Chapter 15
Once more, this last couplet is very much in the style of Shakespeare's sonnets; nor is it wholly unlike even the dramatic style of Shakespeare in his youth--and some dozen other poets or poeticules of the time. But throughout this part of the play the recurrence of a faint and intermittent resemblance to Shakespeare is more frequently noticeable than elsewhere. {252} A student of imperfect memory but not of defective intuition might pardonably assign such couplets, on hearing them cited, to the master-hand itself; but such a student would be likelier to refer them to the sonnetteer than to the dramatist. And a casual likeness to the style of Shakespeare's sonnets is not exactly sufficient evidence to warrant such an otherwise unwarrantable addition of appendage to the list of Shakespeare's plays.
A little further on we come upon the first and last passage which does actually recall by its wording a famous instance of the full and ripened style of Shakespeare.
He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp Shall die, my lord: and will your sacred self Commit high treason 'gainst the King of heaven, To stamp his image in forbidden metal, Forgetting your allegiance and your oath? In violating marriage' sacred law You break a greater honour than yourself; To be a king is of a younger house Than to be married: your progenitor, Sole reigning Adam on the universe, By God was honoured for a married man, But not by him anointed for a king.
Every possible reader, I suppose, will at once bethink himself of the famous passage in _Measure for Measure_ which here may seem to be faintly prefigured:
It were as good To pardon him that hath from nature stolen A man already made, as to remit Their saucy sweetness, that do coin heaven's image In stamps that are forbid:
and the very difference of style is not wider than the gulf which gapes between the first style of Shakespeare and the last. But men of Shakespeare's stamp, I venture to think, do not thus repeat themselves. The echo of the passage in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, describing the girlish friendship of Hermia and Helena, which we find in the first act of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, describing the like girlish friendship of Emilia and Flavina, is an echo of another sort. Both, I need hardly say, are unquestionably Shakespeare's; but the fashion in which the matured poet retouches and completes the sketch of his earlier years--composes an oil painting, as it were, from the hints and suggestions of a water-colour sketch long since designed and long since half forgotten--is essentially different from the mere verbal and literal trick of repetition which sciolists might think to detect in the present instance. Again we must needs fall back on the inevitable and indefinable test of style; a test which could be of no avail if we were foolish enough to appeal to scholiasts and their attendant dunces, but which should be of some avail if we appeal to experts and their attentive scholars; and by this test we can but remark that neither the passage in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ nor the corresponsive passage in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ could have been written by any hand known to us but Shakespeare's; whereas the passage in _King Edward III_. might as certainly have been written by any one out of a dozen poets then living as the answering passage in _Measure for Measure_ could assuredly have been written by Shakespeare alone.
As on a first reading of the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides we feel that, for all the grace and freshness and lyric charm of its opening scenes, the claim of the poem to our ultimate approval or disapproval must needs depend on the success or failure of the first interview between Theseus and his calumniated son; and as on finding that scene to be feeble and futile and prosaic and verbose we feel that the poet who had a woman's spite against women has here effectually and finally shown himself powerless to handle the simplest elements of masculine passion, of manly character and instinct; so in this less important case we feel that the writer, having ventured on such a subject as the compulsory temptation of a daughter by a father, who has been entrapped into so shameful an undertaking through the treacherous exaction of an equivocal promise unwarily confirmed by an inconsiderate oath, must be judged by the result of his own enterprise; must fail or stand as a poet by its failure or success. And his failure is only not complete; he is but just redeemed from utter discomfiture by the fluency and simplicity of his equable but inadequate style. Here as before we find plentiful examples of the gracefully conventional tone current among the lesser writers of the hour.
_Warwick_. How shall I enter on this graceless errand? I must not call her child; for where's the father That will in such a suit seduce his child? Then, _Wife of Salisbury_;--shall I so begin? No, he's my friend; and where is found the friend That will do friendship such endamagement?--{255} Neither my daughter, nor my dear friend's wife, I am not Warwick, as thou think'st I am, But an attorney from the court of hell; That thus have housed my spirit in his form To do a message to thee from the king.
This beginning is fair enough, if not specially fruitful in promise; but the verses following are of the flattest order of commonplace. Hay and grass and the spear of Achilles--of which tradition
the moral is, What mighty men misdo, they can amend--
these are the fresh and original types on which our little poet is compelled to fall back for support and illustration to a scene so full of terrible suggestion and pathetic possibility.
The king will in his glory hide thy shame; And those that gaze on him to find out thee Will lose their eyesight, looking on the sun. What can one drop of poison harm the sea, Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill And make it lose its operation?
And so forth, and so forth; _ad libitum_ if not _ad nauseam_. Let us take but one or two more instances of the better sort.
_Countess_. Unnatural besiege! Woe me unhappy, To have escaped the danger of my foes, And to be ten times worse invir'd by friends!
(Here we come upon two more words unknown to Shakespeare; {256} _besiege_, as a noun substantive, and _invired_ for _environed_.)
Hath he no means to stain my honest blood But to corrupt the author of my blood To be his scandalous and vile soliciter? No marvel though the branches be infected, When poison hath encompassed the roots; No marvel though the leprous infant die, When the stern dam envenometh the dug. Why then, give sin a passport to offend, And youth the dangerous rein of liberty; Blot out the strict forbidding of the law; And cancel every canon that prescribes A shame for shame or penance for offence. No, let me die, if his too boisterous will Will have it so, before I will consent To be an actor in his graceless lust.
_Warwick_. Why, now thou speak'st as I would have thee speak; And mark how I unsay my words again. An honourable grave is more esteemed Than the polluted closet of a king; The greater man, the greater is the thing, Be it good or bad, that he shall undertake; An unreputed mote, flying in the sun, Presents a greater substance than it is; The freshest summer's day doth soonest taint The loathed carrion that it seems to kiss; Deep are the blows made with a mighty axe; That sin doth ten times aggravate itself That is committed in a holy place; An evil deed, done by authority, Is sin, and subornation: Deck an ape In tissue, and the beauty of the robe Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast.
(Here are four passably good lines, which vaguely remind the reader of something better read elsewhere; a common case enough with the more tolerable work of small imitative poets.)
A spacious field of reasons could I urge Between his glory, daughter, and thy shame: That poison shows worst in a golden cup; Dark night seems darker by the lightning flash; _Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds_; And every glory that inclines to sin, The shame is treble by the opposite. So leave I, with my blessing in thy bosom; Which then convert to a most heavy curse, When thou convert'st from honour's golden name To the black faction of bed-blotting shame! [_Exit_.
_Countess_. I'll follow thee:--And when my mind turns so, My body sink my soul in endless woe! [_Exit_.
So much for the central and crowning scene, the test, the climax, the hinge on which the first part of this play turns; and seems to me, in turning, to emit but a feeble and rusty squeak. No probable reader will need to be reminded that the line which I have perhaps unnecessarily italicised appears also as the last verse in the ninety-fourth of those "sugared sonnets" which we know were in circulation about the time of this play's first appearance among Shakespeare's "private friends"; in other words, which enjoyed such a kind of public privacy or private publicity as one or two among the most eminent English poets of our own day have occasionally chosen for some part of their work, to screen it for awhile as under the shelter and the shade of crepuscular laurels, till ripe for the sunshine or the storm of public judgment. In the present case, this debatable verse looks to me more like a loan or maybe a theft from Shakespeare's private store of undramatic poetry than a misapplication by its own author to dramatic purposes of a line too apt and exquisite to endure without injury the transference from its original setting.
The scene ensuing winds up the first part of this composite (or rather, in one sense of the word, incomposite) poem. It may, on the whole, be classed as something more than passably good: it is elegant, lively, even spirited in style; showing at all events a marked advance upon the scene which I have already stigmatised as a failure--that which attempts to render the interview between Warwick and the King. It is hardly, however, I should say, above the highest reach of Greene or Peele at the smoothest and straightest of his flight. At its opening, indeed, we come upon a line which inevitably recalls one of the finest touches in a much later and deservedly more popular historical drama. On being informed by Derby that
The king is in his closet, malcontent, For what I know not, but he gave in charge, Till after dinner, none should interrupt him; The Countess Salisbury, and her father Warwick. Artois, and all, look underneath the brows;
on receiving, I say, this ominous intimation, the prompt and statesmanlike sagacity of Audley leads him at once as by intuition to the inference thus eloquently expressed in a strain of thrilling and exalted poetry;
Undoubtedly, then something is amiss.
Who can read this without a reminiscence of Sir Christopher Hatton's characteristically cautious conclusion at sight of the military preparations arrayed against the immediate advent of the Armada?
I cannot but surmise--forgive, my friend, If the conjecture's rash--I cannot but Surmise the state some danger apprehends!
With the entrance of the King the tone of this scene naturally rises--"in good time," as most readers will say. His brief interview with the two nobles has at least the merit of ease and animation.
_Derby_. Befall my sovereign all my sovereign's wish!
_Edward_. Ah, that thou wert a witch, to make it so!
_Derby_. The emperor greeteth you.
_Edward_. Would it were the countess!
_Derby_. And hath accorded to your highness' suit.
_Edward_. Thou liest, she hath not: But I would she had!
_Audley_. All love and duty to my lord the king!
Edward. _Well, all but one is none_:--What news with you?
_Audley_. I have, my liege, levied those horse and foot, According to your charge, and brought them hither.
_Edward_. Then let those foot trudge hence upon those horse According to their discharge, and begone.--
_Derby_. I'll look upon the countess' mind Anon.
_Derby_. The countess' mind, my liege?
_Edward_. I mean, the emperor:--Leave me alone.
_Audley_. What's in his mind?
_Derby_. Let's leave him to his humour.
[_Exeunt_ DERBY and AUDLEY
_Edward_. Thus from the heart's abundance speaks the tongue Countess for emperor: And indeed, why not? She is as _imperator_ over me; And I to her Am as a kneeling vassal, that observes The pleasure or displeasure of her eye.
In this little scene there is perhaps on the whole more general likeness to Shakespeare's earliest manner than we can trace in any other passage of the play. But how much of Shakespeare's earliest manner may be accounted the special and exclusive property of Shakespeare?
After this dismissal of the two nobles, the pimping poeticule, Villon manque or (whom shall we call him?) reussi, reappears with a message to Caesar (as the King is pleased to style himself) from "the more than Cleopatra's match" (as he designates the Countess), to intimate that "ere night she will resolve his majesty." Hereupon an unseasonable "drum within" provokes Edward to the following remonstrance:
What drum is this, that thunders forth this march, To start the tender Cupid in my bosom? Poor sheepskin, how it brawls with him that beateth it! Go, break the thundering parchment bottom out, And I will teach it to conduct sweet lines
("That's bad; _conduct sweet lines_ is bad.")
Unto the bosom of a heavenly nymph: For I will use it as my writing paper; And so reduce him, from a scolding drum, To be the herald, and dear counsel-bearer, Betwixt a goddess and a mighty king. Go, bid the drummer learn to touch the lute, Or hang him in the braces of his drum; For now we think it an uncivil thing To trouble heaven with such harsh resounds. Away! [_Exit_ Lodowick. The quarrel that I have requires no arms But these of mine; and these shall meet my foe In a deep march of penetrable groans; My eyes shall be my arrows; and my sighs Shall serve me as the vantage of the wind To whirl away my sweet'st {261} artillery: Ah, but, alas, she wins the sun of me, For that is she herself; and thence it comes That poets term the wanton warrior blind; But love hath eyes as judgment to his steps, Till too much loved glory dazzles them.
Hereupon Lodowick introduces the Black Prince (that is to be), and "retires to the door." The following scene opens well, with a tone of frank and direct simplicity.
_Edward_. I see the boy. O, how his mother's face, Moulded in his, corrects my strayed desire, And rates my heart, and chides my thievish eye; Who, being rich enough in seeing her, Yet seeks elsewhere: and basest theft is that Which cannot check itself on poverty.-- Now, boy, what news?
_Prince_. I have assembled, my dear lord and father, The choicest buds of all our English blood, For our affairs in France; and here we come To take direction from your majesty.
_Edward_. Still do I see in him delineate His mother's visage; those his eyes are hers, Who, looking wistly {262a} on me, made me blush; For faults against themselves give evidence: Lust is a fire; and men, like lanterns, show Light lust within themselves even through themselves. Away, loose silks of wavering vanity! Shall the large limit of fair Brittany {262b} By me be overthrown? and shall I not Master this little mansion of myself? Give me an armour of eternal steel; I go to conquer kings. And shall I then Subdue myself, and be my enemy's friend? It must not be.--Come, boy, forward, advance! Let's with our colours sweep the air of France.
Here Lodowick announces the approach of the Countess "with a smiling cheer."
_Edward_. Why, there it goes! that very smile of hers Hath ransomed captive France; and set the king, The dauphin, and the peers, at liberty.-- Go, leave me, Ned, and revel with thy friends. [_Exit_ PRINCE. Thy mother is but black; and thou, like her, Dost put into my mind how foul she is. Go, fetch the countess hither in thy hand, And let her chase away these winter clouds; For she gives beauty both to heaven and earth. [_Exit_ LODOWICK. The sin is more, to hack and hew poor men, Than to embrace in an unlawful bed The register of all rarieties {263a} Since leathern Adam till this youngest hour.
_Re-enter_ LODOWICK _with the_ COUNTESS.
Go, Lodowick, put thy hand into my purse, Play, spend, give, riot, waste; do what thou wilt, So thou wilt hence awhile, and leave me here. [_Exit_ LODOWICK.
Having already, out of a desire and determination to do no possible injustice to the actual merits of this play in the eyes of any reader who might never have gone over the text on which I had to comment, exceeded in no small degree the limits I had intended to impose upon my task in the way of citation, I shall not give so full a transcript from the next and last scene between the Countess and the King.
_Edward_. Now, my soul's playfellow! art thou come To speak the more than heavenly word of yea To my objection in thy beauteous love?
(Again, this singular use of the word _objection_ in the sense of offer or proposal has no parallel in the plays of Shakespeare.)
_Countess_. My father on his blessing hath commanded--
_Edward_. That thou shalt yield to me.
_Countess_. Ay, dear my liege, your due.
_Edward_. And that, my dearest love, can be no less Than right for right, and render {263b} love for love.
_Countess_. Than wrong for wrong, and endless hate for hate. But, sith I see your majesty so bent, That my unwillingness, my husband's love, Your high estate, nor no respect respected, Can be my help, but that your mightiness Will overbear and awe these dear regards, I bind my discontent to my content, And what I would not I'll compel I will; Provided that yourself remove those lets That stand between your highness' love and mine.
_Edward_. Name them, fair countess, and by heaven I will.
_Countess_. It is their lives that stand between our love That I would have choked up, my sovereign.
_Edward_. Whose lives, my lady?
_Countess_. My thrice loving liege, Your queen, and Salisbury my wedded husband; Who living have that title in our love That we can not bestow but by their death.
_Edward_. Thy opposition {264a} is beyond our law.
_Countess_. So is your desire: If the law {264b} Can hinder you to execute the one, Let it forbid you to attempt the other: I cannot think you love me as you say Unless you do make good what you have sworn.
_Edward_. No more: thy husband and the queen shall die. Fairer thou art by far than Hero was; Beardless Leander not so strong as I: He swom an easy current for his love; But I will, through a helly spout of blood, {264c} Arrive that Sestos where my Hero lies.
_Countess_. Nay, you'll do more; you'll make the river too With their heartbloods that keep our love asunder; Of which my husband and your wife are twain.
_Edward_. Thy beauty makes them guilty of their death And gives in evidence that they shall die; Upon which verdict I their judge condemn them.
_Countess_. O perjured beauty! more corrupted judge! When, to the great star-chamber o'er our heads, The universal sessions calls to count This packing evil, we both shall tremble for it.
_Edward_. What says my fair love? is she resolute?
_Countess_. Resolute to be dissolved: {266} and, therefore, this: Keep but thy word, great king, and I am thine. Stand where thou dost; I'll part a little from thee; And see how I will yield me to thy hands. Here by my side do hang my wedding knives; Take thou the one, and with it kill thy queen, And learn by me to find her where she lies; And with the other I'll despatch my love, Which now lies fast asleep within my heart: When they are gone, then I'll consent to love.
Such genuinely good wine as this needs no bush. But from this point onwards I can find nothing especially commendable in the remainder of the scene except its brevity. The King of course abjures his purpose, and of course compares the Countess with Lucretia to the disadvantage of the Roman matron; summons his son, Warwick, and the attendant lords; appoints each man his post by sea or land; and starts for Flanders in a duly moral and military state of mind.
Here ends the first part of the play; and with it all possible indication, though never so shadowy, of the possible shadowy presence of Shakespeare. At the opening of the third act we are thrown among a wholly new set of characters and events, all utterly out of all harmony and keeping with all that has gone before. Edward alone survives as nominal protagonist; but this survival--assuredly not of the fittest--is merely the survival of the shadow of a name. Anything more pitifully crude and feeble, more helplessly inartistic and incomposite, than this process or pretence of juncture where there is no juncture, this infantine shifting and shuffling of the scenes and figures, it is impossible to find among the rudest and weakest attempts of the dawning or declining drama in its first or second childhood.
It is the less necessary to analyse at any length the three remaining acts of this play, that the work has already been done to my hand, and well done, by Charles Knight; who, though no professed critic or esoteric expert in Shakespearean letters, approved himself by dint of sheer honesty and conscience not unworthy of a considerate hearing. To his edition of Shakespeare I therefore refer all readers desirous of further excerpts than I care to give.
The first scene of the third act is a storehouse of contemporary commonplace. Nothing fresher than such stale pot-pourri as the following is to be gathered up in thin sprinklings from off the dry flat soil. A messenger informs the French king that he has descried off shore
The proud armado (_sic_) of King Edward's ships; Which at the first, far off when I did ken, Seemed as it were a grove of withered pines; But, drawing on, their glorious bright aspect, Their streaming ensigns wrought of coloured silk, Like to a meadow full of sundry flowers, Adorns the naked bosom of the earth;
and so on after the exactest and therefore feeblest fashion of the Pre- Marlowites; with equal regard, as may be seen, for grammar and for sense in the construction of his periods. The narrative of a sea-fight ensuing on this is pitiable beyond pity and contemptibly beneath contempt.
In the next scene we have a flying view of peasants in flight, with a description of five cities on fire not undeserving of its place in the play, immediately after the preceding sea-piece: but relieved by such wealth of pleasantry as marks the following jest, in which the most purblind eye will be the quickest to discover a touch of the genuine Shakespearean humour.
_1st Frenchman_. What, is it quarter-day, that you remove, And carry bag and baggage too?
_2nd Frenchman_. Quarter-day? ay, and quartering-day, I fear. _Euge_!
The scene of debate before Cressy is equally flat and futile, vulgar and verbose; yet in this Sham Shakespearean scene of our present poeticule's I have noted one genuine Shakespearean word, "solely singular for its singleness."
So may thy temples with Bellona's hand Be still adorned with laurel victory!
In this notably inelegant expression of goodwill we find the same use of the word "laurel" as an adjective and epithet of victory which thus confronts us in the penultimate speech of the third scene in the first act of _Antony and Cleopatra_.