Part 13

Though easily attained among the Greeks, whose life and feelings might be summed up in a few large and simple features, this ideal did not present itself to modern nations under forms sufficiently general and pure to receive the application of the rules laid down in accordance with the ancient models. France, in order to adopt them, was compelled to limit its field, in some sort, to one corner of human existence. Our poets have employed all the powers of genius to turn this narrow space to advantage; the abysses of the heart have been sounded to their utmost depth, but not in all their dimensions. Dramatic illusion has been sought at its true source, but it has not been required to furnish all the effects that might have been obtained from it. Shakspeare offers to us a more fruitful and a vaster system. It would be a strange mistake to suppose that he has discovered and brought to light all its wealth. {153} When we embrace human destiny in all its aspects, and human nature in all the conditions of man upon earth, we enter into possession of an exhaustless treasure. It is the peculiar advantage of such a system, that it escapes, by its extent, from the dominion of any particular genius. We may discover its principles in Shakspeare's works; but he was not fully acquainted with them, nor did he always respect them. He should serve as an example, not as a model. Some men, even of superior talent, have attempted to write plays according to Shakspeare's taste, without perceiving that they were deficient in one important qualification for the task; and that was, to write as he did, to write them for our age, just as Shakspeare's plays were written for the age in which he lived. This is an enterprise, the difficulties of which have hitherto, perhaps, been maturely considered by no one. We have seen how much art and effort was employed by Shakspeare to surmount those which are inherent in his system. They are still greater in our times, and would unvail themselves much more completely to the spirit of criticism which now accompanies the boldest essays of genius. It is not only with spectators of more fastidious taste, and of more idle and inattentive imagination, that the poet would have to do, who should venture to follow in Shakspeare's footsteps. He would be called upon to give movement to personages embarrassed in much, more complicated interests, pre-occupied with much more various feelings, and subject to less simple habits of mind, and to less decided tendencies. Neither science, nor reflection, nor the scruples of conscience, nor the uncertainties of thought, frequently encumber Shakspeare's heroes; doubt is of little use among them, and the violence of their passions speedily transfers their belief to the side of their desires, or sets their actions above their belief. {154} Hamlet alone presents the confused spectacle of a mind formed by the enlightenment of society, in conflict with a position contrary to its laws; and he needs a supernatural apparition to determine him to act, and a fortuitous event to accomplish his project. If incessantly placed in an analogous position, the personages of a tragedy conceived at the present day, according to the romantic system, would offer us the same picture of indecision. Ideas now crowd and intersect each other in the mind of man, duties multiply in his conscience, and obstacles and bonds around his life. Instead of those electric brains, prompt to communicate the spark which they have received--instead of those ardent and simple-minded men, whose projects, like Macbeth's, "will to hand"--the world now presents to the poet minds like Hamlet's, deep in the observation of those inward conflicts which our classical system has derived from a state of society more advanced than that of the time in which Shakspeare lived. So many feelings, interests, and ideas, the necessary consequences of modern civilization, might become, even in their simplest form of expression, a troublesome burden, which it would be difficult to carry through the rapid evolutions and bold advances of the romantic system.

We must, however, satisfy every demand; success itself requires it. The reason must be contented at the same time that the imagination is occupied. The progress of taste, of enlightenment, of society, and of mankind, must serve, not to diminish or disturb our enjoyment, but to render them worthy of ourselves, and capable of supplying the new wants which we have contracted. Advance without rule and art in the romantic system, and you will produce melodrames calculated to excite a passing emotion in the multitude, but in the multitude alone, and for a few days; just as, by dragging along without originality in the classical system, you will satisfy only that cold literary class who are acquainted with nothing in nature which is more important than the interests of versification, or more imposing than the three unities. {155} This is not the work of the poet who is called to power and destined for glory; he acts upon a grander scale, and can address the superior intellects, as well as the general and simple faculties of all men. It is doubtless necessary that the crowd should throng to behold those dramatic works of which you desire to make a national spectacle; but do not hope to become national if you do not unite in your festivities all those classes of persons and minds whose well-arranged hierarchy raises a nation to its loftiest dignity. Genius is bound to follow human nature in all its developments; its strength consists in finding within itself the means for constantly satisfying the whole of the public. The same task is now imposed upon government and upon poetry; both should exist for all, and suffice at once for the wants of the masses and for the requirements of the most exalted minds. Doubtless stopped in its course by these conditions, the full severity of which will only be revealed to the talent that can comply with them, dramatic art, even in England, where, under the protection of Shakspeare, it would have liberty to attempt any thing, scarcely ventures at the present day to endeavor timidly to follow him. Meanwhile, England, France, and the whole of Europe demand of the drama pleasures and emotions that can no longer be supplied by the inanimate representation of a world that has ceased to exist. The classical system had its origin in the life of its time; that time has passed; its image subsists in brilliant colors in its works, but can no more be reproduced. {156} Near the monuments of past ages, the monuments of another age are now beginning to arise. What will be their form? I can not tell; but the ground upon which their foundations may rest is already perceptible. This ground is not the ground of Corneille and Racine, nor is it that of Shakspeare; it is our own; but Shakspeare's system, as it appears to me, may furnish the plans according to which genius ought now to work. This system alone includes all those social conditions and all those general or diverse feelings, the simultaneous conjunction and activity of which constitute for us, at the present day, the spectacle of human things. Witnesses, during thirty years, of the greatest revolutions of society, we shall no longer willingly confine the movement of our mind within the narrow space of some family event, or the agitations of a purely individual passion. The nature and destiny of man have appeared to us under their most striking and their simplest aspect, in all their extent and in all their variableness. We require pictures in which this spectacle is reproduced, in which man is displayed in his completeness, and excites our entire sympathy. The moral dispositions which impose this necessity upon poetry will not change; but we shall see them, on the contrary, manifesting themselves more plainly, and receiving greater development, day by day. Interests, duties, and a movement common to all classes of citizens, will strengthen among them that chain of habitual relations with which all public feelings connect themselves. Never could dramatic art have taken its subjects from an order of ideas at once more popular and more elevated; never was the connection between the most vulgar interests of man and the principles upon which his highest destinies are dependent, more clearly present to all minds; and the importance of an event may now appear in its pettiest details as well as in its mightiest results. {157} In this state of society, a new dramatic system ought to be established. It should be liberal and free, but not without principles and laws. It should establish itself like liberty, not upon disorder and forgetfulness of every check, but upon rules more severe and more difficult of observance, perhaps, than those which are still enforced to maintain what is called order against what is designated license.

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Historical And Critical Notices

of the

Principal Dramas Of Shakspeare.

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Romeo And Juliet.

(1595.)

Two powerful families of Verona, the Montecchi and the Capelletti (the Montagues and Capulets), had long lived on terms of such hostility to each other, that it had frequently led to sanguinary conflicts in the open streets. Alberto della Scala, the second perpetual captain of Verona, had ineffectually endeavored to reconcile them; but he succeeded so far in bridling their enmity, that "when they met," says Grirolamo della Corte, the historian of Verona, "the younger men made way for their elders, and they mutually exchanged salutations."

In the year 1303, under the reign of Bartolommeo della Scala, who had been chosen perpetual captain on the death of his father Alberto, Antonio Capelletto, the leader of his faction, gave a great entertainment during the carnival, to which he invited most of the nobility of Verona. Romeo Montecchio, who was about twenty-one years of age, and one of the handsomest and most amiable young men in the city, went thither in a mask, accompanied by some of his friends. After some time, taking off his mask, he sat down in a corner, from which he could see and be seen. Much astonishment was felt at the boldness with which he had thus ventured in the midst of his enemies. {162} However, as he was young and of agreeable manners, the Capulets, says the historian, "did not pay so much attention to his presence as they might have done if he had been older." His eyes and those of Giulietta Capelletto soon met, and being equally struck with admiration, they did not cease to look at each other. The festivities terminated with a dance, which "among us," says Girolamo, "is called the hat-dance (_dal cappello_)," in which Romeo engaged; but, after having danced a few figures with his partner, he left her to join Juliet, who was dancing with another. "Immediately that she felt him touch her hand, she said, 'Blessed be your coming!' And he, pressing her hand, replied, 'What blessing do you receive from it, lady?' And she answered, with a smile, 'Be not surprised, sir, that I bless your coming; Signor Mercurio had been chilling me for a long while, but by your politeness you have restored me to warmth.' (The hands of this young man, who was called Mercurio the Squinter, and who was beloved by every one for the charms of his mind, were always colder than ice.) To these words, Romeo replied, 'I am greatly delighted to do you service in any thing.' When the dance was over, Juliet could say no more than this: 'Alas! I am more yours than my own.'"

Romeo having repaired on several occasions to a small street upon which Juliet's windows looked out, one evening she recognized him "by his sneezing or some other sign," and opened the window; they saluted each other very courteously (_cortesissimamente_), and, after having conversed for a long while of their loves, they agreed that they must be married, whatever might happen; and that the ceremony should be performed by Friar Leonardo, a Franciscan monk, who was "a theologian, a great philosopher, an admirable distiller, a proficient in the art of magic," and the confessor of nearly all the town. {163} Romeo went to see this worthy; and the monk, thinking of the credit he would gain, not only with the perpetual captain, but also with the whole city, if he succeeded in reconciling the two families, acceded to the request of the young couple. On Quadragesima Sunday, when confession was obligatory, Juliet went with her mother to the church of St. Francis in the citadel; and having entered first into the confessional, on the other side of which Romeo was stationed, they received the nuptial benediction through the window of the confessional, which the monk had had the kindness to leave open. Afterward, by the connivance of a very adroit old nurse of Juliet's, they spent the night together in her garden.

However, after the festival of Easter, a numerous troop of Capulets met, at a little distance from the gates of Verona, a band of Montagues, and attacked them, at the instigation of Tebaldo, a cousin-german of Juliet, who, seeing Romeo use every effort to put an end to the combat, went up to him, and, forcing him to defend himself, received a sword-thrust in his throat, from which he fell dead on the spot. Romeo was banished; and a short time afterward, Juliet, on the point of finding herself compelled to marry another, had recourse to Friar Leonardo, who gave her a powder to swallow, by means of which she would appear to be dead, and would be interred in the family vault, which happened to be in the church attached to Leonardo's convent. The monk was to deliver her immediately from her grave, and to send her in disguise to Mantua, where Romeo was residing; and he promised to inform her lover of their design.

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Matters were arranged as Leonardo had suggested; but Romeo, having been informed of Juliet's death by an indirect source, before he received the monk's letter, set out at once for Verona with a single domestic, and, having provided himself with a violent poison, hastened to the tomb, opened it, bathed Juliet's body with his tears, swallowed the poison, and died. Juliet awaking from her trance the instant afterward, seeing Romeo dead, and learning from the monk, who had come up in the meanwhile, all that had happened, was seized with such violent paroxysms of grief, that, "without being able to utter a word, she fell dead upon the bosom of her Romeo." [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: See Girolamo della Corte, "Istorie di Verona," vol. i., p. 89, _et seq_ ed. 1594.]

This story is told as true by Girolamo della Corte, and he assures his readers that he had often seen the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, which, rising a little above the level of the ground, and being situated near a well, then served as a laundry to the orphan asylum of St. Francis, which was being built in that locality. He relates, at the same time, that the Cavalier Gerardo Boldiero, his uncle, who had first taken him to this tomb, had pointed out to him, at a corner of the wall, near the Capuchin Convent, the place from which he had heard it said that the bones of Romeo and Juliet, and of several other persons, had been transferred a great number of years before. Captain Bréval, in his Travels, also mentions that he saw at Verona, in 1762, an old building which was then an orphan asylum, and which his guide informed him had once contained the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, but that it no longer existed.

It was probably not in accordance with the narrative of Girolamo della Corte that Shakspeare composed his tragedy. It was first performed, as it would appear, in 1595, under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth, and was printed for the first time in 1597. {165} Now the work of Girolamo della Corte, which was intended to contain twenty-two books, was interrupted in the middle of the twentieth book, and in the year 1560, by the illness of the author. We learn, moreover, from the editor's preface, that this illness was prolonged, and terminated in the death of the historian; that the necessity for revising a work, to which Girolamo himself had been unable to give the finishing stroke, occupied a considerable period; and, finally, that the lawsuits, "both civil and criminal," with which the editor was tormented, prevented him from bringing his undertaking to a conclusion as promptly as he could have desired; so that the work of Girolamo could not have been published until a long while after his death. The edition of 1594 is, therefore, to all appearance, the first edition, and could scarcely have fallen into Shakspeare's hands so early as 1595.

But the history of Romeo and Juliet, which was doubtless very popular at Verona, had already formed the subject of a novel by Luigi da Porto, published at Venice in 1535, six years after the death of the author, under the title of "La Giulietta." This novel was reprinted, translated and imitated in several languages, and furnished Arthur Brooke with the subject of an English poem, which was published in 1562, and from which Shakspeare certainly derived the subject of his tragedy. [Footnote 20]

[Footnote 20: The title is, "The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, containing a rare Example of true Constancie; with the Subtill Counsels and Practises of an old Fryer, and their ill event." This poem has been reprinted at the end of the tragedy in the large editions of Shakspeare; among others, in Malone's edition.]

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The imitation is complete. Juliet, in Brooke's poem, as well as in the novel of Luigi da Porto, kills herself with Romeo's dagger, instead of dying of grief, as in the history of Girolamo della Corte; but it is a singular circumstance, that both Arthur Brooke's poem and Shakspeare's tragedy make Romeo die, as in the history, before Juliet awakes, whereas, in the novel of Luigi da Porto, he does not die until after he has witnessed her restoration to life, and had a scene of sorrowful farewell with her. Shakspeare has been blamed for not having adopted this version, which would have furnished him with a very pathetic position; and it has been inferred that he was not acquainted with the Italian novel, although it had been translated into English. Several circumstances, however, give us reason to believe that Shakspeare was acquainted with this translation. As for his motives for preferring the poet's narrative to that of the novelist, he may have had many; in the first place, to account for his departing in so important a point from the novel of Luigi da Porto, which he has followed most scrupulously in almost every other particular, perhaps Arthur Brooke, the author of the poem, may have had some knowledge of the true history, as related by Girolamo della Corte. Being a contemporary of Shakspeare, he may have communicated this to him, and Shakspeare's careful conformity, as far as he was able, to history, or to the narratives received as such, would not have allowed him to hesitate as to his choice. Moreover--and this was probably the true reason of the poet--Shakspeare very seldom precedes a strong resolution by long speeches. As Macbeth says:

"Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives."

Whatever anguish reflection may add to grief, it fixes the mind on too large a number of objects not to distract it from the single and absorbing idea which leads to desperate actions. After having received Romeo's farewell, and lamented his death in concert with him, it might have happened that Juliet would have bewailed him all her life instead of killing herself on the spot. {167} Garrick rewrote the scene in the monument, in accordance with the supposition adopted in the novel of Luigi da Porto; the scene is touching, but, as was perhaps inevitable in such a situation, which it would be impossible to delineate in words, the feelings are too much and too little agitated, and the despair is either excessive or not sufficiently violent. In the laconism of Shakspeare's "Romeo and Juliet," in these last moments, there is much more passion and truth.

This laconism is all the more remarkable, because during the whole course of the play, Shakspeare has abandoned himself without constraint to that abundance of reflection and discourse which is one of the characteristics of his genius. Nowhere is the contrast more striking between the depth of the feelings which the poet describes, and the form in which he expresses them. Shakspeare excels in seeing our human feelings as they really exist in nature, without premeditation, without any labor of man upon himself, ingenuous and impetuous, mingled of good and evil, of vulgar instincts and sublime inspirations, just as the human soul is, in its primitive and spontaneous state. What can be more truthful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, so young, so ardent, so unreflecting, full at once of physical passion and of moral tenderness, without restraint, and yet without coarseness, because delicacy of heart ever combines with the transports of the senses! There is nothing subtle or factitious in it, and nothing cleverly arranged by the poet; it is neither the pure love of piously exalted imaginations, nor the licentious love of palled and perverted lives; it is love itself--love complete, involuntary and sovereign, as it bursts forth in early youth, in the heart of man, at once simple and diverse, as God made it. {168} "Romeo and Juliet" is truly the tragedy of love, as "Othello" is that of jealousy, and "Macbeth" that of ambition. Each of the great dramas of Shakspeare is dedicated to one of the great feelings of humanity; and the feeling which pervades the drama is, in very reality, that which occupies and possesses the human soul when under its influence. Shakspeare omits, adds, and alters nothing; he brings it on the stage simply and boldly, in its energetic and complete truth.