Chapter VI: Part 6

When we desire to produce man upon the stage in all the energy of his nature, it is not too much to summon to our aid man as a whole, and to exhibit him under all the forms and in all the positions of which his existence admits. Such a representation is not merely more complete and striking, but it is also more truthful and accurate. We deceive the mind with regard to an event, if we present to it merely one salient part adorned with the colors of truth, while the other part is rejected and effaced in a conversation or a narrative. Thence results a false impression which, in more than one instance, has injured the effect of the finest works. "Athalie," that masterpiece of our drama, still finds us imbued with a certain prejudice against Joad and in favor of Athalie, whom we do not hate sufficiently to rejoice in her destruction, and whom we do not fear enough to approve the artifice which draws her into the snare. And yet Athalie has not only massacred her son's children, in order that she might reign in their stead; but she is a foreigner, maintained on the throne by foreign troops; the enemy of the God adored by her people, she insults and braves Him by the presence and pomp of a foreign worship, while the national religion, stripped of its power and honors, and clung to with fear and trembling by only "a small number of zealous worshipers," daily expects to fall a victim to the hatred of Mathan, the insolent despotism of the queen, and the avidity of her base courtiers. Here is, indeed, an exhibition of tyranny and misfortune; here is matter enough to drive the people to revolt, and to lead to conspiracies among the last defenders of their liberties. {152} And all these facts are related in the speeches of Joad, of Abner, of Mathan, and even of Athalie herself. But they are displayed in speeches only; all that we behold in action is Joad conspiring with the means which his enemy still leaves at his disposal, and the imposing grandeur of the character of Athalie. The conspiracy is under our eyes; but we have only heard of tyranny. If the action had revealed to us the evils which oppression involves; if we had beheld Joad excited and stimulated to revolt by the cries of the unhappy victims of the vexations of the foreigner; if the patriotic and religious indignation of the people against a power "lavish of the blood of the defenseless," had given legitimacy to Joad's conduct in our eyes--the action, when thus completed, would leave no uncertainty in our minds; and "Athalie" would perhaps present to us the ideal of dramatic poetry, at least, according to our conception of it at the present time.

Though easily attained among the Greeks, whose life and feelings might be summed up in a few large and simple features, this ideal did not present itself to modern nations under forms sufficiently general and pure to receive the application of the rules laid down in accordance with the ancient models. France, in order to adopt them, was compelled to limit its field, in some sort, to one corner of human existence. Our poets have employed all the powers of genius to turn this narrow space to advantage; the abysses of the heart have been sounded to their utmost depth, but not in all their dimensions. Dramatic illusion has been sought at its true source, but it has not been required to furnish all the effects that might have been obtained from it. Shakspeare offers to us a more fruitful and a vaster system. It would be a strange mistake to suppose that he has discovered and brought to light all its wealth. {153} When we embrace human destiny in all its aspects, and human nature in all the conditions of man upon earth, we enter into possession of an exhaustless treasure. It is the peculiar advantage of such a system, that it escapes, by its extent, from the dominion of any particular genius. We may discover its principles in Shakspeare's works; but he was not fully acquainted with them, nor did he always respect them. He should serve as an example, not as a model. Some men, even of superior talent, have attempted to write plays according to Shakspeare's taste, without perceiving that they were deficient in one important qualification for the task; and that was, to write as he did, to write them for our age, just as Shakspeare's plays were written for the age in which he lived. This is an enterprise, the difficulties of which have hitherto, perhaps, been maturely considered by no one. We have seen how much art and effort was employed by Shakspeare to surmount those which are inherent in his system. They are still greater in our times, and would unvail themselves much more completely to the spirit of criticism which now accompanies the boldest essays of genius. It is not only with spectators of more fastidious taste, and of more idle and inattentive imagination, that the poet would have to do, who should venture to follow in Shakspeare's footsteps. He would be called upon to give movement to personages embarrassed in much, more complicated interests, pre-occupied with much more various feelings, and subject to less simple habits of mind, and to less decided tendencies. Neither science, nor reflection, nor the scruples of conscience, nor the uncertainties of thought, frequently encumber Shakspeare's heroes; doubt is of little use among them, and the violence of their passions speedily transfers their belief to the side of their desires, or sets their actions above their belief. {154} Hamlet alone presents the confused spectacle of a mind formed by the enlightenment of society, in conflict with a position contrary to its laws; and he needs a supernatural apparition to determine him to act, and a fortuitous event to accomplish his project. If incessantly placed in an analogous position, the personages of a tragedy conceived at the present day, according to the romantic system, would offer us the same picture of indecision. Ideas now crowd and intersect each other in the mind of man, duties multiply in his conscience, and obstacles and bonds around his life. Instead of those electric brains, prompt to communicate the spark which they have received--instead of those ardent and simple-minded men, whose projects, like Macbeth's, "will to hand"--the world now presents to the poet minds like Hamlet's, deep in the observation of those inward conflicts which our classical system has derived from a state of society more advanced than that of the time in which Shakspeare lived. So many feelings, interests, and ideas, the necessary consequences of modern civilization, might become, even in their simplest form of expression, a troublesome burden, which it would be difficult to carry through the rapid evolutions and bold advances of the romantic system.

We must, however, satisfy every demand; success itself requires it. The reason must be contented at the same time that the imagination is occupied. The progress of taste, of enlightenment, of society, and of mankind, must serve, not to diminish or disturb our enjoyment, but to render them worthy of ourselves, and capable of supplying the new wants which we have contracted. Advance without rule and art in the romantic system, and you will produce melodrames calculated to excite a passing emotion in the multitude, but in the multitude alone, and for a few days; just as, by dragging along without originality in the classical system, you will satisfy only that cold literary class who are acquainted with nothing in nature which is more important than the interests of versification, or more imposing than the three unities. {155} This is not the work of the poet who is called to power and destined for glory; he acts upon a grander scale, and can address the superior intellects, as well as the general and simple faculties of all men. It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. The same task is now imposed upon government and upon poetry; both should exist for all, and suffice at once for the wants of the masses and for the requirements of the most exalted minds. Doubtless stopped in its course by these conditions, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where, under the protection of Shakspeare, it would have liberty to attempt any thing, scarcely ventures at the present day to endeavor timidly to follow him. Meanwhile, England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The classical system had its origin in the life of its time; that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. {156} Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I can not tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible. This ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakspeare; it is our own; but Shakspeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us, at the present day, the spectacle of human things. Witnesses, during thirty years, of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness, and excites our entire sympathy. The moral dispositions which impose this necessity upon poetry will not change; but we shall see them, on the contrary, manifesting themselves more plainly, and receiving greater development, day by day. Interests, duties, and a movement common to all classes of citizens, will strengthen among them that chain of habitual relations with which all public feelings connect themselves. Never could dramatic art have taken its subjects from an order of ideas at once more popular and more elevated; never was the connection between the most vulgar interests of man and the principles upon which his highest destinies are dependent, more clearly present to all minds; and the importance of an event may now appear in its pettiest details as well as in its mightiest results. {157} In this state of society, a new dramatic system ought to be established. It should be liberal and free, but not without principles and laws. It should establish itself like liberty, not upon disorder and forgetfulness of every check, but upon rules more severe and more difficult of observance, perhaps, than those which are still enforced to maintain what is called order against what is designated license.

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{159}

Historical And Critical Notices

of the

Principal Dramas Of Shakspeare.

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Romeo And Juliet.

(1595.)

Two powerful families of Verona, the Montecchi and the Capelletti (the Montagues and Capulets), had long lived on terms of such hostility to each other, that it had frequently led to sanguinary conflicts in the open streets. Alberto della Scala, the second perpetual captain of Verona, had ineffectually endeavored to reconcile them; but he succeeded so far in bridling their enmity, that "when they met," says Grirolamo della Corte, the historian of Verona, "the younger men made way for their elders, and they mutually exchanged salutations."

In the year 1303, under the reign of Bartolommeo della Scala, who had been chosen perpetual captain on the death of his father Alberto, Antonio Capelletto, the leader of his faction, gave a great entertainment during the carnival, to which he invited most of the nobility of Verona. Romeo Montecchio, who was about twenty-one years of age, and one of the handsomest and most amiable young men in the city, went thither in a mask, accompanied by some of his friends. After some time, taking off his mask, he sat down in a corner, from which he could see and be seen. Much astonishment was felt at the boldness with which he had thus ventured in the midst of his enemies. {162} However, as he was young and of agreeable manners, the Capulets, says the historian, "did not pay so much attention to his presence as they might have done if he had been older." His eyes and those of Giulietta Capelletto soon met, and being equally struck with admiration, they did not cease to look at each other. The festivities terminated with a dance, which "among us," says Girolamo, "is called the hat-dance (_dal cappello_)," in which Romeo engaged; but, after having danced a few figures with his partner, he left her to join Juliet, who was dancing with another. "Immediately that she felt him touch her hand, she said, 'Blessed be your coming!' And he, pressing her hand, replied, 'What blessing do you receive from it, lady?' And she answered, with a smile, 'Be not surprised, sir, that I bless your coming; Signor Mercurio had been chilling me for a long while, but by your politeness you have restored me to warmth.' (The hands of this young man, who was called Mercurio the Squinter, and who was beloved by every one for the charms of his mind, were always colder than ice.) To these words, Romeo replied, 'I am greatly delighted to do you service in any thing.' When the dance was over, Juliet could say no more than this: 'Alas! I am more yours than my own.'"

Romeo having repaired on several occasions to a small street upon which Juliet's windows looked out, one evening she recognized him "by his sneezing or some other sign," and opened the window; they saluted each other very courteously (_cortesissimamente_), and, after having conversed for a long while of their loves, they agreed that they must be married, whatever might happen; and that the ceremony should be performed by Friar Leonardo, a Franciscan monk, who was "a theologian, a great philosopher, an admirable distiller, a proficient in the art of magic," and the confessor of nearly all the town. {163} Romeo went to see this worthy; and the monk, thinking of the credit he would gain, not only with the perpetual captain, but also with the whole city, if he succeeded in reconciling the two families, acceded to the request of the young couple. On Quadragesima Sunday, when confession was obligatory, Juliet went with her mother to the church of St. Francis in the citadel; and having entered first into the confessional, on the other side of which Romeo was stationed, they received the nuptial benediction through the window of the confessional, which the monk had had the kindness to leave open. Afterward, by the connivance of a very adroit old nurse of Juliet's, they spent the night together in her garden.

However, after the festival of Easter, a numerous troop of Capulets met, at a little distance from the gates of Verona, a band of Montagues, and attacked them, at the instigation of Tebaldo, a cousin-german of Juliet, who, seeing Romeo use every effort to put an end to the combat, went up to him, and, forcing him to defend himself, received a sword-thrust in his throat, from which he fell dead on the spot. Romeo was banished; and a short time afterward, Juliet, on the point of finding herself compelled to marry another, had recourse to Friar Leonardo, who gave her a powder to swallow, by means of which she would appear to be dead, and would be interred in the family vault, which happened to be in the church attached to Leonardo's convent. The monk was to deliver her immediately from her grave, and to send her in disguise to Mantua, where Romeo was residing; and he promised to inform her lover of their design.

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Matters were arranged as Leonardo had suggested; but Romeo, having been informed of Juliet's death by an indirect source, before he received the monk's letter, set out at once for Verona with a single domestic, and, having provided himself with a violent poison, hastened to the tomb, opened it, bathed Juliet's body with his tears, swallowed the poison, and died. Juliet awaking from her trance the instant afterward, seeing Romeo dead, and learning from the monk, who had come up in the meanwhile, all that had happened, was seized with such violent paroxysms of grief, that, "without being able to utter a word, she fell dead upon the bosom of her Romeo." [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: See Girolamo della Corte, "Istorie di Verona,"
vol. i., p. 89, _et seq_ ed. 1594.]

This story is told as true by Girolamo della Corte, and he assures his readers that he had often seen the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, which, rising a little above the level of the ground, and being situated near a well, then served as a laundry to the orphan asylum of St. Francis, which was being built in that locality. He relates, at the same time, that the Cavalier Gerardo Boldiero, his uncle, who had first taken him to this tomb, had pointed out to him, at a corner of the wall, near the Capuchin Convent, the place from which he had heard it said that the bones of Romeo and Juliet, and of several other persons, had been transferred a great number of years before. Captain Bréval, in his Travels, also mentions that he saw at Verona, in 1762, an old building which was then an orphan asylum, and which his guide informed him had once contained the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, but that it no longer existed.

It was probably not in accordance with the narrative of Girolamo della Corte that Shakspeare composed his tragedy. It was first performed, as it would appear, in 1595, under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth, and was printed for the first time in 1597. {165} Now the work of Girolamo della Corte, which was intended to contain twenty-two books, was interrupted in the middle of the twentieth book, and in the year 1560, by the illness of the author. We learn, moreover, from the editor's preface, that this illness was prolonged, and terminated in the death of the historian; that the necessity for revising a work, to which Girolamo himself had been unable to give the finishing stroke, occupied a considerable period; and, finally, that the lawsuits, "both civil and criminal," with which the editor was tormented, prevented him from bringing his undertaking to a conclusion as promptly as he could have desired; so that the work of Girolamo could not have been published until a long while after his death. The edition of 1594 is, therefore, to all appearance, the first edition, and could scarcely have fallen into Shakspeare's hands so early as 1595.

But the history of Romeo and Juliet, which was doubtless very popular at Verona, had already formed the subject of a novel by Luigi da Porto, published at Venice in 1535, six years after the death of the author, under the title of "La Giulietta." This novel was reprinted, translated and imitated in several languages, and furnished Arthur Brooke with the subject of an English poem, which was published in 1562, and from which Shakspeare certainly derived the subject of his tragedy. [Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: The title is, "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus
and Juliet, containing a rare Example of true Constancie;
with the Subtill Counsels and Practises of an old Fryer, and
their ill event." This poem has been reprinted at the end of
the tragedy in the large editions of Shakspeare; among
others, in Malone's edition.]

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The imitation is complete. Juliet, in Brooke's poem, as well as in the novel of Luigi da Porto, kills herself with Romeo's dagger, instead of dying of grief, as in the history of Girolamo della Corte; but it is a singular circumstance, that both Arthur Brooke's poem and Shakspeare's tragedy make Romeo die, as in the history, before Juliet awakes, whereas, in the novel of Luigi da Porto, he does not die until after he has witnessed her restoration to life, and had a scene of sorrowful farewell with her. Shakspeare has been blamed for not having adopted this version, which would have furnished him with a very pathetic position; and it has been inferred that he was not acquainted with the Italian novel, although it had been translated into English. Several circumstances, however, give us reason to believe that Shakspeare was acquainted with this translation. As for his motives for preferring the poet's narrative to that of the novelist, he may have had many; in the first place, to account for his departing in so important a point from the novel of Luigi da Porto, which he has followed most scrupulously in almost every other particular, perhaps Arthur Brooke, the author of the poem, may have had some knowledge of the true history, as related by Girolamo della Corte. Being a contemporary of Shakspeare, he may have communicated this to him, and Shakspeare's careful conformity, as far as he was able, to history, or to the narratives received as such, would not have allowed him to hesitate as to his choice. Moreover--and this was probably the true reason of the poet--Shakspeare very seldom precedes a strong resolution by long speeches. As Macbeth says:

"Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives."

Whatever anguish reflection may add to grief, it fixes the mind on too large a number of objects not to distract it from the single and absorbing idea which leads to desperate actions. After having received Romeo's farewell, and lamented his death in concert with him, it might have happened that Juliet would have bewailed him all her life instead of killing herself on the spot. {167} Garrick rewrote the scene in the monument, in accordance with the supposition adopted in the novel of Luigi da Porto; the scene is touching, but, as was perhaps inevitable in such a situation, which it would be impossible to delineate in words, the feelings are too much and too little agitated, and the despair is either excessive or not sufficiently violent. In the laconism of Shakspeare's "Romeo and Juliet," in these last moments, there is much more passion and truth.

This laconism is all the more remarkable, because during the whole course of the play, Shakspeare has abandoned himself without constraint to that abundance of reflection and discourse which is one of the characteristics of his genius. Nowhere is the contrast more striking between the depth of the feelings which the poet describes, and the form in which he expresses them. Shakspeare excels in seeing our human feelings as they really exist in nature, without premeditation, without any labor of man upon himself, ingenuous and impetuous, mingled of good and evil, of vulgar instincts and sublime inspirations, just as the human soul is, in its primitive and spontaneous state. What can be more truthful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, so young, so ardent, so unreflecting, full at once of physical passion and of moral tenderness, without restraint, and yet without coarseness, because delicacy of heart ever combines with the transports of the senses! There is nothing subtle or factitious in it, and nothing cleverly arranged by the poet; it is neither the pure love of piously exalted imaginations, nor the licentious love of palled and perverted lives; it is love itself--love complete, involuntary and sovereign, as it bursts forth in early youth, in the heart of man, at once simple and diverse, as God made it. {168} "Romeo and Juliet" is truly the tragedy of love, as "Othello" is that of jealousy, and "Macbeth" that of ambition. Each of the great dramas of Shakspeare is dedicated to one of the great feelings of humanity; and the feeling which pervades the drama is, in very reality, that which occupies and possesses the human soul when under its influence. Shakspeare omits, adds, and alters nothing; he brings it on the stage simply and boldly, in its energetic and complete truth.

Pass now from the substance to the form, and from the feeling itself to the language in which it is clothed by the poet; and observe the contrast! In proportion as the feeling is true and profoundly known and understood, its expression is often factitious, laden with developments and ornaments in which the mind of the poet takes delight, but which do not flow naturally from the lips of a dramatic personage. Of all Shakspeare's great dramas, "Romeo and Juliet" is, perhaps, the one in which this fault is most abundant. We might almost say that Shakspeare had attempted to imitate that copiousness of words, and that verbose facility which, in literature as well as life, generally characterize the peoples of the South. He had certainly read, at least in translation, some of the Italian poets; and the innumerable subtleties interwoven, as it were, into the language of all the personages in "Romeo and Juliet," and the introduction of continual comparisons with the sun, the flowers, and the stars, though often brilliant and graceful, are evidently an imitation of the style of the sonnets, and a debt paid to local coloring. It is, perhaps, because the Italian sonnets almost always adopt a plaintive tone, that choice and exaggeration of language are particularly perceptible in the complaints of the two lovers. {169} The expression of their brief happiness is, especially in the mouth of Juliet, of ravishing simplicity; and when they reach the final term of their destiny, when the poet enters upon the last scene of this mournful tragedy, he renounces all his attempts at imitation, and all his wittily wise reflections. His characters, who, says Johnson, "have a conceit left them in their misery," lose this peculiarity when misery has struck its heavy blows; the imagination ceases to play; passion itself no longer appears, unless united to solid, serious, and almost stern feelings; and that mistress, who was so eager for the joys of love, Juliet, when threatened in her conjugal fidelity, thinks of nothing but the fulfillment of her duties, and how she may remain without blemish the wife of her dear Romeo. What an admirable trait of moral sense and good sense is this in a genius devoted to the delineation of passion!

However, Shakspeare was mistaken when he thought that, by prodigality of reflections, imagery, and words, he was imitating Italy and her poets. At least he was not imitating the masters of Italian poetry, his equals, and the only ones who deserved his notice. Between them and him, the difference is immense and singular. It is in comprehension of the natural feelings that Shakspeare excels, and he depicts them with as much simplicity and truth of substance as he clothes them with affectation and sometimes whimsicality of language. It is, on the contrary, into these feelings themselves that the great Italian poets of the fourteenth century, and especially Petrarch, frequently introduce as much refinement and subtlety as elevation and grace; they alter and transform, according to their religious and moral beliefs, or even to their literary tastes, those instincts and passions of the human heart to which Shakspeare leaves their native physiognomy and liberty. {170} What can be less similar than the love of Petrarch for Laura, and that of Juliet for Romeo? In compensation, the expression, in Petrarch, is almost always as natural as the feeling is refined; and whereas Shakspeare presents perfectly simple and true emotions beneath a strange and affected form, Petrarch lends to mystical, or at least singular and very restrained emotions, all the charm of a simple and pure form.

I will quote only one example of this difference between the two poets, but it is a very striking example, for it is one in which both have tried their powers upon the same position, the same feeling, and almost the same image.

Laura is dead. Petrarch is desirous of depicting, on her entrance upon the sleep of death, her whom he had painted so frequently, and with such charming passion, in the brilliancy of life and youth:

"Non come fiamma che per forza è spenta,
Ma che per sè medesraa si consume,
Se n'andò in pace l'animo contenta.
A guisa d'un soave e chiaro lume,
Cui nutrimento a poco a poco manca,
Tenendo al fin il suo usato costume;
Pallida no, ma più che neve bianca
Che senza vento in un bel colle fiocchi,
Parea posar come persona stanca.
Quasi un dolce dormir ne' suoi begli occhi,
Sendo lo sperto già de lei diviso,
Era quel che morir chiaman gli sciocchi,
Morte bella parea nel suo bel viso." [Footnote 21]

[Footnote 21: Petrarch, "Trionfo della Morte,"
cap. i., lines 160-172]

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The following translation is from the pen of Captain Macgregor:

"Not as a flame which suddenly is spent,
But one that gently finds its natural close,
To heaven, in peace, her willing spirit rose;
As, nutriment denied, a lovely light,
By fine gradations failing, less, less bright,
E'en to the last gives forth a lambent glow:
Not pale, but fairer than the virgin snow,
Falling, when winds are laid, on earth's green breast,
She seem'd a saint from life's vain toils at rest.
As if a sweet sleep o'er those bright eyes came,
Her spirit mounted to the throne of grace!
If this we, in our folly, Death do name,
Then Death seem'd lovely on that lovely face." [Footnote 22]

[Footnote 22: Macgregor's "Odes of Petrarch," p. 220.]

Juliet also is dead. Romeo contemplates her as she lies in her tomb, and he also expatiates upon her beauty:

* * * "O, my love! my wife!
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath,
Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty;
Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

I need not insist upon the comparison; who does not feel how much more simple and beautiful the form of expression is in Petrarch? It is the brilliant and flowing poetry of the South, beside the strong, rough, and vigorous imagination of the North.

The love of Romeo for Rosaline is an invention of Luigi da Porto, retained in the poem of Arthur Brooke. This invention imparts so little interest to the first acts of the drama, that Shakspeare probably adopted it merely with a view to giving greater effect to that character of suddenness which distinguishes the passions of a Southern clime. The part of Mercutio was suggested to him by these lines of the English poem:

"A courtier that eche where was highly had in price,
For he was courteous of his speeche, and pleasant of devise.
Even as a lyon would emong the lambs be bolde,
Such was emong the bashful maydes Mercutio to beholde."

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Such was, doubtless, the _bel air_ in Shakspeare's time, and it is as the type of the amiable and amusing companion that he has described Mercutio. However, though he was not bold enough to attack, like Molière, the ridiculous absurdities of the court, he very frequently makes it evident that its tone was a burden to him; and the part of Mercutio seems to have been a great tax upon his taste and uprightness of mind. Dryden relates as a tradition of his time, that Shakspeare used to say, "that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him." Mercutio has, nevertheless, had many zealous partisans in England; among others, Johnson, who, on this occasion, soundly rates Dryden for his irreverent words regarding the witty Mercutio, "some of whose sallies," he says, "are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden." Shakspeare's aversion for the kind of wit of which he has been so lavish in "Romeo and Juliet," is sufficiently proved by Friar Laurence's injunction to Romeo when he begins to explain his position in the sonnet style:

"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift."

Friar Laurence is the wise man of the play, and his speeches are, in general, as simple as it was allowable for those of a philosopher to be in his time.

The part of Juliet's nurse also contains but few of these subtleties, which Shakspeare seems to have reserved, in this work, to persons of the higher classes, and sometimes to the valets who ape their manners. The character of the nurse is indicated in Arthur Brooke's poem; in which, however, it is far from possessing the same homely truthfulness as in Shakspeare's drama.

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Wherever they are not disfigured by conceits, the lines in "Romeo and Juliet" are perhaps the most graceful and brilliant that ever flowed from Shakspeare's pen. They are, for the most part, written in rhyme, another homage paid to Italian habits.

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Hamlet.

(1596.)

"Hamlet" is not the finest of Shakspeare's dramas; "Macbeth," and, I think, "Othello" also, are, on the whole, superior to it: but it perhaps contains the most remarkable examples of its author's most sublime beauties, as well as of his most glaring defects. Never has he unvailed with more originality, depth, and dramatic effect the inmost state of a mighty soul; never, also, has he yielded with greater unrestraint to the terrible or burlesque fancies of his imagination, and to the abundant intemperance that is characteristic of a mind which hastens to diffuse its ideas without any selection, and which delights to render them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected expression, without caring to give them a pure and natural form.

According to his custom, Shakspeare took no trouble in "Hamlet," either to invent or to arrange his subject. He took the facts as he found them recorded in the fabulous stories of the ancient history of Denmark, by Saxo Grammaticus, which wore transformed into tragical histories by Belleforest, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and were immediately translated and became popular in England, not only among the reading public, but also on the stage, for it appears certain that six or seven years before Shakspeare, in 1589, an English poet named Thomas Kyd had already written a tragedy on the subject of Hamlet. {175} This is the text of the historical romance out of which, as a sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, Shakspeare modeled his drama.

"Fengon, having secretly assembled certain men, and perceiving himself strong enough to execute his enterprise, Horvendile, his brother, being at a banquet with his friends, suddenly set upon him, where he slew him as traitorously as cunningly he purged himself of so detestable a murder to his subjects; for that before he had any violent or bloody hands, or once committed parricide upon his brother, he had incestuously abused his wife, whose honor he ought to have sought and procured, as traitorously he pursued and effected his destruction. * * *

"Boldened and encouraged by his impunity, Fengon ventured to couple himself in marriage with her whom he used as his concubine during good Horvendile's life, * * * and the unfortunate and wicked woman, that had received the honor to be the wife of one of the valiantest and wisest princes of the North, imbased herself in such vile sort as to falsify her faith unto him, and, which is worse, to marry him that had been the tyrannous murderer of her lawful husband. * * *

"Geruth having so much forgotten herself, the prince Hamblet perceiving himself to be in danger of his life, as being abandoned of his own mother, to beguile the tyrant in his subtleties, counterfeited the madman with such craft and subtle practices that he made show as if he had utterly lost his wits; and under that vail he covered his pretense, and defended his life from the treasons and practices of the tyrant his uncle. {176} For every day being in the queen's palace (who as then was more careful to please her whoremaster, than ready to revenge the cruel death of her husband, or to restore her son to his inheritance), he rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the dirt and mire, running through the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one word, but such as seemed to proceed of madness and mere frenzy; all his actions and gestures being no other than the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of all reason and understanding, in such sort, that as then he seemed fit for nothing but to make sport to the pages and ruffling courtiers that attended in the court of his uncle and father-in-law. But many times he did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers, that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might proceed. * * *

"Hamblet likewise had intelligence in what danger he was like to fall, if by any means he seemed to obey, or once like the wanton toys and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent to him by his uncle; which much abashed the prince, as then wholly being in affection to the lady; but by her he was likewise informed of the treason, as being one that from her infancy loved and favored him, and would have been exceeding sorrowful for his misfortune. * * *

"Among the friends of Fengon, there was one that, above all the rest, doubted of Hamblet's practices in counterfeiting the madman. His device to entrap Hamblet in his subtleties was thus--that King Fengon should make as though he were to go some long voyage concerning affairs of great importance, and that in the mean time Hamblet should be shut up alone in a chamber with his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden behind the hangings, there to stand and hear their speeches, and the complots by them to be taken concerning the accomplishment of the dissembling fool's pretense; * * * and withal offered himself to be the man that should stand to hearken and bear witness of Hamblet's speeches with his mother. This invention pleased the king exceeding well. * * *

{177}

"Meantime, the counselor entered secretly into the queen's chamber, and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the queen and Hamblet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to come like a cock, beating with his arms (in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings) upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat! a rat!" and presently drawing his sword, thrust it into the hangings, which done, he pulled the counselor, half dead, out by the heels, and made an end of killing him. * * * By which means having discovered the ambush, and given the inventor thereof his just reward, he came again to his mother, who in the mean time wept and tormented herself; and having once again searched every corner of the chamber, perceiving himself to be alone with her, he began in sober and discreet manner to speak unto her, saying,

"'What treason is this, most infamous woman of all that ever prostrated themselves to the will of an abominable whoremonger, who, under the vail of a dissembling creature, covereth the most wicked and detestable crime that man could ever imagine or was committed? Now may I be assured to trust you, that like a vile wanton adulteress, altogether impudent and given over to her pleasure, runs spreading forth her arms to embrace the traitorous villainous tyrant that murdered my father, and most incestuously receivest the villain into the lawful bed of your loyal spouse? * * * {178} O, Queen Geruth! it is licentiousness only that has made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king, your husband and my father. * * * Be not offended, I pray you, madam, if, transported with dolor and grief, I speak so boldly unto you, and that I respect you less than duty requireth; for you, having forgotten me, and wholly rejected the memory of the deceased king my father, must not be ashamed if I also surpass the bounds and limits of due consideration. * * *'

"Although the Queen perceived herself nearly touched, and that Hamblet moved her to the quick, where she felt herself interested, nevertheless she forgot all disdain and wrath, which thereby she might as then have had, hearing herself so sharply chidden and reproved, to behold the gallant spirit of her son, and to think what she might hope, and the easier expect of his so great policy and wisdom. But on the one side, she durst not lift up her eyes to behold him, remembering her offense, and on the other side, she would gladly have embraced her son, in regard of the wise admonitions by him given unto her, which as then quenched the flames of unbridled desire that before had moved her. * * *

"After this, Fengon came to the court again, and determined that Hamblet should be sent into England. Now to bear him company were assigned two of Fengon's faithful ministers, bearing letters engraved in wood, that contained Hamblet's death, in such sort as he had advertised the King of England. But the subtle Danish prince, while his companions slept, having read the letters, and known his uncle's great treason, with the wicked and villainous minds of the two courtiers that led him to the slaughter erased out the letters that concerned his death, and instead thereof graved others, with commission to the King of England to hang his two companions. * * *

{179}

"Hamblet, while his father lived, had been instructed in that devilish art, whereby the wicked spirit abuseth mankind, and advertiseth him of things past. It toucheth not the matter herein to discover whether this prince, by reason of his over great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared. * * *" [Footnote 23]

[Footnote 23: See "The Hystorie of Hamblet," in Payne
Collier's "Shakspeare's Library," vol, i. London, 1843.]

It was evidently Hamlet who, in this narrative, struck and allured the imagination of Shakspeare. This young prince, mad from calculation, and perhaps slightly mad by nature; cunning and melancholy; burning to avenge the death of his father, and skillful in defending his own life; adored by the young girl sent to work his ruin; an object of dread, and yet of tenderness, to his guilty mother; and, until the moment of throwing off the mask, hidden and incomprehensible to both: this personage, full of passion, danger, and mystery, well versed in the occult sciences, and whom, perhaps, "by reason of his over great melancholy, the wicked spirit enabled to divine that which never any but himself had before declared;" what an admirable character was this for Shakspeare, that curious and deep-searching observer of the secret agitations of the human soul and destiny! Had he done nothing more than depict, with the bold outline and brilliant coloring of his pencil, this character and situation as delineated in the chronicle, he would assuredly have produced a masterpiece.

{180}

But Shakspeare did much more than this: under his treatment, Hamlet's madness becomes something altogether different from the obstinate premeditation or melancholy enthusiasm of a young prince of the Middle Ages, placed in a dangerous position, and engaged in a dark design; it is a grave moral condition, a great malady of soul which, at certain epochs and in certain states of society and of manners, diffuses itself among mankind, frequently attacks the most highly gifted and the noblest of our species, and afflicts them with a disturbance of mind which sometimes borders very closely upon madness. The world is full of evil, and of all kinds of evil. What sufferings, crimes, and fatal, although innocent errors! What general and private iniquities, both strikingly apparent and utterly unknown! What merits, either stifled or neglected, become lost to the public, and a burden to their possessors! What falsehood, and coldness, and levity, and ingratitude, and forgetfulness, abound in the relations and feelings of men! Life is so short, and yet so agitated--sometimes so burdensome, and sometimes so empty! The future is so obscure! so much darkness at the end of so many trials! In reference to those who only see this phase of the world and of human destiny, it is easy to understand why their mind becomes disturbed, why their heart fails them, and why a misanthropic melancholy becomes an habitual feeling which plunges them by turns into irritation or doubt--into ironical contempt or utter prostration.

This was assuredly not the disease of the times in which the chronicle represents Hamlet to have lived, nor indeed of the age in which Shakspeare himself flourished. The Middle Ages and the sixteenth century were epochs too active and too rude to give ready admittance to these bitter contemplations and unhealthy developments of human sensibility. {181} They belong much rather to times of luxurious life, and of moral excitement at once keen and leisurely, when souls are roused from their repose, and deprived of every strong and obligatory occupation. It is then that arise these meditative discontents, these partial and irritated impressions, this entire forgetfulness of all that is good, this passionate susceptibility to all that is evil in the condition of man, and all this pedantic wrath of man against the laws and order of the universe.

That painful uneasiness and profound disturbance which are introduced into the soul by so gloomy and false an appreciation of things in general, and of man himself--which he never met with in his own time, or in those times with the history of which he was acquainted--Shakspeare devined, and constructed from them the figure and character of Hamlet. Read once again the four great monologues in which the Prince of Denmark abandons himself to the reflective expression of his inmost feelings; gather together from the whole play the passages in which he casually gives them utterance; seek out and sum up that which is manifest, and that which is hidden in all that he thinks and says, and you will every where recognize the presence of the moral malady which I have just described. Therein truly resides, much more than in his personal griefs and perils, the source of Hamlet's melancholy; in this consists his fixed idea and his madness.

And with the admirable good sense of genius, in order to render the exhibition of so sombre a disease not only endurable, but attractive, Shakspeare has endowed the sufferer himself with the gentlest and most alluring qualities. He has made Hamlet handsome, popular, generous, affectionate, and even tender. He was desirous that the instinctive character of his hero should in some sort redeem human nature from the distrust and anathemas with which it was laden by his philosophic melancholy.

{182}

But, at the same time, guided by that instinct of harmony which never deserts the true poet, Shakspeare has diffused over the whole drama the same gloomy color which opens the scene; the spectre of the assassinated monarch gives its impress to the movement of the drama from its very outset, and leads it onward to its termination, and when that term arrives, death reigns once more; all die, the innocent as well as the guilty, the young girl as well as the prince, and she more mad than he is; all depart to join the spectre who had left the tomb only that he might drag them all with him on his return. The whole circumstance is as mournful as Hamlet's thoughts. None are left upon the stage but the Norwegian strangers, who then appear for the first time, and who have previously taken no part in the action.

After this great moral painting comes the second of Shakspeare's superior beauties, dramatic effect. This is nowhere more complete and more striking than in "Hamlet," for the two conditions of great dramatic effect are found in it, unity in variety--one sole, constant, and dominant impression; and this impression varied according to the character, the turn of mind, and the condition of the different personages in whom it is developed. Death hovers over the whole drama; the spectre of the murdered king represents and personifies it; he is always there, sometimes present himself, sometimes present to the thoughts, and in the language of the other personages. Whether great or small, innocent or guilty, interested or indifferent to his history, they are all constantly concerned about him; some with remorse, others with affection and grief, others again merely with curiosity, and some ever without curiosity, and simply by chance: for example, that rude grave-digger, who says that he entered on his trade on the day on which the late king had gained a great victory over his neighbor, the King of Norway, and who, while digging the grave of the beautiful Ophelia, the mad mistress of the madman Hamlet, turns up the skull of poor Yorick, the jester of the deceased monarch--the skull of the jester of that spectre, who issues at every moment from his tomb to alarm the living and enforce the punishment of his assassin. {183} All these personages, in the midst of all these circumstances, are brought forward, withdrawn, and introduced again by turns, each with his own peculiar physiognomy, language, and impression; and all ceaselessly concur to maintain, diffuse, and strengthen the sole, general impression of death--of death, just or unjust, natural or violent, forgotten or lamented, but always present--which is the supreme law, and should be the permanent thought of all men.

On the stage, before a large and mingled crowd of spectators, the effect of this drama, at once so gloomy and so animated, is irresistible; the soul is stirred to its lowest depths, at the same time that the imagination and senses are occupied and carried away by a continuous and rapid external movement. Herein is displayed the two-fold genius of Shakspeare, equally inexhaustible as a philosopher and as a poet; by turns a moralist and a machinist; as skillful in filling the stage with uproarious movement, as in penetrating and bringing to light the inmost secrets of the human heart. Subjected to the immediate action of such a power, men _en masse_ require nothing beyond that which it gives them; it holds them under its dominion, and carries by assault their sympathy and their admiration. {184} Fastidious and delicate minds, which judge almost at the same moment that they feel, and carry the necessity for perfection even into their liveliest pleasures, have an immense taste and admiration for Shakspeare also; but they are disagreeably disturbed in their admiration and enjoyment, sometimes by the accumulation and confusion of useless personages and interests, sometimes by long and subtle developments of a reflection or an idea which it would be proper for the personage to indicate _en passant_, but in which the poet takes pleasure, and so pauses for his own gratification; but more frequently still by that fantastic mixture of coarseness and refinement of language which sometimes imparts factitious and pedantic forms even to the truest feelings, and a barbarous physiognomy to the noblest inspirations of philosophy or poetry. These defects abound in "Hamlet." I will neither give myself the painful satisfaction of proving this assertion, nor will I omit to state it. In point of genius, Shakspeare has perhaps no rivals; but in the high and pure regions of art, he can not be taken as a model.

{185}

King Lear.

(1605.)