"O Helica.n.u.s, strike me, honour"d sir; Give me a gash, put me to present pain; Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me, O"erbear the sh.o.r.es of my mortality, And drown me with their sweetness."
What can equal in purifying, regenerative power the fact that one human being can be so much to another? No theology, morality, or philosophy can bring a man so near to G.o.d.
Tempest.--Prospero"s pardon for those who had conspired against him proceeds from "our little life is rounded with a sleep."
The Tempest is called a comedy, but it suggests a tragedy in Prospero"s return to Milan and the months or years he spent there till he died. For twelve years he had been on the island with Miranda, "a thrid of his own life," "that for which he lived," "the cherubin that did preserve him" during his voyage, who raised in him
"An undergoing stomach, to bear up Against what should ensue."
He hears her, smitten with Ferdinand almost in a moment, declare to him:
"I would not wish Any companion in the world but you, Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of";
and she leaves her father and goes far away to Naples with her husband.
Ariel, whom Prospero had freed from his miserable enchantment, had never ceased to thirst for liberty and returns to the winds. Dearly had Prospero loved his delicate Ariel.
"Why, that"s my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee; But yet thou shalt have freedom: so, so, so."
Caliban he had tried to reclaim, had taught him speech and to name the big and lesser light, but all his pains were "lost, quite lost,"
and the "born devil" rewarded them by an attempt on Miranda"s chast.i.ty. He is left behind, master of the island again, to take up his abode in the cell which Prospero and Miranda had inhabited, and with the added experience of Stephano"s drink, which he probably soon learned to imitate.
Antonio, the usurping brother, is said to have been penitent, but his penitence was not profound. He offered no apology, and the first words he is recorded to have uttered after his guilt was discovered were a joke upon "the plain fish," Caliban. He was forgiven, and most likely once more became malignant.
There is nothing to show us that the citizens of Milan were in much trouble when Prospero was deposed, or that they rejoiced when he was restored. They, doubtless, regretted Antonio, who
"Set all hearts i" the state To what tune pleased his ear."
The lord of the spirits, of the elves who chased the ebbing Neptune, he who had given fire to the dread rattling thunder, broke his staff and drowned his book and went back to his lonely palace. Did he never long for his island, for Ariel"s music, for his daughter"s daily presence, replaced by infrequent letters with news of the Court, her children, and Ferdinand? He may have reflected that she was happy, but nevertheless every third thought was his grave.
Merchant of Venice.--Jessica is hateful from the beginning; the disguise in boy"s clothes, the robbery of her father, and the exchange for a monkey of the jewel which belonged to her mother. I am afraid Shakespeare intended we should like her. But she is only a part of the perplexity of the play. That Shakespeare should have used the casket story is inexplicable. Not only is it, as Johnson says, "wildly improbable," it confuses Portia"s character: it is an irritating absurdity.
"But more, for that in low simplicity He lends out money gratis."
We have no proof that Antonio did this. He may have done it. He was the kind of person who might like popularity. If he was really guilty of "low simplicity," I sympathise with Shylock"s hatred of him. But if he was not, I understand it. Shylock was not bound to be generous. It would have been ridiculous in him, an alien in blood and religion, persecuted, spat upon.
The interest of the play departs with Shylock.
Shakespeare"s plays are organic, one character cannot be understood without the other; Hamlet without Ophelia; Romeo without Juliet.
Each is in, by, and of the other; particularised by the other. I do not find this quality, at least in anything like the same degree, in Beaumont and Fletcher.
Note the way in which Shakespeare"s characters--Macbeth, for example--unfold themselves by new circ.u.mstances, what unconjecturable development takes place.
When a serious defect presents itself in a living friend it seems to obtrude itself, press upon us, and affect our judgment more than if we see it in a play of Shakespeare"s. In the play the background of counterbalancing virtue is not obscured and forgotten. In actual life we lose sight of it.
FINIS
"He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see mult.i.tudes pa.s.sing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice, or excite our sympathy, we should remember that we likewise are lost in the same throng; that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear, is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten."--The Rambler, No 159.
Footnotes
{148} On the 24th April 1885 a fire broke out in an oil-monger"s house in the Borough. The inmates were the oil-monger, his wife, four children, and Alice, the servant-of-all-work. She came to the window as soon as the alarm was raised and shouted for help. Before the fire brigade arrived the whole building was in flames. The people in the street called to her to jump and held out clothes to break her fall, but she went back and presently reappeared dragging a feather bed with her, which she pushed out. It was instantly extended below, and Alice fetched one of the children and threw it most carefully down. It was saved, and two other children also were saved by her in the same way. By this time it was evident that the suffocating fumes were beginning to affect her, for her aim with the last two was not steady. The crowd implored her to leap, but it was too late. She could not make a proper spring and fell on the ground. Five minutes afterwards the engines and fire-escape appeared. She was picked up and died in Guy"s Hospital. I begged her portrait from her brother. It is not remarkable. That, perhaps, is the best thing that can be said about it. It is a pleasant, brave face--a face that you might see a dozen times on a Sunday afternoon.
M. R.
{205} The references are to the first edition, that of 1793.
{250} Even this word disappears in the Revised Version, where the Greek is translated "reviling Him."
{254} The vulgar is the wiser, because it is but as wise as it must needes.--(Florio"s translation.)