Hazlitt on English Literature Part 6

"Why, good fellow, What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live?

Or in my life what comfort, when I am Dead to my husband?"

Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy's clothes, and suggests "a course pretty and full in view," by which she may "happily be near the residence of Posthumus," she exclaims,

"Oh, for such means, Though peril to my modesty, not death on't, I would adventure."

And when Pisanio, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change

----"Fear and niceness, The handmaids of all women, or more truly, Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage, Ready in gibes, quick-answer'd, saucy, and As quarrellous as the weazel"----

she interrupts him hastily:--

"Nay, be brief; I see into thy end, and am almost A man already."

In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully--

----"My dear lord, Thou art one of the false ones; now I think on thee, My hunger's gone; but even before, I was At point to sink for food."

She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of Posthumus, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master--

----"And when With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha' strew'd his grave, And on it said a century of pray'rs, Such as I can, twice o'er, I'll weep and sigh, And leaving so his service, follow you, So please you entertain me."

Now this is the very religion of love. She all along relies on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted Jay of Italy; she relies on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. Arviragus thus addresses her--

----"With fairest flowers, While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack The flow'r that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath."

The yellow Iachimo gives another thus, when he steals into her bedchamber:--

----"Cytherea, How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! Fresh lily, And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch-- But kiss, one kiss--'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' th' taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see th' enclosed lights now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heav'ns own tinct--on her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I' th' bottom of a cowslip."

There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,--as that well-known pa.s.sage beginning, "Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance," sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial.

The character of Cloten, the conceited, b.o.o.by lord, and rejected lover of Imogen, though not very agreeable in itself, and at present obsolete, is drawn with much humour and quaint extravagance. The description which Imogen gives of his unwelcome addresses to her--"Whose love-suit hath been to me as fearful as a siege"--is enough to cure the most ridiculous lover of his folly. It is remarkable that though Cloten makes so poor a figure in love, he is described as a.s.suming an air of consequence as the Queen's son in a council of state, and with all the absurdity of his person and manners, is not without shrewdness in his observations. So true is it that folly is as often owing to a want of proper sentiments as to a want of understanding! The exclamation of the ancient critic--Oh Menander and Nature, which of you copied from the other! would not be misapplied to Shakspeare.

The other characters in this play are represented with great truth and accuracy, and as it happens in most of the author's works, there is not only the utmost keeping in each separate character; but in the casting of the different parts, and their relation to one another, there is an affinity and harmony, like what we may observe in the gradations of colour in a picture. The striking and powerful contrasts in which Shakspeare abounds could not escape observation; but the use he makes of the principle of a.n.a.logy to reconcile the greatest diversities of character and to maintain a continuity of feeling throughout, has not been sufficiently attended to. In CYMBELINE, for instance, the princ.i.p.al interest arises out of the unalterable fidelity of Imogen to her husband under the most trying circ.u.mstances. Now the other parts of the picture are filled up with subordinate examples of the same feeling, variously modified by different situations, and applied to the purposes of virtue or vice. The plot is aided by the amorous importunities of Cloten, by the persevering determination of Iachimo to conceal the defeat of his project by a daring imposture; the faithful attachment of Pisanio to his mistress is an affecting accompaniment to the whole; the obstinate adherence to his purpose in Bellarius, who keeps the fate of the young princes so long a secret in resentment for the ungrateful return to his former services, the incorrigible wickedness of the Queen, and even the blind uxorious confidence of Cymbeline, are all so many lines of the same story, tending to the same point. The effect of this coincidence is rather felt than observed; and as the impression exists unconsciously in the mind of the reader, so it probably arose in the same manner in the mind of the author, not from design, but from the force of natural a.s.sociation, a particular train of thought suggesting different inflections of the same predominant feeling, melting into, and strengthening one another, like chords in music.

The characters of Bellarius, Guiderius, and Arviragus, and the romantic scenes in which they appear, are a fine relief to the intrigues and artificial refinements of the court from which they are banished. Nothing can surpa.s.s the wildness and simplicity of the descriptions of the mountain life they lead. They follow the business of huntsmen, not of shepherds; and this is in keeping with the spirit of adventure and uncertainty in the rest of the story, and with the scenes in which they are afterwards called on to act. How admirably the youthful fire and impatience to emerge from their obscurity in the young princes is opposed to the cooler calculations and prudent resignation of their more experienced counsellor! How well the disadvantages of knowledge and of ignorance, of solitude and society, are placed against each other!

"_Guiderius._ Out of your proof you speak: we poor unfledg'd Have never wing'd from view o' th' nest; nor know not What air's from home. Haply this life is best, If quiet life is best; sweeter to you That have a sharper known; well corresponding With your stiff age: but unto us it is A cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed, A prison for a debtor, that not dares To stride a limit.

_Arviragus._ What should we speak of When we are old as you? When we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December! How, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.

We are beastly; subtle as the fox for prey, Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat; Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage We make a quire, as doth the prison'd bird, And sing our bondage freely."

The answer of Bellarius to this expostulation is hardly satisfactory; for nothing can be an answer to hope, or the pa.s.sion of the mind for unknown good, but experience.--The forest of Arden in _As you like it_ can alone compare with the mountain scenes in CYMBELINE: yet how different the contemplative quiet of the one from the enterprising boldness and precarious mode of subsistence in the other! Shakspeare not only lets us into the minds of his characters, but gives a tone and colour to the scenes he describes from the feelings of their supposed inhabitants. He at the same time preserves the utmost propriety of action and pa.s.sion, and gives all their local accompaniments. If he was equal to the greatest things, he was not above an attention to the smallest. Thus the gallant sportsmen in CYMBELINE have to encounter the abrupt declivities of hill and valley: Touchstone and Audrey jog along a level path. The deer in CYMBELINE are only regarded as objects of prey, "The game's a-foot,"

etc.--with Jaques they are fine subjects to moralise upon at leisure, "under the shade of melancholy boughs."

We cannot take leave of this play, which is a favourite with us, without noticing some occasional touches of natural piety and morality. We may allude here to the opening of the scene in which Bellarius instructs the young princes to pay their orisons to heaven:

----"See, boys! this gate Instructs you how t' adore the Heav'ns; and bows you To morning's holy office.

_Guiderius._ Hail, Heav'n!

_Arviragus._ Hail, Heav'n!

_Bellarius._ Now for our mountain-sport, up to yon hill."

What a grace and unaffected spirit of piety breathes in this pa.s.sage! In like manner, one of the brothers says to the other, when about to perform the funeral rites to Fidele,

"Nay, Cadwall, we must lay his head to the east; My Father hath a reason for't"--

--as if some allusion to the doctrines of the Christian faith had been casually dropped in conversation by the old man, and had been no farther inquired into.

Shakspeare's morality is introduced in the same simple, un.o.btrusive manner. Imogen will not let her companions stay away from the chase to attend her when sick, and gives her reason for it--

"Stick to your journal course; _the breach of custom Is breach of all!_"

When the Queen attempts to disguise her motives for procuring the poison from Cornelius, by saying she means to try its effects on "creatures not worth the hanging," his answer conveys at once a tacit reproof of her hypocrisy, and a useful lesson of humanity--

----"Your Highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart."

MACBETH

"The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name."

MACBETH and _Lear_, _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _Hamlet_, are usually reckoned Shakspeare's four princ.i.p.al tragedies. _Lear_ stands first for the profound intensity of the pa.s.sion; _Macbeth_ for the wildness of the imagination and the rapidity of the action; _Oth.e.l.lo_ for the progressive interest and powerful alternations of feeling: _Hamlet_ for the refined development of thought and sentiment. If the force of genius shewn in each of these works is astonis.h.i.+ng, their variety is not less so. They are like different creations of the same mind, not one of which has the slightest reference lo the rest. This distinctness and originality is indeed the necessary consequence of truth and nature. Shakspeare's genius alone appeared to possess the resources of nature. He is "your only _tragedy-maker_." His plays have the force of things upon the mind. What he represents is brought home to the bosom as a part of our experience, implanted in the memory as if we had known the places, persons, and things of which he treats. Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural and tragical event. It has the rugged severity of an old chronicle with all that the imagination of the poet can engraft upon traditional belief. The castle of Macbeth, round which "the air smells wooingly," and where "the temple-haunting martlet builds," has a real subsistence in the mind; the Weird Sisters meet us in person on "the blasted heath;" the "air-drawn dagger" moves slowly before our eyes; the "gracious Duncan," the "blood-boultered Banquo" stand before us; all that pa.s.sed through the mind of Macbeth pa.s.ses, without the loss of a t.i.ttle, through our's. All that could actually take place, and all that is only possible to be conceived, what was said and what was done, the workings of pa.s.sion, the spells of magic, are brought before us with the same absolute truth and vividness.--Shakspeare excelled in the openings of his plays: that of MACBETH is the most striking of any. The wildness of the scenery, the sudden s.h.i.+fting of the situations and characters, the bustle, the expectations excited, are equally extraordinary. From the first entrance of the Witches and the description of them when they meet Macbeth,

----"What are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire.

That look not like the inhabitants of th' earth And yet are on't?"

the mind is prepared for all that follows.

This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action; and the one is made the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming pressure of preternatural agency urges on the tide of human pa.s.sion with redoubled force. Macbeth himself appears driven along by the violence of his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm: he reels to and fro like a drunken man; he staggers under the weight of his own purposes and the suggestions of others; he stands at bay with his situation; and from the superst.i.tious awe and breathless suspense into which the communications of the Weird Sisters throw him, is hurried on with daring impatience to verify their predictions, and with impious and b.l.o.o.d.y hand to tear aside the veil which hides the uncertainty of the future. He is not equal to the struggle with fate and conscience. He now "bends up each corporal instrument to the terrible feat;" at other times his heart misgives him, and he is cowed and abashed by his success. "The deed, no less than the attempt, confounds him." His mind is a.s.sailed by the stings of remorse, and full of "preternatural solicitings." His speeches and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life, baffling solution, and entangling him in their labyrinths.

In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust of his own resolution. His energy springs from the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His blindly rus.h.i.+ng forward on the objects of his ambition and revenge, or his recoiling from them, equally betrays the hara.s.sed state of his feelings,--This part of his character is admirably set off by being brought in connection with that of Lady Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and masculine firmness give her the ascendancy over her husband's faultering virtue. She at once seizes on the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment of all their wished-for greatness, and never flinches from her object till all is over. The magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear more than we hate.

She does not excite our loathing and abhorrence like Regan and Gonerill.

She is only wicked to gain a great end; and is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding presence of mind and inexorable self-will, which do not suffer her to be diverted from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or want of natural affections. The impression which her lofty determination of character makes on the mind of Macbeth is well described where he exclaims,

----"Bring forth men children only; For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males!"