Generalisations like those of Polonius are obtained from observation during youth and middle age. In old age the creation of generalisations ceases and we fall back on our acquired stock. They remain true, but the application fails. We must be increasingly careful in the use of these ancient abstractions, and more intent on the consideration of the instance before us. The temptation to drag it under what we already know is great and must be resisted.
Proverbs and wise saws are more suitable to common life than to intricate relationships. They are inapplicable to deep pa.s.sion and spiritual matters.
Johnson notes that the Ghost"s visits are a failure so far as Hamlet"s resolution is concerned.
Hamlet says,
"O! from this time forth, My thoughts be b.l.o.o.d.y, or be nothing worth!"
but they remained thoughts. The play is to be the thing to decide him, but when it is over and he has the clearest proofs, he does not act, but consents to leave Denmark and returns by accident. Had he obeyed the Ghost"s promptings and killed the King at the end of the play in the third act, Polonius, Ophelia, the Queen, Laertes, and Hamlet himself might have been saved.
Troilus and Cressida is an inexplicable play. It is a justification of those critics who obstinately, but without external evidence, refuse to believe that much which is attributed to Shakespeare really belongs to him. It is absolutely impossible that the man who put these words into the mouth of Achilles:
"I have a woman"s longing, An appet.i.te that I am sick withal, To see great Hector in his weeds of peace; To talk with him, and to behold his visage, Even to my full of view."
could have adapted from the Recuyell the shocking ignominy of the ninth scene in the fifth act in which Achilles calls on his myrmidons to slay Hector unarmed, and then triumphs in these lines:
"My half-supp"d sword, that frankly would have fed, Pleas"d with this dainty bit, thus goes to bed.
[Sheathes his sword.
Come, tie his body to my horse"s tail; Along the field I will the Trojan trail."
Measure for Measure as a play is hateful to me, although there are pa.s.sages in it as truly Shakespeare as anything to be found in all his works. The chief objection to it is that justice, to use Coleridge"s word, is "baffled." There are other objections almost as great. From beginning to end almost everybody is base, foolish, or uninteresting. The Duke"s temporary withdrawal is stupid and contemptible, considering that he is the governor of the state; the condemnation of Claudio is wildly unnatural; the subst.i.tution of Mariana loathsome; the treachery of Angelo in not reprieving Claudio inconceivable, notwithstanding what we already know of the deputy"s hypocrisy and villainy. The lowest depth of scoundrelism is reached when, face to face with Mariana and publicly at the city gate before the Duke and all the company a.s.sembled, he excuses himself from marrying her because
"her reputation was disvalued In levity."
And yet he is let off scot-free, and Mariana marries him!
Isabella"s apology,
"I partly think, A due sincerity govern"d his deeds, Till he did look on me,"
might be sufficient for an outbreak of his l.u.s.t but not for his lying, and Mariana"s is still worse:
"Best men are moulded out of faults."
Not out of such faults as Angelo"s are the best men moulded.
The punishment inflicted on the poor wretch Lucio is horrible.
Lucio. "I beseech your highness, do not marry me to a wh.o.r.e! . . .
Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping and hanging.
Duke. Slandering a prince deserves it."
This is a foul line. I should like to discover doc.u.mentary proof that it is not Shakespeare"s, but the gag of some actor desirous of pleasing court folk
The Promos and Ca.s.sandra from which Measure for Measure is taken is certainly worse, for Promos (Angelo) is made to marry Ca.s.sandra (Isabella) and after the marriage is to die, but Ca.s.sandra, "tyed in the greatest bondes of affection to her husband, becomes an earnest suter for his life."
Henry VIII.--The scene in which Katherine appears before the court is perhaps the finest in the play. To what n.o.ble use is her Spanish pride turned! The last line of the following quotation from Katherine"s reply to Wolsey is infinite:
"For it is you Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me, Which G.o.d"s dew quench."
Oth.e.l.lo is pure tragedy, for the judgment which falls on Oth.e.l.lo and Desdemona, although it is disproportionate to the character or life of either, is necessary from the beginning. Brabantio was not wholly without justification in thinking the marriage unnatural, and Desdemona"s desertion of him without a word was unfeeling. The depth of the tragedy is increased by his death.
"Poor Desdemon I am glad thy father"s dead.
Thy match was mortal to him."
Iago feels the necessity of obtaining motives for his conduct. He tries to find them in the supposed infidelity of his wife with Oth.e.l.lo and in his supersession by Ca.s.sio. Neither is sufficient, but he partly believes in them, and they partly serve their purpose.
Coleridge says Oth.e.l.lo was not jealous: he lacked the suspicion that is essential to jealousy. Perhaps so, but in that case we want a name for the pa.s.sion which rushes to belief of that which it prays may be false. The very intensity of love, so far from inducing careful examination of slander against the divinity I worship, prevents reflection by anxiety; by terror lest the love should be disturbed. Iago"s evidence, thinks Coleridge, was so strong that Oth.e.l.lo could not have done otherwise; but would he have acted in war on evidence equally weak?
How mad Iago is with all his cunning! What a fool! Had he been anything but the maddest fool, he would have seen that in the end his plans must break down. Intellect? Yes, of a kind he had it pre-eminently, but intellect becomes folly when it is inhuman.
"Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars."
Shakespeare might have made Oth.e.l.lo the more eager to plunge into the big wars, but Desdemona is so inwoven with him that the whole fabric goes to ruin when she is torn out.
Oth.e.l.lo "falls in a trance" after his outburst at the beginning of the fourth act. He is a Moor. In the background also lies Brabantio"s prophecy. Venice cannot do without him, but he cannot hold a Venetian woman.
King Lear.--There are pa.s.sages in King Lear which are enough to make us wish we had never been born. They are almost an impeachment of the Ruler of the Universe, and yet--there is Cordelia. Whence did she come? She is as much His handiwork as Regan, and in all our conclusions about Him we must take her into account.
Lear does not go mad. He is mad from the beginning, but his madness is in abeyance. Look at the style of his curses on Goneril.
Coleridge"s criticism is exact: "Lear"s self-supportless leaning for all pleasure on another"s breast." If a man desires not to go mad or not to be soured into oil of vitriol, let him watch the doors of his heart; let him never solicit any expression of love.
Cordelia"s "nothing, my lord," as Coleridge says, is partly irrepressible disgust at her sisters" hypocrisy. There was also, as France admits, "a tardiness in nature" in Cordelia. She was her father"s favourite, but what sort of a life must she have lived with such a father before the time at which the play opens? We ought not to be surprised that she refuses to be demonstrative. She reacts against his exaggeration.