Characteristics of Women Part 13

and which could make the dark vault of death "a feasting presence full of light." Without any elaborate description, we behold Juliet, as she is reflected in the heart of her lover, like a single bright star mirrored in the bosom of a deep, transparent well. The rapture with which he dwells on the "white wonder of her hand;" on her lips,

That even in pure and vestal modesty Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.

And then her eyes, "two of the fairest stars in all the heavens!" In his exclamation in the sepulchre,

Ah, dear Juliet, why art thou yet so fair!

there is life and death, beauty and horror, rapture and anguish combined. The Friar's description of her approach,

O, so light a step Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint!

and then her father's similitude,

Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field;--

all these mingle into a beautiful picture of youthful, airy, delicate grace, feminine sweetness, and patrician elegance.

And our impression of Juliet's loveliness and sensibility is enhanced, when we find it overcoming in the bosom of Romeo a previous love for another. His visionary pa.s.sion for the cold, inaccessible Rosaline, forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true--the real sentiment which succeeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original story, has been retained by Shakspeare with equal feeling and judgment; and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from prejudicing us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the portrait of the lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend Juliet herself? for in the original story we find that her attention is first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him "fancy sick and pale of cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was selected to be his fancy's queen; and the more rigorous the beauty, and the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about "metamorphosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously expresses it,[23]--to maintain her supremacy in charms at the sword's point; to sigh; to walk with folded arms; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless desolation, was the fas.h.i.+on of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the Bayards, the Herberts of the time--all those who were the mirrors "in which the n.o.ble youth did dress themselves," were of this fantastic school of gallantry--the last remains of the age of chivalry; and it was especially prevalent in Italy. Shakspeare has ridiculed it in many places with exquisite humor; but he wished to show us that it has its serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dreaming, fanciful pa.s.sion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her charms and coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the day.[24]

Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate, O any thing, of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lover's eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lover's tears.

But when once he has beheld Juliet, and quaffed intoxicating draughts of hope and love from her soft glance, how all these airy fancies fade before the soul-absorbing reality! The lambent fire that played round his heart, burns to that heart's very core. We no longer find him adorning his lamentations in picked phrases, or making a confidant of his gay companions: he is no longer "for the numbers that Petrarch flowed in;" but all is consecrated, earnest, rapturous, in the feeling and the expression. Compare, for instance, the sparkling ant.i.thetical pa.s.sages just quoted, with one or two of his pa.s.sionate speeches to or of Juliet:--

Heaven is here, Where Juliet lives! &c.

Ah Juliet! if the measure of thy joy Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbour air, and let rich music's tongue Unfold the imagin'd happiness, that both Receive in either by this dear encounter.

Come what sorrow may, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight.

How different! and how finely the distinction is drawn! His first pa.s.sion is indulged as a waking dream, a reverie of the fancy; it is depressing, indolent, fantastic; his second elevates him to the third heaven, or hurries him to despair. It rushes to its object through all impediments, defies all dangers, and seeks at last a triumphant grave, in the arms of her he so loved. Thus Romeo's previous attachment to Rosaline is so contrived as to exhibit to us another variety in that pa.s.sion, which is the subject of the poem, by showing us the distinction between the fancied and the real sentiment. It adds a deeper effect to the beauty of Juliet; it interests us in the commencement for the tender and romantic Romeo; and gives an individual reality to his character, by stamping him like an historical, as well as a dramatic portrait, with the very spirit of the age in which he lived.[25]

It may be remarked of Juliet as of Portia, that we not only trace the component qualities in each as they expand before us in the course of the action, but we seem to have known them previously, and mingle a consciousness of their past, with the interest of their present and their future. Thus, in the dialogue between Juliet and her parents, and in the scenes with the Nurse, we seem to have before us the whole of her previous education and habits: we see her, on the one hand, kept in severe subjection by her austere parents; and on the other, fondled and spoiled by a foolish old nurse--a situation perfectly accordant with the manners of the time. Then Lady Capulet comes sweeping by with her train of velvet, her black hood, her fan, and her rosary--the very _beau-ideal_ of a proud Italian matron of the fifteenth century, whose offer to poison Romeo in revenge for the death of Tybalt, stamps her with one very characteristic trait of the age and country. Yet she loves her daughter; and there is a touch of remorseful tenderness in her lamentation over her, which adds to our impression of the timid softness of Juliet, and the harsh subjection in which she has been kept:--

But one, poor one!--one poor and loving child, But one thing to rejoice and solace in, And cruel death hath catched it from my sight!

Capulet, as the jovial, testy old man, the self willed, violent, tyrannical father,--to whom his daughter is but a property, the appanage of his house, and the object of his pride,--is equal as a portrait: but both must yield to the Nurse, who is drawn with the most wonderful power and discrimination. In the prosaic homeliness of the outline, and the magical illusion of the coloring, she reminds us of some of the marvellous Dutch paintings, from which, with all their coa.r.s.eness, we start back as from a reality. Her low humor, her shallow garrulity, mixed with the dotage and petulance of age--her subserviency, her secrecy, and her total want of elevated principle, or even common honesty--are brought before us like a living and palpable truth.

Among these harsh and inferior spirits is Juliet placed; her haughty parents, and her plebeian nurse, not only throw into beautiful relief her own native softness and elegance, but are at once the cause and the excuse of her subsequent conduct. She trembles before her stern mother and her violent father: but, like a petted child, alternately cajoles and commands her nurse. It is her old foster-mother who is the confidante of her love. It is the woman who cherished her infancy, who aids and abets her in her clandestine marriage. Do we not perceive how immediately our impression of Juliet's character would have been lowered, if Shakspeare had placed her in connection with any common-place dramatic waiting-woman?--even with Portia's adroit Nerissa, or Desdemona's Emilia? By giving her the Nurse for her confidante, the sweetness and dignity of Juliet's character are preserved inviolate to the fancy, even in the midst of all the romance and wilfulness of pa.s.sion.

The natural result of these extremes of subjection and independence, is exhibited in the character of Juliet, as it gradually opens upon us. We behold it in the mixture of self-will and timidity, of strength and weakness, of confidence and reserve, which are developed as the action of the play proceeds. We see it in the fond eagerness of the indulged girl, for whose impatience the "nimblest of the lightning-winged loves"

had been too slow a messenger; in her petulance with her nurse; in those bursts of vehement feeling, which prepare us for the climax of pa.s.sion at the catastrophe; in her invectives against Romeo, when she hears of the death of Tybalt; in her indignation when the nurse echoes those reproaches, and the rising of her temper against unwonted contradiction:--

NURSE.

Shame come to Romeo!

JULIET.

Blistered be thy tongue, For such a wis.h.!.+ he was not born to shame.

Then comes that revulsion of strong feeling, that burst of magnificent exultation in the virtue and honor of her lover:--

Upon _his_ brow Shame is ashamed to sit, For 'tis a throne where Honor may be crown'd Sole monarch of the universal earth!

And this, by one of those quick transitions of feeling which belong to the character, is immediately succeeded by a gush of tenderness and self-reproach--

Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name, When I, thy three-hours' wife, have mangled it?

With the same admirable truth of nature, Juliet is represented as at first bewildered by the fearful destiny that closes round her; reverse is new and terrible to one nursed in the lap of luxury, and whose energies are yet untried.

Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems Upon so soft a subject as myself.

While a stay remains to her amid the evils that encompa.s.s her, she clings to it. She appeals to her father--to her mother--

Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak one word!

Ah, sweet my mother, cast me not away!

Delay this marriage for a month,--a week!

And, rejected by both, she throws herself upon her nurse in all the helplessness of anguish, of confiding affection, of habitual dependence--

O G.o.d! O nurse! how shall this be prevented?

Some comfort, nurse!

The old woman, true to her vocation, and fearful lest her share in these events should be discovered, counsels her to forget Romeo and marry Paris; and the moment which unveils to Juliet the weakness and baseness of her confidante, is the moment which reveals her to herself. She does not break into upbraidings; it is no moment for anger; it is incredulous amazement, succeeded by the extremity of scorn and abhorrence, which take possession of her mind. She a.s.sumes at once and a.s.serts all her own superiority, and rises to majesty in the strength of her despair.

JULIET.

Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE.

Aye, and from my soul too;--or else Beshrew them both!

JULIET.

Amen!

This final severing of all the old familiar ties of her childhood--

Go, counsellor!

Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain!