Chapter XI (2)

These statements, it is obvious, bring the subject into a small compass; for as the anonymous comedy must have been composed after 1599, referring, as it does, to a drama of that date, and as some incidents in Shakspeare's Timon are evidently founded upon it, whilst the death of Elizabeth took place in March, 1603, the play of our poet must necessarily, if Mr. Chalmers's intimations be relied upon, have been completed in the interim.

Indeed the only argument on the other side for fixing the date of this play in 1609, is built upon the supposition that Shakspeare commenced the study of Plutarch in 1605, and that having once availed himself of this historian for one of his plays, he was induced to proceed, until _Julius Cæsar_, _Anthony and Cleopatra_, _Timon_, and _Coriolanus_, had been written in succession.[447:A] But, as it has been clearly ascertained by Mr. Chalmers, that Shakspeare was perfectly well acquainted with Plutarch when he wrote his Hamlet[447:B], this supposition can no longer be tenable.

We have fixed on the year 1602 rather than 1601, for the era of the composition of our author's play, as it is equally susceptible of the illustration adduced by Mr. Chalmers, allows more scope for the production of the elder drama, and, at the same time, more opportunity to our poet to have become familiar with a comedy which, there is reason to think, from its pedantic style, was never popular, and certainly never was printed.

_Timon of Athens_ is an admirable satire on the folly and ingratitude of mankind; the former exemplified in the thoughtless profusion of Timon, the latter in the conduct of his pretended friends; it is, as Dr. Johnson observes, "a very powerful warning against that ostentatious liberality, which scatters bounty, but confers no benefits, and buys flattery, but not friendship."[447:C]

But the mighty reach of Shakspeare's mind is in this play more particularly distinguishable in his delineation of the species and causes of misanthropy, and in the management of the delicate shades which diversify its effects on the heart of man. Timon and Apemantus are both misanthropes; but from very different causes, and with very different consequences, and yet they mutually illustrate each other.

The misanthropy of Timon arises from the perversion of what would otherwise have been the foundation of his happiness. He possesses great goodness and benevolence of heart, an ardent love of mankind, a spirit noble, enthusiastic, and confiding, but these are unfortunately directed into wrong channels by the influence of vanity, and the thirst of distinction. Rich in the amplest means of dispensing bounty, he receives, in return, such abundant praise, especially from the least deserving and the most designing, that he becomes intoxicated with adulation, craving it, at length, with the avidity of an appetite, and preferring the applause of the world to the silent approval of his own conscience.

The immediate consequence of this delusion is, that he seeks to bestow only where celebrity is to follow; he does not fly to succour poverty, misfortune, and disease, in their sequestered haunts, but he showers his gifts on poets, painters, warriors, and statesmen, on men of talents or of rank, whose flattery, either from genius or from station, will find an echo in the world. The next result of beneficence thus abused, is that Timon possesses numerous _nominal_ but no _real_ friends, and, when the hour of trial comes, he is, to a man, deserted in his utmost need. It is then, that having no estimate of friendship but what reposed on the characters who have left him bare to the storm, and concluding that the rest of mankind, compared with those whom he had selected, are rather worse than better, he gives loose to all the invective which deceived affection and wounded vanity can suggest; feeling, as it were, an abhorrence of, and an aversion to, his species, in proportion to the keenness of his original sensibility, and the agony of his present disappointment.

The inherent goodness of Timon on the one hand, and his avarice of praise and flattery on the other, are vividly brought out through the medium of his servants, and of the Cynic Apemantus. The true criterion, indeed, of the worth of any individual, is best found in the estimation of his household, and we entertain a high sense of the value of Timon's character, from the attachment and fidelity of his dependants. They, in their humble intercourse with their master, have intimately felt the native benevolence of his disposition, and, to the disgrace of those who have revelled in his bounty, are the only sympathizers in his fate. They call to mind his generous virtues:—

"Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart;
Undone by goodness!"

is the exclamation of his faithful steward; nor are the inferior domestics less sensible of his worth:—

"_1 Serv._ So noble a master fallen!—and not
One friend, to take his fortune by the arm!—

_3 Serv._ Yet do our hearts wear Timon's livery,
That see I by our faces."[449:A]

When Flavius visits his master in his seclusion, and with the most disinterested views and the most heart-felt commiseration, offers him his wealth and his attendance, Timon starts back with amazement bordering on distraction, afflicted and aghast at the recognition, when too late, of genuine friendship, and self-convicted of injustice towards his fellow-creatures:—

"Had I a steward so true, so just, and now
So comfortable? It almost turns
My dangerous nature wild.[449:B] Let me behold
Thy face.—Surely, this man was born of woman.—
Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,
Perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim
One honest man,—mistake me not,—but one;
No more, I pray,—and he is a steward.—
How fain would I have hated all mankind,
And thou redeem'st thyself!"[449:C]

If the constitutional goodness of Timon is to be inferred from the conduct of his domestics, the errors which overshadowed it are most distinctly laid open by the unsparing invective of Apemantus. The misanthropy of this character is not based, like Timon's, on the wreck of the noblest feelings of our nature, on the milk of human kindness turned to gall, but springs from the vilest of our passions, from envy, hatred, and malice. He is born a beggar, and his pride is to continue such, while his sole occupation, his pleasure and his choice, is to drag forth the vices, and calumniate the virtues of humanity. For this task he possesses, in the powers of his intellect, the utmost efficiency, and seems, indeed, to have been introduced by the poet for the express purpose of unfolding the conduct of Timon. The two characters, in fact, reciprocally anatomise each other, and with a depth and minuteness which leaves nothing undetected.

The lust of flattery and distinction which burns in the bosom of Timon, finds, even in the height of his prosperity, a sharp, and therefore a wholesome reprover in Apemantus, who tells the Athenian to his face, that "he that loves to be flattered, is worthy of the flatterer," at the same time exposing his limitless and ill-bestowed bounty in the strongest terms; but no good man would choose the hour of adversity and overwhelming distress for a still bitterer torrent of taunts and reproaches, at a period when nothing but additional misery could accrue from the experiment. Such, however, is the object of Apemantus, in his visit to the cave of Timon, and accordingly he experiences the reception which his motives so richly deserve:—

"_Tim._ Why dost thou seek me out?

_Apem._ To vex thee.

_Tim._ Always a villain's office, or a fool's.
Dost please thyself in't!

_Apem_. Ay.

_Tim._ What! a knave too?"

immediately after which, the unhappy Timon proceeds, with admirable discrimination, to contrast himself and his persecutor; a description which, for strength and severity, as well as truth of censure, has never been exceeded:—

"_Tim._ Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm
With favour never clasp'd; but bred a dog.
Had'st thou like us, from our first swath, proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command, thou would'st have plung'd thyself
In general riot; melted down thy youth
In different beds of lust; and never learn'd
The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd
The sugar'd game before thee. But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary;
The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment;
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare
For every storm that blows;—I, to bear this,
That never knew but better, is some burden:
Thy nature did commence in sufferance, time
Hath made thee hard in't. Why should'st thou hate men?
They never flatter'd thee: What hast thou given?
If thou wilt curse,—thy father, that poor rag,
Must be thy subject; who, in spite, put stuff
To some she-beggar, and compounded thee,
Poor rogue hereditary. Hence! be gone!—
If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,
Thou hadst been a knave, and flatterer."[451:A]

In revenge for this correct, but tremendous picture of himself, Apemantus, shortly afterwards, presents Timon with a miniature of his own character, so faithfully condensed, that it comprises, in about a dozen words, the entire history of his life; the indiscriminate generosity of his early, and the extravagant misanthropy, of his latter days:—

"The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity
of both ends."[451:B]

The widely different fate of these two characters, is, likewise, decisive of the opposite origin and nature of their misanthropical conduct. Timon, that

—————————————— "monument,
And wonder of good deeds evilly betow'd,"[452:A]

dies broken-hearted, a martyr to self-delusion, and to the ingratitude of mankind; whilst Apemantus, wrapped up in constitutional apathy, travels on unscathed, a general and unfeeling railer on the frailty of his species.

25. MEASURE FOR MEASURE: 1603. Mr. Malone's reasons for placing the composition of this play towards the close of 1603, appear to us perfectly unshaken by the arguments which Mr. Chalmers has brought forward for the purpose of referring it to the subsequent year. The validity of the alteration which this gentleman wishes to establish, turns almost altogether on the cogency of the following statement:—"Claudio," he says, "complains of '_the neglected act being enforced against him_.' Isabella laments her being the sister of one Claudio, condemned, on the _act of fornication_, to lose his head. Now, the act which was thus alluded to, though not with the precision of an Old Bailey solicitor, 'was the statute to restrain all persons from marriage, until their former wives, and former husbands be dead,' for which such persons, so offending, were to _suffer death_, as in cases of felony. It was against this act, then, which did not operate till after the end of the session, on the 7th of July, 1604, that Shakspeare's satire was levelled."[452:B]

But this very act, it seems from Mr. Chalmers's reference, was passed in the second year of James the First, and how, therefore, could Claudio's complaint of a "_neglected_ act being enforced against him," apply to a statute thus recently issued, and whose operation had only just commenced? The objection is insurmountable, and Claudio's allusion was most assuredly to the act formerly passed on this subject in the first year of Edward the Sixth.

The primary source of the fable of _Measure for Measure_, is to be traced to the fifth novel of the eighth decade of the Ecatommithi of Giraldi Cinthio, which was repeated in the tragic histories of Belle Forest; but Shakspeare's immediate original was the play of _Promos and Cassandra_ of George Whetstone, published in 1578, and of which the argument, as given by the author, has been annexed by Mr. Steevens to Shakspeare's production. On this elder drama, and on Shakspeare's improvements on its plot, the following pertinent remarks have been lately made by Mr. Dunlop:—"The crime of the brother," he observes, speaking of Whetstone's comedy, "is softened into seduction: Nor is he actually executed for his transgression, as a felon's head is presented in place of the one required by the magistrate. The king being complained to, orders the magistrate's head to be struck off, and the sister begs his life, even before she knows that her brother is safe. Shakspeare has adopted the alteration in the brother's crime, and the substitution of the felon's head. The preservation of the brother's life by this device might have been turned to advantage, as affording a ground for the intercession of his sister; but Isabella pleads for the life of Angelo before she knows her brother is safe, and when she is bound to him by no tie, as the Duke does not order him to marry Isabella. From his own imagination Shakspeare had added the character of Mariana, Angelo's forsaken mistress, who saves the honour of the heroine by being substituted in her place. Isabella, indeed, had refused, even at her brother's intercession, to give up her virtue to preserve his life. This is an improvement on the incidents of the novel, as it imperceptibly diminishes our sense of the atrocity of Angelo, and adds dignity to the character of the heroine. The secret superintendence, too, of the Duke over the whole transaction, has a good effect, and increases our pleasure in the detection of the villain. In the fear of Angelo, lest the brother should take revenge 'for so receiving a dishonoured life, with ransom of such shame,' Shakspeare has given a motive to conduct which, in his prototypes, is attributed to wanton cruelty."[454:A]

Of _Measure for Measure_, independent of the comic characters which afford a rich fund of entertainment, the great charm springs from the lovely example of female excellence in the person of Isabella. Piety, spotless purity, tenderness combined with firmness, and an eloquence the most persuasive, unite to render her singularly interesting and attractive. To save the life of her brother, she hastens to quit the peaceful seclusion of her convent, and moves, amid the votaries of corruption and hypocrisy, amid the sensual, the vulgar, and the profligate, as a being of a higher order, as a ministering spirit from the throne of grace. Her first interview with Angelo, and the immediately subsequent one with Claudio, exhibit, along with the most engaging feminine diffidence and modesty, an extraordinary display of intellectual energy, of dexterous argument, and of indignant contempt. Her pleadings before the lord deputy are directed with a strong appeal both to his understanding and his heart, while her sagacity and address in the communication of the result of her appointment with him to her brother, of whose weakness and irresolution she is justly apprehensive, are, if possible, still more skilfully marked, and add another to the multitude of instances which have established for Shakspeare an unrivalled intimacy with the finest feelings of our nature.

The page of poetry, indeed, has not two nobler passages to produce, than those which paint the suspicions of Isabella as to the fortitude of her brother, her encouragement of his nascent resolution, and the fears which he subsequently entertains of the consequences of dissolution:—

"_Isab._ O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect
Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

_Claud._ Why give you me this shame?
Think you I can a resolution fetch
From flowery tenderness? If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride,
And hug it in mine arms.

_Isab._ There spake my brother; there my father's grave
Did utter forth a voice!"[455:A]

On learning the terms which would effect his liberation, his astonishment and indignation are extreme, and he exclaims with vehemence to his sister,—

"Thou shalt not do't;"

but no sooner does this burst of moral anger subside, than the natural love of existence returns, and he endeavours to impress Isabella, under the wish of exciting her to the sacrifice demanded for his preservation, with the horrible possibilities which may follow the extinction of this state of being, an enumeration which makes the blood run chill:—

"_Claud._ O Isabel!

_Isab._ What says my brother?

_Claud._ Death is a fearful thing.

_Isab._ And shamed life a hateful.

_Claud._ Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling!—'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life,
That age, ach, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

_Isab._ Alas! alas!"[456:A]

"It is difficult to decide," remarks Mr. Douce, "whether Shakspeare is here alluding to the pains of hell or purgatory. May not the whole be a mere poetical rhapsody, originating in the recollection of what he had read in books of Catholic divinity? for it is very certain, that some of these were extremely familiar to him."[456:B]

Of our author's predilection for the imposing exterior, and fanciful, but often sublime, reveries of the Roman Catholic religion, we have already taken some notice; and, in reference to the very interesting part which the Duke assumes in this play, under the disguise of a monk, it is the observation of the learned and eloquent Schlegel, "that Shakspeare, amidst the rancour of religious parties, takes a delight in painting the condition of a monk, and always represents his influence as beneficial. We find in him none of the black and knavish monks, which an enthusiasm for the protestant religion, rather than poetical inspiration, has suggested to some of our modern poets. Shakspeare merely gives his monks an inclination to busy themselves in the affairs of others, after renouncing the world for themselves; with respect, however, to pious frauds, he does not represent them as very conscientious. Such are the parts acted by the monk in _Romeo and Juliet_, and another in _Much Ado about Nothing_, and even by the Duke, whom, contrary to the well-known proverb, the cowl seems really to make a monk."[456:C]

26. KING LEAR: 1604. Both the chronologers have assigned to this tragedy the date of 1605; but it appears to us more probable that its production is to be attributed to the close of the year 1604. It certainly was written between the publication of Harsnet's _Declaration of Popish Impostures_, in 1603, and the Christmas of 1606; for Shakspeare undoubtedly borrowed, as the commentators have justly observed, the fantastic names of several spirits from the above mentioned work, whilst in the entry of Lear on the Stationers' Registers, on the 26th of November, 1607, it is expressly recorded to have been played, during the preceding Christmas, before His Majesty at Whitehall.

It is from the following facts, as established by Mr. Chalmers, together with two or three additional circumstances, that we have been induced to throw back a few months the era of the composition of this play. "Lear is ascertained," observes Mr. Chalmers, "to have been written, after the month of October, 1604; say the commentators: (or rather says Mr. Malone) For, King James was proclaimed King _of Great Britain_, on the 24th of October, 1604; and, it is evident, that Shakspeare made a minute change in an old rhyming saw:—

———————————— "Fy, fa, fum,
I smell the blood of an _English_ man;"

which Shakspeare, with great attention to the times, changed, in the following manner:—

"His word was still, Fie, foh, fum,
I smell the blood of a _British_ man."

But, the fact is, that there was issued from Greenwich a royal proclamation, on the 13th of May, 1603; declaring that, till a compleat union, the King held, and esteemed, the two realms, as _presently_ united, and as one kingdom; and, the poets, Daniel and Drayton, who wrote gratulatory verses, on his accession, spoke of the two kingdoms, as united, thereby, into one realm, by the name of Britain; and of the inhabitants of England and Scotland, as one people, by the denomination of British." And he then adds, in a note: "Before King James arrived at London, Daniel offered to him 'A Panegyrike congratulatory, delivered to the King's most excellent Majesty at Burleigh-Harrington in Rutlandshire;' which was printed, in 1603, for Blount, with a Defence of Rhime:—

"Lo here the glory of a greater day
Than _England_ ever heretofore could see
In all her days. ———— ———— ————
And now she is, and now in peace therefore
_Shake hands with union_, O thou mightie state,
Now thou art all _great Britain_, and no more,
_No Scot, no English_ now, nor no debate."[458:A]

We see here, that even before James took possession of his capital, poetry had adopted the very language which Shakspeare has used in his Lear: and that, as early as the 13th of May, 1603, a proclamation had been issued, declaratory of the King's resolution to hold and esteem the two realms as united, and as forming but one kingdom.

These two events, therefore, were of themselves, a sufficient ground for the alteration which our bard thought proper to introduce, and which, if it occurred, as we suppose, anterior to the definitive proclamation of October, 1604, must have been considered, by the monarch, as the greater compliment, on that very account.

A strong additional argument in favour of this chronology, may be drawn from the attempt made in 1605, to impose on the public the old play of _King Leir_ for the successful drama of our author. This production, which had been entered at Stationers' Hall in 1594, was, with this view, re-entered on the Stationers' books on the 8th of May, 1605, and the entry terminates with these words, "as it was _lately_ acted."[458:B]

Now, as it was intended that the expression _lately_ should be referred, by the reader, to our author's play, for which this was meant to be received, it follows, as an almost necessary consequence, from the common acceptation of the term, that the _Lear_ of Shakspeare had been acted some months anteriorly, and was not then actually performing, an inference which agrees well with the date which we have adopted, but cannot be made to accord with Mr. Malone's supposition of Shakspeare's tragedy appearing in April, 1605, and the spurious claimant in May, when there is every reason to conclude that our poet's drama was then nightly, or, at least, weekly delighting the public.

Another circumstance in support of the era which we have chosen for this play, is to be derived from the consideration, that, in Mr. Malone's arrangement, _Cymbeline_ is assigned, and, in our opinion, correctly assigned, to the year 1605, while, in consequence of the removal of _The Winter's Tale_ to the epoch of 1613, a change founded on apparently substantial grounds, the year 1604 is left perfectly open to the admission for which we contend.

To the numerous sources mentioned by the [459:A]commentators, whence Shakspeare may have drawn the materials of his _Lear_, is to be added the celebrated French Romance, entitled _Perceforest_, which, next to the _Gesta Romanorum_, and the _History of Geoffrey of Monmouth_, is the oldest authority extant. The story of King Leyr, as here related, corresponds, in all its leading features, with the fable of our poet.[459:B]

Of this noble tragedy, one of the first productions of the noblest of poets, it is scarcely possible to express our admiration in adequate terms. Whether considered as an effort of art, or as a picture of the passions, it is entitled to the highest praise. The two portions of which the fable consists, involving the fate of Lear and his daughters, and of Gloster and his sons, influence each other in so many points, and are blended with such consummate skill, that whilst the imagination is delighted by diversity of circumstances, the judgment is equally gratified in viewing their mutual co-operation towards the final result; the coalescence being so intimate, as not only to preserve the necessary unity of action, but to constitute one of the greatest beauties of the piece.

Such, indeed, is the interest excited by the structure and concatenation of the story, that the attention is not once suffered to flag. By a rapid succession of incidents, by sudden and overwhelming vicissitudes, by the most awful instances of misery and destitution, by the boldest contrariety of characters, are curiosity and anxiety kept progressively increasing, and with an impetus so strong, as nearly to absorb every faculty of the mind and every feeling of the heart.

Victims of frailty, of calamity, or of vice, in an age remote and barbarous, the actors in this drama are brought forward with a strength of colouring, which, had the scene been placed in a more civilised era, might have been justly deemed too dark and ferocious, but is not discordant with the earliest heathen age of Britain. The effect of this style of characterisation is felt occasionally throughout the entire play, but is particularly visible in the delineation of the vicious personages of the drama, the parts of Goneril, Regan, Edmund, and Cornwall being loaded, not only with ingratitude of the deepest dye, but with cruelty of the most savage and diabolical nature; they are the criminals, in fact, of an age where vice may be supposed to reign with lawless and gigantic power, and in which the extrusion of Gloster's eyes might be an event of no infrequent occurrence.

Had this mode of casting his characters in the extreme, been applied to the remainder of the _Dramatis Personæ_, we should have lost some of the finest lessons of humanity and wisdom that ever issued from the pen of an uninspired writer; but, with the exception of a few coarsenesses, which remind us of the barbarous period to which the story is referred, and of a few incidents rather revolting to credibility, but which could not be detached from the original narrative, the virtuous agents of the play exhibit the manners and the feelings of civilisation, and are of that mixed fabric which can alone display a just portraiture of the nature and composition of our species.

The characters of Cordelia and Edgar, it is true, approach nearly to perfection, but the filial virtues of the former are combined with such exquisite tenderness of heart, and those of the latter with such bitter humiliation and suffering, that grief, indignation, and pity are instantly excited. Very striking representations are also given of the rough fidelity of Kent, and of the hasty credulity of Gloster; but it is in delineating the passions, feelings, and afflictions of Lear, that our poet has wrought up a picture of human misery which has never been surpassed, and which agitates the soul with the most overpowering emotions of sympathy and compassion.

The conduct of the unhappy monarch having been founded merely on the impulses of sensibility, and not on any fixed principle or rule of action, no sooner has he discovered the baseness of those on whom he had relied, and the fatal mistake into which he had been hurried by the delusions of inordinate fondness and extravagant expectation, than he feels himself bereft of all consolation and resource. Those to whom he had given all, for whom he had stripped himself of dignity and power, and on whom he had centered every hope of comfort and repose in his old age, his inhuman daughters, having not only treated him with utter coldness and contempt, but sought to deprive him of all the respectability, and even of the very means of existence, what in a mind so constituted as Lear's, the sport of intense and ill-regulated feeling, and tortured by the reflection of having deserted the only child who loved him, what but madness could be expected as the result? It was, in fact, the necessary consequence of the reciprocal action of complicated distress and morbid sensibility; and, in describing the approach of this dreadful infliction, in tracing its progress, its height, and subsidence, our poet has displayed such an intimate knowledge of the workings of the human intellect, under all its aberrations, as would afford an admirable study for the enquirer into mental physiology. He has also in this play, as in that of Hamlet, finely discriminated between real and assumed insanity, Edgar, amidst all the wild imagery which his imagination has accumulated, never touching on the true source of his misery, whilst Lear, on the contrary, finds it associated with every object, and every thought, however distant or dissimilar. Not even the Orestes of Euripides, or the Clementina of Richardson, can, as pictures of disordered reason, be placed in competition with this of Lear; it may be pronounced, indeed, from its truth and completeness, beyond the reach of rivalry.

Of all the miseries incident to humanity the apprehension of approaching loss of reason is, perhaps, the most dreadful. Lear, on discovering the ingratitude of his eldest daughter, feels compunction for his treatment of the youngest: "I did her wrong," he exclaims, and such is the violence of the shock and the keenness of his sufferings, that, even in this first conflict of resentment and sorrow, he deprecates this heaviest of calamities:—

"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!"[462:A]

But when Regan, following the example of her sister, inflicts upon him still greater dishonour, the fearful assurance is intimately felt, and he predicts its visitation in positive terms:—

—————————— "You think, I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep:—
I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep.—_O, fool, I shall go mad!_"[462:B]

Nothing can impress us with a more tremendous idea of this awful state of mind, than the feelings of Lear during his exposure to the tempest. What, under other circumstances, would have been shrunk from with alarm and pain, is now unfelt, or only so, as a relief from deeper horrors:—

"_Lear._ Thou think'st 'tis much, that this contentious storm
Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee;
But _where the greater malady is fix'd,
The lesser is scarce felt_. Thoud'st shun a bear:
But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,
Thoud'st meet the bear i' the mouth. When the mind's free,
The body's delicate: _the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else,
Save what beats there_.—Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand,
For lifting food to't?—But I will punish home:—
No, I will weep no more.—In such a night
To shut me out!—Pour on; I will endure:
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!—
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,—
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that,—

_Kent._ Good my lord, enter here.

_Lear._ Pr'ythee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease;
_This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more_."[463:A]

It is at the close of this scene that the misfortune which he has dreaded so much, overtakes him: "his wits," as Kent observes, "begin to unsettle;" but it is not a total dereliction of intellect: Lear is neither absolutely delirious, nor maniacal; but he labours under that species of hallucination which leaves to the wretched sufferer a sense of his own unhappiness: a state of being, beyond all others, calculated to awaken the most thrilling sensations of pity.

A picture of more terrible grandeur or of wilder sublimity, than what occurs, during the exposure of the aged monarch to the impetuous fury of the storm, was never imagined. Every thing conspires to render it unparalleled in its powers of impression. On a night, when the conflicting elements of fire, air, and water, deafen nature itself with their uproar; on a night,

———— "wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,
The lion and the belly-pinched wolf
Keep their fur dry,"[464:A]

is the miserable old king driven out by his unnatural daughters, to wander over a bleak and barren heath in search of shelter, destitute of even common necessaries, a very beggar on the bounty of his former subjects, and accompanied only by his fool, and the faithful though banished Kent. It is with difficulty that they persuade him to take refuge from the storm; at length, he yields, at the same time addressing the fool in terms which, perhaps more than any other lines in the play, unveil the native goodness of his heart:—

————————————— "Come, your hovel,
_Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee_."[464:B]

No sooner, however, has the fool entered this hovel, than he returns horror-struck, followed by Edgar, who rushes on the heath, an almost naked maniac, and exclaiming,

"Away! the foul fiend follows me!—
Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind."[464:C]

The dialogue which now ensues between these extraordinary characters is, of itself, a proof of the boundless expansion of the poet's mind. The torrent of agonizing grief and resentment which flows from Lear, abandoned by his daughters, verging towards insanity, and aware of its approach; the wild exuberance of fancy which thrills in the phrenzied accents of Edgar, who, under the disguise of a madman tormented by demons, is flying from death threatened by a father; and the quaint mixture of wisdom, pleasantry, and satire in the language of the honest fool, who yet heightens, while he means to alleviate the distresses of his master, are elements of mental strife which harmonise with, and add a kind of illimitable horror to the storm which howls around.

Nor inferior to this in merit, though of a totally different cast, is the scene in which the exhausted monarch, having been lulled to sleep through the effects of an opiate, is awakened by the sound of music, whilst Cordelia, hanging over him, with an almost breathless anxiety, at length ventures to address him. The language of the poor old man, in the moment of partial reminiscence, is, beyond any other effort of human composition, simple and affecting:—

"_Cor._ How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

_Lear._ You do me wrong, to take me out of the grave:—
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

_Cor._ Sir, do you know me?

_Lear._ You are a spirit, I know; when did you die?—

_Cor._ O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me:—
No, sir, you must not kneel.

_Lear._ Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly,
I fear, I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks, I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night: Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.

_Cor._ And so I am, I am.

_Lear._ Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know, you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.

_Cor._ No cause, no cause.—

_Lear._ You must bear with me;
Pray now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish."[466:A]

27. CYMBELINE: 1605. This play, if not, in the construction of its fable, one of the most perfect of our author's productions, is, in point of poetic beauty, of variety and truth of character, and in the display of sentiment and emotion, one of the most lovely and interesting. Nor can we avoid expressing our astonishment at the sweeping condemnation which Johnson has passed upon it; charging its fiction with folly, its conduct with absurdity, its events with impossibility; terming its faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.[466:B]

Of the enormous injustice of this sentence, nearly every page of _Cymbeline_ will, to a reader of any taste or discrimination, bring the most decisive evidence. That it possesses many of the too common inattentions of Shakspeare, that it exhibits a frequent violation of costume, and a singular confusion of nomenclature, cannot be denied; but these are trifles light as air, when contrasted with its merits, which are of the very essence of dramatic worth, rich and full in all that breathes of vigour, animation, and intellect, in all that elevates the fancy, and improves the heart, in all that fills the eye with tears, or agitates the soul with hope and fear.

In possession of excellences, vital as these must be deemed, cold and fastidious is the criticism that, on account of irregularities in mere technical detail, would shut its eyes upon their splendour. Nor are there wanting critics of equal learning with, and superior taste to Johnson, who have considered what he has branded with the unqualified charge of "confusion of manners," as forming, in a certain point of view, one of the most pleasing recommendations of the piece. Thus Schlegel, after characterising _Cymbeline_ as one of Shakspeare's most wonderful compositions, adds,—"He has here connected a novel of Boccacio with traditionary tales of the ancient Britons reaching back to the times of the first Roman Emperors, and _he has contrived, by the most gentle transitions, to blend together into one harmonious whole the social manners of the latest times with the heroic deeds, and even with appearances of the gods_."[467:A] It may be also remarked, that, if the unities of time and place be as little observed in this play, as in many others of the same poet, unity of character and feeling, the test of genius, and without which the utmost effort of art will ever be unavailing, is uniformly and happily supported.

Imogen, the most lovely and perfect of Shakspeare's female characters, the pattern of connubial love and chastity, by the delicacy and propriety of her sentiments, by her sensibility, tenderness, and resignation, by her patient endurance of persecution from the quarter where she had confidently looked for endearment and protection, irresistibly seizes upon our affections; and when compelled to fly from the paternal roof, from

"A father cruel, and a step-dame false,
A foolish suitor to a wedded lady,
That hath her husband banished,"

she is driven to assume, under the name of Fidele, the disguise of a page, we follow her footsteps with the liveliest interest and admiration.

The scenes which disclose the incidents of her pilgrimage; her reception at the cave of Belarius; her intercourse with her lost brothers, who are ignorant of their birth and rank, her supposed death, funeral rites, and resuscitation, are wrought up with a mixture of pathos and romantic wildness, peculiarly characteristic of our author's genius, and which has had but few successful imitators. Among these few, stands pre-eminent the poet Collins, who seems to have trodden this consecrated ground with a congenial mind, and who has sung the sorrows of Fidele in strains worthy of their subject, and which will continue to charm the mind and soothe the heart "till pity's self be dead."

When compared with this fascinating portrait, the other personages of the drama appear but in a secondary light. Yet are they adequately brought out, and skilfully diversified; the treacherous subtlety of Iachimo, the sage experience of Belarius, the native nobleness of heart, and innate heroism of mind, which burst forth in the vigorous sketches of Guiderius and Arviragus, the temerity, credulity, and penitence of Posthumus, the uxorious weakness of Cymbeline, the hypocrisy of his Queen, and the comic arrogance of Cloten, half fool and half knave, produce a striking diversity of action and sentiment.

Of this latter character, the constitution has been thought so extraordinary, and involving elements of a kind so incompatible, as to form an exception to the customary integrity and consistency of our author's draughts from nature. But the following passage from the pen of an elegant female writer, will prove, that this curious assemblage of frequently opposite qualities, has existed, and no doubt did exist in the days of Shakspeare:—"It is curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular a character as Cloten, have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of the countenance; the shuffling gait; the burst of voice; the bustling insignificance; the fever and ague fits of valour; the froward tetchiness; the unprincipled malice; and, what is most curious, those occasional gleams of good sense, amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain; and which, in the character of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity in character; but in the some time Captain C——n, I saw that the portrait of Cloten was not out of nature."[468:A]

Poetical justice has been strictly observed in this drama; the vicious characters meet the punishment due to their crimes, while virtue, in all its various degrees, is proportionably rewarded. The scene of retribution, which is the closing one of the play, is a master-piece of skill; the developement of the plot, for its fullness, completeness, and ingenuity, surpassing any effort of the kind among our author's contemporaries, and atoning for any partial incongruity which the structure or conduct of the story may have previously displayed.

28. MACBETH: 1606. We have now reached what may justly be termed the greatest effort of our author's genius; the most sublime and impressive drama which the world has ever beheld.

Than the conception of the character of Macbeth, it is scarcely possible to conceive a picture more original and grand? Too great and good to fall beneath the common temptations to villany, Shakspeare has called in the powers of supernatural agency, and seizing upon ambition as the vulnerable part of his hero's character, and placing him between the suggestions of hell on one side, and those of his fiend-like wife on the other, he has, in conformity to the letter of the traditions which were before him, brought about a catastrophe, which, as he has conducted it, is the most awful on dramatic record. For, whilst the influence of the world unknown throws a dread solemnity over the principal incidents, the volition of Macbeth remains sufficiently free to enable the poet to bring into full play the strongest passions of the human breast.

Originally brave, magnanimous, humane, and gentle,

——— "not without ambition; but without
The illness should attend it,"

and wishing to do that holily which he would highly; fully sensible also of the enormous ingratitude and guilt which he should incur by the assassination of the monarch who had loaded him with honours, and who was moreover his kinsman and his guest, the struggle would necessarily have terminated on the side of virtue, had not the predictions of the weird sisters, in part, instantly accomplished, and assuming the form therefore of inevitable destiny, concealed from his bewildered senses the eternal truth, that not from fate, but from his own agency alone could spring the commission of a crime, whose very suggestion had at first filled him with horror. But even this delusion, which seemed for a time to deaden the sense of responsibility, would have failed in its effect, had not the ferocious and sarcastic eloquence of Lady Macbeth been called in to its aid: dazzled by the splendour with which she clothes the expected issue of the deed; indignant at the charge of cowardice, to which she artfully imputes his irresolution, and allured by the means which she has planned as a security from detection, he, at length, rushes into the snare.

No sooner, however, has the assassination of Duncan been perpetrated, than the virtuous principles which had slumbered in the bosom of Macbeth rise up to accuse and condemn him. Conscience-stricken, and recoiling with horror from the atrocity of his own deed, he becomes the victim of the most agonising remorse; he feels deserted both by God and man, and unable even to deprecate the wrath which night and day pursues him:

"I have done the deed:—Did'st thou not hear a noise?—
There's one did laugh in his sleep, and one cried, _Murder!_
That they did wake each other: I stood and heard them.—
One cried, _God bless us!_ and, _Amen!_ the other;
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands
Listening their fear. I could not say, Amen,
When they did say, God bless us.—
But wherefore could not I pronounce, Amen?
I had most need of blessing, and Amen
Stuck in my throat.—
Methought I heard a voice cry, _Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder sleep._—
Still it cry'd, _Sleep no more!_ to all the house;
_Glamis hath murdered sleep_; and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more."[470:A]

To this dread of vengeance from offended heaven, is soon added the apprehension of punishment from mankind, his keen abhorrence of his own iniquity leading him to paint, in the strongest colours, the detestation and resentment which it must have incurred from others. This fear of retaliation from his fellow-creatures, together with the awful prospect of retribution in another world, produce a complete revolution in his character; he is exhibited distrustful, treacherous, and cruel, sweeping from existence, without pity or hesitation, all whose talents, virtues, sufferings, or pretensions seem to endanger a life, of which, though hourly becoming more wretched and depraved, he anticipates the close with horror and dismay.

To the very last, the contest is kept up with tremendous energy, between the native vigour of a brave mind, and the debilitating effects of a guilty, and, therefore, a fear-creating conscience. The lesson is, beyond every other, salutary and important, as it proves that the dominion of one perverted passion subjugates to its own depraved purposes the very principles of virtue itself; the sensibility of Macbeth to his own wickedness, giving birth to terrors which urge him on to reiterated murder, and finally to irretrievable destruction.

The management of the fable of Macbeth presents us with a remarkable instance of the profound art of Shakspeare, in condensing into one representation, and with an uninterrupted progress of the action, an extensive and closely concatenated series of events, forming a perfect cycle of influential incidents and passions, on a scale commensurate with that of nature, and for which it were in vain to look, where the unrelaxing unities of time and place have imposed their fetters on the poet. "Let any one, for instance," observes Schlegel, "attempt to circumscribe the gigantic picture of Macbeth's murder, his tyrannical usurpation, and final fall, within the narrow limits of the unity of time, and he will then see, that, however many of the events which Shakspeare successively exhibits before us in such dread array, he may have placed anterior to the commencement of the piece, and made the subject of after recital, he has altogether deprived it of its sublimity of import. This drama, it is true, comprehends a considerable period of time: but in the rapidity of its progress, have we leisure to calculate this? We see, as it were, the fates weaving their dark web on the bosom of time; and the storm and whirlwind of events, which impel the hero to the first daring attempt, which afterwards lead him to commit innumerable crimes to secure the fruits of it, and drive him at last, amidst numerous perils, to his destruction in the heroic combat, draw us irresistibly along with them. Such a tragical exhibition resembles the course of a comet, which, hardly visible at first, and only important to the astronomic eye, when appearing in the heaven in a nebulous distance, soon soars with an unheard of and perpetually increasing rapidity towards the central point of our system, spreading dismay among the nations of the earth, till in a moment, with its portentous tail, it overspreads the half of the firmament with flaming fire."[472:A]

But, in fact, as hath been remarked by the same admirable critic, _Macbeth_, in its construction, bears a striking affinity to the celebrated trilogy of Æschylus, which included the _Agamemnon_, the _Choephoræ_, and the _Eumenides_, or _Furies_, pieces which were successively represented in one day. "The object of the first is the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, on his return from Troy. In the second, Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother: _facto pius et sceleratus eodem_. This deed, although perpetrated from the most powerful motives, is repugnant however to natural and moral order. Orestes as a Prince was, it is true, entitled to exercise justice even on the members of his own family; but he was under the necessity of stealing in disguise into the dwelling of the tyrannical usurper of his throne, and of going to work like an assassin. The memory of his father pleads his excuse; but although Clytemnestra has deserved death, the blood of his mother still rises up in judgment against him. This is represented in the Eumenides in the form of a contention among the gods, some of whom approve of the deed of Orestes, while others persecute him, till at last the divine wisdom, under the figure of Minerva, reconciles the opposite claims, establishes a peace, and puts an end to the long series of crimes and punishments which desolated the royal house of Atreus.

"A considerable interval takes place between the period of the first and second pieces, during which Orestes grows up to manhood. The second and third are connected together immediately in the order of time. Orestes takes flight after the murder of his mother to Delphi, where we find him at the commencement of the Eumenides.

"In each of the two first pieces, there is a visible reference to the one which follows. In Agamemnon, Cassandra and the chorus prophesy, at the close, to the arrogant Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus, the punishment which awaits them at the hands of Orestes. In the Choephoræ, Orestes, immediately after the execution of the deed, finds no longer any repose; the furies of his mother begin to persecute him, and he announces his resolution of taking refuge in Delphi.

"The connection is therefore evident throughout, and we may consider the three pieces, which were connected together even in the representation, as so many acts of one great and entire drama. I mention this as a preliminary justification of Shakspeare and other modern poets, in connecting together in one representation a larger circle of human destinies, as we can produce to the critics who object to this the supposed example of the ancients."[473:A]

To these observations of M. Schlegel, the following excellent remarks have been added by a writer in the Monthly Review:—"Shakspeare's Macbeth," says this critic, "bears a close resemblance to this trilogy of Æschylus, which gives, in three distinct acts, a history of the house of Agamemnon. In Macbeth, also, are three acts or deeds, distinct from each other, and separated by long intervals of time; namely, the regicide of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, and the fall of Macbeth; the first serving to shew how he attained his elevation, the second how he abused it, and the third how he lost it. A chorus of supernatural beings, (the witches of Shakspeare operate like the furies of Æschylus,) in both these tragic poems, hovers over the fate of the hero; and, by impressing on the spectator the consciousness of an irresistible necessity, all the extenuation which the atrocities could admit is introduced. Criticism, in comparing the master-pieces of these master-poets, may be permitted to hesitate, but not to draw stakes. To the plot or fable of Shakspeare must be allowed the merit of possessing, in the higher degree, wholeness, connection, and ascending interest. The character of Clytemnestra may be weighed without disparagement against that of Lady Macbeth: but all the other delineations are superior in our Shakspeare; his characters are more various, more marked, more consistent, more natural, more intuitive. The style of Æschylus, if distinguished for a majestic energetic simplicity, greatly preferable to the mixt metaphors and puns of Shakspeare, has still neither the richness of thought nor the versatility of diction which we find displayed in the English tragedy."[474:A]