Part 7

From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, and not to any distinction in his quality. Malvolio's conceit is Turveydropian and runs to deportment. Even when he grows flighty with the fancy of being Olivia's husband, he still meditates what his great air must be. "I will be point-de-vice the very man: to have the humor of state, and after a demure travel of regard, to ask for my kinsman, Toby. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control." Standing thus posed, if he should undertake to bow, Toby might believe he "saw creases come into the whites of his eyes."

Dogberry's consequence affects inconsequential phrases, and his days on earth are a series of _non-sequiturs_. Ajax has quite as good an opinion of himself as both these worthies, yet he says he knows not what pride is. "Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I do hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of toads." "Yet he loves himself," says Nestor. Ulysses and Nestor avail themselves of his monstrous sense of superiority to flatter him into fighting Hector in the place of Achilles. This is to pique Achilles and break up his lethargy. Ajax is "a man into whom Nature hath so crowded humors, that his valor is crushed into folly." He sulks in his tent because he feels as valorous as Achilles, and must therefore sport the Achillean moods. He despises the strategy of Ulysses, calls it closet-war, because his own _forte_ is nothing but giving and taking knocks, and his want of thought feels superior to all thinking. You have to behave very gingerly with such a person; if your deference once turns its back, the offence is mortal, and you may make your will. And these people are outrageously touchy; before you have time to make all snug, their conceit has assumed a vortical movement threatening to suck up into its spout every thing in the way. Fire shots at it if you please, but they will not make it tumble. Your only tact is to tack and give it a wide berth. So we see that when Ajax fails to attract any notice he becomes abusive and violent; and he is constantly trying to get somebody to concede that he is a man of as pretty parts as any other Greek. Achilles, forsooth! Who set him up to feel so big, and a better man than I? "If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face." "Oh, no, you shall not go." "An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride." Of course, for of all our pretexts for hating each other there is none so apt as our mutual conceits. We can pardon villainy sooner, for that only affronts an abstract conscience. But a man's conceit is the particular cherished bunion for another man's foot to inadvertently outrage. A straight blow in the chest, hit out from the shoulder, is a signal to measure your strength with another man. But to measure your weakness with him makes you wince. How adroitly Ulysses "rubs the vein" of Ajax's pride! As soon as the first ripple of Ulysses's blarney reaches his feet, he begins to float like a bladder of rapture, and goes bobbing enormously into the net they have spread for him.

When the plot begins to affect him, Thersites observes that "he goes up and down the field asking for himself." As Douglas Jerrold would say: "He stalks as though Colossus had quitted Rhodes to head a company." "He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing." Then he describes him as a veritable Malvolio in armor. Is he really in Olivia's garden, with Sir Toby and the rest on the watch? "Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock; a stride, and a stand; ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard,[4] as who should say, 'There were wit in this head, an't would out.' The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck in the combat, he'll break't himself in vain-glory. He knows not me. I said, 'Good morrow, Ajax;' and he replies, 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think you of this man that takes me for the general? He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin."

Thersites does not allude to opinions which may be turned as easily as a jacket, but to the opinionative temper; nothing turns us so neatly inside out as our good opinion of ourselves. Shakspeare uses the word "opinion" occasionally in this sense; as in I Henry IV. iii. I, where Worcester criticises Hotspur's disposition:--

"Defect of manners, want of government, Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain."

So, whether in armor, in a swallow-tail, or in a surplice, our peacock vein expands around the world.

Then Thersites proposes to imitate the austere conceit of Ajax: "Let Patroclus make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax." This is done, and the freezing brevity of Thersites is exactly like Malvolio's in the height of his fantasy, when Sir Toby and the rest offer to converse with him.

BOTTOM.

When Malvolio is trying to break up the midnight revel, the mischievous Maria fleers at him with, "Go shake your ears." That is a performance for which Malvolio is still too distant from his congener. But self-sufficiency succeeds in preserving that structure in Bottom, who is so deep and rich with harmless vanity that he sprouts into the auricular appendages, and he shakes them in the most amiable, frisky way through the Dream of a Midsummer Night. But there is nothing sour about Bottom; he has none of the quality which Margaret Fuller was the first to call "aloofness." He is hale-fellow with all his mates who appreciate the small gifts which belong to him, and which he good-naturedly strives to render serviceable. Though he is a better fellow than Malvolio, he has all that precisian's ambition; for as the steward could be Olivia's husband as well as any other man,--forsooth, why not?--so Bottom thinks he can play all the parts, rises to their glittering bait, and would appropriate the whole interlude. He is one of those self-made men who occasionally discredit their own bringing up and help us to recover our respect for a liberal education. Like the man of whom Sydney Smith said that he was ready at any moment to undertake the command of the Channel Fleet or run a factory, they have elbowed their way into a conviction that they can fill all the offices from constable to President in a style to astonish men of disciplined intelligence. And they frequently succeed in doing that. Men who unfortunately enjoyed early advantages, and whose lives have perhaps been a protracted training in the virtue as well as wit which lifts state-craft above gambling, have the proper kind of admiration for these chevaliers of industry.

But a highly successful deficiency of education does not make Bottom arrogant. As Athenian dicast, foreman of an English jury, republican officer under investigation, his suavity would be unimpeachable. He is good-tempered, and the first tap of flattery cracks his whole pretension; so that the crafty Quince manages to cast him for Pyramus, who was just such another sweet-faced and destructive lady's man.

Dogberry's malapropisms are inflations made by his vanity to float him into an appearance of sagacity, donkeys' hides blown up to take him across the stream of intercourse. But Bottom miscalls his words from sheer rusticity, and not from any effort to borrow the language of his superiors. The word "alleviate" which he has sometimes heard has been dribbling from brain-cell to cell, and so struggles unconsciously into "aggravate" at last. He uses genteel words which have stayed out of town so long as to be countrified; he has not picked them up, but they have blown into his mind and lodged there, like mallow-seeds. So we see that he is in most senses a born natural, proprietor by birth of the crest which at last he wears. But he is not all fool, for when he wakes out of his exposition of sleep and says he has had a dream, we notice that he is reluctant to expound it. He begins, "Methought I was,"--but a feeling of self-respect interrupts him; he tries it again, to say if he can that he had been wearing asses' ears, but his lips refuse that indignity and he gives it up, much to Shakspeare's credit.

A student of Shakspeare often finds himself wandering waterless and foodless in the sage-brush of æsthetic criticism. Heraud, in his book entitled "Shakspeare, his Inner Life," suggests that when Bottom "transmogrified" the text, "The eye of man hath not seen," &c., so that the new gospel according to Bottom ran thus, "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste," &c., Shakspeare intended to imply that the changing and translating of Bottom shadowed forth the manner in which we shall be transformed in the future life; "but to have done this directly would have been undramatic and otherwise objectionable." This affronts and takes advantage of Bottom's want of intelligence, who might well caution the critic: "Monsieur Cobweb! good Monsieur, get your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. And, good Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not: I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag." But this surfeiting freshet of the modern revival spreads all over Shakspeare's meadows of daisies and forget-me-nots.

Heraud's notion spoils the humor of Bottom's snarl of words which represents perplexity so profound that it must recur to Scripture for relief in expression.

I must notice here another pragmatic after-thought, although it has no connection with the character of Bottom. Heraud is so bent upon forcing a conscious Protestant motive upon Shakspeare that he spoils one of the best passages in the play of Cymbeline. When Imogen, in consequence of a note brought to her from her husband, Leonatus Posthumus, goes to Milford Haven with Pisanio, whom the husband has commissioned to kill her for supposed adultery, she first learns the object of the journey: this converts the beguiling note into something false, unlike her husband, inexplicable. She has thrust it into her bosom: there it lies. "Come, here's my heart," as she invites Pisanio to perform his duty. Then her hand comes into contact with the paper which she had put there. It shall not stand in the way: "The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus all turned to heresy?" That is, she has put the note in a place where it might divert the stroke which the spirit of the note intended:--

"Away, away, Corrupters of my faith! You shall no more Be stomachers to my heart!"

The constant and innocent wife disdains even the slight chance that a bit of paper might turn or deaden the stroke despatched by a loyal husband. She is as loyal as he, but he knows it not: so it is better to die at once than live on thus misconceived. For what is life without the confidence of a loyal husband? The canon against self-slaughter is so divinely engraven in the conscience that it suspends her own hand. Therefore, since life is no longer of value and interest to her, let Pisanio finish. This is the drift of Imogen's speech.

But Heraud imputes to Shakspeare a theological motive in the use of the word "scriptures," as if he meant to include, by secondary allusion, the Bible; and he adds that Shakspeare, although "a critical reader of the Bible and an extreme Protestant," felt the danger of letting the Reformation lapse, by the abuse of reason, into heresies, the only preventive of which was the Catholic principle of authority watching over the use of the Bible.

The German commentators of Shakspeare have done some magnificent work, open occasionally to the English charge of over-subtlety. But no German can yet vie with this English straining to impute to the text an unnatural and ponderous motive. Bottom said that he could "see a voice," and went to the chink to spy if he could hear his Thisbe's face. But these modern observations are far more preternatural.

All the scenes of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," which depend upon the desire of the Athenian mechanicals to amuse their prince, are merely comical when taken alone. The characters thus constructed, by passing into the serious portions of the play, infect it with the element of humor; for the simple earnestness of all their clownishness fraternizes in no offensive way with the more poetical moods of high society, and we feel the charm that equalizes all mankind. The pomp of a court is concentrated at a fustian play that is poorly propertied with bush, lantern, and a fellow daubed with lime. Simpleness and duty tender this contrast, and it comes not amiss. Their crude parody of the fate of Pyramus and Thisbe, done in perfect good faith, is a claim that humble love may have its fortunes too, as well as that of the proud and over-conscious dames who have been roaming through the woods, sick with fancies. What a delightful raillery it is! Yes, we take the point: "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."

It is also a suggestion of the subtlest humor when Titania summons her fairies to wait upon Bottom; for the fact is that the soul's airy and nimble fancies are constantly detailed to serve the donkeyism of this world. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman." Divine gifts stick musk-roses in his sleek, smooth head. The world is a peg that keeps all spiritual being tethered. John Watt agonizes to teach this _vis inertiæ_ to drag itself by the car-load; Palissy starves for twenty years to enamel its platter; Franklin charms its house against thunder; Raphael contributes halos to glorify its ignorance of divinity; all the poets gather for its beguilement, hop in its walk and gambol before it, scratch its head, bring honey-bags, and light its farthing dip at glow-worms' eyes. Bottom's want of insight is circled round by fulness of insight, his clumsiness by dexterity. In matter of eating, he really prefers provender: "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow." But how shrewdly Bottom manages this holding of genius to his service! He knows how to send it to be oriented with the blossoms and the sweets, giving it the characteristic counsel not to fret itself too much in the action.

You see there is nothing sour and cynical about Bottom. His daily peck of oats, with plenty of munching-time, travels to the black cell where the drop of gall gets secreted into the ink of starving thinkers, and sings content to it on oaten straw. Bottom, full-ballasted, haltered to a brown-stone-fronted crib, with digestion always waiting upon appetite, tosses a tester to Shakspeare, who might, if the tradition be true, have held his horse in the purlieus of the Curtain or Rose Theatre: perhaps he sublet the holding while he slipped in to show Bottom how he is a deadly earnest fool; and the boxes crow and clap their unconsciousness of being put into the poet's celestial stocks. All this time Shakspeare is divinely restrained from bitterness by the serenity which overlooks a scene. If, like the ostrich, he had been only the largest of the birds which do not fly, he might have wrangled for his rations of ten-penny nails and leather, established perennial indigestion in literature, and furnished plumes to jackdaws. But he flew closest to the sun, and competed with the dawn for a first taste of its sweet and fresh impartiality.

The humor in this play meddles even with love; for that, too, must be the sport of circumstance and superior power, yet always continue to be the deepest motive of mankind. The juice of love's flower dropped on the eyelids of these distempered lovers makes the caprices of passion show and shift; love in idleness becomes love in earnest, as Puck distils the drops of marriage or of mischief. Titania herself is possessed with that common illusion which marries gracious qualities to absurd companionship. Says Puck,--

"Those things do best please me That befall preposterously."

But this is fleeting. Shakspeare soon breaks the spell in which some of his most delicate and sprightly verses have revelled. The whole play expresses humor on a revel, and brings into one human feeling the supernature, the caprice and gross mischance, the serious drift of life.

TOUCHSTONE.

When we pass from Jaques to Touchstone in "As You Like It," we have expelled that bitter drop which infused sadness into our vein, and the pulse resumes its hilarity. Jaques was not so well-tempered as the female celebrity of our day, who made it a rule, she said, when she heard any scandal of a friend, to hope for the best and believe the worst. Touchstone agrees substantially with Jaques in his views about court-fashions and social conventions, and says things quite as sharp; but he has the tone of genuine humor, and its good-nature never deserts him except when his legs do, as he takes that dispiriting journey into the forest of Arden. We should say that, for a man of his breeding, the clownish and ill-favored Audrey would overcome the most redoubtable temper; for we half believe with Jaques that his "loving voyage is but for two months victualled:" but he has no cynical suspicion. When he sees the sentimental plight of Rosalind, he merrily parodies it, and imagines an old flirtation of his with one Jane Smile; pretending to recollect that he wooed a peascod instead of her in her absence, from which he "took two cods, and, giving her them again, said with weeping tears, 'Wear these for my sake.'" Then he sums it all up with the tolerant reflection, "We, that are true lovers, run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly:" that is, Nature can be foolish in love, but the folly is mortal as all the things of Nature are, and will pass away leaving love behind. Therefore he'll have no jibes about it; and Rosalind justly replies, "Thou speak'st wiser than thou art 'ware of." In his quick answer to this, we detect the purpose of Shakspeare to keep the character ignorant of its own _naïveté_: "Nay, I shall ne'er be 'ware of mine own wit, till I break my shins against it." For humor is not so studiedly conscious of its own quality as irony and satire are. Jaques, meeting Orlando over ears deep in love, says ill-natured things to him, and invites him to a game of railing "against our mistress the world, and all our misery." The difference between his wit and Touchstone's is subtly indicated throughout the play, and is one of Shakspeare's most admirable studies in nature. Jaques marks the moment when the virtue of complete knowledge of the world passes into the vice of discontent. Touchstone expresses the gladness of being a member of this inevitable world, and of tolerating himself with the other fools. Thus all his strictures upon society have this superiority, that they cannot be suspected of hypocrisy and ill-will. Nothing is so depressing as the cynic's perpetual strain of undervaluing. It exhausts the heart like an air-bell; the feather of his irony no longer floats, but drops like lead to weigh us down with suspecting ourselves, and so dragging by that mood all the other people into a pitiful depreciation. We grow light again and rise buoyantly to the sunshiny surface when Touchstone implicates us so good-humoredly in unwisdom, counting himself in, not to miss his taste of the impartiality we all require.

As his name indicates, he tests with a touch the metal of society, and shows dispassionately the color of spuriousness. His foolishness is his naturalness. He is a born simpleton in the sense of being unworldly, a fool "by heavenly compulsion." So he is continually in a state of organic contrast to conventionality. He hears the wrestling-match described, in which three men had their ribs broken. "What is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?" "Why, this that I speak of." "Thus men may grow wiser every day! It is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies." The people in the fashion are the real wearers of motley, as Celia says: "Since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show." Touchstone is

"Wise enough to play the fool; And, to do that well, craves a kind of wit; He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time; Not, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labor as a wise man's art."

In these lines, Shakspeare provides us with the pass-key to the purpose of his court fools and clowns. In them the world's confidential moments speak, when it is off its guard or has no motive to dissimulate. And it is a benefit if men can discover their folly by having it wisely shown to them.

"The wise man's folly is anatomiz'd Even by the squandering glances of the fool."

Jaques accosts him in the forest, "Good-morrow, fool." Touchstone replies, "Call me not fool, till Heaven hath sent me fortune." For thus, indeed, like the wise men, he will have a social chance to show, as they do, what his folly is. Jaques relates how he heard Touchstone airing the solemn triviality of well-ordered circles. Taking out his dial,--

"Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags; 'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine; And, after one hour more, 'twill be eleven; And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot, And thereby hangs a tale."

What tale? Why, the everlasting tedious one of over-accredited common-place behavior. Only a Touchstone, with his sly appreciation, can lend any liveliness to that. No wonder Jaques exclaims, "Motley's the only wear." He sees that Touchstone "hath strange places crammed with observation," and is a man after his own mind. If the temper of Jaques only could have been invested in that motley, they that would be most galled with his folly, "they most must laugh." He is delighted to find that fools can be "so deep contemplative." The deepness of it rests on Touchstone's appreciation of the average shallowness, but there is nothing in his tone to stir that up to a feeble sputter of resentment. Something in the tone continually appeals to us, as he did to Audrey: "Doth my simple feature content you?" Yes, there is nothing scurrilous in thee, else thou hadst not taken up so comfortably with Audrey, who cannot even wish that the gods had made her poetical. "Who calls?" says Corin. "Your betters, sir," replies Touchstone; for everybody is superior to somebody.

What a fine pretence he makes that good manners are essential to salvation, when he asks Corin, "Wast ever in court, shepherd?" Never at court! "Then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation." See the mock Grundy lift his hands, and cast upward the look of shocked superiority. It is done well enough to serve our social virtuosity for a whole epoch of its disdain.

And mark what good sense the fellow has; for, knowing that Audrey cannot appreciate his parts, he says: "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical." Audrey replies: "I do not know what poetical is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?" Honest and true! We see what has won the heart of this motley disparager of cant and shams.