An Introduction to Shakespeare Part 13

CHAPTER XII

THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD--TRAGEDY

The Second and Third periods slightly overlap; for _Julius Caesar_, the first play of the later group, was probably written before _Twelfth Night_ and _As You Like It_. But the change in the character of the plays in these two periods is sharp and decisive, like the change from day to night. Shakespeare has studied the sunlight of human cheerfulness and found it a most interesting problem; now in the mysterious starlight and shadow of human suffering he finds a problem more interesting still.

The three comedies of this period, partly on account of their bitter and sarcastic tone, are not widely read nor usually very much admired; but the great tragedies are the poet's finest work and scarcely equaled in the history of the world.

+Troilus and Cressida+.--Here the story centers around the siege of ancient Troy by the Greeks. Its hero, Troilus, is a young son of Priam, high-spirited and enthusiastic, who is in love with Cressida, daughter of a Trojan priest. Pandarus, Cressida's uncle, acts as go-between for the lovers. Just as the suit of Troilus is crowned with success, Cressida, from motives of policy, is forced to join her father Calchas, who is in the camp of the besieging Greeks. Here her fickle and sensuous nature reveals itself rapidly. She yields to {173} the love of the Greek commander Diomed and promises to become his mistress.

Troilus learns of this, consigns her to oblivion, and attempts, but unsuccessfully, to take revenge on Diomed.

While this love story is progressing, meetings are going on between the Greek and Trojan warriors; a vivid picture is given of conditions in the Greek camp during the truce, and particularly of the insolent pride of Achilles. The story ends with the resumption of hostilities, the slaying of Hector by Achilles, and the resolution of Troilus to revenge his brother's death.

It is very difficult to understand what Shakespeare meant by this play.

If it is a tragedy, why do the hero and heroine meet with no special disaster at the end, and why do we feel so little sympathy for the misfortunes of any one in the play? If it is a comedy, why is its sarcastic mirth made more bitter than tears, and why does it end with the death of its n.o.blest minor character and with the violation of all poetic justice? From beginning to end it is the story of disillusion, for it sorts all humanity into two great cla.s.ses, fools who are cheated and knaves who cheat. Some people think that Shakespeare wrote it in a gloomy, pessimistic mood, with the sardonic laughter of a disappointed, world-wearied man. Others, on rather doubtful grounds, believe it a covert satire on some of Shakespeare's fellow dramatists.

+Authors.h.i.+p+.--It is generally agreed that a small part of this play is by another author. The Prologue and most of the Fifth Act are usually considered non-Shakespearean. They differ from the rest of the play in many details of vocabulary, meter, and style.

{174}

+Date+.--_Troilus and Cressida_ must have been written before 1603, for in the spring of that year an entry in regard to it was made in the Stationers' Register. It must have been written after 1601, for it alludes (Prologue, ll. 23-25) to the Prologue of Jonson's _Poetaster_, a play published in that year. Hence the date of composition would fall during or slightly before 1602. The First Quarto was not published until 1609.

+Sources+.--The main source of this drama was the narrative poem _Troilus and Criseyde_ by Chaucer. Contrary to his custom, Shakespeare has degraded the characters of his original, instead of enn.o.bling them.

The camp scenes are adapted from Caxton's _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_; and the challenge of Hector was taken from some translation of Homer, probably that by Chapman. An earlier lost play on this subject by Dekker and Chettle is mentioned in contemporary reference. We do not know whether Shakespeare drew anything from it or not. Scattered hints were probably taken from other sources, as the story of Troy was very popular in the Middle Ages.

+All's Well That Ends Well+.--When a beautiful and n.o.ble-minded young woman falls in love with a contemptible scoundrel, forgives his rebuffs, compromises her own dignity to win his affection, and finally persuades him to let her throw herself away on him,--is the result a romance or a tragedy? This is a nice question; and by the answer to it we must determine whether _All's Well That Ends Well_ is a romantic comedy like _Twelfth Night_ or a satirical comedy bitter as tragedy, like _Troilus and Cressida_.

Helena, a poor orphan girl, has been brought up by the kindly old Countess of Rousillon, and cherishes a deep affection for the Countess's son Bertram, though he neither suspects it nor returns it.

She saves the life of the French king, and he in grat.i.tude allows her {175} to choose her husband from among the n.o.blest young lords of France. Her choice falls on Bertram. Being too politic to offend the king, he reluctantly marries her, but forsakes her on their wedding day to go to the wars. At parting he tells her that he will never accept her as a wife until she can show him his ring on her finger and has a child by him. By disguising herself as a young woman whom Bertram is attempting to seduce, Helena subsequently fulfills the terms of his hard condition. Later, before the king of France she reminds him of his promise, shows his ring in her possession, and states that she is with child by him. The count, outwitted, and in fear of the king's wrath, repentantly accepts her as his wife; and at the end Helena is expected to live happily forever after.

Disagreeable as the plot is when told in outline, it is redeemed in the actual play by the beautiful character given to the heroine. But this, while it vastly tones down the disgusting side of the story, only increases the bitter pathos which is latent there. The more lovely and admirable Helena is, the more she is unfitted for the unworthy part which she is forced to act and the man with whom she is doomed to end her days. A modern thinker could easily read into this "comedy" the world-old bitterness of pearls before swine.

+Date+.--No quarto of this comedy exists, nor is there any mention of such a play as _All's Well That Ends Well_ before the publication of the First Folio in 1623. A play of Shakespeare's called _Love's Labour's Won_ is mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598; and many think that this was the present comedy under another name. However, the meter, style, and mood of most of the play seem to indicate a later date. The {176} most common theory is that a first version was written before 1598, and that this was rewritten in the early part of the author's third period. This would put the date of the play in its present form somewhere around 1602.

+Sources+.--The story is taken from Boccaccio's _Decameron_ (ninth novel of the third day). It was translated into English by Painter in his _Palace of Pleasure_, where our author probably read it.

Shakespeare has added the Countess, Parolles, and one or two minor characters. The conception of the heroine has been greatly enn.o.bled.

It is a question whether the bitter tone of the play is due to the dramatist's intention or is the unforeseen result of reducing Boccaccio's improbable story to a living possibility.

+Measure for Measure+.--When Hamlet told his guilty mother that he would set her up a gla.s.s where she might see the inmost part of her, he was doing for his mother what Shakespeare in _Measure for Measure_ is doing for the l.u.s.t-spotted world. The play is a trenchant satire on the evils of society. Such realistic pictures of the things that are, but should not be, have always jarred on our aesthetic sense from Aristophanes to Zola, and _Measure for Measure_ is one of the most disagreeable of Shakespeare's plays. But no one can deny its power.

Here, as in _All's Well That Ends Well_, we have one beautiful character, that of Isabella, like a light s.h.i.+ning in corruption. Here, too, the wronged Mariana, in order to win back the faithless Angelo, is forced to resort to the same device to which Helena had to stoop. But this play is darker and more savage than its predecessor. Angelo, as a governor, sentencing men to death for the very sin which he as a private man is trying to commit, is contemptible on a huger {177} and more devilish scale than Bertram. Lucio, if not more base than Parolles, is at least more malignant. And Claudio, attempting to save his life by his sister's shame, is an incarnation of the healthy animal joy of life almost wholly divested of the ideals of manhood. In a way, the play ends happily; but it is about as cheerful as the red gleam of sunset which shoots athwart a retreating thunderstorm.

+Date+.--The play was first published in the Folio of 1623. It is generally believed, however, that it was written about 1603. In the first place, the verse tests and general character of the play seem to fit that date; secondly, there are two pa.s.sages, I, i, 68-73 and II, iv, 27-30, which are usually interpreted as allusions to the att.i.tude of James I toward the people after he came to the throne in 1603; and, thirdly, there are many turns of phrase which remind one of _Hamlet_ and which seem to indicate that the two plays were written near together. Barksted's _Myrrha_ (1607) contains a pa.s.sage apparently borrowed from this comedy, which helps in determining the latest possible date of composition.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare borrowed his material from a writer named George Whetstone, who in 1578 printed a play, _Promos and Ca.s.sandra_, containing most of the story of _Measure for Measure_. In 1582 the same author published a prose version of the story in his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_. Whetstone in turn borrowed his material, which came originally from the _Hecatommithi_ of Giraldi Cinthio.

Shakespeare enn.o.bled the underlying thought as far as he could, and added the character of Mariana.

+Julius Caesar+.--The interest in _Julius Caesar_ does not focus on any one person as completely as in the other great tragedies. Like the chronicle plays which had preceded it, it gives rather a grand panorama of history than the fate of any particular hero. This {178} explains its t.i.tle. It is not the story of Julius Caesar the man, but of that great political upheaval of which Caesar was cause and center. That upheaval begins with his attempt at despotism and the crown; it reaches its climax in his death, which disturbs the political equilibrium of the whole nation; and at last subsides with the decline and downfall of Caesar's enemies. Shakespeare has departed from history in drawing the character of the great conqueror, making it more weak, vain, and pompous than that of the real man. Yet even in the play "the mightiest Julius" is an impressive figure. Alive, he

"doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus";

and his influence, like an unseen force, shapes the fates of the living after he himself is dead.

In so far as the tragedy has any individual hero, that hero is Brutus rather than Caesar himself. Brutus is a man of n.o.ble character, but deficient in practical judgment and knowledge of men. With the best of motives he allows Ca.s.sius to hoodwink him and draw him into the conspiracy against Caesar. Through the same short-sighted generosity he allows his enemy Antony to address the crowd after Caesar's death, with the result that Antony rouses the people against him and drives him and his fellow conspirators out of Rome. Then when he and Ca.s.sius gather an army in Asia to fight with Antony, we find him too impractically scrupulous to raise money by the usual means; and for that reason short of cash and drawn into a quarrel with his brother general. His subsequent {179} death at Philippi is the logical outcome of his own nature, too good for so evil an age, too short-sighted for so critical a position.

Most of the old Roman heroes inspire respect rather than love; and something of their stern impressiveness lingers in the atmosphere of this Roman play. Here and there it has very touching scenes, such as that between Brutus and his page (IV, iii); but in the main it is great, not through its power to elicit sympathetic tears, but through its dignity and grandeur. It is one of the stateliest of tragedies, lofty in language, majestic in movement, logical and cogent in thought.

We can never mourn for Brutus and Portia as we do for Romeo and Juliet, or for Lear and Cordelia; but we feel that we have breathed in their company an air which is keen and bracing, and have caught a glimpse of

"The grandeur that was Rome."

+Date+.--We have no printed copy of Julius Caesar earlier than that of the First Folio. Since it was not mentioned by Meres in 1598 and was alluded to in 1601 in John Weever's _Mirrour of Martyrs_, it probably appeared between those two dates. Weever says in his dedication that his work "some two years ago was made fit for the print." This apparently means that he wrote the allusion to _Julius Caesar_ in 1599 and that consequently the play had been produced by then. There is a possible reference to it in Ben Jonson's _Every Man Out of His Humour_, which came out in 1599. Metrical tests and the general character of the play agree with these conclusions. Hence we can put the date between 1599-1601, with a preference for the former year.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare drew his material from North's _Plutarch_, using the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. He has {180} enlarged the parts of Casca and Lepidus, and made Brutus much n.o.bler than in the original. This last change was a dramatic necessity in order to give the play a hero with whom we could sympathize.

+Hamlet+.--On the surface the story of Hamlet is a comparatively simple one. The young prince is heart-broken over the recent death of his father, and his mother's scandalously hasty marriage to Hamlet's uncle, the usurping sovereign. In this mood he is brought face to face with his father's spirit, told that his uncle was his father's murderer, and given as a sacred duty the task of revenging the crime. To this object he sacrifices all other aims in life--pleasure, ambition, and love.

But this savage task is the last one on earth for which his fine-grained nature was fitted. He wastes his energy in feverish efforts which fail to accomplish his purpose, just as many a man wavers helplessly in trying to do something for which nature never intended him. Partly to deceive his enemies, partly to provide a freer expression for his pent-up emotions than the normal conditions of life would justify, he acts the role of one who is mentally deranged.

Finally, more by chance than any plan of his own, he achieves his revenge on the king, but not until he himself is mortally wounded. His story is the tragedy of a sensitive, refined, imaginative nature which is required to perform a brutal task in a brutal world.

But around this story as a framework Shakespeare has woven such a wealth of poetry and philosophy that the play has been called the "tragedy of thought." It is in Hamlet's brain that the great action of the drama {181} takes place; the other characters are mere accessories and foils. Here we are brought face to face with the fear and mystery of the future life and the deepest problems of this. It is hardly true to say that Hamlet himself is a philosopher. He gives some very wise advice to the players; but in the main he is grappling problems without solving them, peering into the dark, but bringing from it no definite addition to our knowledge. He represents rather the eternal questioning of the human heart when face to face with the great mysteries of existence; and perhaps this accounts largely for the wide and lasting popularity of the play. Side by side with this deep-souled, earnest man, moving in the shadow of the unseen, with his terrible duties and haunting fears, Shakespeare has placed in intentional mockery the old dotard Polonius, the incarnation of shallow worldly wisdom.

No other play of Shakespeare's has called forth such a ma.s.s of comment as this or so many varied interpretations. Neither has any other roused a deeper interest in its readers. The spell which it casts over old and young alike is due partly to the character of the young prince himself, partly to the suggestive mystery with which it invests all problems of life and sorrow.

+Date+.--'A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett' was entered in the Stationers' Register July, 1602. Consequently, Shakespeare's Preliminary version, as represented by the First Quarto, though not printed until 1603, must have been written in or before the spring months of 1602; the second version 1603-1604.

+Sources+.--The plot came originally from the _Historia Danica_, a history of Denmark in Latin, written in the twelfth century {182} by Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish scholar. About 1570 the story was retold in French in Belleforest's _Histoires Tragiques_. Besides his debt to Belleforest, it seems almost certain that Shakespeare drew from an earlier English tragedy of Hamlet by another man. This earlier play is lost; but Nash, a contemporary writer, alludes to it as early as 1589, and Henslowe's Diary records its performance in 1494. Somewhat before 1590, an early dramatist, Thomas Kyd, had written a play called _The Spanish Tragedy_, which, though far inferior to Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, resembled it in many ways. This likeness has caused scholars to suspect that Kyd wrote the early Hamlet; and their suspicions are strengthened by an ambiguous and apparently punning allusion to aesop's _Kidde_ in the pa.s.sage by Nash mentioned above. A crude and brutal German play on the subject has been discovered, which is believed by many to be a translation of Kyd's original tragedy. If this is true, it shows how enormously Shakespeare improved on his source.

+Editions+.--A very badly garbled and crude form of this play was printed in 1603, and is known as the First Quarto. A much better one, which contained most of the tragedy as we read it, appeared in 1604, and is called the Second Quarto. Several other quartos followed, for the play was exceedingly popular. The Folio omits certain pa.s.sages found in the Second Quarto, and introduces certain new ones. Both the new pa.s.sages and the omitted ones are included in modern editions; so that, as has often been said, our modern _Hamlet_ is longer than any _Hamlet_ which Shakespeare left us. The First Quarto is generally regarded as a pirated copy of Shakespeare's scenario, or first rough draft, of the play.

+Oth.e.l.lo+.--This play has often been called the tragedy of jealousy, but that is a misleading statement. Oth.e.l.lo, as Coleridge pointed out, is not a const.i.tutionally jealous man, such as Leontes in _The Winter's Tale_. His distrust of his wife is the natural suspicion of a man lost amid new and inexplicable surroundings. {183} Women are proverbially suspicious in business, not because nature made them so, but because, as they are in utter ignorance of standards by which to judge, they feel their helplessness in the face of deceit. Oth.e.l.lo feels the same helplessness. Trained up in wars from his cradle, he could tell a true soldier from a traitor at a glance, with the calm confidence of a veteran; but women and their motives are to him an uncharted sea.

Suddenly a beautiful young heiress falls in love with him, and leaves home and friends to marry him. He stands on the threshold of a new realm, happy but bewildered. Then comes Iago, his trusted subordinate, --who, as Oth.e.l.lo knows, possesses that knowledge of women and of civilian life which he himself lacks,--and whispers in his ear that his bride is false to him; that under this fair veneer lurks the eternal feminine as they had seen it in the common creatures of the camp; that she has fooled her husband as these women have so often fooled his soldiers; and that the rough-and-ready justice of the camp should be her reward. Had Oth.e.l.lo any knowledge or experience in such matters to fall back on, he might anchor to that, and become definitely either the trusting husband or the Spartan judge. But as it is, he is whirled back and forth in a maelstrom of agonized doubt, until compa.s.s, bearings, and wisdom lost, he ends all in universal s.h.i.+pwreck.

The character of Iago is one of the subtlest studies of intelligent depravity ever created by man. Ostensibly his motive is revenge; but in reality his wickedness seems due rather to a perverted mental activity, unbalanced by heart or conscience. As Napoleon enjoyed manoeuvring armies or Lasker studying chess, so {184} Iago enjoys the sense of his own mental power in handling his human p.a.w.ns, in feeling himself master of the situation. If he ever had natural affections, they have been atrophied in the pursuit of this devilish game.

With Desdemona the feminine element, which had been negligible in _Julius Caesar_ and thrown into the background in _Hamlet_, becomes a prominent feature, and remains so through the later tragedies. There is a pathetic contrast between the beautiful character of Desdemona and her undeserved fate, just as there is between the real n.o.bility of Oth.e.l.lo and the mad act by which he ruins his own happiness. For that reason this is perhaps the most touching of all Shakespeare's tragedies.

+Date+.--The play was certainly published after 1601, for it contains several allusions to Holland's translation of the Latin author Pliny, which appeared in that year. Malone, one of the early editors of Shakespeare, says that _Oth.e.l.lo_ was acted at Hallowmas, 1604. We not know on what evidence he based this a.s.sertion; but since the metrical tests all point to the same date, his statement is generally accepted.

The First Quarto did not appear until 1622, six years after Shakespeare died and one year before the appearance of the First Folio. This was the only play published in quarto between Shakespeare's death and 1623.

There are frequent oaths in the Quarto which have been very much modified in the Folio, and this strengthens our belief that the ma.n.u.script from which the Quarto was printed was written about 1604, for shortly after that date an act was pa.s.sed against the use of profanity in plays.