Part 14
Pass now from the substance to the form, and from the feeling itself to the language in which it is clothed by the poet; and observe the contrast! In proportion as the feeling is true and profoundly known and understood, its expression is often factitious, laden with developments and ornaments in which the mind of the poet takes delight, but which do not flow naturally from the lips of a dramatic personage. Of all Shakspeare's great dramas, "Romeo and Juliet" is, perhaps, the one in which this fault is most abundant. We might almost say that Shakspeare had attempted to imitate that copiousness of words, and that verbose facility which, in literature as well as life, generally characterize the peoples of the South. He had certainly read, at least in translation, some of the Italian poets; and the innumerable subtleties interwoven, as it were, into the language of all the personages in "Romeo and Juliet," and the introduction of continual comparisons with the sun, the flowers, and the stars, though often brilliant and graceful, are evidently an imitation of the style of the sonnets, and a debt paid to local coloring. It is, perhaps, because the Italian sonnets almost always adopt a plaintive tone, that choice and exaggeration of language are particularly perceptible in the complaints of the two lovers. {169} The expression of their brief happiness is, especially in the mouth of Juliet, of ravishing simplicity; and when they reach the final term of their destiny, when the poet enters upon the last scene of this mournful tragedy, he renounces all his attempts at imitation, and all his wittily wise reflections. His characters, who, says Johnson, "have a conceit left them in their misery," lose this peculiarity when misery has struck its heavy blows; the imagination ceases to play; passion itself no longer appears, unless united to solid, serious, and almost stern feelings; and that mistress, who was so eager for the joys of love, Juliet, when threatened in her conjugal fidelity, thinks of nothing but the fulfillment of her duties, and how she may remain without blemish the wife of her dear Romeo. What an admirable trait of moral sense and good sense is this in a genius devoted to the delineation of passion!
However, Shakspeare was mistaken when he thought that, by prodigality of reflections, imagery, and words, he was imitating Italy and her poets. At least he was not imitating the masters of Italian poetry, his equals, and the only ones who deserved his notice. Between them and him, the difference is immense and singular. It is in comprehension of the natural feelings that Shakspeare excels, and he depicts them with as much simplicity and truth of substance as he clothes them with affectation and sometimes whimsicality of language. It is, on the contrary, into these feelings themselves that the great Italian poets of the fourteenth century, and especially Petrarch, frequently introduce as much refinement and subtlety as elevation and grace; they alter and transform, according to their religious and moral beliefs, or even to their literary tastes, those instincts and passions of the human heart to which Shakspeare leaves their native physiognomy and liberty. {170} What can be less similar than the love of Petrarch for Laura, and that of Juliet for Romeo? In compensation, the expression, in Petrarch, is almost always as natural as the feeling is refined; and whereas Shakspeare presents perfectly simple and true emotions beneath a strange and affected form, Petrarch lends to mystical, or at least singular and very restrained emotions, all the charm of a simple and pure form.
I will quote only one example of this difference between the two poets, but it is a very striking example, for it is one in which both have tried their powers upon the same position, the same feeling, and almost the same image.
Laura is dead. Petrarch is desirous of depicting, on her entrance upon the sleep of death, her whom he had painted so frequently, and with such charming passion, in the brilliancy of life and youth:
"Non come fiamma che per forza è spenta, Ma che per sè medesraa si consume, Se n'andò in pace l'animo contenta. A guisa d'un soave e chiaro lume, Cui nutrimento a poco a poco manca, Tenendo al fin il suo usato costume; Pallida no, ma più che neve bianca Che senza vento in un bel colle fiocchi, Parea posar come persona stanca. Quasi un dolce dormir ne' suoi begli occhi, Sendo lo sperto già de lei diviso, Era quel che morir chiaman gli sciocchi, Morte bella parea nel suo bel viso." [Footnote 21]
[Footnote 21: Petrarch, "Trionfo della Morte," cap. i., lines 160-172]
{171}
The following translation is from the pen of Captain Macgregor:
"Not as a flame which suddenly is spent, But one that gently finds its natural close, To heaven, in peace, her willing spirit rose; As, nutriment denied, a lovely light, By fine gradations failing, less, less bright, E'en to the last gives forth a lambent glow: Not pale, but fairer than the virgin snow, Falling, when winds are laid, on earth's green breast, She seem'd a saint from life's vain toils at rest. As if a sweet sleep o'er those bright eyes came, Her spirit mounted to the throne of grace! If this we, in our folly, Death do name, Then Death seem'd lovely on that lovely face." [Footnote 22]
[Footnote 22: Macgregor's "Odes of Petrarch," p. 220.]
Juliet also is dead. Romeo contemplates her as she lies in her tomb, and he also expatiates upon her beauty:
* * * "O, my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty; Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there."
I need not insist upon the comparison; who does not feel how much more simple and beautiful the form of expression is in Petrarch? It is the brilliant and flowing poetry of the South, beside the strong, rough, and vigorous imagination of the North.
The love of Romeo for Rosaline is an invention of Luigi da Porto, retained in the poem of Arthur Brooke. This invention imparts so little interest to the first acts of the drama, that Shakspeare probably adopted it merely with a view to giving greater effect to that character of suddenness which distinguishes the passions of a Southern clime. The part of Mercutio was suggested to him by these lines of the English poem:
"A courtier that eche where was highly had in price, For he was courteous of his speeche, and pleasant of devise. Even as a lyon would emong the lambs be bolde, Such was emong the bashful maydes Mercutio to beholde."
{172}
Such was, doubtless, the _bel air_ in Shakspeare's time, and it is as the type of the amiable and amusing companion that he has described Mercutio. However, though he was not bold enough to attack, like Molière, the ridiculous absurdities of the court, he very frequently makes it evident that its tone was a burden to him; and the part of Mercutio seems to have been a great tax upon his taste and uprightness of mind. Dryden relates as a tradition of his time, that Shakspeare used to say, "that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him." Mercutio has, nevertheless, had many zealous partisans in England; among others, Johnson, who, on this occasion, soundly rates Dryden for his irreverent words regarding the witty Mercutio, "some of whose sallies," he says, "are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden." Shakspeare's aversion for the kind of wit of which he has been so lavish in "Romeo and Juliet," is sufficiently proved by Friar Laurence's injunction to Romeo when he begins to explain his position in the sonnet style:
"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift."
Friar Laurence is the wise man of the play, and his speeches are, in general, as simple as it was allowable for those of a philosopher to be in his time.
The part of Juliet's nurse also contains but few of these subtleties, which Shakspeare seems to have reserved, in this work, to persons of the higher classes, and sometimes to the valets who ape their manners. The character of the nurse is indicated in Arthur Brooke's poem; in which, however, it is far from possessing the same homely truthfulness as in Shakspeare's drama.
{173}
Wherever they are not disfigured by conceits, the lines in "Romeo and Juliet" are perhaps the most graceful and brilliant that ever flowed from Shakspeare's pen. They are, for the most part, written in rhyme, another homage paid to Italian habits.
{174} Hamlet.
(1596.)
"Hamlet" is not the finest of Shakspeare's dramas; "Macbeth," and, I think, "Othello" also, are, on the whole, superior to it: but it perhaps contains the most remarkable examples of its author's most sublime beauties, as well as of his most glaring defects. Never has he unvailed with more originality, depth, and dramatic effect the inmost state of a mighty soul; never, also, has he yielded with greater unrestraint to the terrible or burlesque fancies of his imagination, and to the abundant intemperance that is characteristic of a mind which hastens to diffuse its ideas without any selection, and which delights to render them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected expression, without caring to give them a pure and natural form.
According to his custom, Shakspeare took no trouble in "Hamlet," either to invent or to arrange his subject. He took the facts as he found them recorded in the fabulous stories of the ancient history of Denmark, by Saxo Grammaticus, which wore transformed into tragical histories by Belleforest, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and were immediately translated and became popular in England, not only among the reading public, but also on the stage, for it appears certain that six or seven years before Shakspeare, in 1589, an English poet named Thomas Kyd had already written a tragedy on the subject of Hamlet. {175} This is the text of the historical romance out of which, as a sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, Shakspeare modeled his drama.
"Fengon, having secretly assembled certain men, and perceiving himself strong enough to execute his enterprise, Horvendile, his brother, being at a banquet with his friends, suddenly set upon him, where he slew him as traitorously as cunningly he purged himself of so detestable a murder to his subjects; for that before he had any violent or bloody hands, or once committed parricide upon his brother, he had incestuously abused his wife, whose honor he ought to have sought and procured, as traitorously he pursued and effected his destruction. * * *
"Boldened and encouraged by his impunity, Fengon ventured to couple himself in marriage with her whom he used as his concubine during good Horvendile's life, * * * and the unfortunate and wicked woman, that had received the honor to be the wife of one of the valiantest and wisest princes of the North, imbased herself in such vile sort as to falsify her faith unto him, and, which is worse, to marry him that had been the tyrannous murderer of her lawful husband. * * *
"Geruth having so much forgotten herself, the prince Hamblet perceiving himself to be in danger of his life, as being abandoned of his own mother, to beguile the tyrant in his subtleties, counterfeited the madman with such craft and subtle practices that he made show as if he had utterly lost his wits; and under that vail he covered his pretense, and defended his life from the treasons and practices of the tyrant his uncle. {176} For every day being in the queen's palace (who as then was more careful to please her whoremaster, than ready to revenge the cruel death of her husband, or to restore her son to his inheritance), he rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the dirt and mire, running through the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one word, but such as seemed to proceed of madness and mere frenzy; all his actions and gestures being no other than the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of all reason and understanding, in such sort, that as then he seemed fit for nothing but to make sport to the pages and ruffling courtiers that attended in the court of his uncle and father-in-law. But many times he did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers, that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might proceed. * * *
"Hamblet likewise had intelligence in what danger he was like to fall, if by any means he seemed to obey, or once like the wanton toys and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent to him by his uncle; which much abashed the prince, as then wholly being in affection to the lady; but by her he was likewise informed of the treason, as being one that from her infancy loved and favored him, and would have been exceeding sorrowful for his misfortune. * * *
"Among the friends of Fengon, there was one that, above all the rest, doubted of Hamblet's practices in counterfeiting the madman. His device to entrap Hamblet in his subtleties was thus--that King Fengon should make as though he were to go some long voyage concerning affairs of great importance, and that in the mean time Hamblet should be shut up alone in a chamber with his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden behind the hangings, there to stand and hear their speeches, and the complots by them to be taken concerning the accomplishment of the dissembling fool's pretense; * * * and withal offered himself to be the man that should stand to hearken and bear witness of Hamblet's speeches with his mother. This invention pleased the king exceeding well. * * *
{177}
"Meantime, the counselor entered secretly into the queen's chamber, and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the queen and Hamblet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to come like a cock, beating with his arms (in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings) upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat! a rat!" and presently drawing his sword, thrust it into the hangings, which done, he pulled the counselor, half dead, out by the heels, and made an end of killing him. * * * By which means having discovered the ambush, and given the inventor thereof his just reward, he came again to his mother, who in the mean time wept and tormented herself; and having once again searched every corner of the chamber, perceiving himself to be alone with her, he began in sober and discreet manner to speak unto her, saying,
"'What treason is this, most infamous woman of all that ever prostrated themselves to the will of an abominable whoremonger, who, under the vail of a dissembling creature, covereth the most wicked and detestable crime that man could ever imagine or was committed? Now may I be assured to trust you, that like a vile wanton adulteress, altogether impudent and given over to her pleasure, runs spreading forth her arms to embrace the traitorous villainous tyrant that murdered my father, and most incestuously receivest the villain into the lawful bed of your loyal spouse? * * * {178} O, Queen Geruth! it is licentiousness only that has made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king, your husband and my father. * * * Be not offended, I pray you, madam, if, transported with dolor and grief, I speak so boldly unto you, and that I respect you less than duty requireth; for you, having forgotten me, and wholly rejected the memory of the deceased king my father, must not be ashamed if I also surpass the bounds and limits of due consideration. * * *'
"Although the Queen perceived herself nearly touched, and that Hamblet moved her to the quick, where she felt herself interested, nevertheless she forgot all disdain and wrath, which thereby she might as then have had, hearing herself so sharply chidden and reproved, to behold the gallant spirit of her son, and to think what she might hope, and the easier expect of his so great policy and wisdom. But on the one side, she durst not lift up her eyes to behold him, remembering her offense, and on the other side, she would gladly have embraced her son, in regard of the wise admonitions by him given unto her, which as then quenched the flames of unbridled desire that before had moved her. * * *
"After this, Fengon came to the court again, and determined that Hamblet should be sent into England. Now to bear him company were assigned two of Fengon's faithful ministers, bearing letters engraved in wood, that contained Hamblet's death, in such sort as he had advertised the King of England. But the subtle Danish prince, while his companions slept, having read the letters, and known his uncle's great treason, with the wicked and villainous minds of the two courtiers that led him to the slaughter erased out the letters that concerned his death, and instead thereof graved others, with commission to the King of England to hang his two companions. * * *
{179}
"Hamblet, while his father lived, had been instructed in that devilish art, whereby the wicked spirit abuseth mankind, and advertiseth him of things past. It toucheth not the matter herein to discover whether this prince, by reason of his over great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared. * * *" [Footnote 23]
[Footnote 23: See "The Hystorie of Hamblet," in Payne Collier's "Shakspeare's Library," vol, i. London, 1843.]
It was evidently Hamlet who, in this narrative, struck and allured the imagination of Shakspeare. This young prince, mad from calculation, and perhaps slightly mad by nature; cunning and melancholy; burning to avenge the death of his father, and skillful in defending his own life; adored by the young girl sent to work his ruin; an object of dread, and yet of tenderness, to his guilty mother; and, until the moment of throwing off the mask, hidden and incomprehensible to both: this personage, full of passion, danger, and mystery, well versed in the occult sciences, and whom, perhaps, "by reason of his over great melancholy, the wicked spirit enabled to divine that which never any but himself had before declared;" what an admirable character was this for Shakspeare, that curious and deep-searching observer of the secret agitations of the human soul and destiny! Had he done nothing more than depict, with the bold outline and brilliant coloring of his pencil, this character and situation as delineated in the chronicle, he would assuredly have produced a masterpiece.
{180}
But Shakspeare did much more than this: under his treatment, Hamlet's madness becomes something altogether different from the obstinate premeditation or melancholy enthusiasm of a young prince of the Middle Ages, placed in a dangerous position, and engaged in a dark design; it is a grave moral condition, a great malady of soul which, at certain epochs and in certain states of society and of manners, diffuses itself among mankind, frequently attacks the most highly gifted and the noblest of our species, and afflicts them with a disturbance of mind which sometimes borders very closely upon madness. The world is full of evil, and of all kinds of evil. What sufferings, crimes, and fatal, although innocent errors! What general and private iniquities, both strikingly apparent and utterly unknown! What merits, either stifled or neglected, become lost to the public, and a burden to their possessors! What falsehood, and coldness, and levity, and ingratitude, and forgetfulness, abound in the relations and feelings of men! Life is so short, and yet so agitated--sometimes so burdensome, and sometimes so empty! The future is so obscure! so much darkness at the end of so many trials! In reference to those who only see this phase of the world and of human destiny, it is easy to understand why their mind becomes disturbed, why their heart fails them, and why a misanthropic melancholy becomes an habitual feeling which plunges them by turns into irritation or doubt--into ironical contempt or utter prostration.
This was assuredly not the disease of the times in which the chronicle represents Hamlet to have lived, nor indeed of the age in which Shakspeare himself flourished. The Middle Ages and the sixteenth century were epochs too active and too rude to give ready admittance to these bitter contemplations and unhealthy developments of human sensibility. {181} They belong much rather to times of luxurious life, and of moral excitement at once keen and leisurely, when souls are roused from their repose, and deprived of every strong and obligatory occupation. It is then that arise these meditative discontents, these partial and irritated impressions, this entire forgetfulness of all that is good, this passionate susceptibility to all that is evil in the condition of man, and all this pedantic wrath of man against the laws and order of the universe.
That painful uneasiness and profound disturbance which are introduced into the soul by so gloomy and false an appreciation of things in general, and of man himself--which he never met with in his own time, or in those times with the history of which he was acquainted--Shakspeare devined, and constructed from them the figure and character of Hamlet. Read once again the four great monologues in which the Prince of Denmark abandons himself to the reflective expression of his inmost feelings; gather together from the whole play the passages in which he casually gives them utterance; seek out and sum up that which is manifest, and that which is hidden in all that he thinks and says, and you will every where recognize the presence of the moral malady which I have just described. Therein truly resides, much more than in his personal griefs and perils, the source of Hamlet's melancholy; in this consists his fixed idea and his madness.
And with the admirable good sense of genius, in order to render the exhibition of so sombre a disease not only endurable, but attractive, Shakspeare has endowed the sufferer himself with the gentlest and most alluring qualities. He has made Hamlet handsome, popular, generous, affectionate, and even tender. He was desirous that the instinctive character of his hero should in some sort redeem human nature from the distrust and anathemas with which it was laden by his philosophic melancholy.
{182}
But, at the same time, guided by that instinct of harmony which never deserts the true poet, Shakspeare has diffused over the whole drama the same gloomy color which opens the scene; the spectre of the assassinated monarch gives its impress to the movement of the drama from its very outset, and leads it onward to its termination, and when that term arrives, death reigns once more; all die, the innocent as well as the guilty, the young girl as well as the prince, and she more mad than he is; all depart to join the spectre who had left the tomb only that he might drag them all with him on his return. The whole circumstance is as mournful as Hamlet's thoughts. None are left upon the stage but the Norwegian strangers, who then appear for the first time, and who have previously taken no part in the action.