Part 23

and, when Othello declares to her that Cassio has confessed his crime:

"He will not say so."

Words of simple sublimity, which Mademoiselle Mars renders with an accent of corresponding simplicity and sublimity; those cries from without which hasten the fatal stroke, and, as it were, nerve the arm of Othello--all this was most deeply felt, applauded as far as the emotion which it caused would allow, and--if we may say so without suggesting any comparison that would be invidious--the tragic scene appeared as superior to the lyric scene as the tragedy of Othello itself is superior to the libretto which is sold for thirty sous at the entrance of the Opéra Bouffon.

Immediately after this scene an incident follows which, we are perfectly aware, has been much applauded by all critics, which is greatly celebrated in all modern poetical criticism, which is even strongly commended by philosophers as an inimitable touch of nature.

Emilia enters the chamber, and Desdemona in her last moments yet finds enough strength left to accuse herself of her own death, and to exculpate Othello:

"Nobody: I myself: Farewell! Commend me to my kind lord: Oh, farewell!"

We must give our testimony that there was no effect whatever produced by these words, and we will freely confess that we should always doubt whether there ought to be any.

Let the critics fulminate against us, let them, if they will, launch their thunder-bolts against us; but it has always appeared to us that this short passage betrays a theatrical artifice, and that here it is the poet who speaks to us through the mouth of his character. It has always appeared to us that this last expiring utterance of Desdemona involves an idea far too complicated, far too refined--a prevision, a precaution, which harmonize neither with her position, nor even with her character.

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Since the day of her marriage, Desdemona has regarded herself as Othello's property--as a thing of which Othello is the absolute master, to use or abuse at his pleasure--as a slave whom he may beat or kill, according as his fancy may lead him; how then came she to think all at once that Othello could run any risk so far as she was concerned, or that it was necessary to place him under shelter from a criminal prosecution? Let her kiss Othello's hand when dying; this is quite in keeping with her character--but for her to give her evidence in his favor, by anticipating the proceedings in a court of justice, is not.

Whether we are right or wrong is yet to be seen; this, however, is of little importance. For the fact we can vouch--we repeat it--that these words made little or no impression.

On the other hand, we can hardly say enough in praise of the last scene--a scene about which the critics say little, but which is, in our humble opinion, one of the most admirable in the whole piece, and which produced an impression worthy of its transcendent beauty.

Hardly has Desdemona breathed out her last sigh, scarcely has the blind fury of Othello satiated himself, when the scene changes, his reason returns, the light of truth bursts upon him like a flood, and encounters him on all sides. Not by the explanations of Emilia is he undeceived, nor even by the confessions of Iago. Half an hour previously he would not have listened to any thing of the kind, but now he anticipates it all.

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Even as he had attempted at first to summon his good sense and firmness to his assistance, against the first assaults of jealousy, so now he attempts to summon his frenzy and blind infatuation to his assistance, against the clamorous reproaches of his reason. He cries out with affected brutality, when speaking of Desdemona:

"She's, like a liar, gone to burning hell, 'Twas I that killed her."

He calls with vaunting impetuosity upon Iago,

"Honest, honest Iago!"

to afford him shelter and protection; he constrains himself to recount once more the baseness which he has always before spoken of in accents of wild fury; but now his language is involuntarily changed:

"'Tis pitiful; but yet Iago knows That she with Cassio has the act of shame A thousand times committed."

Vain efforts! he is at length compelled to contemplate himself as he really is. Deprived of a being of spotless goodness, whom he adored, he now sees himself as others see him, the object not only of horror, but also of derision and contempt. Such epithets as calumniator, murderer assassin, are too gentle for him--he is an infuriated mad man, an enraged wild beast, a bull goaded by the gad-fly, or which has thrown itself, with determination to trample under its feet and to gore with its horns, upon a piece of red cloth which a malicious hand has placed before its eyes. He is in exactly the same position as Ajax, in Sophocles, at the moment when he recovers his senses, after his unhappy mania has departed.

Such words as

"O, gull! O, dolt! As ignorant as dirt!"

are showered down upon Othello from all sides. At first he holds down his head, abandoned to his self-recriminations--he is disarmed like a child.

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"I am not valiant, neither, But every puny whipster gets my sword."

But immediately he adds, and this relieves him,

"But why should honor outlive honesty? Let it go, all."

And then,

"I have seen the day, That, with this little arm and this good sword, I have made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop. But O, vain boast! Who can control his fate? 'Tis not so now. Be not afraid though you do see me weapon'd. Here is my journey's end--here is my butt And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. Do you go back dismayed? 'Tis a lost fear: Make but a rush against Othello's breast, And he retires."

Then he falls upon the body of Desdemona, uttering wild, inarticulate cries, which it is impossible to hear without a shudder of grief and sympathy.

However, this paroxysm of humiliation and despair only lasts for a moment. Othello soon recovers his self-possession. In proportion as reason regains its empire in him, he, in his turn, regains his accustomed ascendency over all the circumstances that surround him. Two or three stern and significant words show that he has determined in his own soul what course he shall pursue. He seizes another sword, and none of those present will dare now to deprive him of it. In the presence of Cassio, he excuses himself with nobleness and simplicity; he contemplates with a look of indifference, in which there is a mixture of disdain, the preparations made to secure his person; and when, at last, Ludovico advances toward him, and, in an already half-intimidated tone, orders him to be in readiness to take his departure to Venice, under a strong escort, in order to appear before the Senate, he interrupts him with the words,

"Soft you; a word or two before you go."

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See here, again, the mighty power of the poet; how much he can indicate by a single stroke. Ludovico shall depart alone, such is Othello's determination; Othello is not to go at all, such is his wish; no one is to dispose of him but himself; he will not hear one remark on this point. He then proceeds, in a strain of dignified sadness:

"I have done the state some service, and they know it; No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice; then must you speak Of one that loved, not wisely, but too well: Of one not easily jealous; but, being wrought, Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum. Set you down this."

This said, and after having provided, as far as is possible for him, for his good name, he returns to self-revenge--he turns, with all the lofty pride of his indignant spirit, against that miserable body which he is about to chastise as a rebellious slave, as a ferocious animal which has dared to trample upon its master, and has thereby abandoned him to dishonor; and, seeking for words expressive of the direst insult, which recall at once what he was, and the works of his life, and what he has always most bitterly despised, he says,

"And say, besides, that in Aleppo, once, Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk Beat a Venetian, and traduced the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him--thus."

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We have dilated on the effect produced by this faithful and, we may say, literal translation of "Othello," because this effect seemed to us to augur very favorably for the French theatre. The piece was better played than any of the master-pieces of our dramatic writers is at this time; it has been better judged than any other piece, so far as we know, ever has been; for it has been judged sincerely, without prejudice, without any spirit of partisanship, and each scene has been estimated according to its true value.

If the public will resolutely maintain this freedom of mind, if they will continue henceforth, on every renewed attempt, to applaud only what seems to them to be good, to condemn that which strikes them as bad, to take up an attitude of indifference to things which are in themselves indifferent, it will, by these means, do much for art, and still more for its own gratification. It will save us the annoyance of an inundation of those imitations of the romantic school of the drama which already threaten to supersede the imitations of the classical school. After we have tried, for a hundred years, under a thousand different names, endless variations on the "Andromaque," the "Mérope," and the "Zaïre"--variations, however, which are devoid of all the beauties which belong to the originals--we shall be preserved from the misfortune of experiencing, under a thousand other names, and perhaps during another hundred years, mere repetitions of "Macbeth," "Othello," or "William Tell," minus the real beauties of "Macbeth," "Othello," and "William Tell."

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The beautiful can never be the result of imitation: what is really imitated are the defects, the exterior forms, the mannerism of great poets; and when the public, in its unreflecting enthusiasm for great poets, allows itself to applaud even their faults, or merely their mannerism, it is sure to have very soon more than enough of these.

Let those who are attached to the romantic school be well assured that this school will not establish itself among us by means of reversed reproductions of old works of art in a thin, transparent disguise, nor by counterfeits foisted upon us under the pretense of being borrowed. Let them traduce the beautiful productions of foreign literature, line by line; their work will not be thrown away; but, in Heaven's name, let them not produce these as novelties, and present them before us as fruits which are indigenous to their soil. They would not even have the excuse of their colleagues--originality must always be original. And let not the public allow themselves to be duped--never let them applaud a modern author merely because he can dress himself up in the plumage of a great master.

And let the friends of the classic school be well assured, in their turn, that their only chance of safety is in being able to rival the romantic school. It is now already dead--it has been slain by the copyists; imitations at second and third hand have filled us with an insurmountable disgust. It will revive--of this there can be no doubt; but its revival must be under a new and transformed appearance, released from the shackles by which it has been unreasonably entangled, free in its movements, prepared to enter upon a new career.

This service must be rendered to it by the existing romantic school.

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That will be a happy time when we shall be able to see these two schools flourishing in the presence of each other, in a reasonable degree of independence, governed, each for itself, by the laws appropriate to its true nature, and distributing with lavish hand the beauties which are their own native growths.

But it will be said, Do you then believe that the classic school has an actual existence--that it is not a mistake, a folly, as has been so often declared? Assuredly, we believe this. Do you think that the romantic school has its laws, and that it does not consist in the abnegation of all laws? Far from it. You do not regard as laws of the classic school those rules about which so much noise has been made? Not at all.

Explain yourself, then. Where is the line of demarkation between the two schools to be drawn? What is your idea of the classic, what of the romantic school? What are those laws of which you speak?

These are questions which we would very gladly answer; but time presses, and the amount of space which can be allotted to us in a review of this kind is already more than exhausted. We must, then, of necessity delay our answer till another opportunity. Moreover, the adherents of the romantic school have now a favorable breeze; and as besides, they do not lack expertness to find pretexts, the occasion will not long be wanting to us.

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Historical Dramas.

Shakspeare did not write his historical dramas in chronological order, and with the intention of reproducing upon the stage the great events and characters of the history of England, as they had been successively developed in fact. He had no idea of working on so general and systematic a plan. He composed his plays just according as some particular circumstance either suggested the idea, or inspired the whim, or imposed the necessity of composing them, never troubling himself about the chronology of the subjects, or about the uniform whole which certain works might form. He has introduced upon the stage nearly all the history of England from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, from John Lackland to Henry VIII.; beginning with King Henry VI. and the fifteenth century, then ascending to King John and the thirteenth century, and finally ending with Henry VIII. and the sixteenth century, after having several times transposed the order of both centuries and kings. The following is the dramatic chronology of his six historical dramas, according to his most learned commentators, and among others, Mr. Malone:

1. The First Part of King Henry VI. (1422-1461), composed in 1569.

2. The Second Part of King Henry VI., composed in 1591.

3. The Third Part of King Henry VI., composed in 1591.

4. King John (1199-1216), composed in 1596.

5. King Richard II. (1377-1399), composed in 1597.

6. King Richard III. (1483-1485), composed in 1597.

7. The First Part of King Henry IV. (1399-1413), composed in 1598.

8. The Second Part of King Henry IV., composed in 1598.

9. King Henry V. (1413-1422), composed in 1599.

10. King Henry VIII. (1509-1547), composed in 1601.

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But, after having indicated with precision the chronological order of the composition of Shakspeare's historical dramas, we must, in order properly to appreciate their character and dramatic connection, replace them in the true order of events. This I have done in the notices which I have written on these dramas; and thus alone can we really behold the genius of Shakspeare unfolding and giving new life to the history of his country.

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[Transcriber's note: Guizot presents a history of John Lackland in "A Popular History of England, From the Earliest Times to the Reign of Queen Victoria", Volume I, Chapter VIII. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61647/pg61647-images.html#Page_182. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_monarchs.]

King John.

(1596.)

In choosing the reign of John Lackland as the subject of a tragedy, Shakspeare imposed upon himself the necessity of not scrupulously respecting history. A reign in which, as Hume says, "England was baffled and affronted in every enterprise," could not be represented in its true colors before an English public and an English court; and the only recollection of King John to which the nation could attach any value--I refer to Magna Charta--was not a topic likely to interest, in any great degree, such a queen as Elizabeth. Shakspeare's play accordingly presents only a summary of the last years of this disgraceful reign; and the skill of the poet is employed to conceal the character of his principal personage without disfiguring it, and to dissemble the color of events without altogether changing it. The only fact concerning which Shakspeare has distinctly adopted a resolution to substitute invention for truth is the relation of King John to France; and assuredly, all the illusions of national vanity were necessary to enable Shakspeare to describe, and the English to witness, Philip Augustus succumbing beneath the ascendency of John Lackland. {298} Such a picture might indeed have been presented to John himself when--living in total inactivity at Rouen, while Philip was regaining all his possessions in France--he vauntingly said, "Let the French go on; I will retake in a day what it has cost them years to acquire." All that which, in Shakspeare's play, is relative to the war with France, seems to have been invented in justification of this gasconade of the most cowardly and insolent of princes.

In the rest of the drama, the action itself, and the indication of facts which it was impossible to dissemble, are sufficient to give us a glimpse of a character into the inmost recesses of which the poet did not venture to penetrate, and into which he could not have penetrated without disgust. But such a personage, and so constrained a manner of description, were not capable of producing a great dramatic effect; and Shakspeare has therefore concentrated the interest of his drama upon the fate of young Arthur, and has devolved upon Faulconbridge that original and brilliant part in which we feel that he takes delight, and which he never refuses to introduce into any of his works.

Shakspeare has presented the young Duke of Bretagne to us at that age at which it first became necessary to assert his rights after the death of King Richard--that is, at about twelve years old. We know that at the period to which Shakspeare's tragedy refers Arthur was about twenty-five or twenty-six, and that he was already married, and an object of interest from his amiable and brilliant qualities, when he was taken prisoner by his uncle; but the poet felt how much more interesting the exhibition of weakness in conflict with cruelty became when exemplified in a child. And besides, if Arthur had not been a child, it would not have been allowable to put forward his mother in his place; and, by suppressing Constance, Shakspeare would, perhaps, have deprived us of the most pathetic picture that he ever drew of maternal love--one of the feelings of which he evinced the profoundest appreciation.

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But, at the same time that he rendered the fact more touching, he lessened the horror which it inspires by diminishing the atrocity of the crime. The most generally received opinion is, that Hubert de Bourg, who had promised to put Arthur to death only that he might save him, had, in fact, deceived the cruelty of his uncle by false reports and a pretended burial; but that John, on being informed of the truth, first withdrew Arthur from the Castle of Falaise, in which he was confined under Hubert's guardianship, and transferred him to the Castle of Rouen, whither he proceeded at night, and by water, had his nephew conveyed into his boat, stabbed him with his own hand, tied a stone to his body, and threw him into the river. Such an image would naturally be rejected by a true poet. Independently of the necessity of absolving his principal personage of so odious a crime, Shakspeare perceived how much more dramatic and conformable to the general nature of man the cowardly remorse of John, when he perceived the danger in which he was plunged by the report of his nephew's death, would be, than this excess of brutal ferocity; and certainly, the fine scene between John and Hubert, after the withdrawal of the lords, is amply sufficient to justify his choice. Besides, the picture which Shakspeare presents had too strong a hold upon his imagination, and had acquired too much reality in his eyes, for him not to be conscious that, after the incomparable scene in which Arthur obtains his safety from Hubert, it would be impossible to endure the idea of any human being laying hands on this poor child, and forcing him again to undergo the agony from which he has just escaped.

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The poet also knew that the sight of Arthur's death, although less cruel, would be intolerable if accompanied, in the minds of the spectators, by the anguish which the thought of Constance would add to it; and he is, therefore, careful to inform us of the death of the mother before making us witness the death of the child; just as if, when his genius had conceived, to a certain degree, the painfulness of any particular feeling or passion, his tender heart became alarmed at it, and sought to modify it for its own sake. Whatever misfortune Shakspeare may depict, he almost invariably leads us to anticipate a still greater misfortune, before which his mind recoils, and which he spares us the unhappiness of beholding.

The character of the bastard Faulconbridge was suggested to Shakspeare by a drama of Rowley's, entitled "The Troublesome Reign of King John," which appeared in 1591, that is, five years before Shakspeare's play, which was composed, it is believed, in 1596. Rowley's play was reprinted in 1611, with Shakspeare's name attached to it--rather a common trick of the booksellers and publishers of that time. This circumstance, and the extent to which Shakspeare has borrowed from this work, has led several critics to believe that he had had a hand in it, and that "The Life and Death of King John" was only a recast of the first work; but it does not appear that this supposition has any foundation in fact.