The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 45

That is what we should call, in a _general_ way, 'the motion of revolution' in our book of abstractions; this is the moment in which it _predominates_ over 'the abhorrence of change,' if not in the extensive whole--if not in _the whole_ of the greater congregation, in that part of it for whom this one speaks; and this is the critical moment which the man of science makes so much of,--brings out so scientifically, so elaborately in this experiment. But this is a part of science which he is mainly familiar with. Here is a place, for instance, where the motion of particular forms is skilfully brought to the aid of that larger motion. Here we have an experiment in which these petty motives come in to aid the revolutionary movement in the minds of the leaders of it, and with their feather's weight turn the scale, when the abhorrence of change is too nicely balanced with its antagonistic force for a predominance of powers without it.

'But for my single self, I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such a thing as _I_ myself.

I was born free as Caesar; so were you.

Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world _Like a Colossus_; and we, petty men, Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves _dishonorable graves_.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

_Brutus_ and _Caesar_. What should be in _that Caesar_?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Conjure with them; _Brutus_ will start a spirit as soon as _Caesar_.

_Now in the name_ of _all the G.o.ds at once_, _Upon what meat doth this our_ CAESAR _feed, That he is grown so great_? AGE, _thou_ art shamed: Rome, thou hast lost the breed of n.o.ble bloods.

When went there by an AGE, since the great flood, But it was famed with more than with ONE MAN?

When could they say, till now, that talked of _Rome_, That _her wide walls_ encompa.s.sed _but One Man_?

_Now_ is it _Rome indeed_, and _room enough_, When there is in it but _One Only Man_.

What you would work me to, I have some aim; _How I have thought of this_, and of _these times_, I shall recount hereafter.

Now could _I_, Casca, _Name_ to thee a man most like this dreadful night; That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars As doth the lion in the Capitol, A man no mightier than thyself, or me, In PERSONAL ACTION; yet _prodigious_ grown, And _fearful as these strange eruptions are_.'

''T is Caesar _that you mean_: Is it _not_, Ca.s.sius?'

'Let it be--WHO IT is: for Romans now Have thewes and limbs like to their ancestors.

Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf, But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.

_He_ were no _lion, were not Romans hinds.

Those that with haste will make a mighty fire, Begin it_ with--WEAK STRAWS. What _trash_ is--Rome What rubbish, and what offal, _when it serves for the base matter to illuminate So vile a thing as_--Caesar. But-- _I_ perhaps _speak this_ Before a willing bondman.

And here is another case where the question of the predominance of powers arises. In this instance, it is the question of _British_ freedom that comes up; and the _tribute_--not the tax--that a Caesar--the first Caesar himself, had exacted, is refused 'in a better hour,' by a people kindling with ancestral recollections, throwing themselves upon their ancient rights, and '_the natural bravery of their isle_,' and ready to re-a.s.sert their ancient liberties.

The Amba.s.sador of Augustus makes his master's complaint at the British Court. The answer of the State runs thus, king, queen and prince taking part in it, as the Poet's convenience seems to require.

'This tribute,' complains the Roman; 'by thee, lately, is left untendered.'

_Queen_. And, to kill the marvel, Shall be so ever.

_Prince Cloten_. _There be many Caesars_, Ere such another Julius. Britain is _A world by itself_; and we will nothing pay, For wearing our own noses. [_General principles_.]

_Queen_. That opportunity _Which then they had to take from us, to resume We have again._ Remember, sir, my liege,

[It is the people who are represented here by Cymbeline.]

_The kings your ancestors_; together with The natural bravery of your isle; which stands As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in With rocks unscaleable, and roaring waters; With sands, that will not bear your enemies' boats, But suck them up to the top-mast.

_Cloten_. Come, there's no more tribute to be paid: _Our kingdom is stronger_ than it was at that time; and, as _I said_, there is no more _such_ Caesars: _other_ of them _may have crooked noses_; but, to owe _such straight arms_, none.

_Cymbeline_. Son, let your mother end.

_Cloten. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Ca.s.sibelan_: I do not say, I am one; but I have a hand.--Why tribute? Why should we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket, or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light; else, Sir, no more tribute, pray you now.

_Cymbeline_. You must know, Till the _injurious Romans_ did extort This tribute from us, _we were free: Caesar's ambition_ .... against all colour, here Did put the yoke upon us; which to _shake off_, Becomes a warlike people, _whom we reckon_ _Ourselves to be_. We do say then to Caesar, _Our_ ancestor was that Mulmutius, _which Ordained_ OUR LAWS, whose use THE SWORD OF CAESAR _Hath too much mangled_; whose REPAIR and FRANCHISE, Shall, by the power we hold, be _our good deed_.

Mulmutius _made our laws_, Who was the first of BRITAIN which did put His brows within a golden crown, and called _Himself_ a KING.

That is the tune when the Caesar comes this way, to a people who have such an ancestor to refer to; no matter what costume he comes in. This is Caesar in Britain; and though Prince Cloten appears to incline naturally to prose, as the medium best adapted to the expression of his views, the blank verse of Cymbeline is as good as that of Brutus and Ca.s.sius, and seems to run in their vein very much.

It is in some such terms as these that we handle those universal motions on whose balance the welfare of the world depends--'the motions of _resistance_ and _connection_,' as the Elizabethan philosopher, with a broader grasp than the Newtonian, calls them--when we come to the diagrams which represent particulars. This is the kind of language which this author adopts when he comes to the modifications of those motions which are incident to extensive wholes in the case of the greater congregations; that is, '_revolution_' and '_abhorrence of change_,' and to those which belong to _particular forms_ also. For it is the science of life; and when the universal science touches the human life, it will have nothing less vivacious than this. It will have the _particular of life_ here also. It will not have abstract revolutionists, any more than it will have abstract b.u.t.terflies, or bivalves, or univalves. This is the kind of 'loud'

talk that one is apt to hear in this man's school; and the clash and clang that this very play now under review is full of, is just the noise that is sure to come out of his laboratory, whenever he gets upon one of these experiments in 'extensive wholes,' which he is so fond of trying. It is the noise that one always hears on his stage, whenever the question of 'particular forms' and _predominance of powers comes_ to be put experimentally, at least, _in this cla.s.s_ of 'wrestling instances.'

For we have here a form of composition in which that more simple and natural order above referred to is adopted--where those clear scientific cla.s.sifications, which this author himself plainly exhibits in another scientific work, though he disguises them in the Novum Organum, are again brought out, no longer in the abstract, but grappling the matter; where, instead of the scientific technicalities just quoted--instead of those abstract terms, such as 'extensive wholes,' 'greater congregation,' 'fruition of their natures,' and the like--we have terms not less scientific, the equivalents of these, but more living--words ringing with the detail of life in its scientific condensations--reddening with the glow, or whitening with the calm, of its ideal intensities--pursuing it everywhere--everywhere, to the last height of its poetic fervors and exaltations.

And it is because this so vivid popular science has its issue from this 'source'--it is because it proceeds from this scientific centre, on the scientific radii, through all the divergencies and refrangibilities of the universal beam--it is because all this inexhaustible multiplicity and variety of particulars is threaded with the fibre of the universal science--it is because all these thick-flowering imaginations, these 'mellow hangings,' are hung upon the stems and branches that unite in the trunk of the _prima philosophia_--it is because of this that men find it so prophetic, so inclusive, so magical; _this_ is the reason they find _all_ in it. 'I have either told, or designed to tell, _all_,' says the expositor of these plays. 'What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' For all the building of this genius is a building on that scientific ground-plan he has left us; and that is a plan which includes all _the human_ field. It is the plan of the _Great Instauration_.

CHAPTER VII.

VOLUMNIA AND HER BOY.

'My boy _Marcius_ approaches.'

'Why should I war without the walls of Troy, That find such cruel battle here within?

Each Trojan that is master of his heart, Let him to field.'

Is not the ground which _Machiavel_ wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and _preserve_ them, is to reduce them _ad principia_; a rule in religion and nature, _as well as_ in civil administration? [Again.] Was not _the Persian_ magic a _reduction_ or correspondence of the _principles_ and _architectures_ of nature to the rules and policy of governments?'--['_Questions to be asked_.']--_Advancement of Learning_.

It is by means of this popular rejection of the Hero's claims, which the tribunes succeed in procuring, that the Poet is enabled to complete his exhibition and test of the virtue which he finds in his time 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of n.o.bility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom--no matter what 'goslings' the law of entail may devolve it on.

He makes use of this incident to complete that separation he is effecting in the hitherto una.n.a.lysed, ill-defined, popular notions, and received and unquestioned axioms of practice--that separation of the instinctive military heroism, and the principle of the so-called heroic greatness, from the true principles of heroism and n.o.bility, the true principle of subjection and sovereignty in the individual human nature and in the common-weal.

That _martial_ virtue has been under criticism and suspicion torn the beginning of this action. It was shown from the first--from that ground and point of observation which the sufferings of the diseased common-weal made for it--in no favourable light. It was branded in the first scene, in the person of its Hero, as 'a dog to the commonalty.'

It is one of the wretched 'commons' who invents, in his distress, that t.i.tle for it; but the Poet himself exhibits it, not descriptively only, but dramatically, as something more brutish than that--eating the poor man's corn that the G.o.ds have sent him, and gnawing his vitals, devouring him soul and body, 'tooth and fell.' It was shown up from the first as an instinct that men share with 'rats'. It was brought out from the first, and exhibited with its teeth in the heart of the common-weal. The Play begins with a cross-questioning in the civil streets, of that sentiment which the hasty affirmations of men enthrone. It was brought out from the first--it came tramping on in the first act, in the first scene--with its sneer at the commons'

distress, longing to make 'a quarry of the _quartered_ slaves, as high' as the plumed hero of it 'could p.r.i.c.k his lance'; and that, too, because they rebelled at famine, as slaves will do sometimes, when the common notion of hunger is permitted to instruct them in the principle of new unions; when that so impressive, and urgent, and unappeasable teacher comes down to them from the Capitol, and is permitted by their rulers to induct them experimentally into the doctrine of 'extensive wholes,' and 'larger congregations,' and 'the predominance of powers.'

And it so happened, that the threat above quoted was precisely the threat which the founder of the reigning house had been able to carry into effect here a hundred years before, in putting down an insurrection of that kind, as this author chanced to be the man to know.

But the cry of the enemy is heard without; and this same principle, which shows itself in such questionable proofs of love at home, becomes with the change of circ.u.mstances--patriotism. But the Poet does not lose sight of its ident.i.ty under this change. This love, that looks so like hatred in the Roman streets, that sniffs there so haughtily at questions about corn, and the price of 'coals,' and the price of labour, while it loves Rome so madly at the Volscian gates--this love, that sneers at the hunger and misery of the commons at home, while it makes such frantic demonstrations against the _common_ enemy abroad, appears to him to be a very questionable kind of _love_, to say the least of it.

In that fine, conspicuous specimen of this quality, which the hero of his story offers him--this quality which the hostilities of nations deify--he undertakes to sift it a little. While in the name of that virtue which has at least the merit of comprehending and conserving a larger unity, a more extensive whole, than the limit of one's own personality, 'it runs reeking o'er the lives of men, as 'twere a perpetual spoil'; while under cover of that name which in barbaric ages limits human virtue, and puts down upon the map the outline of it--the bound which human greatness and virtue is required to come out to; while in the name of _country_ it shows itself 'from face to foot a thing of blood, whose every motion is timed with dying cries,'

undaunted by the tragic sublimities of the scene, this Poet confronts it, and boldly identifies it as that same principle of state and n.o.bility which he has already exhibited at home.

That sanguinary pa.s.sion which the heat of conflict provokes is but the incident; it is the principle of _acquisition_, it is the natural principle of absorption, it is the instinct that nature is full of, that nature is alive with; but the one that she is at war with, too--at war with in the parts--one that she is forever opposed to, and conquering in the members, with her mathematical axioms--with her law of the whole, of 'the worthier whole,' of 'the greater congregation'; it is that principle of acquisition which it is the business of the state to set bounds to in the human const.i.tution--which gets branded with _other_ names, very vulgar ones, too, when the faculty of grasp and absorption is smaller. That, and none other, is the principle which predominates, and is set at large here. The leashed 'dog' of the commonalty at home, is let slip here in the conquered town. The teeth that preyed on the Roman weal there, have elongated and grown wolfish on the Volscian fields. The consummation of the captor's deeds in the captured city--those matchless deeds of valor--the consummation for _Coriola.n.u.s_ in _Corioli_, for 'the _conqueror_ in the _conquest_,'

is--'NOW ALL'S HIS.' And the story of the battle without is--'He never stopped to ease his breast with panting, till he could call both field and city--OURS.'

The Poet sets down nought in malice, but he will have the secret of this LOVE, he will have the heart out of it--this love that stops so short with geographic limits,--that changes with the crossing of a line into a demon from the lowest pit.