life. On the contrary, 'the _way_ of transgressors is hard.' The metaphor suggests a path, laid down at first by the Architect of the universe, beaten plain and flat by the generations of men who have since trodden it: he who keeps within this path of rectitude will walk, not without effort, yet at least with safety; but he who 'steps aside' to the right or left will find his way beset with pitfalls and stumblingblocks. In real life a man sets out to be a villain, but his mental power is deficient, and he remains a villain only in intention. Or he has stores of power, but lacks the spark of purpose to set them aflame. Or, armed with both will to plan and mind to execute, yet his efforts are hampered by unfit tools. Or, if his purpose needs reliance alone on his own clear head and his own strong arm, yet in the critical moment the emotional nature he has inherited with his humanity starts into rebellion and scares him, like Macbeth, from the half-accomplished deed. Or, if he is as hardened in nature as corrupt in mind and will, yet he is closely pursued by a mocking fate, which crowns his well-laid plans with a mysterious succession of failures. Or, if there is no other limitation on him from within or from without, yet he may move in a world too narrow to give him scope: the man with a heart to be the scourge of his country proves in fact no more than the vagabond of a country side.--But in Shakespeare's portrait we have infinite capacity for mischief, needing no purpose, for evil has become to it an end in itself; we have one who for tools can use the baseness of his own nature or the shame of those who are his nearest kin, while at his touch all that is holiest becomes transformed into weapons of iniquity. We have one whose nature in the past has been a gleaning ground for evil in every stage of his development, and who in the present is framed to look on unnatural horror with the eyes of interested curiosity. We have one who seems to be seconded by fate with a series of successes, which builds up for him an irresistibility that is his strongest safeguard; and who, instead of being cramped by circumstances, has for his stage the world of history itself, in which crowns are the prize and nations the victims. In such a portrait is any element wanting to arrive at the ideal of villainy?

[_Ideal villainy_ v. _monstrosity._]

The question would rather be whether Shakespeare has not gone too far, and, passing outside the limits of art, exhibited a monstrosity. Nor is it an answer to point to the 'dramatic hedging' by which Richard is endowed with undaunted personal courage, unlimited intellectual power, and every good quality not inconsistent with his perfect villainy. The objection to such a portrait as the present study presents is that it offends against our sense of the principles upon which the universe has been constructed; we feel that before a violation of nature could attain such proportions nature must have exerted her recuperative force to crush it. If, however, the dramatist can suggest that such reassertion of nature is actually made, that the crushing blow is delayed only while it is accumulating force: in a word, if the dramatist can draw out before us a _Nemesis_ as ideal as the villainy was ideal, then the full demands of art will be satisfied. The Nemesis that dominates the whole play of _Richard III_ will be the subject of the next study.

V.

RICHARD III: HOW SHAKESPEARE WEAVES NEMESIS INTO HISTORY.

_A Study in Plot._

[_Richard III: from the Character side a violation of Nemesis;_]

I HAVE alluded already to the dangerous tendency, which, as it appears to me, exists amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare, to ignore plot as of secondary importance, and to look for Shakespeare's greatness mainly in his conceptions of character. But the full character effect of a dramatic portrait cannot be grasped if it be dissociated from the plot; and this is nowhere more powerfully illustrated than in the play of _Richard III_. The last study was devoted exclusively to the Character side of the play, and on this confined view the portrait of Richard seemed a huge offence against our sense of moral equilibrium, rendering artistic satisfaction impossible. Such an impression vanishes when, as in the present study, the drama is looked at from the side of Plot. [_from the side of Plot, the transformation of history into Nemesis._] The effect of this plot is, however, missed by those who limit their attention in reviewing it to Richard himself. These may feel that there is nothing in his fate to compensate for the spectacle of his crimes: man must die, and a death in fulness of energy amid the glorious stir of battle may seem a fate to be envied. But the Shakespearean Drama with its complexity of plot is not limited to the individual life and fate in its interpretation of history; and when we survey all the distinct trains of interest in the play of _Richard III_, with their blendings and mutual influence, we shall obtain a sense of dramatic satisfaction amply counterbalancing the monstrosity of Richard's villainy. Viewed as a study in character the play leaves in us only an intense craving for Nemesis: when we turn to consider the plot, this presents to us the world of history transformed into an intricate design of which the recurrent pattern is Nemesis.

[_The underplot: a set of separate Nemesis Actions._]

This notion of tracing a pattern in human affairs is a convenient key to the exposition of plot. Laying aside for the present the main interest of Richard himself, we may observe that the bulk of the drama consists in a number of minor interests--single threads of the pattern--each of which is a separate example of Nemesis. [_Clarence._] The first of these trains of interest centres around the Duke of Clarence. He has betrayed the Lancastrians, to whom he had solemnly sworn fealty, for the sake of the house of York; [=i.= iv. 50, 66.] this perjury is his bitterest recollection in his hour of awakened conscience, and is urged home by the taunts of his murderers; while his only defence is that he did it all for his brother's love. [=ii.= i. 86.] Yet his lot is to fall by a treacherous death, the warrant for which is signed by this brother, the King and head of the Yorkist house, [=i.= iv. 250.] while its execution is procured by the bulwark of the house, the intriguing Richard. [_The King._] The centre of the second nemesis is the King, who has thus allowed himself in a moment of suspicion to be made a tool for the murder of his brother, seeking to stop it when too late. [=ii.= i. 77-133.] Shakespeare has contrived that this death of Clarence, announced as it is in so terrible a manner beside the King's sick bed, gives him a shock from which he never rallies, and he is carried out to die with the words on his lips:

O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold
On me, and you, and mine, and yours for this.

[_The Queen and her kindred._]

In this nemesis on the King are associated the Queen and her kindred. They have been assenting parties to the measures against Clarence (however little they may have contemplated the bloody issue to which those measures have been brought by the intrigues of Gloster). [=ii.= ii. 62-65.] This we must understand from the introduction of Clarence's children, who serve no purpose except to taunt the Queen in her bereavement:

_Boy._ Good aunt, you wept not for our father's death;
How can we aid you with our kindred tears?

_Girl._ Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd;
Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!

[=ii.= ii. 74, &c.]

The death of the King, so unexpectedly linked to that of Clarence, removes from the Queen and her kindred the sole bulwark to the hated Woodville family, and leaves them at the mercy of their enemies. [_Hastings._] A third nemesis Action has Hastings for its subject. [=i.= i. 66; =iii.= ii. 58, &c.] Hastings is the head of the court-faction which is opposed to the Queen and her allies, and he passes all bounds of decency in his exultation at the fate which overwhelms his adversaries:

But I shall laugh at this a twelvemonth hence,
That they who brought me in my master's hate,
I live to look upon their tragedy.

He even forgets his dignity as a nobleman, and stops on his way to the Tower to chat with a mere officer of the court, [=iii.= ii. 97.] in order to tell him the news of which he is full, that his enemies are to die that day at Pomfret. Yet this very journey of Hastings is his journey to the block; the same cruel fate which had descended upon his opponents, from the same agent and by the same unscrupulous doom, is dealt out to Hastings in his turn. [_Buckingham._] In this treacherous casting off of Hastings when he is no longer useful, Buckingham has been a prime agent. [=iii.= ii, from 114.] Buckingham amused himself with the false security of Hastings, adding to Hastings's innocent expression of his intention to stay dinner at the Tower the aside

And supper too, although thou know'st it not;

while in the details of the judicial murder he plays second to Richard. By precisely similar treachery he is himself cast off when he hesitates to go further with Richard's villainous schemes; [=iv.= ii, from 86.] and in precisely similar manner the treachery is flavoured with contempt.

_Buck._ I am thus bold to put your grace in mind
Of what you promised me.

_K. Rich._ Well, but what's o'clock?

_Buck._ Upon the stroke of ten.

_K. Rich._ Well, let it strike.

_Buck._ Why let it strike?

_K. Rich._ Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke
Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.
I am not in the giving vein to-day.

_Buck._ Why, then resolve me whether you will or no.

_K. Rich._ Tut, tut.
Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.

[_Exeunt all but Buckingham._

_Buck._ Is it even so? rewards he my true service
With such deep contempt? made I him king for this?
O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone
To Brecknock, while my fearful head is on!

[_The four nemeses formed into a system by nemesis as a link._]

These four Nemesis Actions, it will be observed, are not separate trains of incident going on side by side, they are linked together into a system, the law of which is seen to be that those who triumph in one nemesis become the victims of the next; so that the whole suggests a 'chain of destruction,' like that binding together the orders of the brute creation which live by preying upon one another. When Clarence perished it was the King who dealt the doom and the Queen's party who triumphed: the wheel of Nemesis goes round and the King's death follows the death of his victim, the Queen's kindred are naked to the vengeance of their enemies, and Hastings is left to exult. Again the wheel of Nemesis revolves, and Hastings at the moment of his highest exultation is hurled to destruction, while Buckingham stands by to point the moral with a gibe. Once more the wheel goes round, and Buckingham hears similar gibes addressed to himself and points the same moral in his own person. Thus the portion of the drama we have so far considered yields us a pattern within a pattern, a series of Nemesis Actions woven into a complete underplot by a connecting-link which is also Nemesis.

[_The 'Enveloping Action' a nemesis._]

Following out the same general idea we may proceed to notice how the dramatic pattern is surrounded by a fringe or border. The picture of life presented in a play will have the more reality if it be connected with a life wider than its own. There is no social sphere, however private, but is to some extent affected by a wider life outside it, this by one wider still, until the great world is reached the story of which is History. The immediate interest may be in a single family, but it will be a great war which, perhaps, takes away some member of this family to die in battle, or some great commercial crisis which brings mutation of fortune to the obscure home. The artists of fiction are solicitous thus to suggest connections between lesser and greater; it is the natural tendency of the mind to pass from the known to the unknown, and if the artist can derive the movements in his little world from the great world outside, he appears to have given his fiction a basis of admitted truth to rest on. This device of enclosing the incidents of the actual story in a framework of great events--technically, the 'Enveloping Action'--is one which is common in Shakespeare; it is enough to instance such a case as _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, in which play a fairy story has a measure of historic reality given to it by its connection with the marriage of personages so famous as Theseus and Hippolyta. In the present case, the main incidents and personages belong to public life; nevertheless the effect in question is still secured, and the contest of factions with which the play is occupied is represented as making up only a few incidents in the great feud of Lancaster and York. This Enveloping Action of the whole play, the War of the Roses, is marked with special clearness: two personages are introduced for the sole purpose of giving it prominence. [=ii.= ii. 80.] The Duchess of York is by her years and position the representative of the whole house; the factions who in the play successively triumph and fall are all descended from herself; she says:

Alas, I am the mother of these moans!
Their woes are parcell'd, mine are general.

[=i.= iii, from 111; and =iv.= iv. 1-125.]

And probabilities are forced to bring in Queen Margaret, the head and sole rallying-point of the ruined Lancastrians: when the two aged women are confronted the whole civil war is epitomised. It is hardly necessary to point out that this Enveloping Action is itself a Nemesis Action. All the rising and falling, the suffering and retaliation that we actually see going on between the different sections of the Yorkist house, constitute a detail in a wider retribution: [esp. =ii.= ii; =iv.= i; =iv.= iv.] the presence of the Duchess gives to the incidents a unity, [=ii.= iii; and =iv.= iv.] Queen Margaret's function is to point out that this unity of woe is only the nemesis falling on the house of York for their wrongs to the house of Lancaster. Thus the pattern made up of so many reiterations of nemesis is enclosed in a border which itself repeats the same figure.

[_The Enveloping Nemesis carried on into indefiniteness._]

The effect is carried further. Generally the Enveloping Action is a sort of curtain by which our view of a drama is bounded; in the present case the curtain is at one point lifted, and we get a glimpse into the world beyond. Queen Margaret has surprised the Yorkist courtiers, and her prophetic denunciations are still ringing, in which she points to the calamities her foes have begun to suffer as retribution for the woes of which her fallen greatness is the representative--[=i.= iii. 174-194.] when Gloster suddenly turns the tables upon her.

The curse my noble father laid on thee,
When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper
And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes,
And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout
Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland,--
His curses, then from bitterness of soul
Denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee;
And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed.

And the new key-note struck by Gloster is taken up in chorus by the rest, who find relief from the crushing effect of Margaret's curses by pressing the charge home upon her. This is only a detail, but it is enough to carry the effect of the Enveloping Action a degree further back in time: the events of the play are nemesis on York for wrongs done to Lancaster, but now, it seems, these old wrongs against Lancaster were retribution for yet older crimes Lancaster had committed against York. As in architecture the vista is contrived so as to carry the general design of the building into indefiniteness, so here, while the grand nemesis, of which Margaret's presence is the representative, shuts in the play like a veil, the momentary lifting of the veil opens up a vista of nemeses receding further and further back into history.

[_The one attempt to reverse the nemesis confirms it._]

Once more. All that we have seen suggests it as a sort of law to the feud of York and Lancaster that each is destined to wreak vengeance on the other, and then itself suffer in turn. [=i.= ii.] But at one notable point of the play an attempt is made to evade the hereditary nemesis by the marriage of Richard and Lady Anne. Anne, daughter to Warwick--the grand deserter to the Lancastrians and martyr to their cause--widow to the murdered heir of the house and chief mourner to its murdered head, is surely the greatest sufferer of the Lancastrians at the hands of the Yorkists. Richard is certainly the chief avenger of York upon Lancaster. When the chief source of vengeance and the chief sufferer are united in the closest of all bonds, the attempt to evade Nemesis becomes ideal. Yet what is the consequence? This attempt of Lady Anne to evade the hereditary curse proves the very channel by which the curse descends upon herself. [=iv.= i. 66-87.] We see her once more: she is then on her way to the Tower, and we hear her tell the strange story of her wooing, and wish the crown were 'red hot steel to sear her to the brain'; never, she says, since her union with Richard has she enjoyed the golden dew of sleep; she is but waiting for the destruction, by which, no doubt, Richard will shortly rid himself of her.

[_To counteract the effect of repetition the nemeses are specially emphasised:_]

An objection may, however, here present itself, that continual repetition of an idea like Nemesis, tends to weaken its artistic effect, until it comes to be taken for granted. No doubt it is a law of taste that force may be dissipated by repetition if carried beyond a certain point. But it is to be noted, on the other hand, what pains Shakespeare has taken to counteract the tendency in the present instance. The force of a nemesis may depend upon a fitness that addresses itself to the spectator's reflection, or it may be measured by the degree to which the nemesis is brought into prominence in the incidents themselves. [_by recognition,_] In the incidents of the present play special means are adopted to make the recognition of the successive nemeses as they arise emphatic. In the first place the nemesis is in each case pointed out at the moment of its fulfilment. [=i.= iv, from 18.] In the case of Clarence his story of crime and retribution is reflected in his dream before it is brought to a conclusion in reality; and wherein the bitterness of this review consists, we see when he turns to his sympathising jailor and says:

[=i.= iv. 66.]

O Brackenbury, I have done those things,
Which now bear evidence against my soul,
For Edward's sake: and see how he requites me!

The words have already been quoted in which the King recognises how God's justice has overtaken him for his part in Clarence's death, and those in which the children of Clarence taunt the Queen with her having herself to bear the bereavement she has made them suffer. As the Queen's kindred are being led to their death, one of them exclaims:

[=iii.= iii. 15.]

Now Margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads
For standing by when Richard stabb'd her son.

Hastings, when his doom has wakened him from his infatuation, recollects a priest he had met on his way to the Tower, with whom he had stopped to talk about the discomfiture of his enemies:

[=iii.= iv. 89.]

O, now I want the priest that spake to me!

Buckingham on his way to the scaffold apostrophises the souls of his victims:

[=v.= i. 7.]

If that your moody discontented souls
Do through the clouds behold this present hour,
Even for revenge mock my destruction.

[=iv.= iv. 1, 35.] And such individual notes of recognition are collected into a sort of chorus when Margaret appears the second time to point out the fulfilment of her curses, and sits down beside the old Duchess and her daughter-in-law to join in the 'society of sorrow' and 'cloy her' with beholding the revenge for which she has hungered.

[_by prophecy,_]

Again, the nemeses have a further emphasis given to them by prophecy. [=i.= iii, from 195.] As Queen Margaret's second appearance is to mark the fulfilment of a general retribution, so her first appearance denounced it beforehand in the form of curses. And the effect is carried on in individual prophecies: the Queen's friends as they suffer foresee that the turn of the opposite party will come:

[=iii.= iii. 7.]

You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter;

and Hastings prophesies Buckingham's doom:

[=iii.= iv. 109.]

They smile at me that shortly shall be dead.

It is as if the atmosphere cleared for each sufferer with the approach of death, and they then saw clearly the righteous plan on which the universe is constructed, and which had been hidden from them by the dust of life.

[_and especially by irony._]

But there is a third means, more powerful than either recognition or prophecy, which Shakespeare has employed to make his Nemesis Actions emphatic. The danger of an effect becoming tame by repetition he has met by giving to each train of nemesis a flash of irony at some point of its course. In the case of Lady Anne we have already seen how the exact channel Nemesis chooses by which to descend upon her is the attempt she made to avert it. She had bitterly cursed her husband's murderer:

[=iv.= i. 75.]

And be thy wife--if any be so mad--
As miserable by the life of thee
As thou hast made me by my dear lord's death!

In spite of this she had yielded to Richard's mysterious power, and so, as she feels, proved the _subject of her own heart's curse_. Again, it was noticed in the preceding study how the Queen, less hard than the rest in that wicked court, or perhaps softened by the spectacle of her dying husband, essayed to reverse, when too late, what had been done against Clarence; [=ii.= i. 134.] Gloster skilfully turned this compunction of conscience into a ground of suspicion on which he traded to bring all the Queen's friends to the block, and thus a moment's relenting was made into a means of destruction. [=i.= iv. 187, 199, 200, 206.] In Clarence's struggle for life, as one after another the threads of hope snap, as the appeal to law is met by the King's command, the appeal to heavenly law by the reminder of his own sin, [=i.= iv. 232.] he comes to rest for his last and surest hope upon his powerful brother Gloster--and the very murderers catch the irony of the scene:

_Clar._ If you be hired for meed, go back again,
And I will send you to my brother Gloster,
Who shall reward you better for my life
Than Edward will for tidings of my death.

_Sec. Murd._ You are deceived, your brother Gloster hates you.

_Clar._ O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear:
Go you to him from me.

_Both._ Ay, so we will.

_Clar._ Tell him, when that our princely father York
Bless'd his three sons with his victorious arm,
And charg'd us from his soul to love each other,
He little thought of this divided friendship:
Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep.

_First Murd._ Ay, millstones; as he lesson'd us to weep.

_Clar._ O, do not slander him, for he is kind.

_First Murd._ Right,
As snow in harvest. Thou deceivest thyself:
'Tis he that sent us hither now to slaughter thee.

_Clar._ It cannot be; for when I parted with him,
He hugg'd me in his arms, and swore, with sobs,
That he would labour my delivery.

_Sec. Murd._ Why, so he doth, now he delivers thee
From this world's thraldom to the joys of heaven.

[=ii.= i. 95.]

In the King's case a special incident is introduced into the scene to point the irony. Before Edward can well realise the terrible announcement of Clarence's death, the decorum of the royal chamber is interrupted by Derby, who bursts in, anxious not to lose the portion of the king's life that yet remains, in order to beg a pardon for his follower. The King feels the shock of contrast:

Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death,
And shall the same give pardon to a slave?

The prerogative of mercy that exists in so extreme a case as the murder of a 'righteous gentleman,' and is so passionately sought by Derby for a servant, is denied to the King himself for the deliverance of his innocent brother. [=iii.= ii, from 41.] The nemesis on Hastings is saturated with irony; he has the simplest reliance on Richard and on 'his servant Catesby,' who has come to him as the agent of Richard's treachery; and the very words of the scene have a double significance that all see but Hastings himself.

_Hast._ I tell thee, Catesby,--

_Cate._ What, my lord?

_Hast._ Ere a fortnight make me elder
I'll send some packing that yet think not on it.

_Cate._ 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,
When men are unprepared, and look not for it.

_Hast._ O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out
With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: and so 'twill do
With some men else, who think themselves as safe
As thou and I.

As the scenes with Margaret constituted a general summary of the individual prophecies and recognitions, [=ii.= i.] so the Reconciliation Scene around the King's dying bed may be said to gather into a sort of summary the irony distributed through the play; for the effect of the incident is that the different parties pray for their own destruction. [=ii.= i. 32.] In this scene Buckingham has taken the lead and struck the most solemn notes in his pledge of amity; [=v.= i, from 10.] when Buckingham comes to die, his bitterest thought seems to be that the day of his death is All Souls' Day.

_This is the day_ that, in King Edward's time,
I wish'd might fall on me, when I was found
False to his children or his wife's allies;
This is the day wherein I wish'd to fall
By the false faith of him I trusted most; ...
That high All-Seer that I dallied with
Hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head
And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest.

By devices, then, such as these; by the sudden revelation of a remedy when it is just too late to use it; by the sudden memory of clear warnings blindly missed; by the spectacle of a leaning for hope upon that which is known to be ground for despair; by attempts to retreat or turn aside proving short cuts to destruction; above all by the sufferer's perception that he himself has had a chief share in bringing about his doom:--by such irony the monotony of Nemesis is relieved, and fatality becomes flavoured with mockery.

[_This multiplication of Nemesis a dramatic background for the villainy of Richard._]

Dramatic design, like design which appeals more directly to the eye, has its perspective: to miss even by a little the point of view from which it is to be contemplated is enough to throw the whole into distortion. So readers who are not careful to watch the harmony between Character and Plot have often found in the present play nothing but wearisome repetition. Or, as there is only a step between the sublime and the ridiculous, this masterpiece of Shakespearean plot has suggested to them only the idea of Melodrama,--that curious product of dramatic feeling without dramatic inventiveness, with its world in which poetic justice has become prosaic, in which conspiracy is never so superhumanly secret but there comes a still more superhuman detection, and however successful villainy may be for a moment the spectator confidently relies on its being eventually disposed of by a summary 'off with his head.' The point of view thus missed in the present play is that this network of Nemesis is all needed to give dramatic reality to the colossal villainy of the principal figure. When isolated, the character of Richard is unrealisable from its offence against an innate sense of retribution. Accordingly Shakespeare projects it into a world of which, in whatever direction we look, retribution is the sole visible pattern; in which, as we are carried along by the movement of the play, the unvarying reiteration of Nemesis has the effect of _giving rhythm to fate_.

[_The motive force of the whole play is another nemesis: the Life and Death of Richard._]

What the action of the play has yielded so far to our investigation has been independent of the central personage: we have now to connect Richard himself with the plot. Although the various Nemesis Actions have been carried on by their own motion and by the force of retribution as a principle of moral government, yet there is not one of them which reaches its goal without at some point of its course receiving an impetus from contact with Richard. Richard is thus the source of movement to the whole drama, communicating his own energy through all parts. It is only fitting that the motive force to this system of nemeses should be itself a grand Nemesis Action, the _Life and Death_, or crime and retribution, _of Richard III_. The hero's rise has been sufficiently treated in the preceding study; it remains to trace his fall.

[_The fall of Richard: not a shock but a succession of stages._]

This fall of Richard is constructed on Shakespeare's favourite plan; its force is measured, not by suddenness and violence, but by protraction and the perception of distinct stages--the crescendo in music as distinguished from the fortissimo. Such a fall is not a mere passage through the air--one shock and then all is over--but a slipping down the face of the precipice, with desperate clingings and consciously increasing impetus: its effect is the one inexhaustible emotion of suspense. If we examine the point at which the fall begins we are reminded that the nemesis on Richard is different in its type from the others in the play. [_Not a nemesis of equality but of sureness._] These are (like that on Shylock) of the _equality_ type, of which the motto is measure for measure: [=iii.= iii. 15.] and, with his usual exactness, Shakespeare gives us a turning-point in the precise centre of the play, where, as the Queen's kindred are being borne to their death, we get the first recognition that the general retribution denounced by Margaret has begun to work. But the turning-point of Richard's fate is reserved till long past the centre of the play; his is the nemesis of _sureness_, in which the blow is delayed that it may accumulate force. Not that this turning-point is reserved to the very end; [_The turning-point: irony of its delay._] the change of fortune appears just when Richard has _committed himself_ to his final crime in the usurpation--the murder of the children--the crime from which his most unscrupulous accomplice has drawn back. [=iv.= ii, from 46.] The effect of this arrangement is to make the numerous crimes which follow appear to come by necessity; he is 'so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin'; he is forced to go on heaping up his villainies with Nemesis full in his view. This turning-point appears in the simple announcement that 'Dorset has fled to Richmond.' There is an instantaneous change in Richard to an attitude of defence, which is maintained to the end. His first instinct is action: but as soon as we have heard the rapid scheme of measures--most of them crimes--by which he prepares to meet his dangers, then he can give himself up to meditation; [from 98.] and we now begin to catch the significance of what has been announced. The name of Richmond has been just heard for the first time in this play. But as Richard meditates we learn how Henry VI prophesied that Richmond should be a king while he was but a peevish boy. Again, Richard recollects how lately, while viewing a castle in the west, the mayor, who showed him over it, mispronounced its name as 'Richmond'--and he had started, for a bard of Ireland had told him he should not live long after he had seen Richmond. Thus the irony that has given point to all the other retributions in the play is not wanting in the chief retribution of all: Shakespeare compensates for so long keeping the grand Nemesis out of sight by thus representing Richard as gradually realising that _the finger of Nemesis has been pointing at him all his life and he has never seen it_!

[_Tantalising mockery in Richard's fate._]

From this point fate never ceases to tantalise and mock Richard. He engages in his measures of defence, and with their villainy his spirits begin to recover:

[=iv.= iii. 38.]

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,
And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night;

young Elizabeth is to be his next victim, and

To her I go, a jolly thriving wooer.

[comp. 49. =iv.= iii. 45.]

Suddenly the Nemesis appears again with the news that Ely, the shrewd bishop he dreads most of all men, is with Richmond, and that Buckingham has raised an army. Again, his defence is completing, and the wooing of Elizabeth--his masterpiece, since it is the second of its kind--has been brought to an issue that deserves his surprised exultation:

[=iv.= iv. 431.]

Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!

Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is nearer: a puissant navy has actually appeared on the west. And now his equanimity begins at last to be disturbed. [_His equanimity affected._] He storms at Catesby for not starting, forgetting that he has given him no message to take. [=iv.= iv. 444-540.] More than this, a little further on _Richard changes his mind_! Through the rest of the long scene destiny is openly playing with him, giving him just enough hope to keep the sense of despair warm. Messenger follows messenger in hot haste: Richmond is on the seas--Courtenay has risen in Devonshire--the Guildfords are up in Kent.--But Buckingham's army is dispersed--But Yorkshire has risen.--But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is dispersed--a triumph, Buckingham is taken.--Then, finally, Richmond has landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings. [=v.= iii. 2, 5, 8, &c.] When we next see him he wears a forced gaiety and scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden fits of depression:

Here will I lie to-night;
But where to-morrow?

[=v.= iii, from 47.]

A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute attention to details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey to ride, and at last calls for wine and _confesses_ a change in himself:

I have not that alacrity of spirit,
Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.

[_Climax of Richard's fate: significance of the apparitions._]

Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. By the device of the apparitions the long accumulation of crimes in Richard's rise are made to have each its due representation in his fall. It matters not that they are only apparitions. [=v.= iii, from 118.] Nemesis itself is the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow, but in the close _connection_ between a sin and its retribution. So Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom. This point moreover must not be missed--that the climax of his fate comes to Richard in his _sleep_. [_Significance of Richard's sleep._] The supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when God is opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Prometheus, and such are the reasonings Milton has imagined for his Satan: to whom, though heaven be lost,

All is not lost, the unconquerable will ...
And courage never to submit or yield.

But when that strange bundle of greatness and littleness which makes up man attempts to oppose with such weapons the Almighty, how is he to provide for those states in which the will is no longer the governing force in his nature; for the sickness, in which the mind may have to share the feebleness of the body, or for the daily suspension of will in sleep? Richard can to the last preserve his will from faltering. But, like all the rest of mankind, he must some time sleep: that which is the refuge of the honest man, when he may relax the tension of daily care, sleep, is to Richard his point of weakness, when the safeguard of invincible will can protect him no longer. It is, then, this weak moment which a mocking fate chooses for hurling upon Richard the whole avalanche of his doom; as he starts into the frenzy of his half-waking soliloquy we see him, as it were, tearing off layer after layer of artificial reasonings with which the will-struggles of a lifetime have covered his soul against the touch of natural remorse. With full waking his will is as strong as ever: but meanwhile his physical nature has been shattered to its depths, and it is only the wreck of Richard that goes to meet his death on Bosworth Field.

[_Remaining stages of the fall._]

There is no need to dwell on the further stages of the fall: to the last the tantalising mockery continues. [=v.= iii. 303.] Richard's spirits rise with the ordering of the battle, and there comes the mysterious scroll to tell him he is bought and sold. [=v.= iii. 342.] His spirits rise again as the fight commences, and news comes of Stanley's long feared desertion. [=v.= iv. 11.] Five times in the battle he has slain his foe, and five times it proves a false Richmond. Thus slowly the cup is drained to its last dregs and Richard dies. [=i.= i, from 1.] The play opened with the picture of peace, the peace which led Richard's turbid soul, no longer finding scope in physical warfare, to turn to the moral war of villainy; from that point through all the crowded incidents has raged the tumultuous battle between Will and Nemesis; with Richard's death it ceases, and the play may return to its keynote:

[=v.= v. 40.]

Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again.

VI.

HOW NEMESIS AND DESTINY ARE INTERWOVEN IN MACBETH.

_A further Study in Plot._

[_Macbeth as a study of subtlety in Plot._]

THE present study, like the last, is a study in Plot. The last illustrated Shakespeare's grandeur of conception, how a single principle is held firm amidst the intricacies of history, and reiterated in every detail. The present purpose is to give an example of Shakespeare's _subtlety_, and to exhibit the incidents of a play bound together not by one, [_Its threefold action._] but by three, distinct threads of connection--or, if a technical term may be permitted, three Forms of Dramatic Action--all working harmoniously together into a design equally involved and symmetrical. One of these forms is Nemesis; the other two are borrowed from the ancient Drama: it thus becomes necessary to digress for a moment, in order to notice certain differences between the ancient and modern Drama, and between the ancient and modern thought of which the Drama is the expression.

[_In the passage from ancient to modern, Destiny changes into Providence._]

In the ancient Classical Drama the main moral idea underlying its action is the idea of Destiny. The ancient world recognised Deity, but their deities were not supreme in the universe; Zeus had gained his position by a revolution, and in his turn was to be overthrown by revolution; there was thus, in ancient conception, behind Deity a yet higher force to which Deity itself was subject. The supreme force of the universe has by a school of modern thought been defined as a stream of tendency in things not ourselves making for righteousness: if we attempt to adapt this formula to the ideas of antiquity the difficulty will be in finding anything to substitute for the word 'righteousness.' Sometimes the sum of forces in the universe did seem, in the conception of the ancients, to make for righteousness, and Justice became the highest law. At other times the world seemed to them governed by a supernatural Jealousy, and human prosperity was struck down for no reason except that it was prosperity. In such philosophy as that of Lucretius, again, the tendency of all things was towards Destruction; while in the handling of legends such as that of Hippolytus there is a suggestion of a dark interest to ancient thought in conceiving Evil itself as an irresistible force. It appears, then, that the ancient mind had caught the idea of _force_ in the universe, without adding to it the further idea of a motive by which that force was guided: _blind_ fate was the governing power over all other powers. With this simple conception of force as ruling the world, modern thought has united as a motive righteousness or law: the transition from ancient to modern thought may be fairly described by saying that Destiny has become changed into Providence as the supreme force of the universe. [_The change reflected in ancient and modern Nemesis._] The change may be well illustrated by comparing the ancient and modern conception of Nemesis. To ancient thought Nemesis was simply one phase of Destiny; the story of Polycrates has been quoted in a former study to illustrate how Nemesis appeared to the Greek mind as capricious a deity as Fortune, a force that might at any time, heedless of desert, check whatever happiness was high enough to attract its attention. But in modern ideas Nemesis and justice are strictly associated: Nemesis may be defined as the artistic side of justice.

So far as Nemesis then is concerned, it has, in modern thought, passed altogether out of the domain of Destiny and been absorbed into the domain of law: it is thus fitted to be one of the regular forms into which human history may be represented as falling, in harmony with our modern moral conceptions. But even as regards Destiny itself, while the notion as a whole is out of harmony with the modern notion of law and Providence as ruling forces of the world, yet certain minor phases of Destiny as conceived by antiquity have survived into modern times and been found not irreconcilable with moral law. [_Nemesis and Destiny interwoven in the plot of Macbeth_.] Two of these minor phases of Destiny are, it will be shown, illustrated in _Macbeth_: and we may thus take as a general description of its plot, the interweaving of Destiny with Nemesis.

[_The whole plot a Nemesis Action,_]

That the career of Macbeth is an example of Nemesis needs only to be stated. As in the case of _Richard III_, we have the rise and fall of a leading personage; the rise is a crime of which the fall is the retribution. Nemesis has just been defined as the artistic aspect of justice; we have in previous studies seen different artistic elements in different types of Nemesis. Sometimes, as with Richard III, the retribution becomes artistic through its sureness; its long delay renders the effect of the blow more striking when it does come. [_of the type of equality._] More commonly the artistic element in Nemesis consists in the perfect equality between the sin and its retribution; and of the latter type the Nemesis in the play of _Macbeth_ is perhaps the most conspicuous illustration. The rise and fall of Macbeth, to borrow the illustration of Gervinus, constitute a perfect arch, with a turning-point in the centre. Macbeth's series of successes is unbroken till it ends in the murder of Banquo; his series of failures is unbroken from its commencement in the escape of Fleance. Success thus constituting the first half and failure the second half of the play, the transition from the one to the other is the expedition against Banquo and Fleance, in which success and failure are mingled: [=iii.= iii.] and this expedition, the keystone to the arch, is found to occupy the exact middle of the middle Act.

But this is not all: not only the play as a whole is an example of nemesis, but if its two halves be taken separately they will be found to constitute each a nemesis complete in itself. [_The rise of Macbeth a separate Nemesis action._] To begin with the first half, that which is occupied with the rise of Macbeth. If the plan of the play extended no further than to make the hero's fall the retribution upon his rise, it might be expected that the turning-point of the action would be reached upon Macbeth's elevation to the throne. As a fact, however, Macbeth's rise does not stop here; he still goes on to win one more success in his attempt upon the life of Banquo. What the purpose of this prolonged flow of fortune is will be seen when it is considered that this final success of the hero is in reality the source of his ruin. In Macbeth's progress to the attainment of the crown, while of course it was impossible that crimes so violent as his should not incur suspicion, yet circumstances had strangely combined to soothe these suspicions to sleep. But--so Shakespeare manipulates the story--when Macbeth, seated on the throne, goes on to the attempt against Banquo, this additional crime not only brings its own punishment, but has the further effect of unmasking the crimes that have gone before. This important point in the plot is brought out to us in a scene, specially introduced for the purpose, in which Lennox and another lord represent the opinion of the court.

[=iii.= vi. i.]

_Lennox._ My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,
Which can interpret further: only, I say,
Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan
Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:
And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;
Whom, you may say, if't please you, Fleance kill'd,
For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.
Who cannot want the thought how monstrous
It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain
To kill their gracious father? damned fact!
How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight
In pious rage the two delinquents tear,
That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?
Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;
For 'twould have anger'd any heart alive
To hear the men deny't. So that, I say,
He has borne all things well: and I do think
That had he Duncan's sons under his key--
As, an't please heaven, he shall not--they should find
What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

Under the bitter irony of this speech we can see clearly enough that Macbeth has been exposed by his _series_ of suspicious acts; he has 'done all things well;' and in particular by peculiar resemblances between this last incident of Banquo and Fleance and the previous incident of Duncan and his son. It appears then that Macbeth's last successful crime proves the means by which retribution overtakes all his other crimes; the latter half of the play is needed to develop the steps of the retribution, but, in substance, Macbeth's fall is latent in the final step of his rise. Thus the first half of the play, that which traces the rise of Macbeth, is a complete Nemesis Action--a career of sins in which the last sin secures the punishment of all.

[_The fall of Macbeth a separate Nemesis Action._]

The same reasoning applies to the latter half of the play: the fall of Macbeth not only serves as the retribution for his rise, but further contains in itself a crime and its nemesis complete. What Banquo is to the first half of the play Macduff is to the latter half; the two balance one another as, in the play of _Julius Cæsar_, Cæsar himself is balanced by Antony; and Macduff comes into prominence upon Banquo's death as Antony upon the fall of Cæsar. Now Macduff, when he finally slays Macbeth, is avenging not only Scotland, but also his own wrongs; and the tyrant's crime against Macduff, with its retribution, just gives unity to the second half of the play, in the way in which the first half was made complete by the association between Macbeth and Banquo, [=iii.= i. 57-72.] from their joint encounter with the Witches on to the murder of Banquo as a consequence of the Witches' prediction. Accordingly we find that no sooner has Macbeth, by the appearance of the Ghost at the banquet, realised the turn of fate, than his first thoughts are of Macduff:

[=iii.= iv. 128.]

_Macbeth._ How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding?

_Lady M._ Did you send to him, sir?

_Macbeth._ I hear it by the way; but I will send.

When the Apparitions bid Macbeth 'beware Macduff,' he answers,

[=iv.= i. 74.]