Characteristics of Women Part 16

Go not about; my love hath in't a bond, Whereof the world takes note: come, come, disclose The state of your affection; for your pa.s.sions Have to the full appeach'd.

HELENA.

Then I confess Here on my knee, before high heaven and you, That before you, and next unto high heaven, I love your son:-- My friends were poor, but honest; so's my love Be not offended; for it hurts not him, That he is loved of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him till I do deserve him: Yet never know how that desert should be.

I know I love in vain; strive against hope; Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve, I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his wors.h.i.+pper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Let not your hate encounter with my love, For loving where you do: but, if yourself, Whose aged honor cites a virtuous youth, Did ever in so true a flame of liking, Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love; O then give pity To her, whose state is such, that cannot choose But lend and give, where she is sure to lose; That seeks not to find that her search implies, But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.

This old Countess of Roussillon is a charming sketch. She is like one of t.i.tian's old women, who still, amid their wrinkles, remind us of that soul of beauty and sensibility, which must have animated them when young. She is a fine contrast to Lady Capulet--benign, cheerful, and affectionate; she has a benevolent enthusiasm, which neither age, nor sorrow, nor pride can wear away. Thus, when she is brought to believe that Helen nourishes a secret attachment for her son, she observes--

Even so it was with me when I was young!

This thorn Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong, It is the show and seal of nature's truth, When love's strong pa.s.sion is impress'd in youth.

Her fond, maternal love for Helena, whom she has brought up: her pride in her good qualities overpowering all her own prejudices of rank and birth, are most natural in such a mind; and her indignation against her son, however strongly expressed, never forgets the mother.

What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? he cannot thrive Unless _her_ prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice.

Which of them both Is dearest to me--I have no skill in sense To make distinction.

This is very skilfully, as well as delicately conceived. In rejecting those poetical and accidental advantages which Giletta possesses in the original story, Shakspeare has subst.i.tuted the beautiful character of the Countess; and he has contrived, that, as the character of Helena should rest for its internal charm on the depth of her own affections, so it should depend for its _external_ interest on the affection she inspires. The enthusiastic tenderness of the old Countess, the admiration and respect of the King, Lafeu, and all who are brought in connection with her, make amends for the humiliating neglect of Bertram; and cast round Helen that collateral light, which Giletta in the story owes to other circ.u.mstances, striking indeed, and well imagined, but not (I think) so finely harmonizing with the character.

It is also very natural that Helen, with the intuitive discernment of a pure and upright mind, and the penetration of a quick-witted woman, should be the first to detect the falsehood and cowardice of the boaster Parolles, who imposes on every one else.

It has been remarked, that there is less of poetical imagery in this play than in many of the others. A certain solidity in Helen's character takes place of the ideal power; and with consistent truth of keeping, the same predominance of feeling over fancy, of the reflective over the imaginative faculty, is maintained through the whole dialogue. Yet the finest pa.s.sages in the serious scenes are those appropriated to her; they are familiar and celebrated as quotations, but fully to understand their beauty and truth, they should be considered relatively to her character and situation; thus, when in speaking of Bertram, she says, "that he is one to whom she wishes well," the consciousness of the disproportion between her words and her feelings draws from her this beautiful and affecting observation, so just in itself, and so true to her situation, and to the sentiment which fills her whole heart:--

'Tis pity That wis.h.i.+ng well had not a body in't Which might be felt: that we the poorer born, Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, Might with effects of them follow our friends, And act what we must only think, which never Returns us thanks.

Some of her general reflections have a sententious depth and a contemplative melancholy, which remind us of Isabella:--

Our remedies oft in themselves do lie Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

Impossible be strange events to those That weigh their pains in sense; and do suppose What hath been cannot be.

He that of greatest works is finisher, Oft does them by the weakest minister; So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there Where most it promises; and oft it hits, Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.

Her sentiments in the same manner are remarkable for the union of profound sense with the most pa.s.sionate feeling; and when her language is figurative, which is seldom, the picture presented to us is invariably touched either with a serious, a lofty, or a melancholy beauty. For instance:--

It were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it--he's so far above me.

And when she is brought to choose a husband from among the young lords at the court, her heart having already made its election, the strangeness of that very privilege for which she had ventured all, nearly overpowers her, and she says beautifully:--

The blushes on my cheeks thus whisper me, "We blush that thou shouldst choose;--but be refused, Let the white death sit on that cheek for ever We'll ne'er come there again!"

In her soliloquy after she has been forsaken by Bertram, the beauty lies in the intense feeling, the force and simplicity of the expressions.

There is little imagery, and wherever it occurs, it is as bold as it is beautiful, and springs out of the energy of the sentiment, and the pathos of the situation. She has been reading his cruel letter.

_Till I have no wife I have nothing in France._ 'Tis bitter!

Nothing in France, until he has no wife!

Thou shalt have none, Roussillon, none in France, Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is't I That chase thee from thy country, and expose Those tender limbs of thine to the event Of the none-sparing war? And is it I That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers, That ride upon the violent speed of fire, Fly with false aim! move the still-piercing air, That sings with piercing, do not touch my lord!

Whoever shoots at him, I set him there; Whoever charges on his forward breast, I am the caitiff that do hold him to it; And though I kill him not, I am the cause His death was so effected; better 'twere I met the ravin lion when he roared With sharp constraint of hunger; better 'twere That all the miseries which nature owes, Were mine at once.

No, no, although The air of paradise did fan the house, And angels officed all; I will be gone.

Though I cannot go the length of those who have defended Bertram on almost every point, still I think the censure which Johnson has pa.s.sed on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in men of his age and cla.s.s. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth, just dismissed into the world from domestic indulgence, with an excess of aristocratic and military pride, but not without some sense of true honor and generosity. I have lately read a defence of Bertram's character, written with much elegance and plausibility. "The young Count," says this critic, "comes before us possessed of a good heart, and of no mean capacity, but with a haughtiness which threatens to dull the kinder pa.s.sions, and to cloud the intellect. This is the inevitable consequence of an ill.u.s.trious education. The glare of his birthright has dazzled his young faculties. Perhaps the first words he could distinguish were from the important nurse, giving elaborate directions about his lords.h.i.+p's pap. As soon as he could walk, a crowd of submissive va.s.sals doffed their caps, and hailed his first appearance on his legs. His spelling book had the arms of the family emblazoned on the cover. He had been accustomed to hear himself called the great, the mighty son of Roussillon, ever since he was a helpless child. A succession of complacent tutors would by no means destroy the illusion; and it is from their hands that Shakspeare receives him, while yet in his minority. An overweening pride of birth is Bertram's great foible.

To cure him of this, Shakspeare sends him to the wars, that he may win fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them alone for the world's observance. Thus in his own person he discovers there is something better than mere hereditary honors; and his heart is prepared to acknowledge that the entire devotion of a Helen's love is of more worth than the court-bred smiles of a princess."[33]

It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the time to be called _cowardice_. Such forced marriages were not uncommon even in our own country, when the right of wards.h.i.+p, now vested in the Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel despotism by the sovereign.

There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree on a n.o.ble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point.

He brought her down full forty pound Tyed up within a glove, "Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee, Go seek another love."

"O I'll have none of your gold," she said, "Nor I'll have none of your fee; But your fair bodye I must have, The king hath granted me."

Sir William ran and fetched her then, Five hundred pounds in gold, Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee, My fault will ne'er be told."

"'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt,"

These words then answered she; "But your own bodye I must have, The king hath granted me."

"Would I had drank the water clear, When I did drink the wine, Rather than my shepherd's brat Should be a ladye of mine!"[34]

Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not towards him--whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown and untried--might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him.

The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not, indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after all his misdemeanors, is "dismissed to happiness;" but, not withstanding the clever defence that has been made for him, he has our pardon rather than our sympathy; and for mine own part, I could find it easier to love Bertram as Helena does, than to excuse him; her love for him is his best excuse.

PERDITA.

In Viola and Perdita the distinguis.h.i.+ng traits are the same--sentiment and elegance; thus we a.s.sociate them together, though nothing can be more distinct to the fancy than the Doric grace of Perdita, compared to the romantic sweetness of Viola. They are created out of the same materials, and are equal to each other in the tenderness, delicacy, and poetical beauty of the conception. They are both more imaginative than pa.s.sionate; but Perdita is the more imaginative of the two. She is the union of the pastoral and romantic with the cla.s.sical and poetical, as if a dryad of the woods had turned shepherdess. The perfections with which the poet has so lavishly endowed her, sit upon her with a certain careless and picturesque grace, "as though they had fallen upon her unawares." Thus Belphoebe, in the Fairy Queen, issues from the flowering forest with hair and garments all besprinkled with the leaves and blossoms they had entangled in their flight; and so arrayed by chance and "heedless hap," takes all hearts with "stately presence and with princely port,"--most like to Perdita!

The story of Florizel and Perdita is but an episode in the "Winter's Tale;" and the character of Perdita is properly kept subordinate to that of her mother, Hermione: yet the picture is perfectly finished in every part;--Juliet herself is not more firmly and distinctly drawn. But the coloring in Perdita is more silvery light and delicate; the pervading sentiment more touched with the ideal; compared with Juliet, she is like a Guido hung beside a Georgione, or one of Paesiello's airs heard after one of Mozart's.

The qualities which impart to Perdita her distinct individuality, are the beautiful combination of the pastoral with the elegant--of simplicity with elevation--of spirit with sweetness. The exquisite delicacy of the picture is apparent. To understand and appreciate its effective truth and nature, we should place Perdita beside some of the nymphs of Arcadia, or the Chloris' and Sylvias of the Italian pastorals, who, however graceful in themselves, when opposed to Perdita, seem to melt away into mere poetical abstractions;--as, in Spenser, the fair but fict.i.tious Florimel, which the subtle enchantress had moulded out of snow, "vermeil tinctured," and informed with an airy spirit, that knew "all wiles of woman's wits," fades and dissolves away, when placed next to the real Florimel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness.

Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and the whole of the character is developed in the course of a single scene, (the third,) with a completeness of effect which leaves nothing to be required--nothing to be supplied. She is first introduced in the dialogue between herself and Florizel, where she compares her own lowly state to his princely rank, and expresses her fears of the issue of their unequal attachment. With all her timidity and her sense of the distance which separates her from her lover, she breathes not a single word which could lead us to impugn either her delicacy or her dignity.

FLORIZEL.

These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life--no shepherdess, but Flora Peering in April's front; this your sheep-shearing Is as the meeting of the petty G.o.ds, And you the queen on't.

PERDITA.

Sir, my gracious lord, To chide at your extremes it not becomes me; O pardon that I name them: your high self, The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid, Most G.o.ddess-like prank'd up:--but that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders Digest it with a custom, I should blush To see you so attired; sworn, I think To show myself a gla.s.s.

The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is conveyed in two exquisite pa.s.sages:--

What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever. When you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms, Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own No other function.

I take thy hand; this hand As soft as dove's down, and as white as it; Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow, That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er.