I cannot read the blinding of Gloucester. The only excuse that can be offered, not good for much, is that Shakespeare found the story in the Arcadia, and that in his day horrors on the stage were not so repulsive as they are to us. Cordelia"s death taken from Holinshed is almost as bad. It is not involved in the tragedy like the death of Ophelia or of Desdemona.
All"s Well that Ends Well.--Johnson comments, "I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man n.o.ble without generosity, and young without truth; who married Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: when she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness." This is just.
Bertram is atrocious. With Helena before him he says,
"If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly, I"ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly."
Did he require a deposition on oath in presence of a magistrate? He deserved a scourging in the market place.
Coleridge calls Helena one of Shakespeare"s loveliest women. I cannot agree. She secures her husband"s embraces under a false pretence. How a woman could consent to lie in the arms of a man who had cast her off, and who believed when he was enjoying her that she was a mistress whom he preferred is beyond my comprehension. It is so in Boccaccio, but that is no excuse. Devotion to a man who is indifferent or who hates, is tragically possible, but in its greatest intensity would hardly permit such humiliation.
The play is bad altogether. What was the necessity for suggesting Bertram"s second marriage? There is nowhere any trace of Shakespeare"s depth. The difficulties of the text are singular, and seem to mark this drama as one different from the rest.
Macbeth.--Johnson"s remark that the events are so great that they overpower the persons and prevent nice discrimination of character is partly true.
Coleridge notices that Lady Macbeth was a person of high rank, living much alone. A darkly meditative mind left in solitude can conceive without being startled the most awful designs. The same imagination in Lady Macbeth which brooded over the plot against Duncan"s life drove her to delirium and suicide.
Shakespeare transfers the most perilous stuff in him to Macbeth.
The function smothered in surmise; the reflection on the emptiness of life--tale told by an idiot--Shakespeare empties it into this murderous traitor. He makes him the PREY of that which is mixed in the composition of the best.
The witches do not strike us as miraculous. They are not supernatural, but extensions of the natural.
It is an apology for emendation that one of the most celebrated pa.s.sages in the play is based on conjecture (confirmed by what follows) and on a.n.a.logy.
"I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares NO [Folio] more is none."
"No"--corrected by Rowe to "do."
In Measure for Measure we have
"Be that you are, That is, a woman; if you be more, you"re none."
Note the terrible, gasping brevity of the dialogue between Lady Macbeth and her husband after the murder:
Lady M. "Did not you speak?
M. When?
Lady M. Now.
M. As I descended?
Lady M. Ay."
Macbeth"s speech beginning just before he hears of Lady Macbeth"s death, and ending after he hears of it, should be interpreted and spoken as follows. He had just said he "will laugh a siege to scorn." Then a cry of women within.
"What is that noise?
Seyton. It is the cry of women, my good lord.
[Exit.
Macbeth (musing). I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cool"d To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in "t: I have supp"d full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.
Re-enter Seyton.
Wherefore was that cry?
Seyton. The queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth (with a touch of impatience). She should have died hereafter: There would have been a time for such a word."
He makes no inquiry about his wife, but goes on with his reverie, which does not specially refer to her.
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life"s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."
The "PETTY pace," coming from Macbeth! The "out, out, brief candle," should be spoken in the same musing tone.
Johnson says of a learned apology by Heath for a line in Macbeth which is defective in metre: "This is one of the effects of literature in minds not naturally perspicacious"--a criticism which might be extended to much Shakespearean comment.
Cymbeline.--The wager is loathsome. If any man with whom we were acquainted had laid it, should we not scorn and brand him? It was a crime to mention Imogen"s name in such society as that which met at Philario"s house. The only excuse is Boccaccio, but what shall we say of Iachimo"s interview with Imogen, invented by Shakespeare!
After his beastly experiment upon her, he excuses himself:
"I have spoke this, to know if your affiance Were deeply rooted."
She begs him to prolong his visit! The apology is worse than the original insult.
The royal behaviour, or what Shakespeare means us to take for royal behaviour, in the two youths is overdone and sometimes repulsive.
Arviragus goes out of his way to put his love for Imogen higher than that for his supposed father, Belarius, who is present.
"The bier at door, And a demand who is"t shall die, I"d say My father, not this youth."
Yet the point of the scene is the n.o.bility of blood in these youths!
Lucius, who had protected Imogen, hopes she will plead for his life, and she turns on him: