Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters Part 12

Before quitting this branch of the theme, I will add a few ill.u.s.trations. And I will begin with two specimens of the circular structure; the first being from the night-scene in _The Merchant of Venice_, v. I:

"For do but note a wild and wanton herd, Or race of youthful and unhandled colts, Fetching mad bounds, bellowing, and neighing loud, Which is the hot condition of their blood; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze, By the sweet power of music."

The next is from one of Westmoreland's speeches in the Second Part of _King Henry the Fourth_, iv. 1:

"You, Lord Archbishop,-- Whose See is by a civil peace maintain'd; Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch'd; Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor'd; Whose white investments figure innocence, The dove and very blessed spirit of peace,-- Wherefore do you so ill translate yourself Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace, Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war?"

Now for some specimens in the linear style. The first is from the courts.h.i.+p of Ferdinand and Miranda, _The Tempest_, iii. 1:

"I do not know One of my s.e.x; no woman's face remember, Save, from my gla.s.s, mine own; nor have I seen More that I may call men, than you, good friend, And my dear father: how features are abroad, I'm skilless of; but, by my modesty,-- The jewel in my dower,--I would not wish Any companion in the world but you; Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of."

The next is from the speech of Cominius to the people on proposing the hero for Consul, in _Coriola.n.u.s_, ii. 2:

"At sixteen years, When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought Beyond the mark of others: our then Dictator, Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight, When with his Amazonian chin he drove The bristled lips before him: he bestrid An o'erpress'd Roman, and i' the Consul's view Slew three opposers: Tarquin's self he met, And struck him on his knee: in that day's feats, When he might act the woman in the scene, He prov'd best man i' the field, and for his meed Was brow-bound with the oak."

The following is from the history of Posthumus given by one of the Gentlemen in _Cymbeline_, i. 1:

"The King he takes the babe To his protection; calls him Posthumus Leonatus; Breeds him, and makes him of his bed-chamber; Puts to him all the learnings that his time Could make him the receiver of; which he took, As we do air, fast as 't was minister'd, And in his spring became a harvest; liv'd in Court-- Which rare it is to do--most prais'd, most lov'd; A sample to the youngest; to the more mature A gla.s.s that feated them; and to the graver A child that guided dotards: to his mistress, For whom he now is banish'd,--her own price Proclaims how she esteem'd him and his virtue; By her election may be truly read What kind of man he is."

In all these three pa.s.sages, the structure shapes itself from step to step as it goes on, one idea starting another, and each clause being born of the momentary impulse of the under-working vital current; which is indeed the natural way of unpremeditated, self-forgetting discourse. There is no care about verbal felicities; none for rounded adjustment of parts, or nice balancing of members, or for exactness of pauses and cadences, so as to make the language run smooth on the ear; or, if there be any care about these things, it is rather a care to avoid them. This it is that gives to Shakespeare's style such a truly organic character, in contradistinction to mere pieces of nicely-adjusted verbal joinery or cabinet-work; so that, as we proceed, the lingual form seems budding and sprouting at the moving of the inner mental life; the thought unfolding and branching as the expression grows, and the expression growing with the growth of the thought. In short, language with him is not the dress, but the incarnation of ideas: he does not robe his thoughts with garments externally cut and fitted to them, but his thoughts robe themselves in a living texture of flesh and blood.

Hence the wonderful correspondence, so often remarked, between the Poet's style and the peculiar moods, tempers, motives, and habits of his characters, as if the language had caught the very grain and tincture of their minds. So, for instance, we find him rightly making the most glib-tongued rhetoric proceed from utter falseness of heart; for men never speak so well, in the elocutionary sense, as when they are lying; while, on the other hand, "there are no tricks in plain and simple faith." Thus, in _Macbeth_, when the murder of Duncan is first announced, we have the hero speaking of it to the Princes, when one of them asks, "What is amiss?"

"You are, and do not know't: The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood Is stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd."

Of course he words the matter so finely all because he is playing the hypocrite. Compare with this the quick honest way in which Macduff dashes out the truth: "Your royal father's murder'd." We have a still more emphatic instance of the same kind in Goneril and Regan's hollow-hearted, and therefore highly rhetorical professions of love, when the doting old King invites his three daughters to an auction of falsehood, by proposing,

"That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge."

So, again in _Hamlet_, i. 2, the King opens with an elaborate strain of phrase-making, full of studied and ingenious ant.i.theses; and he keeps up that style so long as he is using language to conceal his thoughts; but afterwards, in the same speech, on coming to matters of business, he falls at once into the direct, simple style of plain truth and intellectual manhood.

But we have a more curious ill.u.s.tration, though in quite another kind, in _Macbeth_, iv. 3, where Ross, fresh from Scotland, comes to Macduff in England:

"_Macd_. Stands Scotland where it did?

_Ross_. Alas, poor country, Almost afraid to know itself! it cannot Be call'd our mother, but our grave: where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile; Where sighs, and groans, and shrieks that rend the air, Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems A modern ecstasy: the dead man's knell Is there scarce ask'd for whom; and good men's lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying or e'er they sicken.

_Macd_. O, relation Too nice, and yet too true!"

Here Ross's picked and precise wording of the matter shows his speech to be the result of meditated preparation; for he has come with his mind so full of what he was to say, that he could think of nothing else; and Macduff, with characteristic plainness of ear and tongue, finds it "too nice." His comment, at once so spontaneous and so apt, is a delightful touch of the Poet's art; and tells us that Shakespeare's judgment as well as his genius was at home in the secret of a perfect style; and that he understood, no man better, the essential poverty of "fine writing."

Equally apt and characteristic is another speech of Macduff's later in the same scene, after learning how "all his pretty chickens and their dam" have been put to death by the tyrant:

"Gentle Heaven, Cut short all intermission; front to front Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape, Heaven forgive him too."

Macduff is a man of great simplicity, energy, and determination of character; and here we have all these qualities boiled down to the highest intensity, as would naturally be the effect of such news on such a man. And observe how much is implied in that little word _too_,--"Heaven forgive him too." As much as to say, "Let me once but have a chance at him, if I don't kill him, then I'm as great a sinner as he, and so G.o.d forgive us both!" I hardly know of another instance of so great a volume of meaning compressed into so few words. And how like it is to n.o.ble Macduff!

I could fill many pages with examples of this perfect suiting of the style to the mental states of the dramatic speakers, but must rest with citing a few more.

Hotspur is proverbially a man of impatient, irascible, headstrong temper. See now how all this is reflected in the very step of his language, when he has just been chafed into a rage by what the King has said to him about the Scottish prisoners:

"Why, look you, I am whipp'd and scourg'd with rods, Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.

In Richard's time,--what do you call the place?-- A plague upon 't!--it is in Glosters.h.i.+re;-- 'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept, His uncle York;--where I first bow'd my knee Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke;-- When you and he came back from Ravenspurg.-- Why, what a candy deal of courtesy This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!

Look, _When his infant fortune came to age_, And, _Gentle Harry Percy_, and, _Kind cousin_,-- O, the Devil take such cozeners!"

Hotspur's spirit is so all-for-war, that he can think of nothing else; hence he naturally scorns poetry, though his soul is full of it. But poetry is so purely an impulse with him, that he is quite unconscious of it. With Glendower, on the contrary, poetry is a purpose, and he pursues it consciously. Note, then, in iii. 1, how this poetical mood shapes and tunes his style, when he interprets his daughter's Welsh to her English husband:

"She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down, And rest your gentle head upon her lap, And she will sing the song that pleaseth you, And on your eyelids crown the G.o.d of sleep, Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness; Making such difference betwixt wake and sleep, As is the difference betwixt day and night, The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team Begins his golden progress in the East."

Here the whole expression seems born of melody, and the melody to pervade it as an essence. So, too, in the same scene, Mortimer being deep in the lyrical mood of honeymoon, see how that mood lives in the style of what he says about his wife's speaking of Welsh, which is all Greek to him; her tongue

"Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a Summer's bower, With ravis.h.i.+ng division, to her lute."

For another instance, take a part of the exiled Duke's speech in _As You Like It_, ii. 1:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

The Duke is a thoughtful, pensive, kind-hearted man, feeling keenly the wrong that has been done him, but not at all given to cheris.h.i.+ng a resentful temper; and here, if I mistake not, his language relishes of the benevolent, meditative, and somewhat sentimental melancholy that marks his disposition.

Still more to the point, perhaps, is the pa.s.sage in _Hamlet_, iv. 5, where Ophelia so touchingly scatters out the secrets of her virgin heart: "They say the owl was a baker's daughter.--Lord, we know what we are, but we know not what we may be.--G.o.d be at your table!" And again: "I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good counsel.--Come, my coach!--Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night." A poor, crazed, but still gentle, sweet-tempered, and delicate-souled girl, quite unconscious of her own distress, yet still having a dim remembrance of the great sorrows that have crazed her,--such is Ophelia here; and her very manner of speech takes the exact colour and tone of her mind.

Probably, however, the best example of all is one that I can but refer to, it being too long for quotation. It is in the second scene of _The Tempest_, where Prospero relates to his daughter the story of his past life, at the same time letting her into the fact and the reasons of what he has just been doing, and still has in hand to do. The dear wise old gentleman is here absent-minded, his thoughts being busy and very intent upon the tempest he has lately got up, and upon the incoming and forthcoming consequences of it; and he thinks Miranda is not attentive to what he is saying, because he is but half-attending to it himself. This subdued mental agitation, and wandering of his thoughts from the matter his tongue is handling, silently registers itself in a broken, disjointed, and somewhat rambling course of narrative; that is, his style runs so in sympathy with his state of mind as to be unconsciously physiognomic of it. Certainly it is among the Poet's finest instances of "suiting the word to the action"; while at the same time it perfectly remembers the "special observance" of "o'erstepping not the modesty of nature."

Since Homer, no poet has come near Shakespeare in originality, freshness, opulence, and boldness of imagery. It is this that forms, in a large part, the surpa.s.sing beauty of his poetry; it is in this that much of his finest idealizing centres. And he abounds in all the figures of speech known in formal rhetoric, except the Allegory and the Apologue. The Allegory, I take it, is hardly admissible in dramatic writing; nor is the Apologue very well suited to the place: the former, I believe, Shakespeare never uses; and his most conspicuous instance of the latter, in fact the only one that occurs to me, is that of the Belly and the Members, so quaintly delivered to the insurgent people by the juicy old Menenius in the first scene of _Coriola.n.u.s_. But, though Shakespeare largely uses all the other figures of speech, I shall draw most of what I have to say of his style in this respect, under the two heads of Simile and Metaphor, since all that can properly be called imagery is resolvable into these. Shakespeare uses both a great deal, but the Simile in a way somewhat peculiar: in fact, as it is commonly used by other poets, he does not seem to have been very fond of it; and when he admits it, he generally uses it in the most informal way possible. But, first, at the risk of seeming pedantic, I will try to make some a.n.a.lysis of the two figures in question.

Every student knows that the Simile may be regarded as an expanded Metaphor, or the Metaphor as a condensed Simile. Which implies that the Metaphor admits of greater brevity. What, then, is the difference?

Now a simile, as the name imports, is a comparison of two or more things, more or less unlike in themselves, for the purpose of ill.u.s.tration. The thing ill.u.s.trated and the thing that ill.u.s.trates are, so to speak, laid alongside each other, that the less known may be made more intelligible by the light of that which is known better.

Here the two parts are kept quite distinct, and a sort of parallel run between them. And the actions or the qualities of the two things stand apart, each on their own side of the parallel, those of neither being ascribed to the other. In a metaphor, on the other hand, the two parts, instead of lying side by side, are drawn together and incorporated into one. The idea and the image, the thought and the ill.u.s.tration, are not kept distinct, but the idea is incarnated in the image, so that the image bears the same relation to the idea as the body does to the soul. In other words, the two parts are completely identified, their qualities interfused and interpenetrating, so that they become one. Thus a metaphor proceeds by ascribing to a given object certain actions or qualities which are not literally true of that object, and which have in reference to it only the truth of a.n.a.logy.

To ill.u.s.trate this. When, in his sonnet composed on Westminster Bridge, Wordsworth says, "This City now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning," the language is a simile in form. If he had said, This City hath now robed herself in the beauty of the morning, it would have been in form a metaphor. On the other hand, when in the same sonnet he says, "The river glideth at his own sweet will," the language is a metaphor. If in this case he had said, The river floweth smoothly along, like a man led on by the free promptings of his own will, it would have been a simile. And so, when Romeo says of Juliet,--

"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear";

here we have two metaphors, and also one simile. Juliet cannot be said literally to teach the torches any thing; but her brightness may be said to make them, or rather the owner of them ashamed of their dimness; or she may be said to be so radiant, that the torches, or the owner of them may learn from her how torches ought to s.h.i.+ne. Neither can it be said literally that her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, for the night has no cheek; but it may be said to bear the same relation to the night as a diamond pendant does to the dark cheek that sets it off. Then the last metaphor is made one of the parts in a simile; what is therein expressed being likened to a rich jewel hanging in an Ethiop's ear. So, too, when Wordsworth apostrophizes Milton,--

"Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea";--

here we have two similes. But when he says,--

"Unruffled doth the blue lake lie, The mountains looking on";

and when he says of the birds singing,--