Characteristics of Women Part 12

[14] _Use_, i. e. usury, interest.

[15] In Shakspeare's time, there were people In Ireland, (there may be so still, for aught I know,) who undertook to charm rats to death, by chanting certain verses which acted as a spell. "Rhyme them to death, as they do rats in Ireland," is a line in one of Ben Jonson's comedies; this will explain Rosalind's humorous allusion.

[16] Rousseau could describe such a character as Rosalind, but failed to represent it consistently. "N'est-ce pas de ton coeur que viennent les graces de ton enjouement? Tes railleries sont des signes d'interet plus touchants que les compliments d'un autre. Tu caresses quand tu folatres.

Tu ris, mais ton rire penetre l'ame; tu ris, mais tu fais pleurer de tendresse et je te vois presque toujours serieuse avec les indifferents"

_Helose._

CHARACTERS OF Pa.s.sION AND IMAGINATION.

JULIET.

O Love! thou teacher'--O Grief! thou tamer--and Time, thou healer of human hearts!--bring hither all your deep and serious revelations!--And ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youth--ye visions of long perished hopes--shadows of unborn joys--gay colorings of the dawn of existence! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in nature or in art; all soft and delicate images--all lovely forms--divinest voices and entrancing melodies--gleams of sunnier skies and fairer climes,--Italian moonlights and airs that "breathe of the sweet south,"--now, if it be possible, revive to my imagination--live once more to my heart! Come, thronging around me, all inspirations that wait on pa.s.sion, on power, on beauty; give me to tread, not bold, and yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of Shakspeare's genius, in Juliet's moonlight bower, and Miranda's enchanted isle!

It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her--only to be exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them!--it is impossible to say any thing better; but it is possible to say something more. Such in fact is the simplicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet's character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth, and its variety. There is in it an intensity of pa.s.sion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a whole; and to attempt to a.n.a.lyze the impression thus conveyed at once to soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fas.h.i.+oned it in its beauty?

Love, as a pa.s.sion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting the axiom of Rochefoucauld, that there is but one love, though a thousand different copies, yet the true sentiment itself has as many different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is under the influence of climate and circ.u.mstance. The love that is calm in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. The love that is wild and pa.s.sionate in the south, is deep and contemplative in the north; as the Spanish or Roman girl perhaps poisons a rival, or stabs herself for the sake of a living lover, and the German or Russian girl pines into the grave for love of the false, the absent, or the dead. Love is ardent or deep, bold or timid, jealous or confiding, impatient or humble, hopeful or desponding--and yet there are not many loves, but one love.

All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love or have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The pa.s.sion is her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along her veins, "blending with every atom of her frame." The love that is so chaste and dignified in Portia--so airy-delicate and fearless in Miranda--so sweetly confiding in Perdita--so playfully fond in Rosalind--so constant in Imogen--so devoted in Desdemona--so fervent in Helen--so tender in Viola,--is each and all of these in Juliet. All these remind us of her; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the Fiammetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or circ.u.mstances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national complexion of the portrait.[17]

There was an Italian painter who said that the secret of all effect in color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect! and how beautifully he has exemplified it in Juliet?

So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows!

Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are all love, surrounded with all hate; all harmony, surrounded with all discord: all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artificial life.

Juliet, like Portia, is the foster child of opulence and splendor; she dwells in a fair city--she has been nurtured in a palace--she clasps her robe with jewels--she braids her hair with rainbow-tinted pearls; but in herself she has no more connection with the trappings around her, than the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with the carved and gilded conservatory which has reared and sheltered its luxuriant beauty.

But in this vivid impression of contrast, there is nothing abrupt or harsh. A tissue of beautiful poetry weaves together the princ.i.p.al figures, and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the costume, and the exquisite gradations of relief with which the most opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they, like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of humanity; but every circ.u.mstance, and every personage, and every shade of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; the splendid imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodigality of genius, and the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as though Shakspeare had really transported himself into Italy, and had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmosphere. How truly it has been said, that "although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not love-sick!" What a false idea would anything of the mere whining amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare--the n.o.ble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty! And Juliet--with even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her! The picture in "Twelfth Night" of the wan girl dying of love, "who pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy," would never surely occur to us, when thinking on the enamored and impa.s.sioned Juliet, in whose bosom love keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm into pa.s.sion, pa.s.sion into heroism! No, the whole sentiment of the play is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the south: it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth; of life, and of the very sap of life.[18] We have indeed the struggle of love against evil destinies, and a th.o.r.n.y world; the pain, the grief, the anguish, the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of parted affection; and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an early grave: but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the blue sky of Italy bends over all!

In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace: the pa.s.sion which has taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity, the resistless violence of the torrent: but she is herself as "moving delicate," as fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughout, the individual part of the character in all its variety is developed, and marked with the nicest discrimination. For instance,--the simplicity of Juliet is very different from the simplicity of Miranda: her innocence is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual power of Portia;--it is founded in the strength of pa.s.sion, not in the strength of character:--it is accidental rather than inherent, rising with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it subsiding. Her romance is not the pastoral romance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of Viola; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imagination.

Her inexperience is not ignorance: she has heard that there is such a thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it. Her mother and her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and man's inconstancy; or she has even

----Turned the tale by Ariosto told, Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old!

Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt--

Ah, gentle Romeo!

If thou dost love, p.r.o.nounce it faithfully.

That conscious shrinking from her own confession--

Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny What I have spoke!

The ingenuous simplicity of her avowal--

Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo--but else, not for the world!

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light, But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true Than those who have more cunning to be strange.

And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which she throws herself for forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for the love she bears him--

Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered.

In the alternative, which she afterwards places before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there is that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have infused into her mind, without one real doubt of his truth, or the slightest hesitation in her self-abandonment: for she does not even wait to hear his a.s.severations;--

But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech thee To cease thy suit, and leave me to my grief.

ROMEO.

So thrive my soul--

JULIET.

A thousand times, good night!

But all these flutterings between native impulses and maiden fears become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up in the depth and enthusiasm of confiding love.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to you The more I have--for both are _infinite_!

What a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no end to its affections! For "what was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on without stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger? What was there to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet felt?"[19]

Lord Byron's Haidee is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the development is epic, not dramatic.[20]

I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla of Schiller's Wallenstein; she is the German Juliet; far unequal, indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit. I know not if critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he portrayed Thekla; but there are some striking points of coincidence, while the national distinction in the character of the pa.s.sion leaves to Thekla a strong cast of originality.[21] The _Princess_ Thekla is, like Juliet, the heiress of rank and opulence; her first introduction to us, in her full dress and diamonds, does not impair the impression of her softness and simplicity. We do not think of them, nor do we sympathize with the complaint of her lover,--

The dazzle of the jewels which played round you Hid the beloved from me.

We almost feel the reply of Thekla before she utters it,--

Then you saw me Not with your heart, but with your eyes!

The timidity of Thekla in her first scene, her trembling silence in the commencement, and the few words she addresses to her mother, remind us of the un.o.btrusive simplicity of Juliet's first appearance; but the impression is different; the one is the shrinking violet, the other the unexpanded rose-bud. Thekla and Max Piccolomini are, like Romeo and Juliet, divided by the hatred of their fathers. The death of Max, and the resolute despair of Thekla, are also points of resemblance; and Thekla's complete devotion, her frank yet dignified abandonment of all disguise, and her apology for her own unreserve, are quite in Juliet's style,--

I ought to be less open, ought to hide My heart more from thee--so decorum dictates: But where in this place wouldst thou seek for truth If in my mouth thou didst not find it?

The same confidence, innocence, and fervor of affection, distinguish both heroines; but the love of Juliet is more vehement, the love of Thekla is more calm, and reposes more on itself; the love of Juliet gives us the idea of infinitude, and that of Thekla of eternity: the love of Juliet flows on with an increasing tide, like the river pouring to the ocean; and the love of Thekla stands unalterable, and enduring as the rock. In the heart of Thekla love shelters as in a home; but in the heart of Juliet he reigns a crowned king,--"he rides on its pants triumphant!" As women, they would divide the loves and suffrages of mankind, but not as dramatic characters: the moment we come to look nearer, we acknowledge that it is indeed "rashness and ignorance to compare Schiller with Shakspeare."[22] Thekla is a fine conception in the German spirit, but Juliet is a lovely and palpable creation. The coloring in which Schiller has arrayed his Thekla is pale, sombre, vague, compared with the strong individual marking, the rich glow of life and reality, which distinguish Juliet. One contrast in particular has always struck me; the two beautiful speeches in the first interview between Max and Thekla, that in which she describes her father's astrological chamber, and that in which he replies with reflections on the influence of the stars, are said to "form in themselves a fine poem." They do so; but never would Shakspeare have placed such extraneous description and reflection in the mouths of _his_ lovers.

Romeo and Juliet speak of themselves only; they see only themselves in the universe, all things else are as an idle matter. Not a word they utter, though every word is poetry--not a sentiment or description, though dressed in the most luxuriant imagery, but has a direct relation to themselves, or to the situation in which they are placed, and the feelings that engross them: and besides, it may be remarked of Thekla, and generally of all tragedy heroines in love, that, however beautifully and distinctly characterized, we see the pa.s.sion only under one or two aspects at most, or in conflict with some one circ.u.mstance or contending duty or feeling. In Juliet alone we find it exhibited under every variety of aspect, and every gradation of feeling it could possibly a.s.sume in a delicate female heart: as we see the rose, when pa.s.sed through the colors of the prism, catch and reflect every tint of the divided ray, and still it is the same sweet rose.

I have already remarked the quiet manner in which Juliet steals upon us in her first scene, as the serene, graceful girl, her feelings as yet unawakened, and her energies all unknown to herself, and unsuspected by others. Her silence and her filial deference are charming:--

I'll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye, Than your consent shall give it strength to fly

Much in the same unconscious way we are impressed with an idea of her excelling loveliness:--

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!