Characteristics of Women Part 45

Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kings A widow calls!--be husband to me, heavens!

And again--

O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth, Then with a pa.s.sion would I shake the world!

Not only do her thoughts start into images, but her feelings become persons: grief haunts her as a living presence:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child; Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

And death is welcomed as a bridegroom; she sees the visionary monster as Juliet _saw_ "the b.l.o.o.d.y Tybalt festering in his shroud," and heaps one ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered fancy:--

O amiable, lovely death!

Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!

Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And I will kiss thy detestable bones; And put my eye-b.a.l.l.s in thy vaulty brows; And right these fingers with thy household worms; And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust; And be a carrion monster like thyself; Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st, And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love, O come to me!

Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy.

Majesty is also the characteristic of Hermione: but what a difference between _her_ silent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the eloquent grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but absolutely electrify us!

On the whole, it may be said that pride and maternal affection form the basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us; but that these pa.s.sions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, a.s.sume their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of intellect and fancy. It is the energy of pa.s.sion which lends the character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination throughout which dilates it into magnificence.

Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be found in the parts of Juliet and Constance; the most splendid, perhaps, excepting only the parts of Lear and Oth.e.l.lo; and for the same reason,--that Lear and Oth.e.l.lo as men, and Juliet and Constance as women, are distinguished by the predominance of the same faculties,--pa.s.sion and imagination.

The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially interfering with the truth of the situation, is the entire omission of the character of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance is incorrectly represented as in a state of widowhood, at a period when, in point of fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place just at the period of the opening of the drama; that Guy de Thouars played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this personage, altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed the dramatic interest of the situation;--and what a situation! One more magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair, amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies![88] The image of the mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her young in an att.i.tude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity of this scene. Considered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the grouping is wonderfully fine; on one side, the vulture ambition of that mean-souled tyrant, John; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy of Philip: between them, balancing their pa.s.sions in his hand, the cold, subtle, heartless Legate: the fiery, reckless Falconbridge; the princely Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling queen, old Elinor; the bridal loveliness and modesty of Blanche; the boyish grace and innocence of young Arthur; and Constance in the midst of them, in all the state of her great grief, a grand impersonation of pride and pa.s.sion, helpless at once and desperate,--form an a.s.semblage of figures, each perfect in its kind, and, taken all together, not surpa.s.sed for the variety, force, and splendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect.

QUEEN ELINOR.

Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical portraits, and full of truth and spirit.

At the period when Shakspeare has brought these three women on the scene together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiress of a sovereign duchy) was near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life--she was nearly seventy: and, as in early youth, her violent pa.s.sions had overborne both principle and policy, so in her old age we see the same character, only modified by time; her strong intellect and love of power, unbridled by conscience or principle, surviving when other pa.s.sions were extinguished, and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and avowed hatred for Constance, together with its motives, are mentioned by the old historians. Holinshed expressly says, that Queen Elinor was mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance.

Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit and fidelity.

QUEEN ELINOR.

What now, my son! have I not ever said, How that ambitious Constance would not cease, Till she had kindled France and all the world Upon the right and party of her son?

This might have been prevented and made whole With very easy arguments of love; Which now the manage of two kingdoms must With fearful b.l.o.o.d.y issue arbitrate.

KING JOHN.

Our strong possession and our right for us!

QUEEN ELINOR.

Your strong possession much more than your right; Or else it must go wrong with you and me.

So much my conscience whispers in your ear-- Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear.

Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her life her influence over her children, and appears to have merited their respect. While intrusted with the government, during the absence of Richard I., she ruled with a steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular; and as long as she lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand, there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated and wronged the husband of her youth,[89] and she had afterwards to endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom she pa.s.sionately loved:[90]--"and so the whirligig of time brought in his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and before the murder of Arthur--a crime which, had she lived, would probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son.

BLANCHE.

Blanche of Castile was the daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile, and the grand-daughter of Elinor. At the time that she is introduced into the drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIII., then Dauphin, took place in the abrupt manner here represented. It is not often that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche met, they were inspired by a mutual pa.s.sion, and that during a union of more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even spent more than a single day asunder.[91]

In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputation; her love for her husband, and strong domestic affections; her pride of birth and rank; her feminine gentleness of deportment; her firmness of temper; her religious bigotry; her love of absolute power, and her upright and conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating nature; and in proportion as she was less amiable as a woman, did she rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which she succeeded in disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible imagination of Constance, which rendered herself and her son easy victims to the fraud or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in her hands the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most celebrated names recorded in history--but in what does she survive to us except in a name? Nor history, nor fame, though "trumpet-tongued," could do for _her_ what Shakspeare and poetry have done for Constance. The earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power departed. When will the reign of Constance cease? when will _her_ power depart? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with human sympathies!

There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II.

The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same pa.s.sive part in the drama that she does in history.

The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no female character of any importance; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur, is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she is sprightly, feminine, and fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter dejection and brokenness of heart which follow her husband's death: she is no heroine for war or tragedy; she has no thought of revenging her loss; and even her grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Her speech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him "not to go to the wars," and at the same time p.r.o.nounces the most beautiful eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression.

Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy's celebrated address to her husband, beginning,

O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?

and that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius Caesar,

... You've ungently, Brutus, Stol'n from my bed.

The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly the same; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accustomed to win more from her fiery lord by caresses than by reason: he loves her in his rough way "as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real influence over him: he has no confidence in her.

LADY PERCY.

... In faith, I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.

I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir About this t.i.tle, and hath sent for you To line his enterprise, but if you go--

HOTSPUR.

So far afoot, I shall be weary, love!

The whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary here, because it ill.u.s.trates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has no _character_, properly so called; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties, scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's thoughts, and proves it too

I grant I am a woman, but withal, A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife, I grant I am a woman, but withal, A woman well reputed--Cato's daughter.

Think you, I am no stronger than my s.e.x Being so father'd and so husbanded?

BRUTUS.

You are my true and honorable wife: As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart!

Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and represented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Brutus: in him we see an excess of natural sensibility, an almost womanish tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of his austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in reality the reverse--acting deeds against his nature by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and pa.s.sionate feeling, and all her s.e.x's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman "so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting on herself a voluntary wound to try her own fort.i.tude, is perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates, that on the day on which Caesar was a.s.sa.s.sinated, Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the conspirators. Shakspeare has rendered this circ.u.mstance literally.

PORTIA.

I pr'ythee, boy, run to the senate house, Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.

Why dost thou stay?