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Shakespeare's Portrayal of the 
 Moral Life 
 
Shakespeare's Portrayal 
 
 of 
 
 The Moral Life 
 
 By 
 FRANK CHAPMAN SHARP, Ph.D. 
 
 Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the 
 University of Wisconsin 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1902 
 
THF UI8HABY OP 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 T«t> Co«>lt:H RBOCIVED 
 
 seP. P3 1902 
 
 OoovnnHT entry 
 
 CI ,ASS ^ XXc No. 
 
 COI»Y 3. 
 
 
 Copyrightj igo2 
 By Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 All rights raewed 
 
 ITNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON ■ CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 
 
TO 
 PROFESSOR CHARLES E. GARMAN 
 
 IN GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Intboduction ix 
 
 Chapter 
 
 I. A Study of Motives 1 
 
 II. Transcendentalism 29 
 
 III. The Criterion of Right and Wrong . 64 
 
 IV. The Nature of the Good 77 
 
 V. Conscience and the Conscienceless . 97 
 
 VI. The Freedom of the Will .... 131 
 
 VII. Virtue and Happiness 159 
 
 VIII. Ethics and Metaphysics 204 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 If conduct be " three-fourths of life," or in other 
 words if all deliberate action have a moral bearing, 
 Shakespeare's description of the moral world is but 
 a name for his collected works. Accordingly, since 
 nothing that is broadly human was foreign to his 
 mind, or failed of at least a passing notice at his 
 hands, the title of the following study would seem 
 to be as comprehensive as that of the professorship 
 founded for Professor Teufelsdrockh at the Uni- 
 versity of Weiss-nicht-wo. The aim of this under- 
 taking, however, is a modest one. Using as our 
 material the concrete facts of life as they appear 
 in the pages of the great dramas, we shall merely 
 attempt to discover what light they throw upon 
 a single group of ethical problems. Manifestly 
 such an inquiry may be confined within definite 
 limits. 
 
 The problems of ethics fall into two distinct 
 classes. First, the moral life of the race as it 
 actually exists and has existed calls for description 
 and explanation. Starting from the phenomena 
 of moral approval and disapproval, in other words, 
 from the fact that certain actions are judged right 
 and others wrong, we here ask : What is the nature 
 
X Introduction 
 
 of the moral judgment, to what kinds of action does 
 it attach itself, and under what conditions does it 
 arise ? Under these few rubrics may be disposed 
 a long series of familiar topics : the standard or 
 standards by which conduct is judged, the nature 
 of conscience and its mode of working, the nature 
 and source of the consciousness of obligation, the 
 conditions under which responsibility is imputed 
 (the ethical side of the free-will controversy), and 
 the relation of metaphysical and theological beliefs 
 to morality. Others closely related, as the connec- 
 tion between character and happiness, and the 
 dynamics of virtue and of crime, will naturally 
 suggest themselves in the course of such an inquiry. 
 In the exploration of this broad field a second set 
 of problems soon presents itself. For the morality 
 that is proves to be a mass of inconsistencies and 
 in part absurdities. Accordingly the question 
 forces itself upon us. How can we reduce the moral 
 judgments of mankind to a consistent and reason- 
 able system, where the word " reasonable " means 
 that which would approve itself to a mind cog- 
 nizant of and sensitive to all the facts of human 
 experience. The first part of a complete treatise 
 on ethics is thus in method a science, the second 
 an art. 
 
 To the catholic mind both of these departments 
 of inquiry are alike interesting and important. 
 Every wise man will accept with gladness any as- 
 sistance in either direction which the skilled 
 observer of human life is able to offer him. Un- 
 
Introduction xi 
 
 fortunately, however, the aid that Shakespeare can 
 give us is limited to the descriptive branch of the 
 subject. Of what he thought about the art of 
 living — and this includes the art of judging — we 
 have no direct and little indirect evidence. There 
 are, indeed, certain historical romances masquerad- 
 ing under the name of biographies that profess to 
 inform us what he thought and how he felt upon 
 almost every subject of human interest. But their 
 results are obtained by picking out from the varied 
 deliverances of his characters those with which the 
 novelist happens to agree. Criticism upon such a 
 method seems superfluous. I at all events shall 
 not attempt to use it. I shall confine myself to 
 an account of the moral life as it is represented 
 upon Shakespeare's stage. I shall treat his char- 
 acters as if they were living beings, whose con- 
 sciousness we — happy peepers and botanizers — 
 were permitted to explore. My descriptions, of 
 course, must be in general terms ; but the formulae 
 in which they are presented will be mine, — objec- 
 tive statements, as far as possible, of what I dis- 
 cover in my journey through the world he has 
 created. What thoughts arose in the dramatist's 
 mind as he contemplated his creations thus becomes 
 a matter with which I have nothing to do. Not 
 merely how he criticised but also how he general- 
 ized are subjects that alike fall outside the inquiry 
 that is here proposed. 
 
 How far these offspring of a poet's imagination 
 resemble the men and women with whom scientific 
 
xii Introduction 
 
 ethics attempts to deal, I have in the main re- 
 frained from considering. There is as yet no suffi- 
 cient concensus of experts in this field to make the 
 subject worth discussing, although we are un- 
 doubtedly nearer the goal than we were a genera- 
 tion ago. At only one point has a departure from 
 this plan seemed desirable, namely in the study of 
 moral pathology. The reasons for making an ex- 
 ception in this case will appear in their proper 
 place. 
 
 But while questions of truth and error are 
 allowed for the most part to pass unconsidered, 
 the following study is not intended as a mere ex- 
 ercise in literary interpretation. It is an attempt 
 to lay before the reader the results of the observa- 
 tions of a man who was one of the most gifted 
 students of human nature the world has ever seen. 
 The record that he left no worker in the humani- 
 ties can afford to neglect. No worker, in fact, does 
 neglect it. But the concreteness of its form and 
 the intermixture of irrelevant material — irrelevant 
 from the point of view of science — which is the 
 consequence of the motives that brought it into 
 being, these have operated to render much it could 
 teach us practically non-existent. For this reason 
 it has seemed worth while to re-write that portion 
 which deals with the moral life. In the process 
 its beauty dies and for many people its interest 
 entirely disappears. There may be some, how- 
 ever, who will care to make a systematic review of 
 the materials which the great observer has col- 
 
Introduction xiii 
 
 lected. In this hope the present experiment has 
 been hazarded. 
 
 In order to get Shakespeare's powers at their 
 best, I have confined myself as far as possible to 
 those dramas which received their present form 
 after the close of the year 1600, or in other words? 
 to the works of the third and fourth periods accord- 
 ing to the common classification. These dramas, 
 it will be remembered, were written during the last 
 ten, or at most twelve years of the poet's literary 
 life, after an apprenticeship, if such we can call it, 
 that had begun, at the very latest, as far back as 
 1590. It has not, indeed, proved practicable to 
 exclude all references to the earlier works, espe- 
 cially the English histories. But it will be found 
 that, where issues of importance are at stake, it is 
 tlie four great tragedies, the Roman and Greek 
 histories, the small group of romances, and the 
 so-called comedies. All 's Well that Ends Well, 
 and Measure for Measure, that supply in the main 
 the material for our investigation. 
 
Shakespeare's 
 Portrayal of the Moral Life 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A STUDY OF MOTIVES 
 
 The fundamental fact of the moral life is the 
 approval and disapproval of conduct. It might 
 therefore be expected that our first topic would 
 be an account of the moral judgments expressly 
 enunciated by Shakespeare's characters. Such in- 
 deed would be the prescription of logic. But the 
 nature of the material at our disposal compels us 
 to begin with a study of the motives in which the 
 life of action has its source. True it is not with 
 conduct, but with judgments upon conduct, that 
 ethics as such has to deal, yet no absolute line of 
 demarcation can be drawn between the two. Every 
 action entitled to the name of voluntary is the out- 
 come of a judgment approving it, pronouncing it 
 an action that for some reason, or perhaps for many 
 reasons, it is well to perform. These reasons are 
 the motives. A study of motives is thus a study 
 of the points of view from which conduct may be 
 
 1 
 
2 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 approved, and a complete enumeration of the mo- 
 tives, persuasive and dissuasive, operating in any 
 given case would, therefore, reveal to us the totality 
 of the grounds on which the judgment of the agent 
 was passed at the moment of action. Any such 
 enumeration might seem to involve a hopeless 
 task on account of the multitude of the threads 
 that enter into the fabric of even the most com- 
 monplace life. But by confining our attention 
 to the highest types of moral endeavor we so 
 far narrow the field that it can be explored, while 
 at the same time we omit nothing that is really 
 essential. At the conclusion of our inquiry, we 
 should accordingly expect to be in possession of 
 the data with which to construct a theory of moral 
 judgments. 
 
 Our study of motives may fittingly begin with an 
 examination of King Lear, that tremendous drama 
 of struggling optimism in which are disclosed the 
 sublimest heights and deepest abysses of human 
 character. What inspired the humanity of Al- 
 bany and the devotion of Gloucester, Edgar, and 
 Kent ? Let us listen to the confession of that 
 loyal servant who has more than once been pro- 
 nounced the most perfect character in Shake- 
 speare. The childish old king, thrown into a fit of 
 petulance at the ruin of a pretty little theatrical 
 effect through what he considers the unreasonable 
 obstinacy of one of the actors, has just disowned 
 his best-loved daughter and parted her patrimony 
 between her sisters. Kent attempts for the sec- 
 
A Study of Motives 3 
 
 ond time to interpose, when Lear with mounting 
 passion cries : 
 
 " Kent, on thy life, no more. 
 Kent. My life I never held but as a 
 
 pawn I<ear I. L 
 
 To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to 
 
 lose it, 
 Thy safety being the motive." 
 
 "What made his master's safety his motive ? He 
 himself tells us as he enters in disguise the palace 
 from which but a few days before he had been 
 driven as an exile : 
 
 " Now, banish'd Kent, 
 
 If thou canst serve where thou dost stand 
 
 condemned, , . . 
 
 I. IV. 4. 
 So may it come, thy master, whom thou 
 
 lovest, 
 
 Shall find thee full of labours." 
 
 "Thy master whom thou lovest!" This is the 
 key to a devotion which did not ask that master's 
 favor, which survived his prosperity and the in- 
 tegrity of his mind, — a devotion which was no 
 mere selfish clinging to an object of affection as 
 was Antony's passion for Cleopatra, but rather 
 the visible expression of a spirit of self-forgetting 
 service quickened by veneration, love, and pity. 
 In the wild night on the heath, when the dis- 
 
 1 The text of all quotations from Shakespeare and the num- 
 bering of lines follow the Globe Edition. 
 
4 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 guised nobleman and the fool are trying to prevail 
 upon Lear to take refuge in the hovel, the old king 
 turning to his companion plaintively asks, " Wilt 
 break my heart ? " Answers Kent : " I had rather 
 break mine own." This is not declama- 
 tion, it is prophecy. For as soon as the 
 strain was over and his charge had been brought in 
 safety to the French camp, the summons came call- 
 ing him to his long home. While recounting to 
 Edgar Lear's wanderings " his grief grew 
 puissant, the strings of life began to 
 crack," and he fell tranced to the ground. The 
 warning voice was not misunderstood. Come to 
 bid his king and master aye good-night, he sees 
 that master gently carried before him through the 
 portal. He scarcely notes that with a new ruler a 
 better era is to dawn, for his thought is fixed upon 
 the journey he must shortly go. The end is at 
 hand ; and soon, like the faithful fool, he will 
 have " gone to bed at noon." 
 
 While in Kent altruism, or the spirit of service, 
 derives its strength primarily from love, in Glouces- 
 ter we find it awakened by the emotion of pity. 
 " Alack, alack, Edmund," he says to his son after 
 Lear has rushed out into the storm, " I like not this 
 unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that 
 I might pity him, they took from me the 
 use of mine own house." Soon he is 
 compelled to formulate his motives in the presence 
 of the infuriated daughters and the Duke of Corn- 
 wall, for they have been informed by the treacher- 
 
A Study of Motives 5 
 
 ous Edmund of his final attempt to serve Lear by 
 sending the old king to Cordelia. 
 
 Cornwall. Where hast thou sent the king? 
 Gloucester. To Dover. 
 Began. Wherefore to Dover? 
 
 Gloucester. Because I would not see thy cruel nails 
 
 Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister 
 
 In his anointed flesh stick bearish fangs. 
 
 The sea, with such a storm as his bare head 
 
 In hell-black night endured, would have in. vii. 50. 
 
 buoy'd up, 
 And queuch'd the stelled fires : 
 Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain. 
 If wolves had at thy gate howl'd that stern time, 
 Thou shouldst have said " Good porter, turn the key," 
 All cruels else subscribed. 
 
 Pity, too, is the source of Albany's devotion to the 
 cause of Lear, if we may believe the taunts of his 
 ferocious wife. When at last he has been forced 
 to open his eyes to the true nature of this woman, 
 he turns upon her and tries to blast her with invec- 
 tive. Utterly unmoved she retorts : 
 
 ''Milk-liver'd man! 
 That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for 
 wrongs : 
 
 IV. ii. 60. 
 
 that not know'st 
 Fools do those villains pity who are pun- 
 
 ish'd 
 Ere they have done their mischief." 
 
L. 70. 
 
 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Goneril is reproaching him, it will be remembered, 
 for delaying to take the field against the French 
 army which has entered England to restore her 
 father to the throne. Almost the next moment 
 brings her new evidence of the workings of com- 
 passion. In the midst of their mutual recrimina- 
 tions a messenger enters bearing the information : 
 
 " The Duke of Cornwall 's dead : 
 Slain by his servant, going to put out 
 The other eye of Gloucester. 
 Albany. Gloucester's eyes ! 
 Messenger. A servant that he bred, thrill'd 
 
 with remorse [pity], 
 Opposed against the act, bending his sword 
 To his great master." 
 
 It is to this same emotion that Cordelia's thought 
 spontaneously turns as the natural restraint upon 
 inhuman deeds : 
 
 " Had you not been their father, these white 
 IV. vii. 30. flakes 
 
 Had challenged pity of them. 
 
 And the hard-hearted Edmund apparently shares 
 her view of the place of this motive in the system 
 of human incentives. For he reminds the soldier 
 sent to kill Cordelia, " to be tender- 
 minded does not become a sword." 
 A study of the place of love and pity in the other 
 plays would lead to similar results. They are not 
 merely recognized as forces that exist; they are 
 
A Study of Motives 7 
 
 counted among the most important incitements to 
 service, the most powerful and widely diffused re- 
 straints upon selfishness and passion. It Tempest i. 
 was pity that moved Prospero to teach "• ^53. 
 Caliban ; it was pity to the general wrong of Rome 
 that drove from the heart of Brutus the j. c. in. i. 
 pity for his friend ; it was pity (or hu- 165-172. 
 manity) that moved Pisanio to disobey his master's 
 command to murder Imogen ; and this cym. in. ii. 
 same humanity that made Camillo at the 16-17. 
 risk of his life and in the face of certain exile warn 
 Polixenes of the death prepared for him w. T. ni. 
 by his friend and host. The belief in "• ^^S- 
 the universality and the power of pity is attested 
 by the fact that to it the suppliant habitually ad- 
 dresses his principal appeal ; so Arthur in King 
 John, Isabella in Measure for Measure, and Marina 
 in Pericles. 
 
 In the preceding description altruism has been 
 represented as aroused by some strong emotion. 
 There is, however, a calm regard for another's good 
 which is capable of moving to action, just as the 
 apprehension of our own good may control our 
 conduct without the intervention of any appreciable 
 feeling. Does Shakespeare recognize and report 
 this fact? The answer is not easy to give. The 
 little that can be said on the subject may best be 
 reserved for another place.^ 
 
 It will now be clear that altruism is represented 
 by Shakespeare as one of the most important factors 
 1 See p. 38. 
 
8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 in the moral life. This suggests the question : Do 
 his men and women, after the fashion of some well- 
 known moralists, identify virtue with altruism, or 
 do they recognize the pursuit of what are primarily 
 personal goods to be legitimate or even obligatory ? 
 Before attempting an answer, certain possible mis- 
 understandings must be cleared from the way. It 
 has often been asserted that there is no real con- 
 flict between altruism and egoism, that your good 
 is my good, because what is for your best interest 
 is for my best interest also. The data upon which 
 this assertion rests do not concern us here ; but 
 even if they be permitted to pass unchallenged the 
 conclusion drawn from them involves what has been 
 called the psychologist's fallacy. This form of 
 muddle-headedness consists in the substitution of 
 the point of view of the observer who is acquainted 
 with all the relevant facts for that of the person he 
 is observing. Manifestly if the agent believes him- 
 self to be making a sacrifice, a conflict with his 
 egoism may actually take place. Manifestly such 
 a person may ask himself how far the spirit of ser- 
 vice ought to be allowed to carry him. Again, it 
 has been urged that self-sacrifice does not represent 
 any assignable phenomenon of human life, that 
 what goes by that name is the identification of my 
 own good with the good of another, the making of 
 his good mine. The substance of this contention 
 must be granted, but there still remains the prob- 
 lem : Within the area of my own good how much 
 consideration ought to be shown for that which is 
 
A Study of Motives 9 
 
 my good solely because it is another's, and that 
 which is mine independently of what the other's 
 interests may be ? No analytical subtleties can 
 volatilize into nothingness the world-old struggle 
 with this perplexity. 
 
 We accordingly enter upon no barren inquiry 
 when we study the claims of egoism against altru- 
 ism as conceived by the people of Shakespeare's 
 world. At the outset one fact emerges with unmis- 
 takable clearness. The ideals of what is due as 
 between friend and friend, servant and master, 
 benefitted and benefactor, and in general those who 
 stand in some exceptionally close relation to each 
 other, are uniformly set very high. Witness Isa- 
 bella and Cordelia, Antonio, the merchant of Venice, 
 and Coriolanus, who throws away vengeance and 
 honor at the prayer of his mother. Witness the 
 gruff soldier Enobarbus,who takes his life in remorse 
 at having abandoned a master who had long for- 
 feited all claims to his allegiance. But the obliga- 
 tions to service are not limited to those who can 
 urge special claims. Camillo gives up what he 
 most loves, and risks his life to save the life of 
 Polixenes, a stranger and a foreigner. What he 
 suffered in leaving his native land, a w. T. iv. 
 self-condemned exile, is shown by the "• ^^*^- 
 passionate longing he feels to return to Sicily, not- 
 withstanding the brilliant position that his judg- 
 ment and character had won him at the court of 
 his new master. It is the story of a single noble 
 deed that we read in The Winter's Tale ; but 
 
lo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Antonio, Cerimon, and Timon in his palmy days, 
 are represented as passing their entire lives in acts 
 of helpfulness and service. What these men do, 
 they and others approve. For they are not de- 
 spised by their neighbors as eccentric fools ; but 
 rather are they looked up to with humility and 
 reverence, as men born to show their grosser fellows 
 a more excellent way. 
 
 Such lives need not betoken, however, a creed of 
 complete self-abnegation. For some at least of the 
 most altruistic characters distinctly recognize the 
 existence of a proper limit to service. The Duke 
 of Vienna, enumerating to Claudio the evils of 
 life, treats as entirely legitimate the pursuit of 
 ends having a purely personal value. In his 
 M. for M. arraignment of the fate that ever holds 
 m. i. 5-41. ^]jg good before our eyes but forbids us 
 to grasp it with our hands, there is no trace of 
 the dogma enunciated by Fichte : " Whoever 
 thinks of his own interests as an interest at all, and 
 desires any life and being whatever, and any self- 
 ish indulgence whatever, save in the race and for 
 the race, he is at bottom, whatever be the good 
 works with which he seeks to hide his misshapen 
 form, nothing but abase, despicable, utterly wicked, 
 and at the same time unhappy man." An explicit 
 assertion of the rights of self occurs during the" 
 dispute between Orlando and his older brother in 
 As You Like It. The latter having feigned 
 compliance with the other's demand for an educa- 
 tion and an allowance sufficient for his proper sup- 
 
A Study of Motives 1 1 
 
 port, Orlando replies : " I will no further 
 
 offend you than becomes me for my 
 
 good." Still more unequivocal are the words of 
 
 Rosencrantz to King Claudio : 
 
 " The single and peculiar life is bound, 
 With all the strength and armour of the Hamlet HI. 
 
 mind, "i- H- 
 
 To keep itself from noyance." 
 
 Rosencrantz is not exactly a member of the moral 
 elite ; but the force of what he says consists in the 
 fact that it has the air of a commonplace, express- 
 ing not merely what people do but what all would 
 admit they ought to do. 
 
 The principle stated in the words just quoted is 
 often embodied in action. Isabella, — that spirit 
 so pure that even the foul-mouthed Lucio holds 
 her as a thing ensky'd and sainted, — Isabella de- 
 clares herself willing to die but not willing to lose 
 her soul in order to save her brother's „ 4, „ 
 
 M. tor M. 
 
 life. And while this of course does not li. iv. 105- 
 represent her real motive for refusing ^^^' 
 the infamous offer of Angelo, it is certainly a con- 
 sideration that appeals to her as reasonable. The 
 highly idealized Henry V. — " the mirror of all 
 Christian kings" — never thinks of waiving his 
 claim to what has fallen to him and his heirs by 
 gift of heaven, and washes his hands of all respon- 
 sibility for the bloodshed that will follow the asser- 
 tion of his right. In leading the English army 
 into France, his point of view is not that the laws 
 
1 1 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 of succession have imposed upon him a duty to 
 others which he must not permit himself to shirk ; 
 nor is it that we owe a duty to the world at large 
 to maintain our personal rights, as Ihering insists 
 in his Kampf urns Recht. Henry simply argues as 
 follows : This fruitful land of France is mine ; 
 therefore, let the consequences to others be what 
 they may, I am justified in possessing myself of it. 
 Where, then, lies the limit ? The son of Henry's 
 royal opponent, on learning of the English demands, 
 encourages his father to resist with the words : 
 " Self-love is not so vile a sin as self -neglecting." 
 Henry V. This, however, is no universally accepted 
 n. iv. 74. axiom. We find Antonio professing 
 himself willing to make any sacrifice, however 
 extreme, for his kinsman Bassanio. And we know 
 his are not empty professions. Desdemona, in like 
 manner, assures Cassio of her readiness to do more 
 otheUo III. for him than she dare for herself. 
 IT. 130. Amidst this diversity of opinion we meet 
 one statement that appears to rest upon a principle 
 which has found a wide, though by no means uni- 
 versal acceptance among moralists. When the 
 Athenian senator is asked for a loan of money 
 with which the most pressing obligations of the now 
 bankrupt Timon may be met, he urges, by way of 
 excuse for refusal, his own extreme necessities, and 
 as major premise asserts : " I must not break my 
 Timon of ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ finger." In this phrase 
 Athens n. seems to be implicitly contained the 
 ^' doctrine that has been formulated by 
 
A Study of Motives 13 
 
 Professor Sidgwick as follows : " One is morally 
 bound to regard the good of any other individual 
 as much as one's own, except in so far as we judge 
 it to be less, when impartially viewed, or less cer- 
 tainly knowable or attainable." ^ The fact that 
 this maxim is used by a hypocritical ingrate as^ an 
 excuse for the cold-hearted treatment of a former 
 benefactor argues nothing against its value. For, 
 as Coleridge has pointed out, some of Shakespeare's 
 worst scoundrels give utterance to the profoundest 
 moral truths. Since no one is represented as delib- 
 erately and with foreknowledge breaking his back 
 to heal another's finger, after the manner of 
 Maggie Tulliver, we cannot tell how such a sacri- 
 fice would have been regarded. At all events the 
 limits set by this principle are those which the 
 moral tact of Isabella teaches her to respect. 
 When asked by Angelo how much she would do to 
 save the life for which she pleads, the instant 
 reply is : " As much for my poor brother as myself." 
 The doctrine that in cases of conflicting jj f^j ji 
 interests duty goes with the greater need rv. iv. 99. 
 can thus claim at least one high-minded and en- 
 lightened adherent. 
 
 Which if any of these different views represents 
 the dramatist's own position it is unnecessary to 
 ask, even were it possible to answer. What is of 
 interest is the fact that we find mirrored in Shake- 
 speare's world the chaos of opinion on this subject 
 which prevails in the society by which we are 
 
 1 The Methods of Ethics ; Fourth Edition, p. 382. 
 
14 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 surrounded, and at the same time a wide-spread 
 recognition that the moral ideal demands a bal- 
 ance, a mean between absolute altruism and ab- 
 solute egoism. 
 
 Great as the emphasis placed upon self-forget- 
 fulness may sometimes be, there is one personal 
 good the desire for which is represented as not 
 merely legitimate under all circumstances, but also 
 as a normal constituent of the ideal character. 
 This good is honor. The Trojan Hector, the Eng- 
 lish Hotspur, the courtier Camillo, the merchant 
 Antonio, the artless Desdemona, and Cato's heroic 
 daughter, each could say with Brutus : " I love 
 the name of honour more than I fear death." He 
 who is dominated by such a spirit, provided he has 
 at the same time a just sense of what it demands, 
 Henry VIII. can do no wrong. " That you would 
 I. ii. 14. love yourself, and in that love not un- 
 consider'd leave your honour," ^ is for this reason 
 the point of the petition which Queen Katharine 
 carries to her royal husband in behalf of his op- 
 pressed subjects. She believes that if the monarch's 
 sense of honor can be actively enlisted her cause 
 is safe. 
 
 Honor is a somewhat ambiguous term. But the 
 meaning it carries in Shakespeare's plays will ap- 
 pear with perfect clearness if we examine the use 
 of the corresponding verb. This connotes, we find, 
 the two closely allied emotions of admiration and 
 
 ^ This passage occurs in a part of the play commonly assigned 
 to Shakespeare. 
 
A Study of Motives 15 
 
 respect. A sufficient example is the passage in 
 Cymbeline, where the description of the virtues and 
 excellences of Posthumus by one of his friends calls 
 forth the exclamation on the part of his compan- 
 ion, " I honour him even out of your 
 report." In agreement with this usage, 
 the love of honor will signify either a desire for the 
 respect and admiration of others or a desire for the 
 possession of those elements or traits of character 
 which are the objects of respect and admiration. 
 
 In the plays, as in real life, these two closely 
 allied impulses are for the most part inextricably 
 intertwined. Occasionally, however, one is dis- 
 coverable in separation from the other. It is at 
 honor in the exclusive sense of the admiration of 
 his fellowmen that Falstaff is girding in his famous 
 monologue on the eve of the battle of j jj^^ jy 
 Shrewsbury. But while the fat knight v. i. 127- 
 will have none of it, the desire for a 
 good name is pictured as a dominant force in every 
 generous nature. Thus Enobarbus, debating 
 whether to remain true to his defeated master 
 Antony, strengthens for the moment his failing 
 loyalty by the reflection 
 
 " He that can endure 
 
 To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord . « « ttt 
 ° A. &< c. in. 
 
 xiii. 43. 
 earns a place i' the story." 
 
 Potent as is the desire for the applause accom- 
 panying elevation of character, it yields precedence 
 
1 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 in the highest representatives of the race to the 
 desire for the applauded thing itself. The nature 
 of the spell which character exerts upon the noble 
 mind can be indicated with exactness. For if that 
 quality in virtue of which an object evokes ad- 
 miration may properly be called beauty, then we 
 may maintain with him of " the pasteboard and 
 the battered hack " : " There are two kinds of 
 beauty, the beauty of the body, and the beauty of 
 the soul." To this aspect of the moral life, Shake- 
 speare's people, true children of the Renaissance, 
 were as sensitive as the Greeks. References to 
 actions or to the character behind them as comely, 
 fair, or beautiful, or on the other hand as foul or 
 ugly, recur constantly ; and the phrase Ka\b<i Kaya- 
 66<; — impressive witness of the completeness with 
 which for the Greek mind the conceptions of the 
 good and the beautiful were interwoven — actually 
 meets us in English dress in the well-known pas- 
 sage from Hamlet : 
 
 "That monster, custom ... is angel yet 
 
 Hamlet ^^ *^^^' 
 
 ni. iv. 161. That to the use of actions fair and good 
 
 He likewise gives a frock or livery, 
 
 That aptly is put on." 
 
 How literally these epithets may be interpreted is 
 shown to demonstration by the words in which the 
 Duke of Venice dismisses Desdemona's father from 
 the council chamber : 
 
A Study of Motives 17 
 
 "If virtue no delighted [delight-giving] 
 
 beauty lack, OtheUo I. 
 
 Your son-in-law is far more fair than iii- 290. 
 black." 
 
 Here moral and physical beauty are expressly 
 placed in the same category. It is thus thoroughly 
 in keeping with the attitude taken towards char- 
 acter throughout the plays that their one ethical 
 definition should read ; " Virtue is t. n. m. 
 beauty." iv. 403. 
 
 Beauty of character, like beauty in the realm of 
 nature, discloses itself in varied forms. These we 
 find not merely portrayed — as we should expect, 
 — but also more or less explicitly analyzed. The 
 definition just quoted from Twelfth Night occurs 
 in a passage that begins : 
 
 " In nature there 's no blemish but the 
 
 ^^^^5 Ill.iv 401. 
 
 None can be call'd deform'd but the un- 
 kind." 
 
 By " unkind " our philosophical sea-captain means 
 without gratitude or natural affection. Here 
 is a recognition of the fact that the cf. Lear I. 
 grateful and affectionate mind is di- ^^- 281. 
 rectly attractive for its own sake, quite independ- 
 ently of what any one can " get out of it." As 
 such it is fairly entitled to be classed with the 
 beautiful, A study of the eulogies scattered 
 through the plays would show that the virtues of 
 generosity, as in forgiving an enemy, of forbear- 
 
 2 
 
1 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ance from self-assertion, which is a form of the 
 same, and of the broad spirit of self-devotion to 
 the common weal are in like manner valued for 
 their own sakes. By parity of reasoning the 
 adjective noble by which they are designated must 
 be interpreted as possessing an aesthetic connotation. 
 
 A second form of moral beauty, — one whose 
 claim to the title no one would think of disputing, 
 — is the display of will-power. Wherever we be- 
 hold the strength that at need can crush passion 
 and the lust for ease and pleasure, the courage 
 that can face loss without flinching, the fortitude 
 that can bear without a murmur, the patience that 
 can work or wait for an issue long delayed, the 
 energy that breaks down every obstacle, there we 
 feel ourselves in the presence of a power whose 
 least effect demands our homage, and whose 
 higher manifestations bow us down in humility and 
 awe, and make us think we " walk in hallowed 
 cathedrals." 
 
 It is obvious that power of will may exist dis- 
 sociated largely or entirely from affection, grati- 
 tude, generosity, or indeed any form of the altruistic 
 spirit. Hence the two principles of beauty that 
 have been described may come into conflict with 
 each other. It is also possible that the spectator 
 of life's drama may be so stunted in mind and 
 heart as to be incapable of responding to the 
 charm of affection and humanity. Naively assum- 
 ing that no one else can possess what he lacks, he 
 will interpret all devotion as the outcome of fear 
 
A Study of Motives 19 
 
 or weakness of some sort, and thus as the mark of 
 a slavish spirit. For such a one there can be 
 nothing great in man but power. This view, pro- 
 pounded long ago by the sophists of the Gorgias 
 and the Republic, has been recently revamped by 
 the German rhapsodist, Nietzsche, and forms the 
 burden of the message which he has felt con- 
 strained to bring to a Philistine world. Childish 
 as are many of the dicta of this half-finished per- 
 sonality, preposterous as is his " philosophy " when 
 taken as a statement of the whole truth about man, 
 there is unquestionably a certain grandeur in the 
 ideal which he sets himself to recommend. " Beau 
 comme une tempete, comme un abime," exclaims 
 Renan of the career of Nietzsche's idol, Csesar 
 Borgia, and few lovers of the Renaissance would 
 gainsay him. Nevertheless, for the well-rounded 
 mind such admiration is only possible through 
 a certain effort of abstraction. And in proportion 
 as the capacity to see or imagine the man and his 
 actions in their entirety is developed, will repulsion 
 tend to destroy enthusiasm where power appears 
 dissevered from altruism. 
 
 Similar changes of appreciation occur where the 
 relation between these two qualities of will is re- 
 versed. There are many amiable persons in the 
 world who wish others well but who are incapable 
 of overcoming any serious obstacle in their behalf. 
 When such persons show equal inefficiency in 
 the advancement of their personal interests and are 
 at the same time free from gross passions, their 
 
20 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ■weakness is apt to be regarded by the superficial 
 as at worst a mere peccadillo, at best as an actual 
 addition to their charm. Henry VI. is a repre- 
 sentative of this type. Tender-hearted, honorable, 
 sincere, modest, a lover of his country, a partisan 
 of the good cause, he lacks decision, energy, cour- 
 age, and even pride, — in short, the power to assert 
 himself in the face of opposition. For popular 
 thought, despite these ominous deficiencies, he re- 
 mains the " saintly king." Nevertheless he can- 
 not escape the condemnation of the judicious. 
 And though his fall may evoke our pity, it is 
 not with us as when we see his noble uncle, 
 the Lord Protector, worthy brother of Henry V., 
 struck down by his enemies in the midst of his 
 life work. 
 
 In passing judgments upon character, however, 
 we must not overlook the difference between 
 absent power and latent power. Power can be 
 revealed to its possessor and the world only as 
 it is demanded for overcoming resistance. But 
 there are those so harmoniously constituted that 
 storm and conflict are strangers to their inner 
 life. If this be due to a cowardly retreat in the 
 presence of privation or danger, or to barrenness 
 of the emotional and impulsive nature, the result 
 either inspires contempt or appeals to us as in- 
 sipid. But where there is great wealth of emo- 
 tional endowment, a capacity for devotion to the 
 highest ends which, though untried, is not without 
 its witness, there we have a new variety of moral 
 
A Study of Motives 21 
 
 beauty. In distinction from the heroic this may 
 perhaps be called the idyllic. 
 
 The keynote of the idyllic life is peace, peace 
 with the world and with self. In such a nature 
 there are no warring passions to be crushed, no 
 temptations to profit at the expense of others to 
 be overcome, while envy, hatred, and malice, that 
 make man the enemy of man, have here no place. 
 The authority of right is owned with glad self- 
 surrender, and in the service of others is found 
 the source of deepest and most permanent joy. 
 To such a one Duty is no stern law-giver, nor 
 does he know her except as a friend. 
 
 " There are who ask not if thine eye 
 Be on them ; who in love and truth, 
 Where no misgiving is, rely 
 Upon the genial sense of youth ; 
 Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot 
 Who do thy work and know it not." ^ 
 
 The idyllic character is in some respects a direct 
 antithesis to the heroic. The hero appears before 
 us with his head surrounded by the halo of victory, 
 but the pain of conflict has left its mark. For this 
 reason, as Schiller has pointed out, the sublime in 
 life always contains an ungesthetic element. But 
 to the child of sunshine and of spring can fall no 
 victor's crown, because he knows no strife. For 
 what the hero accomplishes only at the cost of 
 effort and pain, is for him a work of ease and joy. 
 
 1 Wordsworth : Ode to Duty. 
 
22 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Nevertheless the antithesis is far from complete. 
 In this world of jarring forces, untroubled peace 
 usually comes as the fruit of conquest. On the 
 other hand, there are instances where the soul has 
 known nothing else. Endowed at birth with a 
 temperament that turns to virtue as instinctively as 
 a flower to the sun, that shrinks from the touch 
 of sin as from the defilement of pitch, that knows 
 no distinction between the interests of self and of 
 others, its various impulses are so finely tempered 
 and so exquisitely adjusted to each other that their 
 spontaneous play is goodness. Like the lily of the 
 field it is beautiful without toil, without care, with- 
 out intention. Even here, however, the principle 
 holds that the suggestion of power must not fail. 
 Think for a moment of Perdita and Miranda, those 
 fair forms that, glorified by all the resources of 
 the poet's art, pass across the scene like visitors 
 from a higher world. Wherein do they surpass 
 a Henry YI. ? Is it not in this, that, whereas the 
 latter can never be anything better than a carpet- 
 knight, these two delicate creatures possess a 
 strength and intensity of devotion which, if need 
 arises, will lift them high into the sphere of the 
 heroic ? 
 
 It is not entirely true, then, that none can be 
 called deformed but the unkind. He who em- 
 bodies the ideal of goodness must be endowed in 
 equal measure with the spirit of service and power 
 of will. Think of Cordelia ; think of Horatio ; 
 think of those two great characters that stand at 
 
A Study of Motives 23 
 
 the summit of the creations of the second and 
 fourth periods, Henry Y. and Prospero. With an 
 amount of repetition that is unusual, this union of 
 strength and unselfishness is declared to be the 
 very substance of moral perfection : 
 
 "Tliou hast affected the fine strains of 
 
 , Cor. V. iii. 
 
 lionour, 149; cf.M. 
 
 To imitate the graces of the gods ; of V. IV. i. 
 
 To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' i5*T^^Ii 
 
 M. for M. 
 the air, II. jj. 107- 
 
 And yet to charge thy sulphur with a 117: Cym. 
 bolt IV.U.169- 
 
 That should but rive an oak." 
 
 176. 
 
 An age that lends its ear to every new voice 
 will do well to heed this warning directed alike 
 against sentimentalism and the worship of the 
 Rauhmensch. 
 
 The foregoing analysis will exhibit the error 
 that lurks in a now popular doctrine. It is quite 
 generally held that altruism, or the regard for my 
 neighbor's interests, and honor in the sense of the 
 regard for my own character, are but different 
 names for the same thing. This confusion has its 
 source in what has already been referred to as the 
 psychologist's fallacy. Objectively considered, a 
 man with a high sense of honor, guided by proper 
 judgment and an adequate conception of responsi- 
 bility, will be led by it to the same line of action as 
 the man whose will is set in motion by the aware- 
 ness of another's needs. It will often come to pass, 
 
24 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 therefore, that the desires to do ease to another and 
 Hamlet I. grace to one's self will be indistinguish- 
 i- 131. able except as the agent happens to be 
 
 by profession or by nature an analyst. But that the 
 motives are not identical is shown — if in no other 
 way — by the fact that one may act where the other 
 is totally wanting. 
 
 This appears clearly in the career of Banquo, 
 that would-be receiver of stolen goods, who has 
 succeeded in imposing upon a long line of commen- 
 tators. This canny Scotchman was perfectly in- 
 different as to what happened to his sovereign, 
 provided his own hands were not soiled in the oper- 
 
 . ^ , ation. Like Sextus Pompey in a similar 
 
 Antony and , _ ^ ^ •' 
 
 Cleopatra situation he is willing to approve any- 
 II. vii. 67-86- thing, provided he may be kept in igno- 
 rance of it until the time for preventing it is past. 
 The only difference is that Pompey forbids his cap- 
 tain to carry out the treachery which would make 
 him master of the civilized world, while in that very 
 moment reproaching the same captain for not doing 
 it without orders ; whereas Banquo simply asks 
 that he may not be called upon to take an active 
 part in the foul play which he suspects is being 
 planned. It is quite true that Banquo might have 
 been saved by a more adequate conception of re- 
 sponsibility ; he does not seem to have compre- 
 hended that a man is answerable not merely for 
 what he does but also for what he can prevent. 
 There is no evidence, however, that Kent was better 
 instructed in the theory of responsibility than was 
 
A Study of Motives 25 
 
 Banquo ; but his thoughts were primarily upon his 
 king, not upon his character ; therefore, theories of 
 responsibility were not necessary for him. 
 
 What appears to be the same action may thus 
 have its source in one of several different types 
 of character. The representative of the first type 
 is moved habitually by the desire for his own 
 perfection ; he may thus act quite correctly though 
 by nature icy cold. His neighbor, on the other 
 hand, may be at times, or habitually, thoughtless of 
 his own perfection. He serves others because he 
 wishes them well. Finally these two sets of 
 motives may be combined in the same individual, 
 as in the case of Brutus. Whether a person shall 
 belong to one class or another will depend partly 
 upon temperament, partly, also, upon circumstances. 
 Some men seem to have been born with a looking- 
 glass before the face. On the other hand, moral 
 self-consciousness may be the result of life in the 
 midst of a corrupt society. It is mainly for this 
 reason, I believe, that Isabella, the heroine of 
 Measure for Measure is so sternly conscious of her 
 virtues. Which of these types is most perfect it 
 may not be necessary to determine. But the clear- 
 sighted student who compares Isabella with 
 Miranda will discover that the effects produced 
 upon the spectator in the two cases are essentially 
 different. 
 
 If virtue be beautiful and thus attractive, it 
 should follow that vice is hideous and repulsive. 
 But this is not the whole truth. Certain forms of 
 
i6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 vice are not merely hateful in so far as they 
 involve qualities the direct antitheses of the cor- 
 responding virtues ; they possess, in addition, the 
 power of arousing a sort of physical revulsion, 
 direct, unreasoned, but sometimes of unmeasured 
 intensity. 
 
 The emphasis laid upon this fact by Shakespeare 
 is a characteristic feature in his delineation of the 
 moral life. The terms employed to describe the feel- 
 ings are taken by preference from the senses of 
 taste and smell. lachimo, tossed about by the winds 
 Cym. I. vi. of lust and shame, cries out, " The cloyed 
 *7. will longs for the garbage." King 
 
 Claudius, awakening in a moment of remorse to 
 the true nature of his crime, expresses the loathing 
 Hamlet HI. with which it fills him in the words, " 0, 
 iii. 36. my offence is rank, it smells to heaven." 
 
 The climax of Timon's repulsions is expressed in 
 the same terms. Timon of Athens having lavished 
 his wealth upon sycophants and parasites finds 
 himself in the day of his need utterly abandoned 
 by these feeders on his bounty. In the prosecu- 
 tion of a dramatic revenge he invites his false 
 friends to a great feast. Upon the table stand the 
 long rows of dishes as of old. But there is a new 
 Timon m. tone in the host's invitation to partake : 
 vi. 96. " Uncover, dogs, and lap," he cries. 
 
 The dishes being uncovered are found to contain 
 nothing but warm water. While the guests look 
 at each other in amazement at this strange scene, 
 Timon seizes the dishes, and throwing the water 
 
Study of Motives 27 
 
 into their faces, screams in an ecstasy of hatred 
 and detestation : 
 
 " This is Timon's last ; 
 Who, stuck and spangled with your flat- 
 teries, L. 100. 
 Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces 
 Your reeking villany." 
 
 The specific feeling which the use of this imagery 
 is intended to connote is described in express 
 terms by the boy in Henry Y. who had accom- 
 panied Nym, Bardolph, and Pistol, that graceless 
 trio of braggarts and cut-purses, to the Henry V. 
 French wars : " I must leave them and ^^^- "• ^^• 
 seek some better service : their villany goes against 
 my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up." 
 The oft-recurring epithet, "unclean mind," evidently 
 takes its origin from the same area of experience. 
 
 We must not suppose that all this is merely 
 vague metaphor, indicating in a general way the 
 dislike which is awakened by every form of immo- 
 rality. Apart from sporadic cases, like the aversion 
 of Hamlet and the English Tory to marriage with 
 the nearest relatives of a deceased husband or wife, 
 these unreasoned antipathies are called forth by 
 three great classes of actions. The first is weak- 
 ness of will in its various forms, as cowardice, lack 
 of fortitude, and absence of self-control. These 
 inspire contempt. The second includes all that 
 can be subsumed under the term treachery, as 
 hypocrisy, flattery, and most forms of mendacity. 
 
28 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 For the emotion appropriate to them we ought to 
 restore the old word despisal. Finally there are 
 the forms of sensual indulgence such as gluttony, 
 drunkenness, and incest. These arouse the emotion 
 of disgust. It will be found that in the main 
 Shakespeare confines the terms which suggest the 
 nauseating to the second and third groups of 
 vices. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 No careful moralist will pretend that the preced- 
 ing study contains a complete enumeration of the 
 forces which bring into existence and mould into 
 its present form the moral life. However, it in- 
 cludes, I believe, all the material relevant to our 
 purpose that Shakespeare has supplied. Whether 
 the data thus collected are sufficient to serve as 
 the foundation of a structure worth the trouble of 
 building, it is no part of the present design to in- 
 quire. But it should be noted that if the sketch 
 just given is substantially correct in the sense that 
 no farther additions would necessitate any radical 
 modifications in the general theory that it would 
 suggest, then its significance lies quite as much in 
 what it omits as in what it contains. Looking 
 upon the compassion of Gloucester and the glowing 
 devotion of Kent, no student of ethical history can 
 forget that for a very important school of moralists 
 all this display of feeling, while doubtless very 
 affecting, is certainly not morality. With Kant, 
 for example, the action, to have moral value, 
 must be performed solely for the sake of obeying 
 the command of reason ; everything else is morally 
 
30 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 worthless. This does not mean that he condemns 
 pity and love as such. He simply asserts that 
 since they involve no attitude whether of obedience 
 or rebellion to the law of reason, the actions to 
 which they lead have no more moral quality than 
 eating at the promptings of hunger. 
 
 This view, though familiar enough to the pro- 
 fessional moralist, is so remote, I believe, from 
 any conception that would spontaneously suggest 
 itself to the layman that it appears to call for 
 some elucidation. 
 
 The phrase " obedience to reason " may mean a 
 variety of things, but for the typical transcen- 
 dentalist, like Kant or Fichte, it carries the im- 
 agination to a world higher and more satisfying 
 than the barren heap of shifting sand upon which 
 is cast our present lot. This supersensible world 
 is conceived to be fundamentally different from 
 our own, and the most orthodox representatives of 
 the school never tire of reiterating that an impen- 
 etrable veil hides it completely from our eyes as 
 long as we dwell upon this humble planet. Never- 
 theless, we can assert that it has its own laws like 
 every well-ordered state, laws which its members 
 unquestioningly and cheerfully obey. Of this mys- 
 terious realm we, too, are citizens. For while our 
 lower, or sensual, impulses proclaim our kinship 
 with the brute, our rational nature can only be 
 explained as an emanation from a higher world. 
 We, then, are temporary exiles, or better, colonists 
 sent out to reclaim certain portions of the material 
 
Transcendentalism 3 1 
 
 universe from the rule of night and chaos. Being 
 citizens of such a commonwealth we are bound to 
 obey its laws, not because they are rules for attain- 
 ing the most satisfactory life during the few short 
 days of our mission here, but simply because they 
 are the laws of the fatherland, and disobedience 
 reduces man to the level of the animal, the native 
 inhabitant of this world. So a Greek, living for a 
 time among a barbarian people, might refuse to 
 bend the knee before a Persian despot's throne, 
 because it is contrary to the custom of his native 
 city for a free man to prostrate himself before a 
 mere fellow-being. Or he might restrain himself 
 in a fit of passion from killing his slave, not from 
 any motive of humanity, but solely from a con- 
 sideration of the kind of conduct which in his 
 far-away home is considered becoming in a Greek 
 citizen. In like manner, the sojourner in this 
 world must obey the laws of the land to which he 
 really belongs, or lose his title to citizenship, with 
 the dignity thereto appertaining. The funda- 
 mental moral motive is therefore loyalty, born 
 of reverence, to the laws of an invisible state. 
 
 Morality thus has primarily and essentially noth- 
 ing to do with this transitory life of ours and its 
 petty needs and interests. If the course of action 
 which the supersensible law commands happens 
 to coincide with the demands of mundane welfare, 
 or if it turns out to be the fruit into which beauty 
 and strength of character naturally ripen, such an 
 outcome is treated as a mere matter of chance, or 
 
32 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 at best a pre-established harmony. On the other 
 hand, if this higher law conflicts at any point with 
 the requirements of human welfare, the latter has 
 not the slightest moral claim. Hence the " Fiat 
 justitia, ruat coelum," and Kant's dictum that the 
 lie of benevolence is never justifiable. 
 
 Does the transcendentalist announce these doc- 
 trines as conclusions that have gradually forced 
 themselves upon his mind, the significance of duty 
 as a symbol of the supersensuous revealing itself 
 only as he slowly delves into the depths of the 
 moral consciousness ? Of the ablest and most 
 consistent members of the school we can answer, 
 no. Kant, for instance, never tires of insisting that 
 no one can be called upon to obey a purely un- 
 meaning command, and such, he holds, would be 
 the moral imperative if the mind knew notliing of 
 its origin and import. He accordingly asserts not 
 once but many times that the common man in his 
 longings for nobility of character places himself 
 in thought in an entirely different order of things 
 from that of his sensual desires. In thinking of 
 himself as the possessor of intrinsic personal worth, 
 he becomes clearly conscious of his position as a 
 member of a higher world, the world of the pure 
 intellect or reason.^ 
 
 Fichte's view is the same in principle, though 
 the statements of the master who had never been 
 a hundred miles from Konigsberg are somewhat 
 
 1 See Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Hartenstein 
 Edition, Vol. IV., p. 302; Abbott's translation, p. 74. 
 
Transcendentalism 23 
 
 toned down by the more cosmopolitan pupil. For 
 Kant " there is no one, not even the most con- 
 summate villain, provided only that he is otherwise 
 accustomed to the use of reason" (2. e. is not an 
 imbecile), that is blind to the transcendental sig- 
 nificance of the moral imperative. Fichte, on the 
 other liand, teaches that while every normally con- 
 stituted individual is possessed of this conscious- 
 ness, nevertheless he who habitually yields to his 
 lower impulses may gradually become oblivious of 
 his higher nature till at length it is notliing more 
 to him than the fairy tales of his childhood. " As 
 a man's affections are, so is his knowledge," and 
 " according to what we ourselves are, do we con- 
 ceive of man and his vocation." ^ Furthermore, 
 a second cause of moral myopia is admitted in 
 the following somewhat enigmatical statement: 
 " [Those] who, besides possessing the natural 
 proneness to mere sensuous activity which is com- 
 mon to us all, have also added to its power by the 
 adoption of similar habits of thought . . . can 
 raise themselves above it, permanently and com- 
 pletely, only by persistent and conclusive thought ; 
 otherwise, with the purest moral intentions, they 
 would be continually drawn down again by their 
 understanding, and their whole being would re- 
 main a prolonged and insoluble contradiction." 2 
 Taking into account the tone of Fichte's writings 
 
 1 Fichte's Popular Works, translated by Wm. Smith, pp. 319 
 and 355. 
 
 2 Opus cit., p. 369. 
 
34 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 as a whole, we may set this class down as either 
 narrow and obtuse, or as obstinate and self-willed, 
 or as warped by the longing for forbidden fruit. 
 In short, the seer of Jena proclaims that his de- 
 scription of the rational world and our relation to it 
 represents nothing beyond the most familiar ele- 
 ments of the every- day thinking of the average 
 man. If you the reader fail to recognize its 
 counterpart in your own experience, that fact 
 merely proves that you are either mentally defec- 
 tive or morally corrupt. 
 
 If we are to believe such doctrines as these, the 
 virtues of Shakespeare's characters must be " splen- 
 did vices," for no one of them betrays any partici- 
 pation in these gorgeous visions. The Countess, 
 in All's Well that Ends Well, sends Bertram 
 out into the world rich in her blessing and laden 
 with good counsel; the Duke of Vienna entrusts 
 the reins of government to Angelo in words that 
 bring before him a broad and noble ideal of duty ; 
 Yolumnia pleads for Rome before her all-conquer- 
 ing son ; Brutus debates long before striking down 
 the friend whom he loves and for whose death he 
 must weep ; Prospero thrusts back the thoughts of 
 vengeance that rise in his soul; Hamlet covers 
 himself with reproaches for inertness of thought 
 and deed in the presence of obligations the most 
 sacred that his conscience acknowledges ; Enobar- 
 bus wrestles with temptation, falls, and then, over- 
 whelmed with remorse, makes the only amends 
 still remaining in his power. But the considera- 
 
Transcendentalism 2S 
 
 tions dwelt upon by each of these, apostate or con- 
 fessor, have nothing to do with any celestial order, 
 and remain exactly what they are, whether such an 
 order exists or not. Says Fichte : " I do not pursue 
 the earthly purpose for its own sake alone, or as a 
 final aim; but only because my true final aim, 
 obedience to the law of conscience, does not present 
 itself to me in this world in any other shape than 
 as the advancement of this end." ^ If any of 
 Shakespeare's characters cherished such a senti- 
 ment they were very careful to conceal it. If they 
 attributed it to others, they did not act upon their 
 convictions. 
 
 But transcendentalism may be stated in a vaguer 
 and therefore more plausible form. Still defining 
 morality as obedience to reason, and, as before, 
 understanding by reason the faculty of apprehend- 
 ing supermundane laws, it may be admitted that 
 the ultimate source and authority of the command 
 are not necessarily apparent to the common mind. 
 This is revealed only to the student of Kant. 
 What the man on the street knows is merely that 
 certain actions are unreasonable and others reason- 
 able, and that a being who possesses reason ought 
 to obey reason, this knowledge being accompanied 
 by a tendency to obedience. Or, if he does not 
 formulate it thus, he is conscious at least of an im- 
 pulse to do certain things which are not recom- 
 mended by any of the motives enumerated in the 
 
 1 Opus cit., p. 374. 
 
^6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 last chapter, and which de facto have their source 
 in the commands of reason. On the whole the 
 matter is represented thus in the plays of Schiller, 
 notably in Wallenstein, although his account of the 
 inner life of his characters is too incomplete and 
 vague to be intelligible without the help of his sys- 
 tematic writings. Wliile a transcendentalism of 
 this stripe is incompatible with the teachings and 
 spirit of Kant, it may be actually adopted as a 
 modification of his theory. 
 
 Does reason thus defined appear as a motive in 
 Shakespeare's works ? In general, the term is 
 e. g. 2 Henry there used for the power of apprehend- 
 IV. IV. i. 157. ing truth. In its application to conduct, 
 it means first the capacity of adjusting means to 
 ends, and secondly the capacity of judging cor- 
 rectly as to the relative value of different ends. 
 The latter is clearly its meaning in the sonnet on 
 lust. 
 
 Sonnet 129, "Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
 lines 6 & 7. p^st reason hated, as a swallow'd bait." 
 
 In A Midsummer Night's Dream, again, reason 
 appears as the power of correctly estimating values. 
 Lysander, having under Puck's charm forsaken his 
 yesterday's love, is now pursuing the once-despised 
 Helena with an urgency and a violence which she 
 cannot understand. In answer to the charge of 
 mocking her, Lysander replies with the warmth of 
 the newly baptized proselyte : 
 
Transcendentalism 37 
 
 " Content with Hermia ! No ; I do repent 
 The tedious minutes I with her have 
 
 spe^it- M. N. D. 
 II. ii. 111. 
 
 The will of man is by his reason sway'd ; 
 And reason says you are the worthier 
 maid." 
 
 The word judgment is frequently used e. g. Hamlet, 
 in the same sense. , ^i- '^'^- '^^' 
 
 It is but a short step from reason as the critic of 
 values to reason as what may be called prudence, 
 that is, the impartial regard for the totality of our 
 personal interests. As such it appears in lago's 
 disquisition to Roderigo on the power of the will : 
 " If the balance of our lives had not otheiio I. 
 one scale of reason to poise another of ^- ^'^^^ 
 sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures 
 would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions : 
 but we have reason to cool our raging motions, 
 our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts." In the same 
 strain Enobarbus, while choosing to follow still 
 " the wounded chance of Antony," though others 
 are deserting the defeated triumvir, a. & c. in. 
 avows " my reason sits in the wind ^- ^6- 
 against me." 
 
 There are, it is true, some cases which do not 
 fall into any one of the preceding three or four 
 categories. But the number is so small as abso- 
 lutely to preclude the hypothesis that reason, in the 
 sense in which transcendentalism employs it, is a 
 factor of any importance in the great moral con- 
 
3 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 flicts portrayed in Shakespeare's dramas. Quite 
 apart from their infrequency, their character is 
 such as to afford little aid and comfort to the 
 rationalistic theory, as will appear upon subjecting 
 them to the slightest examination. 
 
 Returning to reason as the equivalent of pru- 
 dence, it will be remembered that its traditional foe 
 is that ill-defined group of emotions and impulses 
 which goes under the name of the passions. Hence 
 it comes about that action determined by reason oc- 
 casionally stands for the antithesis of action due 
 to the impulsion of passion. Here reason evidently 
 means such motives of whatever sort as act with- 
 out the assistance of any strong emotion, motives, 
 therefore, which are most likely to obtain a hear- 
 ing in our calmer hours. An example of this 
 usage will be found in Macbeth, Act II., scene iii., 
 lines 116, 117 : 
 
 " The expedition of my violent love 
 Outrun the pauser, reason." 
 
 Among the motives that are capable of acting 
 without the spur of intense feeling must be counted 
 altruism, the regard for another's welfare. In at 
 least two passages reason seems to be used for 
 such an altruism. The first occurs in Julius 
 Caesar, where Brutus, dissecting the character of 
 Caesar says : 
 
 J. c. " I have not known when his affections 
 
 ^- ^- 20. [passions] sway'd 
 
 More than his reason," 
 
Transcendentalism 39 
 
 The second will be found in the Tempest. Pros- 
 pero has his enemies in his power, but overcomes 
 the temptation to avenge himself with the thought, 
 
 "Though with their high wrongs I am 
 
 struck to the quick, 
 Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my Tempest V. 
 
 fury 
 Do I take part." 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that both these 
 utterances are somewhat ambiguous. 
 
 Only a single passage now remains to be ex- 
 plained. In this the word is used as a generic 
 name for the higher faculties of the mind, intellect- 
 ual and volitional, as opposed to the sense capacities 
 which we possess in common with the brute. 
 Hamlet, comparing his own apathy in the presence 
 of solemn obligations with the craving for activity 
 which has drawn Fortinbras and his Norwegian fol- 
 lowers to fight for a straw upon the plains of 
 Poland, exclaims in one of his characteristic bursts 
 of futile emotion : 
 
 " What is a man, 
 If his chief good and market of his time 
 Be but to sleep and feed ? A beast, no 
 
 more. 
 Sure, he that made us with such large Hamlet IV. 
 
 discourse, iv. 33. 
 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 That capability and god-like reason 
 To fust in us unused." 
 
40 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 That this avowal of enthusiasm for the exercise of 
 mental power, and of contempt for the life of sloth 
 and sensual indulgence has no necessary connec- 
 tion with the speculations of transcendentalism, 
 will be clear, I believe, from the preceding chapter. 
 
 Our conclusion can be summarized in a few words. 
 The theory that defines morality as obedience to 
 reason, where reason means the faculty of appre- 
 hending supermundane laws, may be given the 
 name of rationalism. Rationalism thus defined is 
 as little in consonance with the spirit of Shake- 
 speare's plays as is the highly articulated Kantian- 
 ism of which it is the pale reflection. 
 
 A third form of transcendentalism remains to 
 claim our attention. It finds the source of the moi-al 
 life, not in respect for a law, but in loyalty to a law- 
 giver. Such a view may, perhaps, be called authori- 
 tism. It has been held in somewhat varying forms, 
 its most prominent representatives being the so- 
 called intuitionists. In examining this doctrine 
 we must understand exactly what it affirms. No 
 sane man doubts that for many persons the belief 
 that God commands veracity, respect for property, 
 and much else, is a very powerful factor in secur- 
 ing conformity to the requirements of morality ; 
 just as is the command of the sovereign and the 
 parent, in the state and the family, respectively. 
 The real questions in dispute, at least in our own 
 day, are these : Is loyalty to God an unanalyzable 
 element of consciousness, something, therefore, 
 which is irreducible to any motive or combination 
 
Transcendentalism 41 
 
 of motives as yet shown to exist ? Is it in nature 
 and origin absolutely unique, something without a 
 parallel among the other constituents of the mental 
 life ? Finally, is the loyalty thus conceived the sole 
 source of the consciousness of moral distinctions ? 
 The student who has answered these questions to 
 his own satisfaction has defined his attitude towards 
 the common elements of the authoritive theories. 
 
 Of these questions the second can be despatched 
 with the most ease. Beyond controversy, in Shake- 
 speare's world loyalty to God is not a unique senti- 
 ment without a parallel among mundane springs of 
 action. At every turn the duty we owe God and 
 that which we owe an earthly sovereign are placed 
 side by side, as if identical in nature. Everywhere 
 loyalty to the heavenly and to the earthly king are 
 treated as the same emotion. 
 
 Examples are not far to seek. When Norfolk 
 and Bolingbroke are about to meet in mortal com- 
 bat on the fateful day for which England was to 
 bleed in the War of the Roses, Norfolk, standing 
 armed in the lists, cries out in answer to the 
 marshal's summons: 
 
 " [I] hither come engaged by my oath — 
 Both to defend my loyalty and truth 
 To God, my king and my succeeding issue, 
 Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me ; 
 And, by the grace of God and this mine ]oi(;iia,rd II 
 
 arm, I. iii. 17. 
 
 To prove him, in defending of myself, 
 A traitor to my God, my king, and me." 
 
I.. 179. 
 
 42 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 When King Richard, after forbidding the combat, 
 exiles the principals and compels them to swear 
 eternal enmity to each other, he summons them to 
 take the oath in the following significant language : 
 
 "Lay on our royal sword your banish'd 
 hands ; 
 Swear by the duty that you owe to God — 
 Our part therein we banish with your- 
 selves — 
 To keep the oath that we administer." 
 
 His meaning is : By your banishment you have 
 ceased to be English citizens bound in allegiance 
 to me ; there remains, therefore, no anchor for your 
 faithfulness to your word except the allegiance you 
 owe to the Heavenly King. The identity in nature 
 of loyalty to God and king is stated, if possible, still 
 more explicitly in a later scene of the same play. 
 Again the words are Richard's : , 
 
 " Revolt our subjects ? that we can not 
 __ .. ,„„ mend; 
 
 m. u. 100. ' 
 
 They break their faith to God as well as 
 
 us." 
 
 In Richard II., then, we find a representation of 
 obligation that brings before the mind a picture of 
 a society organized in the spirit of feudalism. At 
 the bottom is the serf or retainer, as the case may 
 be ; then the over-lord ; then the king ; ascending 
 one step higher there is God, in a perfectly literal 
 Richard HI. sense " the great King of kings." The 
 I. IV. 200. subject owes service to his lord, both 
 
Transcendentalism 43 
 
 owe service to their common king ; all of these owe 
 service to the omnipotent Ruler throned in regions 
 inaccessible to sense. Whatever may be the nature 
 of the loyalty that prompts the subject to submis- 
 sion in each of these relations, it appears to be 
 exactly identical throughout the entire range of 
 its activity. The treatment of loyalty in the other 
 plays, including those of the later periods, is only a 
 repetition of the same tale. 
 
 Well, so be it, some one may say, admitted that 
 loyalty to God is not different in kind from loyalty 
 to the king, is loyalty of any sort reducible to 
 motives that we have already studied ? Is it not an 
 ultimate, unanalyzable element in human nature ? 
 Consider, he may urge, the attitude of the race in 
 the presence of authority. Here is one man out of 
 the millions who dwell within the limits of the 
 fatherland ; his commands are obeyed, while the 
 attempt of any one else to exercise such control is 
 either met by a contemptuous refusal, or, if neces- 
 sary, is repelled by force. Disregarding the influ- 
 ence of fear, affection, suggestion, and other 
 well-known forces whose existence has never been 
 doubted, something still remains to be explained. 
 Surely this residual element is without a parallel 
 among springs of action, is utterly mysterious and 
 even miraculous. 
 
 It might seem as if a discussion of this, the 
 fundamental contention of authoritism, were abso- 
 lutely precluded by the nature of our materials. 
 But unfortunately for him, the Englishman has 
 
44 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 been driven only too often to reflect upon the 
 nature of political obligation. From the day when 
 Bolingbroke snatched the crown from the hands 
 of Richard II. till the death of Elizabeth, but 
 two English monarchs, Henry VIII. and Edward 
 VI., ruled with the unquestioning consent of their 
 subjects. The others had to defend themselves 
 against rival claimants, many of whom had gained 
 the allegiance of a powerful faction. Thus the 
 thinking Englishman found himself compelled to 
 formulate as best he could his reasons for feeling 
 constrained to yield a subject's obedience, as the 
 only way of determining to whom the obedience 
 was due. 
 
 We shall not be surprised when we find these 
 moral conflicts mirrored in the pages of Shake- 
 speare. For through the greater part of Elizabeth's 
 reign her throne rocked on its foundation, and 
 was universally considered even more insecure than 
 events proved it to be. Her title rested primarily 
 upon her legitimate descent from Henry VIII. But 
 when we consider the grounds upon which the king 
 obtained his first divorce, it becomes obvious that 
 either she or her predecessor, Mary, must be a 
 usurper, and consequently the partisans of one or 
 the other, traitors. No orthodox Roman Catholic 
 could admit for an instant the validity of the 
 claim of Anne Boleyn to be a lawful wife and 
 queen ; and the Protestant, capable of distinguish- 
 ing between the use of legal forms by brute force 
 and obedience to the spirit that created them, must 
 
Transcendentalism 45 
 
 have admitted to himself that the position of the 
 mother of his sovereign had been in reality little 
 better than that of an acknowledged mistress. 
 Elizabeth's second title rested upon the will of her 
 father; but can a kingdom be disposed of after the 
 manner of a second-best bed ? This was a new 
 problem, involving a principle so remote from 
 previous usage that, by common consent, on the 
 accession of James VI., no attention was paid to 
 the provisions of that same will, which would have 
 given the crown to another branch of the family. 
 Lastly, the third title was grounded upon an act of 
 Parliament. But can Parliament invest with a 
 right to rule one who can urge no other claim ? In 
 early English history this question had been an- 
 swered in the affirmative more than once. Under 
 the Tudors, however, those days were for the most 
 part forgotten, and the generation that crowned 
 Elizabeth's immediate successor was to see such 
 doctrine damned as heresy. 
 
 The intelligent citizen of a modern monarchy 
 would base the obligation to obey the command of 
 a fellow-man upon the principle that the kingly 
 office is a public trust, and the king simply the 
 first servant of the state. He looks upon the law 
 of hereditary succession as " nothing more than an 
 expedient in government founded in wisdom and 
 tending to public utility " — to use the words of an 
 eminent English judge of the eighteenth century .^ 
 
 1 Sir Michael Foster, in Taswell-Longmead, English Constitu- 
 tional History, p. 171, note 5. 
 
46 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 With him the motive for obedience is, at its best, that 
 enthusiasm for the common good which in the in- 
 evitable cases of conflict leads to the subordination 
 of the individual will. 
 
 At first sight such a man seems to have no 
 counterpart in the Shakespearean world. Take, for 
 example, the tetralogy that goes by the several names 
 of Richard II., first and second Henry IV., and 
 Henry V.^ Richard II. is represented, in agreement 
 with the testimony of history, as a thoroughly vicious 
 and at the same time lamentably weak ruler. None 
 of the functions of government was performed prop- 
 erly ; life was not safe ; the property of the nobles 
 was pillaged, and the merchants were oppressed by 
 means of forced loans, blanks, and, according to 
 the play, benevolences or " gifts " to the crown. 
 In consequence of these things Holinshed, the 
 chronicler who supplied Shakespeare with his facts, 
 looks upon Richard's deposition as a righteous act, 
 and apparently the public utility doctrine would 
 permit no other attitude. Yet the best characters 
 in the play look upon Bolingbroke's coronation as 
 a monstrous crime. The Bishop of CarUsle, a man 
 of patriotism and honesty, risks his life in a protest 
 flung into the teeth of the newly created king. 
 What is more striking the leaders of the rebellion, 
 Northumberland and Bolingbroke, admit in after 
 years the immorality of their course. True, Nor- 
 
 1 The view that these plays are essentially one need not carry 
 with it any implications as to the dates at which the several parts 
 were written. 
 
Transcendentalism 47 
 
 thumberland's confessions of guilt appear as the 
 product of his newly conceived hatred for his pres- 
 ent master and of a desire for another change. 
 Nevertheless his expressions of self-reprobation do 
 not sound like mere pretexts ; they seem to repre- 
 sent rather the outcome of sober second thought, 
 clarified, no doubt, by disillusionment. Surely there 
 can be no question of this fact in the case of his 
 son, Hotspur. And whatever we may think of the 
 Percy family, nothing can have a more genuine 
 ring than the dying declaration of Henry IV.: 
 
 " God knows, my son, 
 By what by-paths and indirect crook'd 
 
 ways 
 I met this crown. 2 Henry IV. 
 
 IV. V. 184 
 
 What in me was purchased ^^•' ^^ *'• 
 [i. e., stolen], 
 Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort ; 
 So thou the garland wear'st successively." 
 
 The effect produced upon the hearer or reader 
 by these confessions is heightened through the 
 employment of contrast, a favorite device of the 
 dramatist. The quarrel between Norfolk and Bol- 
 ingbroke, upon which turns the plot of Richard H., 
 had its origin in the murder, or alleged murder, 
 of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of both Richard 
 and Bolingbroke. The agent was Norfolk, but 
 behind him was supposed to have stood the king 
 himself. One of the earliest scenes of the play 
 
48 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 represents the good Duke of York, a brother of 
 Gloucester, hounded on by the widowed duchess to 
 revenge himself upon his royal nephew. The 
 old man is far from insensible to her appeal, but 
 his loyalty stands firm as a granite cliff. 
 
 " God's is the quarrel ; for God's substitute 
 Hath caused his death : the which if 
 Richard n. wrongfully, 
 
 ■ "■ ' Let heaven revenge ; for I may never 
 
 lift 
 An angry arm against His minister." 
 
 Here we may see how the good man acts when 
 the criminal that wrongs him is his sovereign. 
 
 And yet there is another side. The noble and 
 enlightened Henry V., the ideal man of action, 
 though the son of a self-confessed usurper, has no 
 scruples about his own title to the throne. He 
 knows it will be attacked, and he intends to de- 
 fend it. It is only his weak and sentimental son, 
 Henry YI., with his double incapacity for seeing 
 fact and dealing with fact, that displays any anxiety 
 on that score. Furthermore in King John, written 
 apparently about the same time as Richard II., we 
 find the best intellect and character arrayed on the 
 side of the " usurper." 
 
 No one can misunderstand the function of Faul- 
 conbridge in this play. He is to be taken as the 
 representative Englishman. Keen of insight, sane 
 of judgment, noble in heart despite his whimsical 
 outbreaks of self-slander, he clearly stands for the 
 
Transcendentalism 49 
 
 best thought and most scrupulous conscientiousness 
 that the times could show. It will be remembered 
 that John is represented as basing his claim to the 
 crown solely on the pretence that Arthur, the sup- 
 posed son of his elder brother, Geffrey, is in 
 reality illegitimate. There is no element of histori- 
 cal truth in this picture, for England in the thir- 
 teenth century was in fact, as in name, an elective 
 monarchy. John's title, based on his election by 
 Parliament, was consequently all that he could 
 desire. Nevertheless, the play, as we have it, 
 knows nothing of the Parliamentary prerogative. 
 We may gather from certain words that escape 
 Faulconbridge in a moment of passion, that he does 
 not attach the slightest value to the johniv. 
 story of Arthur's illegitimacy. Yet he iii- 142-145. 
 never, for an instant, considers joining the French 
 army that has been set in motion to restore the 
 unfortunate young prince to the throne. On the 
 contrary, his loyalty and devotion to his master 
 seem as great before Arthur's death as after the 
 boy's fatal leap from the castle wall, when, accord- 
 ing to the strictest theory of primogeniture, John 
 became the rightful sovereign. Just as little is lie 
 influenced by the wickedness and misgovernment 
 of the king. In the conflict between John and 
 the English barons who, after the death of Arthur, 
 offered the throne to Louis of France, on the 
 ground of John's moral unfitness for the office, 
 Faulconbridge is the mainstay of the royal party. 
 The solution of these apparent paradoxes is not 
 
50 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 far to seek. Let us remember that the miseries 
 and the anarchy of the reign of Stephen had been 
 caused directly by a struggle over a disputed suc- 
 cession ; that the French Philip, who was posing 
 as the champion of the " legitimate heir," Arthur, 
 was at bottom seeking to make England an ap- 
 panage to a foreign throne ; let us further re- 
 
 _. ^ , _, member that the Bishop of Carlisle is 
 Richard 11. ^ 
 
 IV. i. 136- permitted to see, in prophetic vision, what 
 ^*^- was still fresh in the minds of Eliza- 
 
 beth's subjects, the disorders of the reign of Henry 
 IV., and the horrors of the War of the Roses, an 
 enormous price even for deliverance from the 
 rule of a profligate tyrant ; let us remember these 
 things and we shall see that to side with John 
 against the " legitimate heir," and to side with the 
 despotic Richard against the stronger, wiser, and, 
 in reality, nobler Bolingbroke, might be the policy 
 of the same man, one, namely, whose grounds of 
 action were throughout a consideration of what 
 was likely to be most conducive to the permanent 
 welfare of his country. 
 
 The outcome, then, seems to be clear. Shake- 
 speare represents civic loyalty, where it is most open- 
 eyed and unselfish, as a form of patriotism. And 
 the principle of allegiance that is recognized in 
 practice by his noblest and most intelligent men 
 is one which as formulated by the theorist would 
 read : The right to the throne and the right to 
 demand obedience when on the throne are neither 
 inexplicable nor absolute ; their ultimate source 
 
Transcendentalism 51 
 
 lies in their relation to the public good. Henry 
 V. explicitly acknowledges the validity of this 
 principle. When, on the eve of his departure from 
 France, he discovers the plot that has been formed 
 to kill him, he feels that the wrong done him is in 
 a high degree a personal one, for one of the con- 
 spirators is his best-loved friend. As a man he 
 nevertheless forgives them, and would gladly spare 
 their lives. But as one called upon to consider his 
 kingdom's safety, he is obliged to overrule his per- 
 sonal wishes, and therefore as king, in Henry v. 
 the interest of the common weal, he con- ^i- ^- 166- 
 
 181 
 
 demns them to death. 
 
 Should it be urged that the welfare theory of 
 sovereignty is, at most, latent in the historical plays, 
 and that the language and actions of their char- 
 acters are explicable in other ways, the reply can 
 be made that in any event the theory is formulated 
 with the greatest clearness in one of the maturest 
 products of the poet's genius. 
 
 The great play of Coriolanus is not an attack on 
 "the people," as is often imagined, for the mis- 
 takes and sins of the title hero are far more serious 
 than those set down to the account of the Roman 
 mob. It is rather a study in the workings of 
 political forces. Written at a time when Parlia- 
 ment was awakening from its long lethargy and 
 was beginning to assert the political rights of the 
 people as a whole, the play describes the beginnings 
 of the conflict between the Roman aristocracy and 
 the masses which, after dragging on for five long 
 
52 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 centuries, was to end with the establishment of 
 Ca3sarism. The last steps in this drama had al- 
 ready been traced in Julius Caesar, and Antony 
 and Cleopatra. 
 
 At the moment of the opening of Coriolanus the 
 people have just won a notable victory. They have 
 obtained their first bit of political power in the 
 shape of the creation of the tribunate. From first 
 to last Coriolanus is the consistent and bitter op- 
 ponent of this concession on the part of the patri- 
 cians. His reasons are stated with a clearness that 
 leaves no room for misunderstanding, a force with 
 which no character in the play seems able to cope, 
 and a completeness which in another writer would 
 have converted the play into a didactic treatise. 
 He fears for the consequences of the first grant 
 because, extorted as it is by force, he believes it 
 „^j. J J will inevitably lead to farther conces- 
 221 ff. ; cf. sions. Then when this has grown and 
 ??■ J' there are two powers in the state, neither 
 
 supreme, he foresees the destruction of 
 III. i. passim, good government, then anarchy, and 
 127 f£^ finally, enslavement by some foreign 
 
 power. The only safety lies in the rule 
 ni. i. ; cf. of a small homogeneous body with unre- 
 - ^c^ii« stricted power, wise, provident, and 
 
 lu. 75-137. ^ ' 7 r ' 
 
 capable of leadership. Prom this prin- 
 ciple, and from this alone, he deduces the right to 
 command and the duty to obey. 
 
 It must be added, however, that distinct traces 
 of another mode of thought are occasionallv dis- 
 
Transcendentalism 53 
 
 coverable. For instance, in Henry V., Act I., we 
 find the king of England, together with his legal 
 and his moral guides, examining the claims of the 
 House of Lancaster to the French throne. The 
 point of view throughout seems to be that sover- 
 eignty is a piece of property and the king is the 
 owner of his people. On this view, if accepted 
 without reservation and worked through consist- 
 ently, the crown is like any other possession and 
 carries with it the right of using and misusing. 
 Whatever limitations are placed on these rights 
 can be based solely upon a consideration of the 
 interests of the heirs. For the subject to refuse 
 obedience to a command is a wrong of the same 
 nature as if one person should seek to wrest from 
 another his land or his slaves. The only casuistical 
 questions that can arise with regard to the right 
 to rule, are those relating to the conditions of 
 succession. 
 
 It is easy to see the facts which lend plausibility 
 and indeed a certain justification to this view. The 
 kingly office carries with it great emoluments, and 
 the opportunity for earning a reward for service 
 may be considered a right as much as the undis- 
 turbed possession of a piece of property. Do not 
 modern law courts seek to protect the manufact- 
 urer and the merchant from discriminations that 
 would rob them of their customers ? Have not 
 the trade unions issued a new commandment: 
 " Thou Shalt not take thy neighbor's job " ? That 
 in applying the principle to the relation of gov- 
 
54 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ernor and governed, its restricted validity should 
 be frequently overlooked is only what might be 
 antecedently expected. This attitude towards sov- 
 ereignty, therefore, is but an exaggerated outgrowth 
 of loyalty to the institution of property. Of course 
 it may be asserted that respect for property, alone 
 of all the elements of human life, has its origin 
 in motives or faculties inexplicable except by 
 reference to a supersensible world. Such an asser- 
 tion Shakespeare will not enable us to contradict, 
 for he makes no attempt to analyze either the 
 institution itself or the nature of its claims to our 
 allegiance. As a matter of fact, however, no 
 moralist has had the temerity to take such a 
 position. 
 
 If, then, God be strictly representable as the 
 over-lord of earthly kings, we have a clear picture 
 of the relation in which He stands to His subjects. 
 First, His motives for asserting and enforcing His 
 authority become obvious and intelligible. For if 
 Henry V. in his capacity as king denounces murder 
 and treachery because they are harmful, there are 
 no grounds for supposing that the great King of 
 Eichard kings commands, " thou shalt do no 
 m. I. iv. murder " for any other reason. Sec- 
 200-202. ondly, we can understand the motives 
 that prompt Shakespeare's characters to subordi- 
 nate their will to the divine commands. Apart 
 from fear and love, which are explicitly referred 
 to, and the factor of suggestion, which is not 
 mentioned, we find the conception, sometimes 
 
Transcendentalism 55 
 
 formulated, sometimes implied, that God's com- 
 mandments represent what best conduces to the 
 common good ; perhaps, also, some trace of the 
 notion that we are God's possession. The appeal 
 made by the former consideration requires nothing 
 farther for its explanation than public spirit and 
 a desire for one's own sake for security and order. 
 The second idea gets its practical effectiveness 
 from that respect for property which, that we 
 might not be carried beyond our prescribed limits, 
 has been left unanalyzed. In view of all these facts, 
 loyalty, whether to king or God, can urge no claim 
 to be an utterly mysterious and quasi-miraculous 
 motive. It has its source in springs of action that 
 are well understood ; it has its source in springs 
 of action whose origin requires no supernatural 
 explanation, except, indeed, in so far as the whole 
 nature of man is divine ; it has its source, further- 
 more, in springs of action that urge men to assume 
 right relations with their fellows quite apart from 
 any thought of a supersensible world. 
 
 We have now the answers for the first two ques- 
 tions raised by the doctrine of authoritism. The 
 third and last, it may be remembered, dealt with 
 the relation between loyalty and the consciousness 
 of moral distinctions. The contention of the school 
 with regard to this relationship may be formulated 
 in two statements. First, the apprehension of a 
 certain action as right is identical with the con- 
 sciousness of an obligation to perform it. Second, 
 the consciousness of an obligation to perform an 
 
^6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 action arises only in consequence of a belief that 
 it has been demanded by God. Right and wrong 
 being thus meaningless terms, except as the indi- 
 vidual turns his face towards his divine King, 
 obedience to Him becomes not a part, but the 
 whole of morality. Accordingly when we say we 
 owe fair dealing or assistance to our neighbor, the 
 truth of the matter is that we owe it to Him to 
 treat our neighbor in that particular way. In 
 other words, the only actions that have moral value 
 are those performed from the motive of loyalty 
 to God. 
 
 Whatever may be the objective validity of the 
 above view it could never have been suggested by 
 a study of Shakespeare's characters. In their 
 lives loyalty to God appears simply as one of the 
 many elements that form the substance of the 
 moral life. It does not even claim any sort of pre- 
 eminence above the rest. No unprejudiced person 
 would pretend that Lear is anything else than a 
 representation of the conflict between the powers 
 of good and evil — one of the most tremendous 
 and awe-inspiring that the imagination of man has 
 ever conceived. Yet the attitude of the nobler 
 combatants towards crime and moral heroism alike 
 is not determined in its essentials by the relation 
 in which they suppose themselves to stand to any 
 supersensible power. Cordelia, when she hears 
 Lear IV. irom Kent's lips the story of her father's 
 iii. 31. wrongs, cries out, " Let pity not be 
 
 believed ! " Albany discloses to Goneril his feel- 
 
Transcendentalism 57 
 
 ings towards her and his opinion of her outrages 
 in the words : 
 
 " See thyself, devil ! 
 Proper deformity seems not in the fiend IV. ii. 69. 
 So horrid as in woman." 
 
 These two utterances taken together represent 
 completely the effects of the horrors in the drama 
 upon the conscience of those who saw them. Will 
 any one have the temerity to assert that in reality 
 these men and women had no conscience, that their 
 emotions were merely pathological, as Kant would 
 call them ? They at all events called the conflict 
 raging about them a moral conflict. Their emotions 
 of abhorrence or enthusiasm were what they under- 
 stood by sympathy for virtue, reprobation for vice. 
 
 " thou good Kent, how shall I live and 
 
 work, IV. vii. 1. 
 
 To match thy goodness? " 
 
 exclaims Cordelia. And when the end has come, 
 Albany, now in supreme control, summons to his 
 side Edgar and Kent : 
 
 *' You, to your rights; 
 With boot, and such addition as your 
 
 honours 
 Have more than merited. All friends v. iii. 300. 
 
 shall taste 
 The wages of their virtue, and all foes 
 The cup of their deservings." 
 
 The German critic Kreyssig has called King Lear 
 the drama of Kant's Categorical Imperative. If 
 
58 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 by this is meant a presentation of the springs of 
 moral life, such as transcendentalism in any of its 
 forms would recognize, he might as well call 
 Paradise Lost the epic of Darwin's Natural 
 Selection. 
 
 In this respect King Lear is an epitome of 
 Shakespeare's world. Much has been said about 
 the absence of religious life in the plays. The 
 fact is, the great majority of the leading characters 
 exhibit in one way or another a belief in the fun- 
 damental postulates of religion. On the other 
 hand, their attitude towards God seldom appears 
 as a direct factor in determining their relation 
 to their fellow-men. This statement is so far 
 from holding merely for the criminal and the 
 vicious, that its most complete exemplification is 
 found in the noblest lives. In fact in the Shake- 
 spearean drama but two virtues are habitually 
 brought under the special protection of heaven: 
 resistance to the temptations of suicide and of 
 perjury. The reason for these exceptions is 
 obvious : these temptations are oftentimes at once 
 so subtle and so overwhelming that considerations 
 of humanity and honor tend to crumble before them. 
 But even here, if the latter are exceptionally strong, 
 the appeal to the supersensible is not needed. 
 
 Consider for a moment the significance of the 
 scene at the meeting of the conspirators in Julius 
 Caesar. Cassius has demanded that they bind 
 themselves together with an oath. To Brutus such 
 a proceeding seems a blackening of their own char- 
 
Transcendentalism 59 
 
 acters. If the evils of the times and shame at our 
 fallen estate are not sufficient motives, let us slink, 
 every man to his own home, and give up the attempt 
 to lead the life of free citizens. But Brutus, you 
 object, was an impractical idealist. That is true ; 
 but his idealism consisted, so far as this particular 
 case is concerned, in judging others by himself. 
 How far his confidence would have led him astray 
 does not concern us, for we are dealing with the 
 ethical question : How explain a Brutus ? not with 
 the statistical one : How many Brutuses are there ? 
 
 The last contention of authoritism thus falls to 
 the ground. Other actions, we discover, besides 
 disobedience to God, are regarded as wrong in 
 themselves ; actions performed without any thought 
 of obedience may be approved as right. 
 
 This conclusion apparently leaves on our hands a 
 serious difficulty. For it will naturally be asked 
 how, on such a view, we can explain that feeling 
 of restraint which, when it appears amid the stress 
 of moral conflict, we call the sense of obligation. 
 The logical consequence of the preceding analysis 
 is to place the source of the entire moral life in 
 desires. But a desire is a mental state whose 
 motive power resides in the attraction that is 
 exercised by a proposed end. How can constraint 
 arise out of attraction ? Whether this problem can 
 claim a place in a study like the present will 
 depend upon our right to make a certain assump- 
 tion. If we may believe that Shakespeare described 
 all the elementary phenomena of the moral life, it 
 
6o Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 certainly belongs here ; otherwise not. For the 
 consciousness of obligation, in the sense of a feeling 
 of restraint, or indeed in any other sense, appears 
 neither as a fundamental nor an independent factor 
 in any moral experience that he describes ; the 
 forces that do battle for the right seem to be, 
 without exception, ideas of a state, whether of self 
 or another, which the agent desires to bring 
 about. We are therefore reduced to two alterna- 
 tives. Either an important or perhaps the most im- 
 portant constituent of the moral consciousness has 
 been ignored, or else we really have before us all 
 the fundamentals, and the sense of restraint is but 
 a secondary phenomenon which may arise out of 
 the conflict of desires. 
 
 Those who accept the latter alternative are 
 bound to point out where and under what condi- 
 tions this feeling arises. That, in reality, is not 
 a difficult task. A desire will give rise to the feel- 
 ing of restraint when the actions necessary for its 
 realization come into conflict with strong passions, 
 deep-seated habits, or are otherwise disagreeable in 
 the doing ; when, during the action or even in fac- 
 ing the possibility of performing it, we feel as if we 
 were acting along the line of the greatest resist- 
 ance. In these cases we shrink back and at the 
 same time feel ourselves attracted onward. There- 
 upon, alike whether we press forward or turn 
 aside, a feeling of coercion or restraint will arise, 
 and, as long as the opposing forces keep their hold 
 upon the attention, will continue. 
 
Transcendentalism 6i 
 
 An illustration of this principle may be found 
 in the tragedy of Hamlet's life. Hamlet possesses 
 a certain ideal of character embodied in his friend 
 Horatio. Its warp and woof are loyalty and the 
 power to pursue one's own way independently alike 
 of every stimulus or distraction that fortune hap- 
 pens to throw into the way. ( Vide Act IH., scene 
 ii., lines 59-79. Note that "just" means loyal.) 
 Such loyalty, according to a code that Hamlet 
 never questions, demands the revenge of his father's 
 murder. Such constancy must he possess if he is 
 to attain success. For the stab of a dagger will 
 not of itself suffice ; he must so act as to remain 
 free from the suspicion of selfish motives in the 
 eyes of his mother, his betrothed, and his country- 
 men. This involves a carefully thought-out and 
 perhaps complicated plan tenaciously followed from 
 stage to stage, till his end is finally gained. But 
 it is just such a course of which temperament and 
 habit have made him incapable. Dependent as he 
 is upon stimuli from without for anything more 
 exacting than idle reverie, he cannot even set 
 his mind to work upon mapping out a coherent 
 plan of procedure. Yet all this time an ideal 
 of strength and devotion is beckoning him onward. 
 Hence it is only with a sense of constraint at 
 moments intolerable that he can give himself up 
 to the life of aimless floating with the current 
 which finally proves his ruin. 
 
 In this way it does not seem difficult to explain 
 the feeling of obligation as rooted and grounded 
 
62 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 in desire or approbation. Whether this or any 
 other account of the phenomenon ever entered 
 Shakespeare's mind, no one who knows what 
 evidence means would pretend to decide. But 
 assuming always that his descriptions are correct, 
 and at least in outline complete, it appears to be 
 the only account compatible with his delineation 
 of the moral life. 
 
 Our study in moral dynamics leaves in our hands 
 a principle of the greatest practical importance. 
 If Shakespeare portrays human life aright, morality 
 stands whatever view we may take of the nature 
 of the universe or of the origin and ultimate des- 
 tiny of man. Let the great heart of things be what 
 it will, we recognize a duty to ourselves, our neigh- 
 bor, and the general weal, and we have within us 
 powers that respond to their call. Metaphysical 
 and theological belief may strengthen the moral 
 muscle in many ways, but is not its creator. Nor 
 in the completely developed man would there be 
 anything left for it to do. In fact our study of 
 Shakespeare's writings ought to teach us to reverse 
 the traditional view on these matters. The nature 
 of a man's religion, i. e., his relations with God, 
 depends primarily upon his character, though 
 interaction is, of course, not excluded. King 
 Claudius, for instance, was the pink of orthodoxy, 
 and even Falstaff believed — and trembled. But 
 the relation of these men to God, in so far as 
 He had any place in their lives, was a mere matter 
 of buying and selling. Indeed this is the only 
 
Transcendentalism 63 
 
 attitude toward Him that an ignoble mind can 
 take. If, then, the commands of the great King 
 are really to exercise moral restraint of a high 
 order, there must first exist a spirit of self-forget- 
 ting service — " He that loveth not his brother 
 whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom 
 he hath not seen ? " — or failing this, a desire for 
 the approbation of a companion mind. Morality 
 is thus the creation, not of religious belief, but of 
 ideals without which religion itself could arouse 
 neither reverence nor moral enthusiasm. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CRITERION OF RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 In making our way, through this jungle of motives 
 I trust we have not forgotten that our aim was to 
 discover the sources of the moral judgment. Every 
 motive, as was pointed out in the beginning of 
 Chapter I., is a ground of approval. Accordingly 
 among the sum total of the motives for the best 
 actions must be found 'the grounds upon which the 
 agent bases his moral approval of such actions. 
 Taking the agent as a representative of the race, 
 we are thus supplied with valuable material for 
 testing the current theories of the moral judgment. 
 The clearest and most certain outcome of our 
 exploration is a negative one. Conduct is not 
 approved, primarily, because it is believed to be 
 demanded by a law that comes from a supersen- 
 sible order and that has no relation to the welfare 
 of human beings in this life. But a positive con- 
 clusion seems also warranted. Our analysis of 
 human activities has acquainted us with a class of 
 forces which can be described as interest in the 
 various forms of welfare. And we have found in 
 what every one would agree to call the higher 
 actions such interests to be the dominant motive. 
 We may therefore infer that moral judgments 
 
The Criterion of Right and Wrong 6^ 
 
 have their source in ideals of welfare ; that con- 
 duct is an object of moral approbation or disap- 
 probation according to the relation in which it 
 stands to the well-being of self and others. The 
 theory that thus emerges may be called idealism or 
 eudsemonism. 
 
 Two easily distinguishable grounds of approval 
 have also been discovered. Kent, we remember, 
 declares that his motive for interposing between 
 Cordelia and the wrath of her father is the latter's 
 safety. This evidently signifies that he approves 
 the action in question because of its conduciveness 
 to an end lying outside of itself, namely, Lear's 
 welfare. Accordingly we seem entitled to assert 
 the existence of moral judgments in which con- 
 duct is pronounced right because a means to wel- 
 fare. Such judgments may be called utilitarian. 
 On the other hand, the point of view in Volum- 
 nia's appeal to Coriolanus to spare his native city 
 is of an entirely different nature. 
 
 " Thou hast affected the fine strains of 
 
 honour, 
 
 To imitate the graces of the gods. 
 
 Coriolanus V. 
 
 iii. 149. 
 
 Think' st thou it honourable for a noble 
 
 man 
 
 Still [always] to remember wrongs ? " 
 
 The ground for approving forgiveness of enemies 
 is that forgiveness is admirable. Here we seem to 
 have a second variety of the moral judgment, in 
 
 5 
 
66 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 which conduct is pronounced right quite apart 
 from any thoughts of its ulterior effects, simply 
 because of its own intrinsic excellence. Judg- 
 ments based upon admiration for beauty in the 
 world of conduct, and immediate antipathy for 
 the ugly, the base, and the vile, may be called 
 aesthetic. 
 
 Our confidence in the validity of these conclu- 
 sions will be strengthened by a study of those 
 cases where circumstances have compelled an ex- 
 plicit formulation of the reasons for which an 
 action is pronounced right or wrong. I pass over 
 such scenes as the night in the garden, when 
 Brutus justifies the assassination of his best 
 friend on the ground that one must 
 
 " Think him as a serpent's egg 
 li i 32 Which, hatch' d, would, as his kind, grow 
 
 mischievous." 
 
 No one would care to base a theory on passages of 
 this kind, because they are too isolated. Two 
 varieties of judgments, however, recur so fre- 
 quently in the same form that of their nature and 
 significance there can be no reasonable doubt. The 
 first of these is the attitude assumed towards pun- 
 ishment for crime ; the second, the approval of the 
 " forced lie." 
 
 The casuistry of punishment can be disposed 
 of in a few words. Isabella, interceding for her 
 brother's life, pleads, when argument proves un- 
 availing, " Yet show some pity." Angelo replies : 
 
The Criterion of Right and Wrong 67 
 
 " I show it most of all when I show jus- 
 tice; 
 For then I pity those I do not know, jj" ^ qq 
 
 Which a dismiss'd offence would after 
 gall." 
 
 On precisely this ground, with explicit disavowal 
 of any other justification, Henry V. condemns to 
 death the noblemen who had plotted to Henry v. II. 
 kill him. Not the clamors of revenge, "• 174-177. 
 not the demands of some abstract conception of 
 justice, but the requirements of the public good, 
 this it is, in his view, that justifies the state in 
 bringing evil upon the evil-doer. 
 
 The principle that right and wrong are deter- 
 mined by a consideration of the demands of the 
 welfare of those directly and indirectly affected, 
 appears likewise in the treatment of veracity. 
 Isabella, suing for the life of her brother before 
 the deputy Angelo, in the supposed absence of the 
 reigning duke, has been offered the boon she begs, 
 on condition that she yield herself to his will. 
 Never for an instant does she think of consenting, 
 and Claudio seems to be lost. But the omniscient 
 friar, who later proves to be the duke in disguise, 
 evolves a well-contrived plan for the young man's 
 rescue. He seeks out Isabella and proposes that 
 she appear to yield, and then send in her stead to 
 the place assigned Angelo's betrothed, Mariana of 
 the moated grange. This unfortunate woman had 
 long ago been heartlessly abandoned by the deputy, 
 but with the tenacity of her sex she had never 
 
68 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ceased to love him. " By this," explains the friar, 
 " is your brother saved, your honour untainted, 
 
 the poor Mariana advantaged, and the 
 ra^°'^263 corrupt deputy scaled. . . . If you think 
 
 well to carry this as you may, the double- 
 ness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof." 
 There is not a moment's hesitation. " The image 
 of it gives me content already," cries Isabella, and 
 prepares herself for her part. 
 
 The farther task of unmasking Angelo necessi- 
 tates more lies, and here, the stakes not being so 
 great, the protests of the antipathetic emotions 
 make themselves heard. 
 
 Isabella. To speak so indirectly I am 
 loath : 
 IV. vi. 1. I would say the truth ; . . . 
 
 . . . Yet I am advised to do it ; 
 He says, to veil full purpose. 
 
 Nevertheless, her loathness does not prevent her 
 from carrying out to the letter the instructions 
 that she has been given. In the presence of the 
 duke, who has resumed his state, the dignitaries 
 of the city, and the people who have thronged to 
 witness the entry of their ruler, she deliberately 
 asserts that upon the deputy's demand she allowed 
 her sisterly compassion to confute her honor. The 
 significance of these scenes lies in the fact that 
 Isabella is no weak or compliant mind. She is a 
 woman in whom purity of purpose is the funda- 
 mental necessity of life; a woman whose con- 
 
The Criterion of Right and Wrong 69 
 
 science is Sro sensitive and withal so powerful that she 
 seems to the world " a thing ensky'd and sainted." 
 Some persons make a difference between lying 
 for their own benefit and that of others; not so 
 Shakespeare's characters. Think, for instance, of 
 the heroine of All's Well that Ends Well, a char- 
 acter superior in beauty even to the statuesque 
 Isabella. Fleeing in the guise of a pilgrim from 
 France to Italy, in order that the husband who 
 hates her may be at liberty to return to his home, 
 she reaches Florence as evening is about to fall. 
 She finds the people of the city congregated out- 
 side the walls watching the triumphal entry of 
 their army, just returned from a campaign against 
 Siena. Among the crowd is the landlady of an 
 inn where pilgrims were wont to lodge. With an 
 eye to her professional duties this good woman 
 accosts Helena and engages her to remain all 
 night at her house. Thereupon the usual shower 
 of questions begins : 
 
 Widoiv. 
 
 You came, I think, from France ? 
 
 
 Helena. 
 
 I did so. 
 
 
 Widow. 
 
 Here you shall see a countryman 
 of yours 
 
 
 
 That has done worthy service. 
 
 AU 's WeU 
 
 Helena. 
 
 His name, I pray you. 
 
 m. V. 49. 
 
 Diana. 
 
 The Count Eousillon: know you 
 such a one ? 
 
 
 Helena. 
 
 But by the ear, that hears most 
 
 nobly of him : 
 His face I know not. 
 
 
yo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Of course Helena could not reveal what that name, 
 so idly spoken, meant to her. She could not be 
 expected to tell what might lead to the discovery 
 that the Count Rousillon was her husband. But 
 had she been a stickler for veracity, after Kant's 
 own heart, she would either have refused to enter 
 upon a course which was, itself, a continuous piece 
 of deception, or, if she could succeed in making a 
 distinction between the spoken and the acted lie, 
 she would have from the first resolved to choose 
 silence where the truth would mean the defeat of 
 her purpose. To be sure, such a procedure might 
 in this case have aroused a curiosity as dangerous 
 as a complete avowal ; but then, what of it ? If we, 
 as rational beings, are under obligation to make 
 our words a reflection of our thoughts, regardless 
 of consequences, then must she submit to discovery. 
 Helena, however, has other ideas of duty. Too high- 
 minded to shuffle or equivocate, she deliberately 
 makes a statement that she knows is completely 
 false. Like Imogen in Cymbeline, she evidently 
 believes 
 
 " If I do lie and do 
 Cymbeline ^o harm by it, though the gods hear, I 
 IV. ii. 377. hope 
 
 They '11 pardon it." 
 
 Only Helena's conscience demands no excuses. 
 
 In the entire range of Shakespeare's plays there 
 is but a single record of a genuine conflict between 
 the impulse to speak the truth, at whatever cost, 
 
The Criterion of Right and Wrong 71 
 
 and the desire to dissemble for what, apart from 
 the deception, would be recognized as a worthy 
 purpose. Coriolanus, having ruined his cause with 
 the people by his plainness of speech, is corioianue 
 urged by his friends to return to the ^^^- "• 
 Forum and disown his insulting epithets. At 
 first he cannot bring himself to consent. But the 
 ground of his refusal is no more an objection to 
 deceit as such, than it is a regard for the social 
 value of veracity. It is solely the aversion of 
 the proud patrician to the humiliation of bend- 
 ing his uncovered head before the despised mob, of 
 admitting to himself and to them that he dare not 
 say what he pleases. His mother understands him 
 perfectly. Determined that he shall yield, her last 
 move is to appeal to his love for her, the appeal 
 that had never failed. If he will be deaf to that, 
 
 " Come all to ruin ; let 
 Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear 
 Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at 
 
 death m. u. 125. 
 
 With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list. 
 Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it 
 
 from me, 
 But owe thy pride thyself." 
 
 Coriolanus has within him the spirit of the Spartan 
 prisoners who, rather than bear the name of slaves, 
 took their lives. Like the mediaeval knight, the 
 lie was disgraceful in his eyes primarily, if not 
 solely, because the sign of a cowardly spirit. 
 
72 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Whether the lies of Isabella and Helena were 
 really justifiable it would be quite irrelevant to my 
 present purpose to inquire. "Wliat I desire to show 
 is the manner in which many minds, and those 
 often of the purest intentions, deal with the prob- 
 lem when it is forced upon them. The preceding 
 sketch shows that at least a portion of Shake- 
 speare's world, a portion including some of its high- 
 est representatives, more or less clearly conceive 
 the obligation to veracity as dependent upon the 
 needs of social life. 
 
 On the other hand, Shakespeare was, of course, 
 well aware that these questions are often decided 
 by other criteria, although for some reason, per- 
 haps because such modes of judgment did not have 
 his sympathy, they do not appear prominently in 
 his writings. Nevertheless, traces of them are not 
 wholly wanting. Thus as we have seen, the duty 
 of the state to requite evil with evil is always based 
 upon the requirements of public welfare. In virtue, 
 apparently of the same principle, private punish- 
 ment is usually condemned. Vengeance, however, 
 is occasionally counted a sacred duty, as by Ham- 
 let. Similarly with untruthfulness. It is invaria- 
 bly excused where it is supposed to be harmless. 
 But we are occasionally given brief glimpses of 
 another attitude. For instance, when Isabella de- 
 clares, "to speak so indirectly I am loath," her 
 repugnance does not seem to arise from a compu- 
 tation of consequences. 
 
 It is such immediate judgments as these — naively 
 
The Criterion of Right and Wrong 73 
 
 supposed to be common to all men, or at least to 
 all good and intelligent men — that have enabled 
 non-eudsemonistic theories to assert the absence 
 of all essential relation between morality and mun- 
 dane good. Intuitionism, which it will be remem- 
 bered is a form of transcendentalism, goes still 
 farther. It interprets the stirrings of resentment, 
 the antipathy to treachery and sensuality, the 
 warming of the heart at the spectacle of courage, 
 as quasi-miraculous intimations from a supersen- 
 sible world, specific directions or commands as to 
 the manner in which the citizens of that world 
 ought to comport themselves during their enforced 
 sojourn in Vanity Fair. But just as our study of 
 casuistry has shown that not all good and intelli- 
 gent persons regard these " intimations " as ab- 
 solutely binding, so our study of motives should 
 have taught us that even in those whom they most 
 completely dominate they exist in the form of 
 ideals. When there is an immediate demand that 
 the wicked be punished, it is due to the desire that 
 the object of our indignation shall suffer ; when 
 there is an unreflective horror of the lie, loyalty to 
 truth means purity of character ; when Hamlet 
 asks 
 
 " Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to 
 suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous Hamlet 
 
 fortune, III. i. 66. 
 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them ? " 
 
74 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 there stands before his inner eye the ideal of a 
 strong immovable will. Where a single ideal rules 
 in its own field without a rival, what it demands 
 will be called right. Where no one is supreme, 
 doubt and conflict must arise, and the outcome 
 will be determined — whether we are distinctly 
 aware of it or not — by our view of the relative 
 importance of the interests at stake. Indeed one 
 of the most far-reaching shigle explanations of the 
 diversity of moral judgments is found in just this 
 difference of opinion as to the relative value of in- 
 compatible ends. 
 
 The assertion that our actual moral judgments 
 are invariably determined by some conception of 
 welfare may seem to be audacious in the face of the 
 explicit denials of a large body of non-eudasmonis- 
 tic writers. Does not the transcendentalist, it will 
 be asked, describe the workings of at least his own 
 moral consciousness ? Did not Kant and Fichte 
 get their moral code from sources absolutely unre- 
 lated to their desires and aversions ? The solu- 
 tion of this difficulty is found in the difference 
 that may exist between what we believe and what 
 we believe we believe ; or, as Mr. Bosanquet has 
 phrased it,^ between moral ideas and ideas about 
 morality. 
 
 Unfortunately for the progress of ethics the gen- 
 eral tendency has been for the philosopher to make 
 
 ^ International Journal of Ethics, I., 86 ff. Reprinted in Ciri- 
 lization of Christendom, p. 178 ff. 
 
The Criterion of Right and Wrong 75 
 
 his doctrines too exclusively a mere reflection of 
 the more salient features of his own moral experi- 
 ence, to the neglect of much he might have learned 
 from the inner life of his fellow-men. But even 
 where self has been the most exclusive object of 
 study, an almost incredible divergence between the 
 standards actually used and the account offered of 
 these standards is demonstrable. Of course this 
 assertion cannot be proved here for the more elabo- 
 rate doctrines of modern philosophy, but the brief- 
 est study of the ethical theories alluded to by 
 Shakespeare's characters will show what is possible 
 in that direction. 
 
 Of the three or four of these theories the most 
 popular is that which defines right as agreement 
 with the intentions of nature. Ever since this 
 curious doctrine was explicitly formulated by the 
 Greek sophist, Hippias, about four hundred years 
 before Christ, it has maintained a place in the lan- 
 guage and perhaps the thought of men. The 
 demand for a " life according to nature " and the 
 doctrine of " natural rights " represent merely two 
 of its many forms. Among Shakespeare's people the 
 theory comes to light in such phrases as t. and c. n. 
 " Nature craves all dues be render'd to "• ^'^^^ 
 their owners," revenge, " that food which Timon V. 
 nature loathes," and in the words with i^- 32. 
 which the English ambassador demands from the 
 King of France the surrender of his title and his 
 lands. The king, he announces, wills 
 
76 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 " That you divest yourself, and lay apart 
 The borrow'd glories that by gift of 
 
 Henry V. heaven, 
 
 II. iv. 77. By law of nature and of nations, 'long 
 
 To him and to his heirs." 
 
 In vain, however, do we seek for an instance in 
 which Henry V. or any one else consults the " in- 
 tentions of nature " with regard to matters whose 
 legitimacy he has no other ground to question. One 
 of the most evident intentions of nature is that the 
 masculine half of the race should be distinguished 
 from the better half by the presence of a beard ; 
 but the whim having fastened itself upon the men 
 of Europe to assign that function to short hair, we 
 shave and have our hair cut in calm indifference to 
 what " nature craves." Shakespeare's men seem 
 to have felt no more qualms on the subject than 
 we do. So far may our formulae for our judg- 
 ments be removed from the veritable grounds on 
 which they are based. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE GOOD 
 
 The foundations of the moral world, we have 
 learned, are laid in the desire for the welfare of 
 self and others. But the term welfare is as vague 
 as an aphorism from Meister Eckhart, and the 
 moralist is bound to make it more definite. With- 
 out some conception of its meaning we could not 
 form the simplest decision. Without an exact for- 
 mula we may be left stranded at a critical period 
 in our career upon the sands of doubt and hesita- 
 tion, or we may be driven from our course by the 
 blind forces of temperament or swept away by some 
 current of education or fashion. Isabella, for in- 
 stance, hates a lie ; on the other hand, she de- 
 sires her brother's life. Of two goods the world 
 has room for but one. Let her choice fall as it 
 may, it must assume the truth of some theory of 
 values. To be sure, a formula for the good cannot 
 by itself serve as a pilot to guide us through the 
 intricacies of casuistry, but, supplemented by a 
 correct view of the relation that should be main- 
 tained between the pursuit of individual good and 
 the good of others, it is a chart to tell us in what 
 direction our harbor lies. 
 
78 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 The good (honum) means, of course, that which is 
 desirable or worth having. In ethical discussions, 
 unless the contrary is expressly stated, it denotes 
 that which is desirable not as a means to an end, 
 but as an end in itself. Among the prominent 
 claimants for the honor of occupying this position 
 are pleasure, activity, breadth and variety of experi- 
 ence,^ power, the beautiful, knowledge, virtue, and 
 the development of our faculties. The first and 
 the last are the two most prominent candidates, the 
 last under the name of self-realization having been 
 for a considerable period the favorite in the most 
 exclusive philosophical circles. And if within the 
 last few years its popularity has suffered something 
 of a decline, it can still, like a retired political 
 " sage," count upon the devoted loyalty of a faith- 
 ful few and the Platonic veneration of a multitude 
 of former worshipers. 
 
 At the very outset of any inquiry into the nature 
 of the good a formidable difficulty arises. What 
 is meant by the term valuable ? It has often been 
 thought sufficient to answer: That is valuable 
 which is desired ; that is intrinsically valuable 
 which is desired for its own sake. This definition 
 cannot be called false, for somewhere within the 
 circle of the desired the good must lie. But 
 whether it is adequate is quite another matter. 
 For reasons which will appear in their place I 
 
 ^ Cf. Faust : What all mankind of pain and of enjoyment 
 
 May taste, with them to taste be my e.-nploymeut. 
 Faust, part 1, Act II., scene vi. Translation of J. S. Blackie. 
 
The Nature of the Good 79 
 
 shall not, however, follow up this interesting and 
 important question. The majority of the investi- 
 gators in this field have contented themselves with 
 presenting a formula which they claim will cover 
 all the ultimate objects of desire. The limits of 
 our subject matter will restrict us to an examina- 
 tion of certain of these conclusions. 
 
 If by self-realization is meant the developing 
 and perfecting of all our powers and capacities of 
 intellect, taste, and will, then after what has been 
 said in a previous cliapter no proof is needed that 
 it fills a large place as a motive in the lives of the 
 broadest and most gifted men. It is true that our 
 study was confined to the will. Yet obviously an 
 interest in the development of all sides of our 
 nature will be the usual accompaniment of a scru- 
 pulous care for the perfection of any one of them. 
 A Prospero, therefore, who in the world of action 
 takes the side of his nobler reason against his 
 lower passions will also care supremely for the 
 bettering of his mind. And the frequently ex- 
 pressed ideal of living above the brutes will be 
 found to involve a desire, not merely for emanci- 
 pation from the power of blind and transient im- 
 pulses, but also for the possession of every capacity, 
 intellectual, emotional, and volitional, that dis- 
 tinguishes man from the lower animals. 
 
 Whether self-realization is entitled to the rank 
 of an ultimate end is a question that we may waive 
 for the moment. However the answer may fall, 
 we may easily assure ourselves that it is not 
 
8o Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 the only object of desire, even in the highest rep- 
 resentatives of the race. This will appear from 
 a study of one of the most characteristic features 
 of Shakespeare's world, namely the desire for 
 fame. 
 
 To the role played by this masterful passion 
 reference has already been made.^ We meet it at 
 the very beginning of one of the earliest comedies : 
 
 j". J ■ "Fame, that all hunt after in their lives." 
 
 From that time on there is scarcely a play where 
 the desire either for fame or its brother, good 
 reputation, is not an important factor in the 
 working out of the plot. Those to whom it 
 T. and c. means most hold it " far more precious- 
 V. iii. 27. dear than life," even where life has 
 everything to offer. 
 
 The same is true of the closely allied end, good 
 reputation. When Bolingbroke, who is one day to 
 be crowned Henry lY., charges the Duke of Nor- 
 folk with treason in the presence of King Richard 
 II., the accused nobleman demands the privilege 
 of clearing himself by the arbitrament of battle. 
 Richard, knowing that he is the real object of 
 Boliugbroke's attack, at first refuses to permit the 
 combat. Thereupon Norfolk breaks forth in words 
 that may fairly be called the fundamental article 
 in the creed of chivalry : 
 
 1 See above p. 15. 
 
The Nature of the Good 8i 
 
 " The purest treasure mortal times afford 
 Is spotless reputation : that away, 
 Men are but gilded loam or painted clay. Ricj^ard II 
 
 I. i. 177. 
 Mine honour is my life ; both grow in 
 
 one; 
 Take honour from me, and my life is 
 done." 
 
 To stand well with those about us is here declared 
 to be the chief end of man. This language can- 
 not be interpreted as merely the exaggeration of 
 passion, or as a mask of duplicity assumed to con- 
 ceal the features of crime. For what a man is 
 appears, if anywhere, in his last hours, and the 
 dying thought of some of Shakespeare's noblest 
 characters, — Antonio, Brutus, Hamlet, — concerns 
 itself with the portrait they are to leave behind 
 them in the memory of men. 
 
 The significance for our purposes of this attitude 
 towards fame and reputation lies in the fact that 
 both are here valued, not as means to some ulterior 
 end, but as ends in themselves. First, they do 
 not derive their value from any relation to self- 
 realization. This is obvious from their very nature. 
 Self-realization has to do with what we are, or, if 
 you prefer, with the way we appear to ourselves ; 
 fame and reputation, with the way we appear to 
 others. To confound things so different is to 
 widen your definition till self-realization means : 
 Whatever I choose to consider a good. 
 
 The independence of these two ends is, further- 
 
82 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 more, demonstrable by examples. One of the most 
 interesting passages to be found in the entire range 
 of Shakespeare's works is the controversy between 
 the sons of Priam, in Troilus and Cressida. In the 
 seventh year of the war, the Greeks offered to de- 
 part forever without demanding any indemnity for 
 their losses, provided the Trojans would give up 
 Helen. The proposition is brought in due form 
 before a family council where at first all favor its 
 acceptance, save Priam's youngest son, Troilus, 
 and naturally enough, his brother Paris. The dis- 
 cussion grows heated, Troilus being the centre of 
 attack. Finally Hector proceeds to define his 
 position for the last time. "The reasons you 
 allege," he says in reply to Paris and Troilus, 
 
 " do more conduce 
 T. and C. To the hot passion of distemper'd blood 
 II. ii. 168. Than to make up a free determination 
 'Twixt right and wrong." 
 
 Then follows a solemn assertion of the wickedness 
 
 of detaining Helen, concluding in an elevated 
 
 strain : 
 
 " These moral laws 
 Of nature and of nations speak aloud 
 
 L. 184. To have her back return'd : thus to persist 
 
 In doing wrong extenuates not wrong, 
 But makes it much more heavy." 
 
 Every one is accordingly prepared to hear Hector 
 insist anew upon the acceptance of the Greek 
 
The Nature of the Good 83 
 
 proposals. Imagine their surprise when in the 
 very next breath he continues : 
 
 " Hector's opinion 
 Is this in way of truth ; yet ne'ertheless, 
 My spritely brethren, I propend to you 
 In resolution to keep Helen still, L. 188. 
 
 For 't is a cause that hath no mean de- 
 
 pendance 
 Upon our joint and several dignities." 
 
 "What can he mean ? Troilus understands him 
 instantly : 
 
 " Why, there you touch'd the life of our design : 
 Were it not glory that we more affected 
 Than the performance of our heaving spleens, 
 I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood 
 Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector, 
 She is a theme of honour and renown, 
 A spur to valiant and magnanimous ^ 194 
 
 deeds. 
 Whose present courage may beat down our foes. 
 And fame in time to come canonize us ; 
 For, I presume, brave Hector would not lose 
 So rich advantage of a promised glory 
 As smiles upon the forehead of this action 
 For the wide world's revenue. 
 
 Hect. I am yours, 
 
 You valiant offspring of great Priamus." 
 
 Here, then, is an indubitable instance of a prefer- 
 ence for fame before character, and that by men 
 
84 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 upon whose idealization Shakespeare has lavished 
 all the wealth of his powers. 
 
 The theory of values here implied is explicitly 
 stated (though according to his custom never 
 acted upon) by Hamlet in the soliloquy after his 
 Hamlet IV. meeting with the fame-seeking Fortin- 
 iv. 46 ff. bras. It is put still more strongly 
 in Pericles. In this play the order of dependence 
 affirmed by the perfectionist is deliberately re- 
 versed, and virtue and wisdom are declared to be 
 valuable because they assure their possessor an 
 imperishable dwelling-place in the minds of men. 
 
 Cerimon. I hold it ever, 
 
 Virtue and cunning were endowments 
 greater 
 
 Pericles Than nobleness and riches : careless 
 
 m. ii. 26. heirs 
 
 May the two latter darken and expend ; 
 But immortality attends the former, 
 Making a man a god. 
 
 Of course this is merely Cerimon's polite way of 
 parrying his friends' praise. Nevertheless, to be 
 effective, what he says cannot seem either to 
 speaker or hearers utterly absurd. While, there- 
 fore, it need not have been taken by any of them 
 for the whole truth, it must have seemed valid 
 to them as far as it went. In fact, with a little 
 care in selecting one's illustrations, a plausible 
 argument could be made for the position that 
 fame, including, of course, reputation, is re- 
 
The Nature of the Good 85 
 
 garded in Shakespeare's world as the sole ultimate 
 good. 
 
 But if fame is not desired as a means to self- 
 realization, just as little is it ordinarily desired 
 because of the pleasure its attainment promises 
 to afford, A test case is supplied by Cassius, and 
 possibly Brutus, who wished for fame after death, 
 although they did not look forward to a life 
 beyond the grave. Hardly had Coesar fallen under 
 the blows of the conspirators, when the thought 
 of the leaders, beset though they were on all sides 
 by confusion and danger, turned as automatically 
 as a deflected needle to the glory promised them by 
 their deed. 
 
 Cassius. Stoop, then, and wash. How 
 
 many ages hence 
 Shall this our lofty scene be acted over 
 In states unborn and accents yet un- 
 known! 
 
 Brutus. How many times shall Caesar j. c. m. 
 
 bleed in sport, ^* ^^^• 
 
 That now on Pompey's basis lies along 
 No worthier than the dust ! 
 
 Cassius. So oft as that shall be, 
 
 So often shall the knot of us be call'd 
 The men that gave their country liberty. 
 
 Yet Cassius was an Epicurean,^ and v.i. 77. 
 
 Brutus seems to have shared with his iv. ui. 
 
 brother Stoics of that day the belief 1*5. 
 1 So also in Plutarch. 
 
86 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 that the consciousness of good and evil ends with 
 death. At least, in the farewell between him and 
 his friend we find no reference to the possibility 
 of a meeting in another world. Evi- 
 dently their desire for posthumous fame 
 was not aroused by the idea of enjoying its 
 realization. 
 
 Mighty as is the desire for fame, it may yield 
 in potency to the passion of love. Othello was 
 once altogether such a one as Hector ; the free 
 active life of the soldier, with its promise of power 
 and renown, the preservation of his reputation 
 for courage, honor, and leadership, these were 
 all in all to him. But the time came when Desde- 
 mona became a part of his life. Then in the 
 agony of the supposed annihilation of her affection, 
 he found he could have endured the wreck of his 
 Othello IV. ambition, yes, even the scorn of man, 
 ii. 47 ff. better than the loss of love. Why ? 
 At all events not because it meant loss of an 
 important means of self-realization. The love of 
 woman he had never expected, but when Desde- 
 mona wept at the story of the dangers he had 
 passed, he needs must love her. And when she 
 had become his wife, his bliss in possession did 
 not arise from the reflection that now a very 
 important and hitherto neglected side of his nature 
 could obtain its development, that his character 
 would become more perfectly rounded and more 
 harmonious as time went on through the growth 
 of latent capacities. No, it is what he has, not 
 
The Nature of the Good 87 
 
 what he maj become that fills his soul with 
 absolute content. 
 
 " If it were now to die, 
 ' Twere now to be most happy ; for, I fear, 
 My soul hath her content so absolute ii, i.l91. 
 
 That not another comfort like to this 
 Succeeds in unknown fate." 
 
 This brief survey seems to me to demonstrate 
 the existence of ends which are pursued for their 
 own sakes, alike without reference to their power 
 of developing faculties, and to the amount of 
 pleasure or freedom from pain they promise to 
 furnish. In view of the present state of ethical 
 controversy, it seems worth while to establish 
 this principle for that important end of human 
 endeavor, the good of others. 
 
 " What is your will ? That [Lysim- Pericles 
 achus] have his." The simple and 
 common phenomenon represented in this brief 
 dialogue has been the occasion of many an inky 
 battle. Taken in their obvious signification its 
 words are declared by some to stand for an impos- 
 sibility. When I act most " unselfishly " my will 
 is really aiming, they imagine, at some state of my- 
 self that can be reached only as my neighbor at- 
 tains the object of his desire. This state may then 
 be described, according to taste, either as sympa- 
 thetic pleasure in another's success, or as the 
 development of some of my various powers or 
 capacities. 
 
88 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 The first of these hypotheses appears in a well- 
 known Lincoln story. " Mr. Lincoln once remarked 
 to a fellow-passenger on an old-time mud-coach " 
 — so runs one version of the tale — " that all men 
 were prompted by selfishness in doing good. His 
 fellow-passenger was antagonizing his position, 
 when they were passing over a corduroy bridge 
 that spanned a slough. As they crossed this 
 bridge they espied an old razor-backed sow on the 
 bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had 
 got into the slough and were in danger of drown- 
 ing. As the old coach began to climb the hill Mr. 
 Lincoln called out, ' Driver, can't you stop just a 
 moment?' Then Mr. Lincoln jumped out, ran 
 back, and lifted the little pigs out of the mud and 
 water and placed them on the bank. When he 
 returned, his companion remarked : ' Now, Abe, 
 where does selfishness come in on this little 
 episode ? ' ' Why, bless your soul, Ed, that 
 was the very essence of selfishness. I should 
 have had no peace of mind all day had I gone 
 on and left that suffering old sow worrying over 
 those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don't 
 you see ? ' " i 
 
 That Mr. Lincoln has supplied a correct explana- 
 tion of many an action there can be no doubt. 
 That the explanation is inadequate to account for 
 all the facts is equally certain. Clarence, brother 
 of Edward lY. and Richard IIL, warned by a 
 
 1 Quoted from the Springfield (111.) Monitor, in the Outlook, 
 Vol. LVI, p. 1059. 
 
The Nature of the Good 89 
 
 dream that the hour of his death is at hand, cries 
 out in agony of soul, 
 
 " God ! if my deep prayers cannot 
 
 appease thee, 
 But thou wilt be avenged on my mis- Bichardm. 
 
 deeds, I- i^- 69- 
 
 Yet execute thy wrath in me alone, 
 0, spare my guiltless wife and my poor 
 
 children ! " 
 
 His petition is not for ease of mind about his 
 family, but for his family. He is as far from 
 begging to be assured of their welfare as he is 
 from begging to be allowed to witness it. The 
 direct object of his desire is their good. In fact, 
 the Lincoln paradox is susceptible of a very simple 
 explanation. Unsatisfied desire may become the 
 object of a secondary desire, the desire to be rid of 
 the desiring state. But obviously the secondary 
 desire is made possible by the existence of a 
 primary desire with a different object. 
 
 According to the second of the above mentioned 
 hypotheses, when I am making a sacrifice for the 
 benefit of another — as the untutored mind naively 
 calls it — I am in reality interested solely in devel- 
 oping my own courage, my power of enduring pain 
 or privation, my sympathies, or some such thing. 
 To put it plainly and without circumlocution, I am 
 merely using my fellow men as material on which 
 to work up my emotional and volitional muscle, a 
 sort of moral Swedish horse or flying trapeze. A 
 
go Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 man like Kent becomes in this view an excep- 
 tionally determined athlete, bearing the same rela- 
 tion to the average mortal that the climber of 
 Alpine peaks does to the business man who gets 
 all the exercise he wants by walking to and from 
 his street-car. This theory is ruled out of court, 
 if put forward as an all-suJEiicient description of 
 altruistic action, in case we can find an instance 
 of a desire for the good of those whose welfare we 
 cannot affect by our actions, and who therefore 
 make no demand upon the exercise of our faculties. 
 The scene just cited supplies such an instance. 
 When a man who is looking death in the face 
 prays, " 0, spare my guiltless wife and my poor 
 children ! " he is begging for that which can never 
 affect the state of his moral muscle, one way or the 
 other. 
 
 If we may affirm that neither pleasure nor self- 
 realization is the sole object of desire, we must 
 assert with equal emphasis that neither can be ex- 
 cluded from the category of the desired. For self- 
 realization Shakespeare hardly affords us the test 
 case we might expect to have ; but surely we are 
 entitled to infer that if a man may desire for its 
 own sake to present a certain appearance to others, 
 he may desire in an exactly similar manner to 
 present that same appearance to himself; or, in 
 other words, if he may desire to seem, he may 
 desire to be. 
 
 With regard to pleasure the facts are really 
 beyond controversy. The claims of psychological 
 
The Nature of the Good 91 
 
 hedonism have indeed been met by the counter- 
 claim that pleasure is never a direct object of 
 desire nor pain of aversion. But this statement is 
 simply an illustration of the principle that narrow- 
 ness enkindles narrowness. No one, of course, ever 
 desires " mere pleasure," for there is no such thing. 
 But to say we desire pleasure means that we 
 desire a state because and in so far as it promises 
 to be pleasant. Evidence that this is possible for 
 aversion from pain seems to be afforded by Othello's 
 last words to Desdemona : 
 
 " Not dead ? not yet quite dead ? 
 I that am cruel am yet merciful ; Othello V. 
 
 I would not have thee linger in thy ii- 86. 
 pain." 
 
 There may be those who imagine that Othello is 
 merely afraid his mercifulness will lose something 
 of its delicacy if he is not careful to prevent un- 
 necessary suffering. But I venture to affirm that 
 for the spectator not mad with too much learning 
 the tragic power of these brief lines lies in the 
 assumption that at the last supreme moment 
 Othello desires the good of her he still must love, 
 and that he does not regard a prolongation of the 
 death agony by a few minutes or even seconds too 
 trifling a matter to be worthy of consideration. 
 
 That the aversion to certain emotional states 
 may be due to their painfulness is exhibited in the 
 plays with even greater clearness. Constance, the 
 widow of King John's older brother, has just lost 
 
92 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 her only son, and is racked with the agony of a 
 desolated mother. Doubtless she would not be 
 free from her grief at the price of less sensitive- 
 ness ; that would conflict with an ideal of mother- 
 hood which she could not cast away. But if she 
 could be free without lowering herself in her own 
 eyes how gladly would she welcome the change. 
 
 "I am not mad: I would to heaven I 
 were ! 
 For then, ' tis like I should forget 
 myself : 
 King John O, if I could, what grief should I 
 m. iv. 48. forget ! 
 
 Preach some philosophy to make me 
 
 mad, 
 And thou shalt be canonized, cardinal." 
 
 Shakespeare wrote this as a young man. But 
 in the maturity of his powers he portrays a similar 
 situation met in the same spirit. The speaker is 
 the blind Gloucester. 
 
 "The king is mad: how stiff is my vile 
 sense, 
 That I stand up, and have ingenious 
 feeling 
 Lear IV. Of my huge sorrows ! Better I were 
 
 Ti- 286. distract: 
 
 So should my thoughts be sever'd from 
 
 my griefs, 
 And woes by wrong imaginations lose 
 The knowledge of themselves." 
 
The Nature of the Good 93 
 
 The conclusion to be derived from the foregoing 
 
 _ analysis is that if good be defined as the object of 
 
 desire Shakespeare represents a world in which no 
 
 one formula can be made to cover the content of 
 
 the idea. Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, risks all 
 
 for glory ; to another man reputation is a bubble. 
 
 Desdemona would not have been such a woman as 
 
 Othello thinks her for all the world ; Emilia, on 
 
 : the other hand, while she would not choose such a 
 
 course for a small matter like a ring, is certain she 
 
 would do it for the world, and she knows many 
 
 women like herself. Kent thinks that death has 
 
 ■ been kind to Lear : 
 
 " He hates him much 
 " That would upon the rack of this tough lear V. iii. 
 world ^^3- 
 
 Stretch him out longer." 
 
 Not so, the thorough-going perfectionist would say. 
 Lear is now restored in mind. Though feeble in 
 body, with, at most, but a few years of life before 
 him, he has still unrealized powers and capacities 
 which are capable of development. That he has 
 not altogether stiffened into the immobility of age 
 is shown by the fact that, in the few weeks of 
 mingled passion and madness since his abdication, 
 the old king has become a different man. When 
 the storm has cleared we find a new light has 
 dawned upon his soul, a light that the sun of pros- 
 perity could never throw. Hence he has still 
 everything to live for. True, death has robbed 
 
94 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 him of his one remaining joy. Drearily, hence- | 
 forward, will his days drag themselves toward 
 the inevitable end. But pleasure and pain are 
 matters of no importance. Moreover, Cordelia's 
 death, under the circumstances in which it took 
 place, may be expected to bring out new and in- 
 teresting phases of his character. He hates him 
 much that would see his journey towards perfec- 
 tion shortened by a single step. 
 
 Whose judgment of values is correct ? Or is 
 there no standard that applies to all men ? Is my 
 good simply that which I desire ; and when choice is 
 necessary, is the better that which I desire more ? 
 We remember Hamlet's answer to this question. 
 Hamlet finds Denmark a prison ; Rosencrantz 
 finds it otherwise. 
 
 / Hamlet. Why, then, 't is none to you ; 
 
 Hamlet n. 
 
 but thinking makes it so. 
 
 .. „._ for there is nothing either good or bad,* 
 
 But Shakespeare, who can speak against the 
 thing he says, gives us another view in a pas- 
 sage that may have been written about the same 
 time. During the controversy between the 
 sons of Priam already referred to, the youth- 
 ful Troilus ventures the same paradox about a 
 woman : 
 
 T. ^^C. n. ,, y^^^^ .g ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ,^ .g ^^YyxQdi ? " 
 1 Not " right or wrong," as this is often understood to mean. 
 
The Nature of the Good 95 
 
 To this Hector at once replies : 
 
 " But value dwells not in particular will ; 
 It holds his estimate and dignity 
 As well wherein 't is precious of itself 
 As in the prizer." 
 
 In other words, a man's own preferences are not 
 necessarily the sole ultimate standard in determin- 
 ing his good. 
 
 Which of the foregoing statements is correct is 
 obviously a problem upon the solution of which all 
 subsequent investigation into the content of the good 
 must depend. Material bearing directly upon it is 
 not, I think, offered by Shakespeare ; those phases 
 of the mental life that alone could supply the 
 necessary data, he has not cared to represent. 
 While our results are thus in the main negative, 
 they are not, I trust, for that reason profitless. 
 We have discovered that those psychologists and 
 moralists are in error who describe the will as 
 always directed to a single goal ; and we have dis- 
 covered that, contrary to the assertion of various 
 writers, perfection, pleasure, and the good of others, 
 as well as much else, may become the direct object 
 of desire. These doctrines are not merely of im- 
 portance in themselves, they derive an added sig- 
 nificance from the fact that they represent the 
 only results of the long controversy about the 
 honum that can lay any claim to the dignity of es- 
 tablished truths. For they alone, amidst the clash 
 of contending opinions, have been able to secure 
 
g6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 the allegiance of an ever-increasing proportion of 
 the best contemporary authorities. They may 
 therefore be looked upon as the foundation for all 
 that the future will accomplish in this field of in- 
 vestigation. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSCIENCELESS 
 
 If the great master of those who know human life 
 has succeeded in describing adequately the conflict 
 within the will between the better and the worse, 
 he has supplied the data for defining the funda- 
 mental word in the ethical vocabulary. Accord- 
 ing to certain moralists, as we have seen, conscience 
 is a mystic oracle within the breast through which 
 are transmitted to this lower world the laws of a 
 supersensible commonwealth. According to others, 
 conscience cannot be a separate faculty, function- 
 ing by itself in some corner of the mind ; it is the 
 mind as a whole regarded as the source of moral 
 judgments. It is in the latter way, if our previous 
 conclusions are warranted, that the matter should 
 be described by Shakespeare. Whether he does 
 in fact so describe it may be determined by study- 
 ing a typical representation of the revival of moral 
 sensibility. 
 
 The scene is laid in the chamber of Queen Ger- 
 trude, in the castle of Elsinore. Behind the arras 
 lies the slain Polonius. Turning away with un- 
 concern from the deed his hand has just committed, 
 Hamlet addresses himself to his trembling mother : 
 
 7 
 
98 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 "Leave wringing of your hands: peace! 
 sit you down, 
 Hamlet IH. j^^^ jg^ ^q wring your heart ; for so I 
 shall, 
 If it be made of penetrable stuff." 
 
 Before them on the arras stands the figure of the 
 murdered king ; next to him the man that robbed 
 him of place, of love, of life. 
 
 "Look here, upon this picture, and on 
 this, 
 
 The counterfeit presentment of two 
 brothers. 
 
 See, what a grace was seated on this brow ; 
 
 Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove him- 
 self; 
 
 An eye like Mars, to threaten and com- 
 mand ; 
 L. 68. A station like the herald Mercury 
 
 New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 
 
 A combination and a form indeed. 
 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
 
 To give the world assurance of a man : 
 
 This was your husband. Look you now, 
 what follows : 
 
 Here is your husband ; like a mildew'd 
 ear. 
 
 Blasting his wholesome brother." 
 
 How could she turn away from one so noble ? How 
 could she forget solemnly contracted vows to throw 
 herself into the arms of " a murderer and a villain ; 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 99 
 
 a slave that is not twentieth part the tithe of [her] 
 precedent lord ? " He finds but one answer : the 
 capriciousness of lust. This it is that made her 
 fall a prey to the guilty advances of her husband's 
 brother; that drove from her mind the image of 
 her former lord before he was laid in the grave ; 
 that sealed her eyes to the murder of her husband 
 and hurried her into an incestuous union with the 
 murderer. Licentiousness, shallowness of heart, 
 disloyalty to the dead, incest, this is the count. 
 As black on black the picture is painted before her 
 eyes, the better impulses of that fallen nature are 
 quickened into life and the power returns to see 
 herself as she is. " Hamlet, speak no more," 
 she cries in the agony of self-recognition, 
 
 " Thou turns't mine eyes into my very soul ; 
 
 And there I see such black and grained 
 
 L. 88. 
 
 spots 
 
 As will not leave their tinct." 
 
 Love and pity, sorrow and shame at the downfall 
 of her nobler self, loathing for the self that now 
 dwells in its place, these Hamlet has aroused. If 
 the scene is meant to represent the awakening of 
 conscience, these are conscience. 
 
 But if, when the situation demands the sacrifice 
 of some personal interest, there be neither altruism 
 in its heaven-directed or earth-directed form, nor 
 desire for perfection of character, nor direct abhor- 
 rence of vice, to what can we appeal ? Nothing. 
 We may, of course, use bribery or threats ; but the 
 
 L.ofC. 
 
lOO Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 result is not genuine morality. The man is con- 
 scienceless, whatever he does or refrains from 
 doing. He feels no scruples about the proposed 
 crime and no real remorse for it when past. Shake- 
 speare has not hesitated to draw several such char- 
 acters. If we disregard Aaron, in Titus Andronicus, 
 on the ground of disputed authorship, his first 
 essay in this direction was Richard 111.^ 
 
 To descant upon the crimes of this intrepid vil- 
 lain were to harp upon a hackneyed theme. As 
 every one admits, no traces of moral principle can 
 be discovered in his career as represented in the 
 main body of the drama. In cold blood he plans 
 and perpetrates a series of revolting murders, and 
 feels nothing but satisfaction in his success. But 
 in his last hours, it is often held, this moral indif- 
 ference disappears. When, on the eve of the battle 
 of Bosworth Field, he is warned by voices whose 
 prophetic nature he cannot doubt that his life is 
 at an end, and when on the black curtain of the 
 night the vision of the past is thrown, scene after 
 scene, then what he calls conscience rises to afflict 
 him. He awakes in terror, while cold fearful drops 
 stand on his trembling flesh. 
 
 What are the thoughts that oppress and terrify 
 his soul ? It is easy to discover, for to the unbiased 
 observer they are unequivocally revealed. Listen 
 to the cry with which he awakes : 
 
 1 The Shakespearean authorship of Richard III. has been de- 
 nied by James Russell Lowell, but, it would appear, on insufficient 
 evidence. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless loi 
 
 " Give me another horse : bind up my 
 wounds. 
 Have mercy, Jesu ! — Soft ! I did but 
 
 ^^'^^™- Kichard HI. 
 
 Methought the souls of all that I had v. iii. 177, 
 murder'd 178,204-206. 
 
 Came to my tent; and every one did 
 
 threat 
 To-morrow's vengeance on the head of 
 
 Richard." 
 
 From the priest's lips he had often heard that 
 
 " The great King of kings 
 
 Hath in the tables of his law commanded , . ^„ 
 
 L. IV. 200. 
 That thou shalt do no murder." 
 
 That God " holds vengeance in His hands," was a 
 fundamental tenet of his church. Why 
 
 L. 204. 
 
 should he doubt it? There is no evi- 
 dence that he was a skeptic. In the presence of his 
 generals he could, indeed, scoff at the thought of 
 future retribution : 
 
 "Let not our babbling dreams affright our 
 
 souls : 
 Conscience is but a word that cowards 
 
 use, 
 Devised at first to keep the strong in ' ' ' 
 
 awe: 
 Our strong arms be our conscience, 
 
 swords our law." 
 
 But manifestly he is here whistling to keep up his 
 own and his followers' courage. Can he for a mo- 
 
I02 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ment imagine that God will fail to keep His word ? 
 Does he not know that Richard, King of England, 
 has never permitted the slightest act of disobedi- 
 ence to his commands to go unpmiished ? So with 
 all his bravado he cannot help believing these mid- 
 night apparitions to be messengers of divine wrath. 
 For belief in dreams was an unquestioned element 
 in the creed of the time, and what these dreams an- 
 nounced was a punishment that he knew was inevi- 
 table, sooner or later. In the heyday of life he 
 could forget the threatening vengeance, but now it 
 is immediately upon him ; the vengeance is to- 
 morrow's, and vengeance means not merely defeat 
 and failure, but death and hell. Well may he start 
 in terror, though no coward. But in all this there 
 is no trace of self-condemnation ; only fear. 
 
 „ ... ,-« "0 coward conscience, how dost thou 
 V. m. 179. 
 
 afflict me!" 
 
 « Ratcliff, I fear, I fear, — 
 
 Bat. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of 
 
 shadows. 
 K. Rich. By the apostle Paul, shadows 
 
 to-night 
 Have struck more terror to the soul of 
 
 Richard 
 Than can the substance' of ten thousand 
 
 soldiers 
 Armfed in proof, and led by shallow 
 
 Richmond." 
 
 Such fear by itself means no more than that frail 
 mortality believes itself in the hands of Omnipo- 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 103 
 
 tence, enraged because for the moment its will has 
 been blocked. 
 
 But the text as handed down to us contains other 
 matter. 
 
 " What do I fear ? myself ? there 's none 
 else by : 
 
 Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. 
 
 Is there a murderer here ? No. Yes, I 
 am: 
 
 Then fly. What, from myself ? Great 
 
 reason why : L. 182. 
 
 Lest I revenge. What, myself upon my- 
 self? 
 
 Alack, I love myself. Wherefore ? for 
 any good 
 
 That I myself have done unto myself ? 
 
 0, no ! alas, I rather hate myself 
 
 For hateful deeds committed by my- 
 self!" 
 
 and so forth, for nine more dreary lines. What 
 are we to make of such words ? Is Shakespeare 
 representing this cold-blooded monster as feeling 
 genuine remorse for crime ? Can he be supposed 
 to hate himself ? Does he intend we shall believe 
 Richard was oppressed with a consciousness of 
 guilt ? 
 
 The answer to this question involves a problem 
 of textual criticism. " Some parts of [this solilo- 
 quy]," says Hudson^ "are in or near the poet's 
 
 1 Shakespeare : His Life, Art, and Characters, Vol. II., p. 
 168. 
 
I04 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 best style, others in his worst. . . . [The latter are] 
 made up of forced conceits and affectations, such 
 as nature utterly refuses to own. ... It is hard to 
 believe that Shakespeare could have written [them] 
 at any time of his life, or that the speaker, was 
 meant to be in earnest in twisting such riddles ; but 
 he was. Some have, indeed, claimed to see a reason 
 for the thing in the speaker's state of mind ; but this 
 view is to my thinking quite upset by the better 
 parts of the same speech." Now it is noticeable 
 that just those lines of the monologue that are 
 assthetically painful are ethically perplexing. "We 
 have, therefore, our choice between two hypotheses. 
 Either Shakespeare, like Coleridge, in that mon- 
 strosity known as Remorse, supposed that sorrow 
 for a misspent life, horror of crime, and self-loath- 
 ing, can arise in a nature that possesses neither 
 sympathy, honor, nor antipathy for treachery ; or 
 — the second alternative — some one to us un- 
 known, thinking this representation of the guilty 
 sinner on the eve of death was not sufficiently ac- 
 curate, or edifying, or blood-curdling, attempted to 
 improve upon Shakespeare's art by supplementing 
 his deficiencies. 
 
 The latter hypothesis is far from gratuitous. 
 "It seems almost certain," says Karl Elze^ "that 
 [Shakespeare's own manuscripts] never were in 
 a printer's hands, except the manuscript of his 
 Venus and Adonis and his Lucrece which he pub- 
 
 1 William Shakespeare. English Translation, by L. Dora 
 Schmitz, p 296. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 105 
 
 lislied himself." For this reason and many other 
 equally good ones, textual critics are generally 
 agreed that no one of the plays has come down to us 
 exactly as it was written. If with these facts in 
 mind we compare the lines in question with others 
 that are undoubted interpolations, as Measure for 
 Measure, Act III., scene ii., lines 275-296, and 
 King Lear, Act III., scene ii., lines 80-95, we 
 shall recognize them as the productions of kindred 
 souls. Accordingly the choice seems an easy one. 
 The passage is not from Shakespeare's hand. 
 
 But if, soaked with a priori ideas of what the 
 criminal ought to feel, we reject this conclusion ; 
 if we think it more likely that the youthful Shake- 
 speare wrote doggerel than that he represented 
 a villain living and dying without remorse, we 
 may turn to the studies in crime of the maturer 
 man, the man who in the days of the great trage- 
 dies had attained the fulness of his mental stature. 
 The conclusions derivable from an analysis of the 
 characters of Goneril and lago depend upon no 
 excision of doubtful passages, upon no interpreta- 
 tions that may be forced upon single words or 
 isolated sentences. 
 
 It has been said even by keen critics that Goneril 
 and her sister Regan are exactly alike ; " alike as 
 two crabs," says the keenest critic of the guild. 
 But nature never turns out two figures from the 
 same model, and Shakespeare is nature. Regan 
 has the tongue of a shrew ; moreover, she appears 
 only too ready in carrying out the suggestions of 
 
io6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 her older sister. But in judging her it must be 
 remembered that both women acted with reference 
 to their father under the greatest provocation.^ If 
 all the circumstances are studied carefully and 
 without prejudice, it will be found that Regan, while 
 indeed a woman of cold, selfish, and vindictive 
 nature, stands no lower in the moral scale than 
 hundreds of respectable people ; and a number of 
 indications strewn through the text make it appear 
 that at her worst she is rather driven to evil deeds 
 by awe of her strong-minded sister than drawn by 
 the spontaneous promptings of an actively cruel 
 nature. At all events, it is from Goneril that sug- 
 gestions of novelties in cruelty invariably come. 
 She it is that first disquantities her father's train. 
 She it is that forestalls any attempt to recall the 
 old king, as he rushes out into the darkness, by her 
 cold-blooded sentence : 
 
 " 'T is his own blame ; hath put himself 
 Lear II. iv. n . 
 
 2QQ from rest, 
 
 And must needs taste his folly." 
 
 Under Lear's curses his second daughter winces ; 
 but Goneril merely laughs in derision at his terri- 
 ble maledictions as the drivelling of a dotard. 
 
 But the difference between the sisters goes much 
 deeper. Regan is free from treachery even to the 
 point of unsuspiciousness ; it is not her part to 
 press the poisoned cup to the lips of one by whose 
 death she will profit. But Goneril, aspiring to the 
 
 1 See Barrett Wendell, William Shakespeare, p. 296 fE. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 107 
 
 throne of an undivided England in company with 
 Edmund, is capable of destroying every life that 
 stands between her and her goal. Her sister we 
 behold stricken by her potation ; her husband was 
 to fall a victim to the same fate ; her brother-in- 
 law must have been within the scope of her mur- 
 derous plans, if we may judge from the way in which 
 the news of his death is received ; it was her writ, 
 as well as Edmund's, that was upon the life of Lear 
 and of Cordelia. Nor was this, as we may infer, 
 the first attempt she had made to kill her father. 
 Before even the slight excuse that he had harbored 
 with her enemies was offered her, she had sought 
 to disencumber herself of him. We learn from 
 Gloucester that at the time Lear sought refuge 
 with Regan there was " a plot of death 
 upon him." We cannot with justice 
 suspect the second sister, for she seems to be speak- 
 ing in good faith when she says she will take care 
 of her father gladly, provided he will dismiss his 
 retinue. On the other hand, circumstantial evi- 
 dence, which the careful reader will not fail to 
 notice, points directly to Goneril as the guilty party. 
 It is even possible that she had formed her resolu- 
 tion upon the very day on which the old king an- 
 nounced his purpose to lay down his authority. 
 For her first words to Regan, after the partition of 
 the kingdom, are dark hints about important plans 
 concerning Lear, plans not to be thought about, 
 but to be acted upon and " i' the heat." 
 
 But, after all, the exact time at which Goneril 
 
io8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 became, in intention, a parricide is of minor con- 
 sequence. She is in any event a monster, whereas 
 Regan is no more than a heartless and undutiful 
 woman. It is the older sister, therefore, that 
 stands as the incarnation of brazen-faced iniquity 
 in its most aggressive and shameless form. 
 
 What, then, will this ruthless creature do when 
 her husband loads her with reproaches for her in- 
 humanity and want of natural affection ? Will she 
 awake to a sense of the enormity of her offences ? 
 Will she melt with contrition ? It might have been 
 if within her breast there had dwelt some rudiments 
 of a better nature. On the eve of the commission 
 of a great crime many a perverted will finds resolu- 
 tion stayed by the presence of an enemy within the 
 gates. But of Goneril's kingdom no such insurrec- 
 tion is recorded ; for the historian, looking into her 
 soul, found there no rebel armed against the gov- 
 erning power. Hence, when she is confronted with 
 the awful picture of her inner life, she feels no 
 sorrow, no remorse, because she lacks the pre- 
 conditions. The rather, by that instinct of self- 
 preservation which dwells alike in our best and 
 worst impulses, rage and contempt arise. Re- 
 proach is met by recrimination, and Albany is 
 scored as a milksop, a coward, a moral- 
 ly, u. 50-59, izing fool. Later, in the very moment 
 Cf. Fencles ' j 
 
 IV. iii. when her sister is dying with poison 
 
 that she has administered, and her plot 
 to kill her husband lies open to the light of day, she 
 still breathes defiance as in the time of her strength ; 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 109 
 and with the words on her lips, " The _ ... ,^- 
 
 '■ V. 111. 100. 
 
 laws are mine, not thine : who can ar- 
 raign me for 't ? " this unbending spirit goes forth 
 to meet death. 
 
 Yet even in this woman there still slumbers a 
 germ of the moral life. When Edmund, whom she 
 loves, lies dying before her, she suspects double 
 dealing, and at once raises the cry of treachery, the 
 cry, that is, of wrong, not merely of in- 
 jury. Inasmuch as her own sister is ' * ' 
 at that moment dying of the poison which she had 
 herself mixed, such a complaint may seem the very 
 acme of absurdity. That it is in the highest degree 
 inconsistent is evident ; hardly less so that it is 
 supremely human. The principle is illustrated 
 over and over again in the historical plays, and 
 while every one is familiar with its less exaggerated 
 manifestations, experience will show that there are 
 no limits to its application. Goneril, then, pos- 
 sesses just sufficient conscience to be roused to 
 moral indignation for a passing instant, when she 
 believes a cruel injury has been done her and the 
 man she loves, although she has not enough to feel 
 the lightest touches of self-condemnation for the 
 crimes by which she herself is to profit. 
 
 It is to lago, then, that we must turn for Shake- 
 speare's sole representative, in his later period, of 
 the absolutely conscienceless being. With the 
 moral vocabulary lago is, indeed, well acquainted. 
 By observation he has learned what others admire 
 and hate. Hence, he can use terms expressive of 
 
no Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 praise and blame with perfect propriety. Such 
 actions as his, he knows, people call the blackest 
 sins; himself they would call a devil. We may 
 accordingly overhear him saying, with admirable 
 perspicuity : 
 
 " When devils will the blackest sins put 
 on, 
 Othello II. They do suggest at first with heavenly 
 iii. 357. shows, 
 
 As I do now." 
 
 But let no one be deceived by these linguistic 
 attainments. 
 
 Students of criminal psychology have noticed 
 that most criminals employ euphemistic terms in 
 speaking of their misdeeds. In the language of 
 the German vagabond, thieving is business {G-e- 
 schdft). The French burglar and murderer, Lace- 
 naire, used the same word in seeking to obtain an 
 accomplice in his friend Avril : " We ought to go 
 into business together," he urged — " nous devons 
 mSler ensemble notre Industrie." ^ In the thieves' 
 Henry V j^^'go^ ^f England, according to the boy 
 III. ii. 44. in Henry V., stealing was " purchase." 
 jyigj^ From Pistol we learn it was also styled 
 
 Wives I. " convey." This characteristic of hu- 
 
 iii 33 
 
 man nature — for it is not confined to 
 those who come into conflict with the police — has 
 sometimes occasioned much amusement among the 
 thoughtless. But, as a matter of fact, the man who 
 
 1 Despine, Psychologie naturelle, Vol. II., p. 433. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 1 1 1 
 
 in the very act of committing a crime can look 
 upon his deed with unaverted eyes, has reached the 
 last stage of moral insensibility. For him who 
 palters with himself there is always some hope ; 
 for the clear-seeing criminal, never. Accordingly, 
 when an immoral man applies to his own conduct 
 the adjectives by which the race express their 
 admirations and loathings, he demonstrates either 
 complete atrophy of conscience, or a weak will, which 
 knows and approves the better, and struggles, 
 though in vain, against overmastering temptations. 
 It is to the former class that lago belongs. Like 
 Richard III., he can face the truth be- 
 cause insensible of its meaning. What i]^^^'^!^' 
 feats of objectivity were possible to him Richard 
 is shown by a significant passage at the oQ^'g^ ^' 
 beginning of the fifth act. Having de- 
 cided that Cassio must die — a point apparently 
 not included in the original draft of his plan — he 
 is reviewing after his characteristic fashion the 
 grounds for his decision. Among them he finds 
 this : 
 
 " [Cassio] hath a daily beauty in his life othello V. 
 That makes me ugly." i- 19. 
 
 lago has discovered that people admire Cassio 
 more than him, notwithstanding his "honesty" 
 and desire to be useful. Such a state of affairs 
 may be prejudicial to his interests. Indeed it had 
 already proved so, for it had doubtless helped to 
 
112 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 bring about the promotion of the " bookish theoric " 
 to the position he himself coveted. And certainly 
 it had led to the selection of the same theorist in 
 preference to the practical ancient as Othello's con- 
 fidant in his love affairs. For this reason, then, 
 Cassio must be thrust out of the way. But instead 
 of saying to himself, as a better man would have 
 done : Cassio must be killed, because people admire 
 him more than me, he states his grounds with 
 almost incredible coolness in purely objective 
 terms : Cassio's character is more admirable than 
 mine. Such an utterance would have been practi- 
 cally impossible had not these words been to him 
 as are the names of colors to one born blind, who 
 has mastered the science of optics. 
 
 Some critics have found it possible, however, to 
 endow lago with the rudiments of a conscience, 
 because of a peculiarity in the accounts he gives 
 himself of his own motives. As is well known, 
 the utterances of the monologues in which these 
 revelations appear are confused and at times con- 
 tradictory. The facts themselves, nevertheless, 
 seem perfectly clear. He desires Roderigo's 
 money, Cassio's place ; possibly, too, the satisfaction 
 of avenging himself upon Othello for preferring a 
 book-crammed student to a man of affairs like 
 himself, and for being the (innocent) occasion of 
 false reports about his wife's infidelity. Though 
 with regard to this matter of revenge, we may be 
 sure that it would never have been allowed to inter- 
 fere with what he considered his profit ; while the 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 113 
 
 fact that at the end he tries to drag Othello into 
 the same net with himself can be explained hj 
 other motives than malevolence.^ Most of all he 
 lusts for a sense of his own power, and like 
 Nietzsche, he knows nothing of the strength that 
 dedicates itself to bearing the burdens of others. He 
 therefore finds an actual enjoyment in his villainy, 
 not primarily because he wants revenge, as is the 
 conventional opinion, but because lie delights in 
 the sense of strength and skill that is awakened by 
 successful intrigue.2 He chuckles over his disguise 
 and plays with it ; he becomes so fasci- cf. 11. Ui. 
 nated with the game that he half forgets ^^' ^^■ 
 the ends for which it was originally undertaken, 
 and we hear about his marital jealousy of the Moor 
 gnawing his inwards, and even of a n. i. 304- 
 similar jealousy of Cassio. ^^^• 
 
 The palpable absurdity of his believing such 
 suspicions, and of their " gnawing his inwards," 
 even if he did believe them, is so great that many 
 critics, following Coleridge, have discovered in 
 these utterances the workings of conscience seek- 
 ing some justification for the deeds it beholds 
 committed. There is, however, no necessity for 
 such an assumption. A cold-blooded calculating- 
 machine like lago must always have some ulterior 
 end in view in everything he does. Are there not 
 many excellent people who can never take a walk 
 or go upon a journey without inventing some 
 
 1 See below, p. 126. 
 
 2 See Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays : Othello. 
 
114 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 errand or call of business by way of a pretext? 
 lago is one of this class. Starting out to get 
 money, position, and a taste of revenge en route, 
 he is so far carried away by his delight in the hunt 
 that to keep his self-respect as a rational being he 
 has to invent as many reasons as his imagination can 
 rake together to justify himself in taking the enor- 
 mous risks he is incurring. Calculation, not con- 
 science, is the only explanation needed for his 
 " motive hunting." Calculation and a passion for 
 intrigue explain the overwhelming majority of his 
 words and deeds. The little that remains outside 
 springs from sources not a whit more pure. 
 
 How lago will act when his trap finally closes 
 upon li self is foreshadowed in the analysis just 
 made. Devoid as he is of all moral sensibility, he 
 betrai . neither sorrow nor shame as the network 
 of his villainy is at length unravelled in the sight 
 of the world, and his victims lie stricken before 
 his eyes. He confesses just enough to secure a 
 
 .. companion in punishment, then closes 
 
 his lips forever. Unrelenting, cold as 
 the remorseless ice of an Alpine glacier, he is led 
 away in silence to the torture chamber. 
 
 Does lago live in this real world of ours ? Can 
 a human mother bring forth such a monster ? The 
 answer of transcendentalism is unequivocal. In 
 the most emphatic terms Kant affirms and reaffirms 
 the doctrine that " there is no man so depraved 
 that in transgressing [the moral law] he would not 
 feel a resistance, and an abhorrence of himself, so 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 115 
 
 that he must put a force on himself." ^ The very 
 existence of transcendentalism is bound up with the 
 maintenance of this position. For the categorical 
 ought is the offspring of pure reason, and pure 
 reason, as the source of the fundamental princi- 
 ples of all forms of knowledge, is an essential ele- 
 ment of even the most primitive human mind. 
 Moreover, the purpose of the creation of man 
 lies in his reducing the inner world of impulse 
 and the outer world of blind force to a cosmos 
 governed by reason's law. Obviously nature can- 
 not be represented as defeating its own ends by 
 creating instruments that lack the fundamental 
 requisite for the performance of their appointed 
 function. 
 
 Whom, then, shall we believe, Kant or Shake- 
 speare ? As was promised in the introduction to 
 this study, the question of the objective value of 
 Shakespeare's delineations has hitherto been kept 
 in the background. At this point, however, an 
 exception to the previously observed policy seems 
 to be called for. In the first place, as the outcome 
 of carefully conducted researches carried on by a 
 large number of investigators during the past forty 
 years, there has come into existence a group of 
 important principles that are accepted by all 
 authorities regardless of what other ethical and 
 metaphysical theories they may happen to hold. 
 Here, for once, then, we can test Shakespeare's 
 
 ^ Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten; Einleitung zur Tugendlehre. 
 Abbott's Translation, p. 290, note. 
 
1 1 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 fidelity to nature by criteria more objective than 
 individual prejudices and fancies. In the second 
 place, as we have already seen, and as we shall 
 have farther opportunity to discover in our study 
 of Macbeth, Shakespeare's criminals are constantly 
 being misinterpreted through ignorance of the 
 character of their prototypes in our own world. A 
 brief review of certain of the results of criminal 
 psychology may accordingly prove of genuine ser- 
 vice to the cause of Shakespearean criticism. 
 
 The most important and startling of these re- 
 sults is one that vindicates in every detail Shake- 
 speare's portrait of lago. As all students of moral 
 pathology are agreed, there exists a type of man 
 to which the name born or instinctive criminal 
 has been given.^ The essential characteristics of 
 this class are two in number : first, complete moral 
 insensibility, revealed by absence of all repugnance 
 to the suggestion of crime before the deed and of 
 remorse after the commission. This, of course, does 
 not mean that the criminal is unaware that the 
 adjective " wrong " is by many people attached to 
 certain classes of action, or that society or God 
 dislikes such actions, and will strike back in re- 
 venge when the chance offers. What he lacks is 
 the experiences that give the moral vocabulary its 
 meaning to the good man. This phenomenon is 
 often called moral imbecility. The second charac- 
 teristic of the born criminal is a high degree of 
 
 1 Both terms are misleading; the adjective "incorrigible" 
 seems to me more satisfactory. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 117 
 
 perversity, that is, the dominance of desires that 
 are either directly anti-social, — as malicious 
 cruelty and revengefulness, — or at least seducive, 
 by which is meant peculiarly liable to grow at 
 the expense of the higher interests. Most promi- 
 nent among the latter are laziness, love of money, 
 and lust. 
 
 The existence of this variety of Homo sapiens is 
 in no way dependent upon the truth of theories 
 about the shape of criminals' skulls, the develop- 
 ment of their lower jaw, and much else of the 
 same sort. For the existence of the psychological 
 differentias of the class is not called in question 
 by any opponent of the Italian school of criminal 
 anthropology who has made a first-hand study of 
 the subject, in whatever way he may be inclined to 
 explain the facts. 
 
 "Whether the term moral imbecility shall be re- 
 stricted to those in whom conscience is absolutely 
 a zero is, of course, a mere matter of terminology. 
 Such persons are few in number, and the degrees 
 of approximation to that state are innumerable. 
 The ordinary basis of classification seems to be 
 obtained by including under the name born crimi- 
 nal those who have exhibited entire absence of 
 moral sensibility with regard to such capital or 
 penitentiary offences as they may be known to have 
 committed. 
 
 The evidence for the existence of moral imbe- 
 cility is varied in nature and only too abundant 
 in amount. We may lay it down as a universal 
 
ii8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 law that remorseful guilt will confess when con- 
 fronted with the proof of its evil deeds. In fact, 
 there are many cases on record where the unsus- 
 pected but repentant criminal has voluntarily sur- 
 rendered himself into the hands of the law. In 
 not a few of these instances the motive has been a 
 craving for punishment, born of moral indignation 
 against the lower nature to which surrender has 
 been made.^ But the born criminal never con- 
 fesses until the evidence against him is absolutely 
 overwhelming, and often not even then. Further- 
 more, he disclaims all feelings of sorrow and repent- 
 ance ; he openly gloats over past success, or mourns 
 over failure ; he often slanders the injured party 
 from the dock out of pure malice, under circum- 
 stances where he cannot suppose he will thereby 
 change the outcome of the trial ; and finally, he 
 is given to abusing the police, the jury, or the 
 judge, after his conviction. Occasionally he dis- 
 plays some feeling at his trial, but it is very 
 remote in nature from remorse. Despine relates 
 that a murderer twenty-two years of age on being 
 brought to trial manifested no concern of any kind 
 till informed that in the room of his victim, where 
 he and his accomplice had succeeded in finding 
 only eighty francs, a purse of fifteen hundred 
 francs was concealed. Thereupon he burst into 
 tears, exclaiming, " Oh, I told Chopin that it didn't 
 
 1 This seemingly paradoxical emotion is exhibited in more than 
 one of Shakespeare's characters : e. g., Posthumus in Cymbeline. 
 See v., iv., 3-29 ; v., 210-225. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 119 
 
 pay to kill a man for eighty francs." ^ Moreover, 
 when the wife murderer sleeps quietly for two 
 or three nights in the bed by the side of the 
 victim of his knife, and when the parricide is 
 found in a saloon on the evening of the murder 
 smoking calmly and watching with interest a 
 game of billiards, then we are entitled to infer 
 that remorse can hardly be disturbing their peace 
 of mind. More striking than any other class of 
 evidence is that exhibiting the attitude of many 
 criminals towards God. Take as an example the 
 following typical case. " A wife who was poison- 
 ing her husband wrote to her accomplice : ' He is 
 not well. . . Oh, if God would have pity on us, 
 how I would bless Him ! When he complains [of 
 the effects of the poison] I thank God in my 
 heart.' And he answers, ' I will pray to Heaven 
 to aid us.' And she again, ' He was ill yesterday. 
 I thought that God was beginning His work. I 
 have wept so much that it is not possible God 
 should not have pity on my tears.' " ^ In their ex- 
 pectation of the approbation and sympathy of an 
 all-seeing and impartial spectator, these murderers 
 show beyond the possibility of mistake how far 
 they are removed from self-condemnation and 
 shame. 
 
 The impression that the layman carries away 
 from the reading of such reports is confirmed by 
 the concurrent testimony of those who have had 
 
 1 Psychologie naturelle, Vol. II., p. 416. 
 3 Havelock Ellis, The Criminal, p. 158, 
 
1 20 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 the best opportunities for studying the criminal 
 at first hand. The brilliant Russian author, Dos- 
 toieffsky, who spent several years in a Siberian 
 prison, declares that he never met with one 
 instance of moral suffering caused by the memory 
 of a crime. " I have," he continues, " frequently 
 heard convicts relate the most terrible crimes, the 
 most unnatural deeds, laughing heartily at the 
 recollection of them." ^ Perhaps the most exhaus- 
 tive investigation ever made into this subject is 
 tliat undertaken by the eminent Italian authority, 
 Ferrijin preparation for his work on homicide. Of 
 seven hundred criminals, murderers and thieves, 
 whom he examined, more than ten per cent, he tells 
 us, gave " absolute proof by the shamelessness of 
 their behavior of the entire absence of remorse ; " 
 and the probable proportion of the completely 
 indifferent and unrepentant is placed at thirty-five 
 per cent.2 
 
 Troubled by some vague suspicion of such facts, 
 transcendentalism has at times shifted its position. 
 Moral insensibility is admitted, but is asserted to 
 be the result of a long-continued course of wrong- 
 doing. Thus it is said that " a man to be what 
 lago is, when we see him, must have gone through 
 much perversion and many gradations of evil." ^ 
 This does not seem to be Shakespeare's view. lago 
 
 ^ Dostoieffsky, Buried Alive, chap. i. 
 
 2 Lombroso, The Criminal (L'uomo delinquente), German Trans- 
 lation, Vol. I., pp. 348-350. 
 
 2 Giles, Human Life in Shakespeare, p. 116. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 121 
 
 is but twenty-eight ; while of Richard III. his own 
 mother bears the impressive testimony : 
 
 " Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; 
 Thy school-days frightful, desperate, Richard HI. 
 wild, and furious, ^^' ^^- ^^^• 
 
 Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and 
 venturous." 
 
 Again the dramatist and the criminal psychologist 
 are at one. Despine's classical work contains 
 examples of moral imbecility from every period 
 of life, beginning with twelve years. One of Feuer- 
 bach's worst cases is a youth of fourteen.^ Moral 
 imbecility may thus be due to a congenital taint. 
 
 We must accordingly face the fact that there 
 are human beings in whom not the slightest trace 
 of moral sensibility has ever been discovered. 
 However, among the morally imbecile, as this term 
 was defined on page 117, there sometimes appear 
 faint traces of a better nature. Goneril's dark 
 heart we have seen lighted for an instant by a 
 gleam of moral indignation. Macbeth and Lady 
 Macbeth were true to each other. The importance 
 of understanding these two tragic figures, the most 
 subtle delineations in the long line of Shakespeare's 
 criminals, will justify us in dwelling for a moment 
 upon these inconsistencies of the human will. 
 
 Absence of remorse means inter alia complete 
 indifference to the sufferings of the victim. But 
 
 ^ Fenerbach, Aktenmassige Darstellung merkwiirdiger Ver- 
 brechen, chap, xxviii. 
 
122 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 with this leaden apathy may go some considerable 
 capacity for sharing the joy and sorrow of one or 
 two intimate associates. Certain poisoners and 
 other murderers have even been notably chari- 
 table ; although those who ought to know assert 
 that such benevolence is mixed with much alien 
 material. Again, there are cases on record where 
 no affection, not even the slightest, has shown 
 itself for any human being. On the other hand, 
 the emotion need not be wholly wanting, and 
 it occasionally occurs in great intensity. For ex- 
 ample, Lombroso declares that one of the most 
 ferocious female criminals he ever knew was 
 passionately fond of children. 
 
 It must be added, however, that what affection 
 and sympathy these miserable beings possess is apt 
 to be wholly capricious in its workings. Lacenaire, 
 a brutal thief and murderer, of whom we shall hear 
 again, declared that he was never overcome by the 
 sight of his victim's corpse : " When I kill a person 
 I have no more feeling about it than when I drink 
 a glass of wine," are his own words. But he ad- 
 mitted that he was overcome with sorrow at the 
 death of his cat. To save its life he risked his 
 own on the very day that he murdered an old lady 
 and her son for their money.^ Perhaps the most 
 extraordinary instance of one-sided sympathy ever 
 chronicled is that told by Lombroso on the author- 
 ity of Paul Lindau : " A man by the name of 
 Schunicht murdered one of his former mistresses 
 
 1 Lombroso, opus cit., Vol. I., pp. 301, 317. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 123 
 
 in the most brutal manner and with an indifference 
 absolutely revolting. He had already left the house, 
 when it occurred to him that the body might remain 
 undiscovered for weeks, and in that event the canary 
 belonging to the murdered woman would starve to 
 death. Thereupon Schunicht retraced his steps, 
 scattered enough food upon the floor of the cage to 
 last the bird for several days, and opened the cage- 
 door and the window in the adjoining room so that 
 in any event the bird could make its escape." ^ 
 
 This anomalous trait is sometimes accompanied 
 by another characteristic even more paradoxical. 
 Given the rudiments of sympathy, it will some- 
 times assume the form of sentimentality. By this 
 is meant playing the r6le of the sympathetic and 
 generous mind, not merely before the world, but 
 also before oneself, the actor evidently deceiving 
 himself more or less for the time, and enjoying the 
 resulting emotion ; just as some people who never 
 give way to resentment in any form delight in im- 
 agining that they have savage tempers, and others 
 like to think of themselves as unhappy for the sake 
 of the pleasures of self-pity thereby gained. Says 
 that profound student of criminal humanity, Anselm 
 von Feuerbach : " There is an intimate relation, 
 especially in cold natures, between the cravings of 
 romantic emotionalism and the sentimentality that, 
 driven by a kind of necessity, titillates the inner 
 sense by what is not really felt, but merely imagines 
 itself felt ; that attempts to palm off upon itself 
 
 1 Lombroso, opus cit., Vol. I., p. 318. 
 
124 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 and the world mere grimaces in the place of 
 genuine passions, thereby poisoning forever the 
 source of the fundamental certitudes, the emotional 
 life. . . . The genuine feelings are soon smothered 
 by the spurious, which explains the fact that senti- 
 mentality is compatible with the most complete 
 hardness of heart and even with active cruelty." ^ 
 
 A sufficient illustration of this principle is 
 afforded by the " literary remains " with which cer- 
 tain of these choice spirits have enriched the world. 
 No more malignant fiend was ever cursed with life 
 than Thomas Wainewright, the poisoner. " Yet 
 the chief characteristic of his essays," says Ellis, 
 "is their sentimentality. Himself he describes 
 as the possessor of a soul whose nutriment is love, 
 and its offspring, art, music, divine song, and still 
 holier philosophy." ^ Reading such flowing lines, 
 we shall not be surprised to learn that when the 
 muses smile upon him, the moral imbecile may 
 become the poet of love and friendship. A typical 
 example presents itself in the notorious Lacenaire. 
 
 Lacenaire has perhaps been sufficiently charac- 
 terized in what was said of him above. Yet there 
 may be profit in having a more concrete idea of 
 this strange personality as the representative of a 
 class, and I therefore quote briefly from his biog- 
 raphy as given by Despine.^ On trial for his life 
 
 1 Feuerbach, opus cit., p. 15. 
 
 ^ Havelock Ellis, opus cit., p. 153. His biography is given in 
 brief by Ellis, p. 12 ff., and p. 127. On this subject cf. Feuerbach, 
 opus cit., p. 358. 
 
 3 Opus cit., Vol. II., p. 423 £f. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 125 
 
 on thirty different counts, — burglaries, forgeries, 
 assaults, and murders, — his interest seemed to be 
 completely centered in presenting a good appear- 
 ance to the world contained within the court-room 
 walls. " He seated himself upon the prisoner's 
 bench with complete self-possession, and talked to 
 his lawyer with a smile upon his lips. He acted 
 as if he had no part wliatever in the trial that was 
 about to begin, an attitude which he maintained 
 throughout, and which appeared to the spectators 
 as posing." This was no comedy intended to de- 
 ceive the court, for, the evidence against him being 
 absolutely complete, he admitted his guilt from 
 the first. He listened without emotion to the 
 reading of the long list of his crimes, and later 
 described them in an indifferent and flippant tone 
 which filled his hearers with horror. At times he 
 smiled agreeably, at other times laughed heartily, 
 as in giving an account of the murder of a girl who 
 possessed information that might compromise him 
 with the police. He lured her into his room, in- 
 duced her to drink a bottle of wine with him, and 
 thereupon stabbed her. This adventure, as he 
 related it, he seemed to find very amusing. 
 
 The following incident in his trial will throw ad- 
 ditional light upon his character. A double mur- 
 der had been committed some time before, but no 
 clue to the perpetrators had been found. Lace- 
 naire, since he had nothing to lose, announced him- 
 self as the murderer, and affably informed the 
 authorities that he had two accomplices whose 
 
126 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 names he gave, and whose whereabouts he dis- 
 closed. His motive in thus ruining his comrades 
 was not revenge for some real or fancied wrong. 
 It was merely the desire for company that misery 
 feels, a phenomenon described clearly in the fol- 
 lowing report of another trial taken from the 
 same rich storehouse : " I was perfectly willing 
 to kill, I did n't mind it a bit, for they had prom- 
 ised to pay me for it ; but I wanted Joseph to strike 
 the blow with me, so that if I was caught I should 
 not get into trouble alone." ^ Lacenaire had his 
 reward. His accomplices were executed with him. 
 When one of these unfortunate beings, who per- 
 sisted in denying his guilt, fell into a paroxysm of 
 fury at the completeness of the evidence against 
 him, Lacenaire laughed till the tears rolled down 
 his cheeks. 
 
 Such was the man who, under sentence of death, 
 his execution but a few weeks distant, unrepentant 
 and devoid of shame, was capable of writing a 
 poem beginning with the following Hnes.^ 
 
 " Maudissez-moi, j'ai ri de vos bassesses, 
 J'ai ri des Dieux, pour vous seuls inventes ; 
 Maudissez-moi : men ame, sans faiblesses, 
 Fut ferme et francbe en ses atrocites. 
 Pourtant cette sime etait loin d'etre noire, 
 Je fus parfois beni des raalheureux . . . 
 A la vertu si mon coeur et.t pu croire, 
 N'en doutez pas, j'eusse ete vertueux." 
 
 1 Despine, Vol. II., p. 175. Cf. above, p. 113. 
 
 2 Lombroso, opus cit.. Vol. I., p. 424. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 127 
 
 In a few born criminals, I repeat, what little sym- 
 pathy they possess takes the form of sentimentality. 
 Weakness of sympathy is accompanied usually, 
 though not invariably, by imperfect development 
 of autopathy, or interest in one's own future. 
 Where the imagination is too sluggish to enable its 
 possessor to put himself into another man's place, 
 it is likely to fail when he attempts to project him- 
 self into scenes and conditions not immediately 
 connected with the imperious present. Thus, like 
 the savage and the infant, he may be absolutely 
 indifferent to even the foreseen evils of to-morrow. 
 Then it happens that he will commit crimes in 
 order to get money for a few days' debauchery, 
 although, as he afterwards admits, he was perfectly 
 aware all the time that detection and punishment, 
 this often involving the death penalty, would be 
 the inevitable consequence. 
 
 " Bien fou, ma foi, qui sacrifie 
 Le present au temps a venir," 
 
 these lines of Lacenaire appear to represent the 
 maxim upon which he habitually acts.^ The fol- 
 lowing incident described by Dostoieffsky shows 
 how it works in practice. Dontoff " was brought 
 before the court martial, and sentenced to run the 
 gauntlet. He was . . . mortally afraid of physical 
 pain. He managed to secrete a knife about his 
 person, and on the eve of the fatal day, he at- 
 
 1 They follow immediately his above-quoted lamentation for 
 the virtues he never possessed. 
 
128 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 tempted to stab one of his officers, as he entered 
 the cell. He was perfectly aware that by this act 
 he only aggravated his punishment, and yet he did 
 it merely for the sake of having the terrible mo- 
 ment put off for a few days, at the utmost." ^ 
 
 Among other ways the sovereignty of the present 
 shows itself in indifference to punishment in a 
 future life. Comparatively few criminals are athe- 
 ists, and few deny the existence of a life beyond the 
 grave, where man must render an account of the 
 deeds done in the body. Sometimes their indif- 
 ference about consequences is really due to moral 
 obtuseness ; they cannot see that they have done 
 anything to awaken the wrath of God. Others 
 with more intelligence admit the fact but do not 
 care. 
 
 This principle of criminal psychology is illus- 
 trated by Shakespeare over and over again. " For 
 the life to come, I sleep out the thousrht 
 
 Winter s ? r a 
 
 Tale IV. of i^j" says Autolycus. Not different 
 
 iii. 30. was the attitude of his more famous 
 
 1 Henry predecessor. In his tilts with Prince Hal, 
 IV. I. 11. Falstaff can treat eternal damnation as 
 
 a huge joke. In a different mood, when 
 admonished in straightforward English of the need 
 to repent, he thrusts the suggestion from him ; 
 there is a momentary pang of terror and the inci- 
 
 2 Henry ^"^"^ ^^ ended. But when death comes 
 IV. n. iv. to his bedside and says, " To-day," the 
 250-5. oi^^ lifelong indifference vanishes like 
 
 1 Opus cit., chap. iy. 
 
Conscience and the Conscienceless 129 
 
 a dream, and he who once spared neither heaven nor 
 hell in his jests may now be heard call- Henry v. 
 ing in agony upon God to avert the ^^- ^- ^~^^- 
 doom that he had never doubted would one day be 
 his. It was not otherwise with Richard III. ; it 
 was not otherwise with Macbeth. The Thane of 
 Cawdor, in the full flood of his ambition, looking 
 the certainty of unending torment fairly in the face, 
 declares that if he could only be assured of success 
 in this life he would not hesitate to " jump the life 
 to come." The denunciation of eternal punish- 
 ment, frequently proclaimed to be a Macbeth i. 
 specific against deliberate surrender to ^^- '^■ 
 criminal suggestion, proves itself powerless in just 
 those persons for whom it is most needed. 
 
 There is much else in Sha.kespeare's portrayal of 
 criminals that it would be of advantage to study, if it 
 were not that anything like a complete treatment 
 of the subject would take us too far from the main 
 course of our inquiry. His knowledge is by no means 
 confined to the moral imbecile. All the classes into 
 which modern authorities have divided the variety 
 " criminal " he knew and described, adjusting the 
 kind and degree of their emotional reaction to the 
 accomplished deed with a nicety and a precision 
 that other men could have attained only after 
 years devoted to the subject. Again, the principle 
 laid down by Lombroso and Ferrero : " In general 
 the moral physiognomy of the born female crimi- 
 nal approximates strongly to that of the male," ^ 
 
 1 The Female Offender, p. 187. 
 
ijo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 he observed and illustrated in Macbeth, King Lear, 
 Pericles (Dionjza), and Cymbeline. Even the 
 little things did not escape his notice. His thieves 
 1 Henry IV. Spend as quickly as they win. His 
 I. ii. S7- vagabonds answer to the description of 
 *^' Locatelli : " Of all criminals they are 
 
 the most jolly, so that they are gladly welcomed 
 into whatever society they find themselves thrust." ^ 
 Indeed we may assert without exaggeration that 
 there is no one principle of criminal psychology 
 that is at once important and assured, no proposi- 
 tion that would command the assent of all careful 
 students who know the criminal at first hand, that 
 cannot be derived from the Shakespearean drama. 
 
 1 Quoted by Lombroso, opus cit., Vol. I., p. 378. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 THE FREEDOM OF THE TVTLL 
 
 As Shakespeare contemplated such characters as 
 Richard and lago, the profoundest problems of life 
 must have come thronging in upon his mind. Is a 
 man born to crime, because insensible to goodness, 
 responsible for what he does ? Can he properly be 
 blamed for acting out his own nature ? Again, 
 what of the inner life of these creatures ? They 
 wreck others without a qualm : is it well with 
 them ? Finally, when they look upon the good 
 man with contempt, as they do, is there any basis 
 in the nature of things for their attitude ? Or on 
 what they themselves would admit to be facts, can 
 they be shown to be mistaken ? 
 
 As the outcome of his studies, Despine lays down 
 the corollary that the moral imbecile is a com- 
 pletely irresponsible being. Devoid of all motive 
 for seeking the good, he has no freedom to choose 
 between the better and the worse, and without 
 freedom there can be no responsibility. If this 
 last statement were brought forward by moralists 
 as a principle deduced by themselves from the data 
 gathered during their investigations, it would have 
 to be ignored in a study that aims merely to pre- 
 
132 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 sent the phenomenology of the moral consciousness. 
 But the believer in free-will does not and cannot 
 separate his own convictions on this subject from 
 the opinions of the race. All men, he asserts, and 
 must assert, from the savage to the sage, regard 
 freedom as an essential condition of responsibility ; 
 and accordingly where they impute the latter they 
 postulate the former. An assertion of this nature 
 properly belongs within the scope of our inquiry. 
 Our examination into its validity will call for an 
 answer to two questions : Does the common man 
 regard himself and his neighbor as free ? Does he 
 limit responsibility by freedom ? 
 
 Before entering upon a study of the subject, it 
 is necessary to point out the ambiguity of the word 
 freedom. It would be an easy matter to make out 
 a list of ten or twelve senses in which it is used in 
 standard ethical treatises. Fortunately for the 
 reader, many of them may be neglected, but it will 
 be impossible to take a single step without distin- 
 guishing at least four possible meanings of the 
 term. 
 
 In the first place, then, the will, or, better, the 
 person, may be said to be free in so far as he is 
 able to do what he desires to do, and to refrain from 
 doing what he desires not to do. This freedom 
 may be limited by the forces of external nature, or 
 the superior physical strength of other living 
 beings. It may also be limited by agencies that 
 are represented, more or less completely, in our 
 own consciousness : the sneeze, the laugh, or the 
 
The Freedom of the Will 133 
 
 hysteria, which, let us try our utmost, prove to be 
 uncontrollable ; the impulses of suicidal and homi- 
 cidal mania, and the like, that sweep a man away 
 to actions which never for an instant have his con- 
 sent, and which he views as he performs them with 
 grief and horror. 
 
 In a second sense we may be said to be free 
 when we are able to bring all our actions into con- 
 formity with our permanent desires. The sover- 
 eignty of the passing instant is broken. We act 
 and in acting know we shall not be called upon to 
 regret, except as new insight may show our deed 
 to be something other than we had thought it. For 
 better or worse our destiny is what in our coolest 
 hours we would have it, in so far as destiny is 
 determined by character. 
 
 Again, man is endowed with a third kind of 
 freedom in so far as he is capable of becoming 
 what he desires to be, i. e., in so far as he has 
 the power to modify and transform the character 
 with which he was endowed at birth. This he can 
 do through his control over his actions and 
 thoughts, in virtue of the principle that impulses 
 to action, if inoperative through a considerable 
 portion of time, tend to lose their strength and in 
 many cases actually disappear. In this way the 
 clamorous passion, the untamed appetite, cow- 
 ardice, inertia, and selfishness, may be gradually 
 eliminated, and higher elements substituted in their 
 place. The man whose early life was a chaos of 
 conflicting impulses may thus attain ultimately to 
 
134 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 the peace that shall never be broken by rebellion. 
 " ' T is in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our 
 T » ;„ bodies are our eardens, to the which 
 
 lago in o 7 
 
 otheUo I. our wills are gardeners ; so that if we 
 ^' ' will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set 
 hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one 
 gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to 
 have it sterile with idleness, or manured with 
 industry, why, the power and corrigible authority 
 of this lies in our wills." The condition upon 
 which this form of freedom rests is the will to use 
 M. for M. it. " Look, what I will not, that I can- 
 n. ii. 51. nQt do," says Angelo, with profound 
 truth. Whoever is sufficiently desirous of growing 
 thyme or lettuce to manure the soil with industry 
 shall have his reward. For others there can be 
 only weeds. 
 
 The denial of freedom in any of these forms is 
 the dogma of fatalism in the proper significance of 
 that much-abused term. Fatalism as we find it in 
 the popular thought of the ancient Greeks, and in 
 Mohammedan theology, is primarily a doctrine of 
 what happens to man, but it may be applied with 
 equal propriety to what he does. It asserts that 
 the will is not a factor in, but merely an impotent 
 spectator of the struggle of life ; that nothing comes 
 to pass because we determine it shall be. (Edipus, 
 for instance, is fated to kill his father and marry 
 his mother. It would have made no difference 
 how firmly he determined never to take a human 
 life, and how tenaciously he held to his purpose. 
 
The Freedom of the Will 135 
 
 He and his father must meet, if not in the narrow 
 pass, then somewhere else ; and if (Edipus had still 
 remained firm, his will would have been stricken 
 with paralysis and, as in an attack of homicidal 
 mania the mother may plunge the knife into her 
 child's heart in the very instant in which, with 
 agonized cries, she urges him to flee, so (Edipus 
 would have beheld his own hand striking the blow 
 that he was powerless to stay. The will refuses 
 its consent ; but the deed is done in despite of the 
 will. 
 
 It is obvious that for actions of this kind no man 
 can be held responsible. For responsibility means 
 that a man is the proper object of moral judgment 
 because of his deed. Now, moral judgment is 
 directed to character, and here is an action that 
 is not the outcome of the character, and that sheds 
 no light whatever upon the direction in which it 
 is moving. All members of the European races 
 recognize this fact to-day, and all hold that at 
 least some actions are not fated. As no contem- 
 porary moralist would dispute this statement, there 
 is no need of dwelling upon it at greater length. 
 
 But many philosophers assert the existence of a 
 fourth kind of freedom, freedom from the law of 
 causation. When a certain course of action is 
 adopted or decided upon, they hold that this 
 decision or determination has no cause. The idea 
 of doing it suggested itself, of course, in accordance 
 with the laws of association ; the idea of the rejected 
 alternative presented itself to the mind in the same 
 
136 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 way. But the act of acceptance or rejection is itself 
 causeless ; in vain would you seek in the man's 
 character or past habits, interests or purposes, for 
 the ground of its being. If it were possible for every 
 condition, external and internal, to be repeated, 
 there would be the same chance that the second 
 time the acceptance would be replaced by rejection. 
 This view is called indeterminism. 
 
 A large number of authorities maintain, on the 
 other hand, that the law of causation holds without 
 exception in the mental as in the physical world. 
 In so far as they believe in the autonomy of the 
 will, as asserted in the preceding paragraphs, they 
 hold that a man's actions are the outcome of his 
 character, as it is at the time. A person may 
 gradually change his character, if he wishes to ; he 
 can conquer his passions, appetites, and bad habits, 
 if he will. But the condition of his even attempting 
 it is a wish to do so. And if the opposition is strong, 
 no vague, weak longings will suflfice ; the change 
 must be desired intensely. Now all the elements 
 of his character, including his desire for improve- 
 ment, must have had a beginning in time ; he who 
 " has them," as we say, did not create them, for 
 they are the inmost parts of himself. They arise 
 and grow according to laws that we did not make 
 and cannot alter. The doctrine that maintains the 
 unbroken continuity of the causal series is called 
 determinism. We now see that it has two forms, 
 which may be called fatalistic and autonomic. Our 
 problem may accordingly be stated as follows: 
 
The Freedom of the Will 137 
 
 What attitude does the common man take, whether 
 virtually or explicitly, to the position of autonomic 
 determinism ? 
 
 It will be obvious that determinism must affirm 
 and indeterminism deny the possibility of fore- 
 casting the actions of human beings. Not but 
 that indeterminism may be compatible with a cer- 
 tain amount of prophecy. No man can act ex- 
 cept upon suggestions that come to him, and the 
 appearance of these suggestions in the arena of 
 consciousness is admitted on all hands to be rigidly 
 determined. Furthermore — and this has often 
 been overlooked — indeterminists are entitled to 
 hold that a man cannot act upon suggestions that 
 do not appeal to him ; ^ the freedom they contend 
 for consists solely in an uncaused choice between 
 alternatives that really attract. Thus an indeter- 
 minist does not stultify himself when he declares 
 his friend to be incapable of a falsehood, provided 
 he knows him well enough to feel justified in assert- 
 ing that the opportunity to gain an end through 
 lying would never arouse in his friend even the 
 slightest inclination to take advantage of it. 
 Where contending desires dispute the field, how- 
 ever, there, if indeterminism is right, prevision be- 
 comes absolutely impossible. No one can tell, at 
 any rate in matters of right and wrong, how such 
 a preference will turn. Our problem accordingly 
 takes this form : In cases of genuine moral con- 
 
 ^ So Despiue. Cf. James, Principles of Psychology, II., 577, 
 note. 
 
138 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 flict, does the common man ever consider himself 
 capable of forecasting the outcome? 
 
 The answers given by Shakespeare to this ques- 
 tion are strikingly uniform and consistent through- 
 out. They are formulated once for all in a speech 
 of Warwick in Henry IV. The king has been re- 
 calling how the deposed Richard long ago fore- 
 told Northumberland's present treason. Warwick 
 replies : 
 
 " There is a history in all men's lives, 
 figuring the nature of the times de- 
 ceased ; 
 The which observed, a man may proph- 
 esy, 
 With a near aim, of the main chance of 
 
 things 
 As yet not come to life, which in their 
 
 seeds 
 And weak beginnings lie intreasured. 
 2 Henry IV. Such things become the hatch and brood 
 m. i. 80. of time ; 
 
 And by the necessary form of this 
 KingEichard might create a perfect guess 
 That great Northumberland, then false 
 
 to him, 
 Would of that seed grow to a greater 
 
 falseness ; 
 Which should not find a ground to root 
 
 upon, 
 Unless on you. 
 
 King. Are these things then necessities ? 
 Then let us meet them like necessities." 
 
The Freedom of the Will 139 
 
 This passage contains a distinct declaration that 
 conduct is the necessary outcome of character, and 
 accordingly in so far as we know the character we 
 can foretell the conduct. Since we can never gain 
 a complete acquaintance with the inner life, we 
 can, it is true, only prophesy " with a near aim." 
 But no hint is given that our power of prevision is 
 confined to hopeless iniquity and inflexible saint- 
 hood. Northumberland himself, while a weak and 
 unprincipled man, does not appear to have been 
 wholly bad. His acquaintances seemingly had no 
 reason to doubt that better impulses were known 
 to him ; the question with them was, would they 
 predominate ? Richard and Warwick evidently 
 thought not. And yet on the indeterministic theory 
 there is no basis even for conjecture. The chances 
 are one to one, and if the range of your calculation 
 is sufficiently extensive that proportion will be 
 realized. But any one person may have a run of 
 luck, good or bad, as he may at rouge-et-noir^ and 
 therefore all prediction about individuals is 
 impossible. 
 
 It may of course be objected that this statement 
 of Warwick is a mere obiter dictum, or that at all 
 events we have no more right to hold Shakespeare's 
 other characters responsible for this expression of 
 opinion than for good old Duncan's absurdity : 
 '' There 's no art to find the mind's con- Macbeth I. 
 struction in the face." The principle on ^^- ^2. 
 which this objection is based is perfectly sound. 
 Here, however, it avails nothing, for one of the 
 
140 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 most common phenomena in our dramas is the 
 prediction of human action. Almost any of the his- 
 tories or tragedies would supply satisfactory illus- 
 trative material. 
 
 In Othello, Act IL, scene i., line 254, Roderigo 
 declares to lago, " I cannot believe that in her [Des- 
 demona] ; she 's full of most blessed condition." 
 This certainly looks like the spirit of prophecy ; 
 but we shall do well not to treat it as evidence of 
 the deterministic attitude, for it may mean : Des- 
 demona is absolutely incapable of temptation in 
 this direction. But when Lodovico, witnessing the 
 last wild outbreak of Othello's rage, asks in sur- 
 othello IV. prise : " Is this the nature whom passion 
 1. 276. could not shake ? " but one inference 
 
 from his words seems possible. For the very point 
 of the question lies in the implication that Othello 
 is not a passionless nature, not one whom passion 
 never tried to shake, but rather one against whose 
 granite will its waves had hitherto dashed in vain. 
 Again we seem to have an unequivocal statement 
 in Cassio's exclamation when Othello falls by the 
 stroke of his own dagger, 
 
 " This did I fear, but thought he had no 
 V. ii. 359. weapon ; 
 
 For he was great of heart." 
 
 Possibly it may be objected that Cassio means no 
 more than that he had considered the chances in 
 favor of suicide to be even, but I venture to assert 
 such an interpretation would have surprised Cassio. 
 
The Freedom of the Will 141 
 
 The tragic interest of Antony and Cleopatra cen- 
 tres in the downfall of a nature rich in possibilities 
 for good. The Roman triumvir is no moral imbe- 
 cile, nor is he one condemned by a hereditary 
 curse to live only for the passing moment. Once 
 he could bear deprivation and suffering in the pur- 
 suit of power and fame. " Antony, leave thy las- 
 civious wassails," cries Octavius : 
 
 " When thou once 
 Wast beaten from Modena, where thou 
 
 slew'st 
 Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel 
 Did famine follow ; whom thou fought'st 
 
 against, 
 Though daintily brought up, with 
 
 patience more 
 Than savages could suffer: thou didst 
 
 drink 
 The stale of horses, and the gilded a. and C. 
 
 puddle I- i'- 65. 
 
 Which beasts would cough at : thy palate 
 
 then did deign 
 The roughest berry on the rudest hedge ; 
 
 And all this ... 
 Was borne so like a soldier, that thy 
 
 cheek 
 So much as lank'd not." 
 
 The ambition which enabled Antony at that time to 
 endure even to the uttermost never became to him 
 an unsubstantial dream. Furthermore, he had a 
 
142 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 genius for friendship, the basis of continuous 
 wedded love ; witness the devotion he enkindled 
 in his followers. He was generous even to his 
 worst enemies, his disloyal friends. When his 
 most trusted general, Enobarbus, forsook him for 
 the winning side, he sent after the fugitive his 
 Act IV. chests and treasures, which the latter 
 
 scene v. had been unable to take with him. He 
 never ceased to realize his own degradation. We 
 might suspect it from this little incident of 
 Enobarbus' treasures, if other proof were wanting. 
 Once these forces almost dominated his life. 
 There was a time when, had he been wedded to 
 an Octavia, he might have ruled his share of the 
 world, another Augustus. But in the toils of 
 Cleopatra he becomes a different man. One who 
 knew him as he once had been wonders to see 
 him slight the most important business in order 
 that " not a minute of [theirl lives 
 
 I i 46 
 
 should stretch without some pleasure." 
 No one seems to think of the chance theory ; the 
 only explanation which an old follower can sug- 
 gest is that he is much changed. Enobarbus, hav- 
 ing watched stage by stage the development of the 
 new Antony, does not hesitate to predict the out- 
 come of the marriage with Octavia. " He will 
 to his Egyptian dish again : then shall the sighs 
 
 of Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar ; 
 H vi 134 
 
 and that which is the strength of their 
 
 amity shall prove the immediate author of their 
 
 variance." Enobarbus includes three complicated 
 
The Freedom of the Will 143 
 
 personalities, it will be observed, within the scope 
 of his prophecy. Waiving all discussion as to the 
 nature of his data with respect to the strong, single- 
 minded triumvir and his noble sister, he certainly 
 could not count in the case of Antony upon the 
 total destruction of the desire to play a great part 
 on the world's stage, of regard for the interests of 
 his followers, of honor and self-respect. For still 
 it remained true that now and then a " Roman 
 thought" would strike him, pathetic witness of the 
 impulses still stirring within his soul. But the 
 shrewd old general believed he could foretell, when 
 the two alternatives were presented to his master, 
 which would be chosen. 
 
 The only phase of the problem of the determina- 
 tion of human conduct that Shakespeare's people 
 ever discuss is the causes of character. Of the 
 various theories that the ingenuity of man has 
 put together the two that are most in favor are 
 heredity and the influence of the stars. It is only 
 on the latter hypothesis that Kent can explain 
 the difference between Cordelia and her sisters. 
 Gloucester goes farther ; the heavenly bodies can 
 actually change a character already formed. Ed- 
 mund, the superior intellect of the play, denies this 
 and indeed the entire theory of " spherical predom- 
 inance." For this reason he has been supposed to 
 be an indeterminist. Such an inference, however, 
 ignores the existence of a large number of alterna- 
 tives, any one of which he may have held ; as the 
 influence of education and surroundings, the mirac- 
 
144 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ulous interference of God or the devil, and much 
 else. If Edmund believed that natural endowment 
 is the most important factor in the making of char- 
 acter, by the side of which nurture is a compara- 
 tively insignificant though not entirely impotent 
 force, natural endowment in turn being determined 
 largely though not exclusively by heredity, he will 
 be in agreement with what seems to have been the 
 views of a large number of Shakespeare's people. 
 Some of these in their surprise at the failure of 
 heredity in a particular instance give the most 
 unequivocal expression of belief in the potency of 
 innate volitional capacities,^ 
 
 On this subject I believe we for once get a 
 'glimpse of the dramatist's own opinions. It is an 
 invariable rule with him that, however dark the 
 course of a story, its final scene shall close with 
 an outlook upon a better world. Thus in Romeo 
 and Juliet the death of the lovers leads to a recon- 
 ciliation between two great families. In Macbeth 
 and King Lear the floods of misrule and civil war 
 finally subside, leaving in possession of the throne 
 rulers strong, honorable, and humane, who — on 
 the deterministic theory — may be expected to in- 
 augurate an era of good government. Even in 
 Othello we have the satisfaction of knowing that 
 lago's career is ended; he can poison no more 
 lives. 
 
 1 Rich. III., I. iii. 229-231 ; Rich. II.. V. iii. 60-63 ; All 's Well, 
 I. ii. 19-22 ; Lear, IV. iii. 34-37 ; Timon, IV. iii. 271-4 ; Pericles, 
 IV. iii. 23-25 ; Tempest, IV. i. 188-189. 
 
The Freedom of the Will 145 
 
 This rule seems at first sight grossly violated in 
 All's Well that Ends Well, and that in the very 
 teeth of the promise conveyed in its title. The end 
 which is to be so delightful is the reconciliation of 
 Bertram with Helena after his flight from her 
 upon their forced marriage. Now, Helena is one 
 of the most perfect of Shakespeare's characters. 
 She represents that combination of strength and 
 devotion which, as we have seen, is repeatedly de- 
 clared to be the complete embodiment of moral 
 beauty. Though living as a dependant in a titled 
 family she has the intelligence and courage to 
 recognize herself as the equal of the young mas- 
 ter of the house. To obtain his love she risks tlie 
 displeasure of her foster-mother, death at the king's 
 court, and, what means most to her, dishonor 
 through misinterpretation of her motives. Con- 
 stantly called upon to act in circumstances of 
 great difficulty she exhibits a quickness of appre- 
 hension, tact, decision, and firmness, that alone 
 would render her a marked character. Her pu- 
 rity of mind is never doubtful in the most delicate 
 situations. Sincerity shines through every deed. 
 It wins at the outset the spectator of the play, who 
 knows from the moment of her appearance that 
 this young girl is no adventuress. It wins the 
 king. Even total strangers trust her. As her 
 sincerity evokes confidence, her sweetness and 
 beauty procure her the love of man and woman. 
 
 So much for Helena. " Look you now what 
 follows." Bertram is indeed a man of courage, 
 
 10 
 
146 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 spirit, and ability, but that is the end. In mat- 
 ters that do not concern war he must be set down 
 as a weak, gullible, and withal unprincipled cad. 
 As Hamlet reveals his ideals through his friendship 
 with Horatio, so we are entitled to infer the worst 
 from the ascendency that Parolles gains over Ber- 
 tram. In Hamlet, ideals never get worked out into 
 life ; it is the reverse with Bertram. His com- 
 panions at court, won at a glance by the loveliness 
 of Helena, are more than willing to marry the 
 physician's daughter whom the king's gratitude 
 has permitted to select a husband. He who knows 
 her best alone refuses. When forced under the 
 yoke by the fiat of the king which neither party 
 may resist, he follows up blindness and pride by a 
 display of insolence, and the insolence is rather 
 that of a child than of a man. His intrigue with 
 Diana after his flight from Paris into Italy is as 
 discreditable as an intrigue can be. He seeks to 
 gain his will by promises that he does not intend 
 to keep. Then confronted with the demand that 
 he redeem his pledge, he turns and twists to avoid 
 Diana's charges, blackening her character first in 
 one way then in another. A study of the details 
 of this episode will only serve to deepen the un- 
 pleasant impression made by its outlines. 
 
 Such, then, are the two principal characters of 
 the play, a strong, noble woman and a spoiled, 
 unprincipled boy. These are the people whose 
 union for life is expected to call forth the excla- 
 mation : Well done ! No wonder most readers 
 
The Freedom of the Will 147 
 
 turn away in disgust. The plot seems to have 
 descended to the plane of a summer novel where 
 the only object is to get two people married. 
 Some readers may indeed comfort themselves with 
 the thought that Helena will reform her wayward 
 husband. But that appears like a vain hope ; for 
 reformation, as a process of cultivation, must have 
 something to work upon. Nor, looking at the case 
 in the abstract, is the percentage of success in this 
 line of activity great enough to inspire with a high 
 degree of confidence — let us say a father with 
 marriageable daughters. 
 
 Nevertheless, the play, I believe, is neither " dis- 
 appointing," " perplexing," nor " profoundly im- 
 moral." All does end well. The difficulties in 
 which the poet has involved himself are due to 
 his faithfulness to the original sources of the 
 plot ; but he has found a solution, and one that is 
 simplicity itself. He merely makes us acquainted 
 with the characters of Bertram's father and 
 mother. 
 
 The distinguishing traits of the Countess are 
 penetration, unselfishness, and the capacity for 
 proportioning affection to real merit. This last 
 she possesses in an extraordinary degree ; it frees 
 her from all prejudices of aristocratic birth ; it 
 makes her love Helena as her own daughter ; it 
 drives her to cast off for a time her son when he 
 exhibits a pride, an insensibility to virtue in the low 
 born, and a hardness of heart that are alien to her 
 own nature. Her philosophy of life makes the love 
 
148 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 of Helena for Bertram seem as normal as if the 
 girl had been the daughter of one of her titled 
 neighbors. 
 
 The Count is dead, but his portrait has been care- 
 fully preserved for us as it lived in the memory of 
 the king. 
 
 " In his youth 
 He had the wit which I can well observe 
 To-day in our young lords ; but they may 
 
 jest 
 Till their own scorn return to them un- 
 noted 
 Ere they can hide their levity in honour : 
 So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness 
 Were in his pride, or sharpness ; if they 
 
 All's Well ^®^®' 
 
 that Ends His equal had awaked them, and his 
 
 Well honour, 
 
 . u. 3 . Clock to itself, knew the true minute when 
 
 Exception bid him speak, and at this time 
 
 His tongue obey'd his hand: who were 
 
 below him 
 
 He used as creatures of another place 
 
 And bow'd his eminent top to their low 
 
 ranks. 
 
 Making them proud, as his nobility 
 
 In their poor praise he humbled." ^ 
 
 The happy issue of the plot is thus entrusted 
 to the workings of the principle of heredity. A 
 hint of this solution is conveyed in the words 
 
 ^ The text of line 44 follows a conjecture of Hudson. 
 
The Freedom of the Will 149 
 
 wifh which the king greets Bertram on the latter's 
 presentation to him. 
 
 " Youth, thou bear'st thy father's face ; 
 Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, 
 Hath well composed thee. Thy father's L. 19. 
 
 moral parts 
 Mayst thou inherit too ! " 
 
 We may look forward with confidence to the fulfil- 
 ment of this hope. The boy has developed slowly, 
 and his growth in the past has been in part 
 retarded by unfavorable influences from without. 
 But now that the proper environment has been 
 supplied, his true nature may be trusted to appear. 
 For the existence within him of the potentialities 
 of all goodness is guaranteed by the character of 
 his ancestry. 
 
 In a more famous play Shakespeare has taken 
 the greatest pains to record his conviction that 
 no absolute break is possible between our present 
 and our past. The instantaneous transformation 
 of Prince Hal from the boon companion of roy- 
 sterers and cut-purses to the wise, self-restrained, 
 and just king, was regarded by the chroniclers 
 of his time as the result of a miracle. But this 
 view of the matter is excluded with the greatest 
 care in the dramas that describe his life. Every 
 salient trait in the character of the king is either 
 exhibited or asserted as existing in the 2 Hen. iv. 
 prince: affection, generosity, the am- ^'^^^2-5^^ 
 
1 50 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 1 Hen. IV. bition that selects the noblest models 
 
 V. V. 22-31. for emulation, regard for the life and 
 
 1 Hen. IV. welfare of others, and hatred of sham 
 
 jgg'"' ^ and hypocrisy. His very excesses are 
 
 V. ii. 52-69. represented as in part the outcome of 
 
 1 Hen. IV. some of his best qualities : his contempt 
 V. X. 83-100. £qj, ^^^q artificial distinctions that are 
 
 ^^^^' I^' consecrated by court tradition ; his love 
 
 IV. IV. 31- ^ , . -^ ^ , ' 
 
 32. of the vigorous London lower-class 
 
 2 Hen. IV. life ; his enjoyment of wit-combats and 
 II. u. 6 ff. ^ hearty laugh. Nor were his frolics 
 ever allowed to degenerate into mischief. Only 
 one of them is of a really doubtful character, and 
 in that the money which he helps to steal, or 
 rather permits to be stolen, in order to perpetrate 
 a joke upon Jack Falstaff, is returned to its owner 
 the next day. 
 
 Had this play been the creation of a slightly 
 later period, such hints would have been judged 
 sufficient. The mature Shakespeare is perfectly 
 content to be misunderstood by those who cannot 
 or will not supplement the detached and momen- 
 tary pictures of his score of scenes by images 
 of a continuous life of which the fragments upon 
 the stage are but the barest suggestion. As it 
 is, however, we are supplied with a clean-cut 
 declaration of tlie doctrine of natural development 
 in its application to the newly crowned king. And 
 as if to give it the maximum of emphasis it is put 
 into the mouths of two churchmen. 
 
The Freedom of the Will 151 
 
 Ely. The strawberry grows underneath 
 the nettle 
 
 And wholesome berries thrive and ripen 
 best 
 
 Keighbour'd by fruit of baser quality : 
 
 And so the prince obscured his contem- 
 plation 
 
 Under the veil of wildness ; which, no 
 
 doubt, ?enry V. I. 
 
 Grew like the summer grass, fastest by 
 night, 
 
 Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty. 
 
 Canterbury. It must be so ; for miracles 
 
 are ceased ; 
 And therefore we must needs admit the 
 
 means 
 How things are perfected. 
 
 A simple application, this, of the principle that 
 men do not gather grapes from thorns or figs from 
 thistles. But it totally ignores the possibility of 
 that inner creation of motive force out of nothing 
 for which indeterminism stands. 
 
 It may be of interest to note further that the 
 just quoted confession of faith denies in the most 
 unqualified manner one of the fundamental tenets 
 of the Elizabethan church, St. Augustine's doctrine 
 of grace. The official creed of the church as for- 
 mulated in the Articles of 1563 affirms : " The con- 
 dition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that 
 he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own 
 natural strength and good works, to faith and call- 
 
152 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ing upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do 
 good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, with- 
 out the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that 
 we may have a good will, and working in us, when 
 we have that good will." Again the churclimen 
 speak for Shakespeare. As he explains the crimes 
 of the moral imbecile without invoking the agency 
 of the devil, so he describes the unfolding life of 
 the noble soul in terms that leave as little room for 
 miracle as for chance. Was he not in this respect 
 as far in advance of the theologians of his age as 
 in his conception of mental disease he was beyond 
 the vast majority of its physicians ? 
 
 To return from Shakespeare to Shakespeare's 
 people : wherever we have an opportunity to make 
 the test we find them manifesting a belief in the 
 determination of volition by character. Usually 
 they think of character as mainly the outcome of 
 heredity ; sometimes, however, they attribute it 
 rather vaguely to the miraculous interposition of 
 supersensible powers ; occasionally, on the other 
 hand, to the stars. With but two exceptions, 
 which will be considered below, the notion of a 
 causeless volition apparently never even enters 
 their minds. 
 
 Does the world look upon the man whose con- 
 duct can be foretold as a morally irresponsible 
 being ? The answer to this, the second of our two 
 questions, is as clear and unequivocal as the answer 
 to the first. In its approbation and reprobation of 
 actions it asks only, do they really proceed from 
 
The Freedom of the Will i ^^ 
 
 the character ? It takes for granted that the bad 
 will is bad, the good will, good, however they came 
 to be such ; in other words, that questions of quality 
 or worth do not turn on theories of origin. Con- 
 sult, in verification, that richest mine of ethical in- 
 formation. King Lear. Nothing but a miracle 
 could make the King of France believe Cordelia 
 capable of a great wrong ; her nobility of character 
 is for that reason none the less genuine and ad- 
 mirable in his eyes. Cordelia, the Fool, and ulti- 
 mately Albany, understand the nature of Goneril 
 through and through, and the two former foretell 
 her actions as with a prophet's vision. Yet this 
 woman appears to them no less hateful and despic- 
 able on that ground. Kent seems to believe that 
 the characters of the three sisters are the product 
 of stellar influences; this does not modify his 
 judgment of what they are. ludeed, reprobation 
 or admiration may be concomitant with an ex- 
 plicit recognition of the deterministic position. 
 Richard III., for instance, is declared by Queen 
 Margaret to have been 
 
 " Seal'd in [his] nativity Richard m. 
 
 The slave of nature and the son of hell." ^- ^- 229. 
 
 It does not occur to Margaret that this makes him 
 any less loathsome. He is what he is, a foul blot 
 on creation. Had his crimes been from first to 
 last the outcome of chance, he could have been no 
 more base or vile. So Timon judges the notoriety- 
 seeking, pseudo-cynic Apemantus. 
 
154 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 " Thy father . . . 
 Timon IV. ... in spite put stuff 
 
 iii. 271. To some she beggar and compounded thee 
 
 Poor rogue hereditary." 
 
 The rogue hereditary is none the less a rogue. 
 
 The average layman, then, finds nothing incom- 
 patible with moral approbation in the conception 
 of conduct as the necessary outcome of character. 
 But certain speculative intellects have discovered 
 difficulties in the deterministic doctrine of respon- 
 sibility, and have asserted in consequence that 
 a caused volition has no moral value. This view 
 finds expression in Shakespeare's plays on two dif- 
 ferent occasions. Hamlet, waiting in company with 
 Horatio for his father's ghost, moralizes as follows 
 upon the Danish reputation for drunkenness : 
 
 " So, oft it chances in particular men, 
 That for some vicious mole of nature in 
 
 them, 
 As, in their birth — wherein they are not 
 
 guilty, 
 Since nature cannot choose his origin — 
 Hamlet I. ........ 
 
 »▼■ 23. That these men, 
 
 Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, 
 Being nature's livery, or fortune's star, — 
 Their virtues else — ... 
 Shall in the general censure take cor- 
 ruption 
 From that particular fault." 
 
The Freedom of the Will 155 
 
 Whether it is an accident that this opinion is put 
 into the mouth of a university student I cannot 
 say ; but I have often wondered whether we may 
 not suppose that Hamlet picked it up from his lec- 
 tures in philosophy at Wittenberg. At all events, 
 I can find no satisfactory evidence that he uses any 
 such principle in his concrete judgments of men 
 and women. His old friends, Hosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern, he declares he 
 will trust as he will adders fang'd. At the same 
 time he justifies his own action in sending them to 
 certain death on the ground that they 
 richly deserved their fate. We can ex- 
 tract indeterminism from this combination of cir- 
 cumstances only by assuming that, through a long 
 succession of free choices of evil, these two young 
 men had completely seared their conscience, so that 
 at last their conduct had become rigidly determined. 
 The guilt now imputed to them might thus really 
 attach to their past decisions. Whether this was 
 the ground on which Hamlet condemned them so 
 mercilessly, he unfortunately neglects to inform us. 
 It would not be fair, however, to emphasize too 
 much the difference between the philosopher and 
 the layman. Their brains are of the same clay. 
 It will, therefore, not be wonderful if an echo of 
 the philosopher's perplexities is heard now and 
 then in the world where men of action live and 
 work. Shakespeare's second and last apologist 
 for the criminal by heredity would count himself a 
 member of this latter class. 
 
156 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 In Antony and Cleopatra, Act I., scene iv., Oc- 
 tavius and Lepidus are discovered discussing the 
 failings of their fellow-triumvir, Antony. To the 
 bitter complaints of Octavius, Lepidus answers : 
 
 L. 12. 
 
 " His faults in him seem . . . hereditary, 
 Rather than purchased ; what he cannot 
 
 change, 
 Than what he chooses." 
 
 The language is a little ambiguous, but the voice 
 sounds like the voice of the indeterminist. Whether 
 the dramatist is here seeking to throw contempt 
 upon this mode of whitewashing weakness and 
 vice I will not undertake to decide, but there is 
 much to suggest it. No excuse could have been 
 more inappropriate under the circumstances, since 
 Octavius might easily rejoin : It was all one to 
 him why Antony could not be depended upon to 
 perform the duties belonging to his position ; 
 what he had to deal with was the fact, and on 
 any theory of its cause he was confronted with 
 a condition that must come to an end. These 
 
 thoughts, indeed, can be read between 
 See U. 16-32. ^, ,"? £ r^ 4. • ^ ^ rr 
 
 the Imes of Octavms reply. He com- 
 pletely ignores Lepidus' apology, continues to 
 blame Antony without raising the question whether 
 his faults could be changed or not, and asserts his 
 own unwillingness to bear the burdens rolled upon 
 his shoulders by another's voluptuousness. 
 
 Evidently Lepidus does not understand the in- 
 deterministic theory well enough to recognize the 
 
The Freedom of the Will 157 
 
 limits within which, even in the eyes of its friends, 
 its excuses are relevant. Or, perhaps shaken by 
 fear that if Antony falls the heir of Julius Caesar 
 may elect to rule the world alone, he is merely 
 talking at random. This latter hypothesis has 
 antecedent probabilities in its favor. Drama and 
 history alike bear witness to the justice of the 
 verdict pronounced by Antony soon after the estab- 
 lishment of the triumvirate. 
 
 " This is a slight unmeritable man, 
 Meet to be sent on 6rrands. 
 
 A barren-spirited fellow ; one that feeds f • ^- ^• 
 On abjects, orts and imitations, 36-39. ' 
 
 Which, out of use and staled by other 
 
 men, 
 Begin his fashion." 
 
 Lepidus seems conscious of his weakness. And it 
 may have been but a fulfilment of his forebodings, 
 when, after he had served Octavius' purpose, he 
 was thrown aside like a worn-out garment. 
 
 The clever controversialist, Mr. Arthur Balfour, 
 some years ago informed the public that modern 
 determinism is bound to look upon the popular 
 belief in free will as an illusion produced by 
 natural selection. If society is to be kept alive, 
 he imagines the argument to run, men must attrib- 
 ute to each other moral responsibility and there- 
 fore freedom ; if, then, the belief in the latter is an 
 illusion, its existence can only be explained by 
 
158 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 the elimination of those communities amongst 
 which it failed to appear. If we may trust Shake- 
 speare, however,this hypothesis is wholly gratuitous. 
 For the kind of free will about which Mr. Balfour 
 is talking is separated by a great gulf from the 
 freedom in which the typical man believes. The 
 men of the Elizabethan era and the men of to-day 
 agree in recognizing the existence of a freedom 
 from external forces that permits the character, 
 in its actions, to show what it really is. And 
 where this power of self-expression exists they 
 praise and blame, or in other words, impute respon- 
 sibility. The vast majority of the human race 
 have never dreamed of a freedom of another kind. 
 When a Hamlet and a Lepidus fall into perplex- 
 ities, it is because they confuse the necessity that 
 links action to character and the necessity that 
 wrenches action away from character, and forces 
 into the world deeds which the will itself would 
 never consent to send forth. 
 
 % 
 
CHAPTER YII 
 VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS 
 
 After Cornwall had blinded Gloucester, a servant 
 who had witnessed the deed exclaimed, " I '11 
 never care what wickedness I do, if Lear m. 
 this man come to good." These words ^' ^^' 
 are the expression of a deeply rooted postu- 
 late of the human mind. In any tolerable order, 
 it is felt, evil-doing must be followed by misfortune. 
 In committing a wrong, the agent seizes upon a 
 good that can become his only at the expense of 
 some more important interest of another or others. 
 Is this the end of the matter ? Or is the world so 
 constructed that the infraction of the laws of social 
 welfare inevitably involves an additional breach in 
 individual well-being ? 
 
 When the nobler natures fall, there waits for 
 them a penalty in the form of remorse. Impres- 
 sive, if brief, glimpses of its power in minds sus- 
 ceptible in any degree to the higher impulses are 
 afforded by the stories of Queen Gertrude and 
 Enobarbus. And when in the blindness of passion 
 a high-strung, sensitive man strikes with a deadly 
 blow the being he loves best, as in Cymbeline and 
 The Winter's Tale, the law that we reap more than 
 we sow is fulfilled to the letter : 
 
i6o Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 '• Though those that are betray'd 
 m^i'^^7 ^^ ^®®^ *^® treason sharply, yet the traitor 
 Stands in worse case of woe." 
 
 But at least in its application to remorse this 
 principle is not of universal validity. It would 
 hold for Imogen as it held for Posthumus ; but 
 lago's hard heart could laugh its threatenings to 
 scorn. Remorse is due to the awakening of moral 
 sensibilities that have been temporarily drugged 
 into torpor ; therefore, it can never trouble those 
 in whom conscience is either dead or unborn. 
 The moral imbecile and the hardened criminal in 
 all cases, and men of only average moral aptitudes 
 in some cases, are thus proof against everything 
 except extra-moral suffering. Do penalties of this 
 class appear, then, where conscience is inert and 
 remorse fails ? 
 
 That the wicked man often brings trouble upon 
 himself as the direct result of his wickedness, it 
 requires no argument to prove. Such misfortune 
 may take on a score of forms that are sufficiently 
 well known, as disease, imprisonment, and failure. 
 But evil-doing has indirect effects no less disas- 
 trous that are frequently overlooked. It has been 
 said that the worst punishment of the liar is not 
 that others cannot believe him, but that he can- 
 not believe others. This principle, of course, holds 
 for every variety of treachery. Its workings can 
 be traced without difficulty in Richard II. and 
 Henry TV. Here we see a pack of human wolves 
 
Virtue and Happiness i6i 
 
 uniting to remove an obstacle in their way, and 
 then, the immediate object accomplished, viewing 
 each other with distrust and suspicion, which ul- 
 timately create the violence they apprehend. 
 
 " The love of wicked men converts to fear; 
 That fear to hate, and hate turns one or Eichard n. 
 
 both V. i. 66. 
 
 To worthy danger and deserved death." 
 
 Success thus purchased can have no more stability 
 than a wave of the sea. 
 
 It is true that in a society altogether dominated 
 by such men, the good are often swept away with 
 the bad to a common ruin. Witness, for instance, 
 the fall of Duke Humphrey, in Henry VI. Never- 
 theless, there is a tendency at work in favor of the 
 good. In so far as "nobleness enkindles noble- 
 ness," they live in a better world than the bad. 
 Brutus could say with his dying breath, j. c. 
 " In all my life I found no man but he ^- ^- ^^^ 
 was true to me." And thus it proved with Henry 
 V. In contrast with almost all the other reigns of 
 the historical plays, where the king is either self- 
 indulgent and greedy of money, or treacherous and 
 unprincipled, or criminally weak and cowardly, wc 
 behold a reign whose peace, as soon as the true 
 temper of the monarch is revealed, is not troubled 
 by a single conspiracy ; more than this, a reign in 
 which for the first time in many a year all the sub- 
 jects of the king rally around him with devotion 
 and enthusiasm in an enterprise that they believe 
 
 11 
 
1 62 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 to be demanded by justice and patriotism. He 
 lived, indeed, in a better world than his father or 
 his son. 
 
 The punishment of grave crimes is rendered 
 more certain and also more overwhelming by a 
 principle that is perhaps most effectively exhibited 
 in Macbeth. Only a single act of violence is needed 
 to place the Thane of Cawdor upon the throne of 
 Scotland. But unfortunately circumstances com- 
 pelled him to make a confidant of one man, Ban- 
 quo ; and who can tell when Banquo may find it 
 to his interest to turn against the master he helped 
 to exalt ? So this possible enemy must die. With 
 him must be sacrificed his son, that there may be 
 no avenger left to terrify the murderer, and that 
 the doom announced by the supernatural messen- 
 gers of fate may be turned aside. These mysteri- 
 ous acts of violence awaken general suspicion and 
 fear. The fear of the subjects awakens new fear 
 in the sovereign, that in turn provokes renewed acts 
 of violence on his part. Strive against necessity 
 as he will, sin, he discovers, plucks on sin; till 
 finally the guilty dupe is buried under their ac- 
 cumulated weight. 
 
 As yet, however, we have discovered nothing 
 worthy the name of a universal law. For the pen- 
 alties thus far enumerated are by no means the 
 inevitable consequence of a violation of the moral 
 order. Some lagos escape detection, their plans 
 succeed to their entire satisfaction, and they be- 
 come pillars of society. Even if unmasked, it 
 
Virtue and Happiness 163 
 
 happens more than once that " the wicked Hamlet m. 
 prize itself buys out the law." No ex- "i- 59- 
 eraplification of this truth is more revolting than 
 Henry YIII., whom Shakespeare and Fletcher were 
 compelled to dismiss, secure and apparently happy 
 in the possession of his desired bride, and as the 
 result of his very crimes freed forever from the 
 hateful yoke of Rome. 
 
 "What, then, is the successful villain, if only 
 sufficiently callous, after all, a man to be envied ? 
 Does his life of unsuspected or at least unchecked 
 crime afford him the expected satisfaction ? The 
 answer to this question is given in Macbeth. 
 
 If we of the twentieth century would understand 
 the impression made by this great tragedy upon 
 its first auditors, we must become with them for the 
 moment subjects of the first Stuart. We must look 
 back upon the life of our ancestors as cramped and 
 disfigured by conventions, prejudices, and super- 
 stitions. We must think of our own life as a thing 
 to be shaped solely with reference to the attain- 
 ment of the best ends through the use of the most 
 economical means. Whether we happen to know 
 it or not, this ideal has come to us from Italy, where, 
 after the night of the Middle Ages, it blossomed 
 and bore fruit under the regenerating influences 
 of classical culture. The great personalities it 
 produced are not entirely unknown to us. Some 
 were guided by the new light to seek a develop- 
 ment of their volitional powers that made them 
 a blessing to their own age and to posterity. 
 
164 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Others there were, however, whose emancipation 
 from the past meant the destruction of every 
 scruple, every restraint that might have kept them 
 from making self the centre of their universe. 
 These latter, if we have caught by contagion, or for 
 any other reason share the feelings of the typical 
 Italian, — these latter are our idols, particularly 
 those among them who have risen to supreme 
 power in the state. In this position they can in- 
 dulge every wish, yes, every passing whim. What 
 more can life offer ? And we could demonstrate, 
 if necessary, that this happy condition would have 
 been forever closed to them, had they not thrust 
 aside from beginning to end every consideration 
 except that of the best means to their own aggran- 
 dizement. On the stage, in the seats reserved for 
 the aristocracy, we see the incarnations of our 
 ideals, men who, sometimes from comparatively 
 humble beginnings, have attained to royal favor, 
 wealth, station, and almost boundless power, through 
 their superiority to the considerations that restrain 
 the stupid and timid herd. It is with these 
 thoughts, these ideals in the background of con- 
 sciousness, that we watch the rise to greatness of 
 a man and a woman dominated by our own spirit. 
 Our hero is not an Italian, as we might have ex- 
 pected. The dramatist has just given us Othello.^ 
 Perhaps this may have moved him to lay the scene 
 
 ^ This chronology is conjectnral, as in most cases when we come 
 to details; but, on the whole, it is the most plausible guess we 
 can make. 
 
Virtue and Happiness 165 
 
 in another part of the world, and to make the plot 
 turn upon the employment of violence rather than 
 intrigue. Perhaps, too, he thought the majority of 
 his audience could better realize the political con- 
 ditions of Scotland than of Italy. But whatever 
 may have determined the setting, there can be 
 no mistake about the essence of the drama. It 
 represents the inner life of the unscrupulous and 
 successful political adventurer of the Sixteenth 
 Century. 
 
 Macbeth is to-day commonly, perhaps univer- 
 sally regarded as a tragedy of remorse. Such a 
 conception is, I believe, not merely erroneous, it 
 utterly obscures the connection between evil-doing 
 and its harvest that is set forth in the play. The 
 first step towards discovering this relationship 
 must therefore be an examination of the tradi- 
 tional theory. 
 
 The view that Macbeth was originally a good 
 man, the only flaw in whose character was a cer- 
 tain lack of determination through which he was 
 led astray by the weird sisters and his wife, this 
 view has fortunately almost disappeared. How it 
 ever came into existence is difficult to understand. 
 
 " What beast was 't, then, 
 That made you break this enterprise to me ? 
 
 . . . Nor time nor place 
 Did then adhere, and yet you would make ^^ 47 
 
 both : 
 They have made themselves, and that their 
 fitness now 
 
1 66 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know 
 How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me : 
 I would, while it was smiling in my face. 
 Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
 And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
 Have done to this." 
 
 Surely these words of Lady Macbeth are sufficiently 
 explicit. The first suggestions of foul play came 
 from Macbeth's own unscrupulous ambition. Tlie 
 role of the weird sisters is strictly limited to 
 promising success. 
 
 When the time for action finally arrives moral 
 scruples play no part whatever in the hesitation 
 that ensues. Macbeth has found that 
 the thought of murder to be committed 
 in some distant future, and the actual consent of the 
 will to its immediate execution, are quite different 
 things. He is therefore compelled to go through 
 an agony of conflict before he can " bend up each 
 corporal agent to this terrible feat." But the con- 
 siderations that give him pause are not regard for 
 duty but fear of the '' bloody instructions which re- 
 turn to plague the inventor." The world to come, 
 which lies below the horizon line, he is willing to 
 "jump." But he cannot free himself from fear of 
 the vengeance that overtakes in this life the traitor 
 and the murderer. He were resolved, if he could 
 only be assured that the point of his knife would 
 not be turned against himself. True, other and 
 higher considerations enter his mind. For a 
 moment the promptings of honor and loyalty are 
 
Virtue and Happiness 167 
 
 allowed to hold the attention ; thereupon the graces 
 of his sovereign present themselves and prepare 
 to plead for the threatened life. But no, the old 
 familiar counsellors push them aside and hasten 
 to urge the danger to which he will subject him- 
 self if he stirs the indignation of his countrymen 
 by outraging their sympathies. 
 
 After the crime has been committed the prevail- 
 ing emotion is not sorrow for sin, but, as before, 
 fear, fear of the dagger and the poisoned cup. It 
 haunts him in his dreams ; it drives him to keep a 
 paid agent in every house, and even persuades him 
 to spy upon the cut-throats who do his work ; it 
 hounds him on to ever new murders and atrocities. 
 Between the murder of Duncan and the second 
 meeting with the weird sisters fear is the domi- 
 nant note of every soliloquy and of every dialogue 
 with Lady Macbeth. 
 
 I am not unaware that Coleridge finds in these 
 utterances of a troubled mind indications of the 
 activity of conscience.^ No grounds are alleged 
 for his hypothesis, but in its favor might be urged 
 the fact that Macbeth is a soldier whose bravery 
 and address upon the field of battle had brought 
 him the title and estate of the Thane of Cawdor. 
 This fact, however, proves nothing. Much bravery 
 is merely the insensibility of habit ; and use and 
 wont which harden men to danger as they do to 
 privation may leave them helpless in situations 
 that are radically new. Hence the terror with 
 1 Notes on Shakespeare : Macbeth. 
 
l68 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 which ghosts have always inspired even the bold- 
 Cf Macbeth ^^^ natures. Coleridge's dictum, in fact, 
 m. iv. 99- seems to have no other basis than the 
 demands of his own transcendentalism 
 which, discovering no direct traces of moral sen- 
 sibility proceeds to read them into the text as best 
 it can. 
 
 Nevertheless, Macbeth is not absolutely without 
 conscience, though Coleridge does not succeed in 
 identifying the indications of its existence. The 
 Scotch nobleman is no mere echo of Richard III. 
 or lago. In the mouths of neither of these 
 worthies should we hear the words, " For Banquo's 
 ■ fic fiR issue have I filed my mind; " still less 
 * those which follow, " For them the 
 gracious Duncan have I murder'd." It is charac- 
 teristic of the completely insensible criminal both 
 in the real world and in Shakespeare's representa- 
 tion of it^ that he looks upon his victim with 
 contempt. Strength is all he admires, and the un- 
 suspecting victim is in his eyes weak and stupid. 
 It is of great significance, therefore, that Macbeth 
 has not lost all his admiration for the childlike 
 innocence of his king even when actually coupled, 
 as it seems to have been in this case, with a lack 
 of force. Equally significant is the farther fact 
 that Macbeth calls his crimes by their proper 
 names, " murder," " treason," " this hangman's 
 [butcher's] hands." For this habit, since it is 
 not the cynicism of the moral imbecile, removes 
 
 1 Bichard III. and lago. 
 
Virtue and Happiness 169 
 
 him from the class of lago as certainly as it does 
 from that of the half-hardened criminal who in 
 wilful blindness calls theft " purchase." 
 
 Nevertheless, Macbeth is a man without real 
 scruples, although faint images of restraining 
 voices sometimes chime upon his inner ear. What 
 moral sensitiveness he possesses is only sufficient 
 to enable him to enjoy coddling himself for his 
 regret at his unfortunate conduct, to make of him 
 a sentimentalizing dealer in fine phrases. He can 
 tell us that treason has done its worst ; he can bid 
 seeling night scarf up the tender eye of .. 
 
 pitiful day at the very moment when he is 
 completing his arrangements for a second murder. 
 Macbeth's fine phrases about murdering innocent 
 sleep, and the many companion utterances, sound 
 like the musings of a sympathetic and poetically 
 gifted nature who is sitting among the audience 
 and watching the course of the action. Even this 
 puts the case a little too strongly. A love of 
 mouth-filling adjectives and of exaggeration for its 
 own sake appears so frequently that we have to 
 make a double discount upon everything he says. 
 At bottom his sorrow at his own deeds is about as 
 deep and lasting as that of the average play-goer 
 at the misfortunes of last night's heroine. How 
 could it be otherwise in one who believes himself 
 doomed to centuries, probably an eternity, of suffer- 
 ing, yet has so little power to realize the absent 
 that he remains unmoved — certainly undeterred — 
 by the prospect. We ought accordingly to trust 
 
lyo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Macbeth no farther than we should Wainewright, 
 the essayist, or Lacenaire, the poet. If he could 
 control his terror he would be able, like Lacenaire, 
 to kill a man with as little compunction as he 
 would drink a glass of wine ; and after the murder 
 he would experience as little genuine remorse. 
 
 It is not otherwise with Lady Macbeth. The 
 emotions that she drowned in wine were fear that 
 thoy might fail in their attempt, or be discovered 
 before the traces had been removed. In order to 
 show his newly acquired independence of character, 
 her husband affects to keep from her the murder 
 of Banquo till she may be able to applaud the 
 accomplished deed. She is not so simple as those 
 commentators suppose, who describe her as unable 
 to see what is coming. Nevertheless, she makes 
 no attempt to stay the murderous hand. The only 
 expression of feeling that escapes her after they 
 are started in their career is longing for the lost 
 sense of security. 
 
 " ' T is safer to be that which we destroy 
 ni. ii. 6. Than by destruction dwell in doubtful 
 
 joy." 
 
 If there be any significance in these facts, Lady 
 Macbeth is as bare of moral scruples as is her 
 husband. 
 
 It is widely believed that Shakespeare's play as 
 it has come down to us is a torso, possibly wrecked 
 by Middleton, that he might enhance its popularity 
 by restoring it in accordance with the taste of the 
 
Virtue and Happiness 171 
 
 times. If some such hypothesis be true, we must 
 suppose many passages have been lost that would 
 have thrown additional light upon the heroine's 
 character. But since those we possess unite in 
 telling the same story, we may feel confident that 
 our interpretation correctly represents its main 
 outlines. 
 
 This paucity of data, however, has made it 
 possible for another theory to grow up and main- 
 tain its ground. According to it, Lady Macbeth is 
 an unselfish and lofty nature, carried away for the 
 moment to do violence to her permanent self by 
 her love for her husband. The evidence for this 
 view will not stand the slightest scrutiny. She 
 loved, we are told, her husband, her father, and her 
 child. Grant this, and nothing is proved. For 
 while strong family affection is not common in the 
 lower grades of criminality, it sometimes occurs.^ 
 And have we not seen a callous murderer risking 
 his life to save a cat ? Her love for her father, of 
 which so much has been made, is certainly not in- 
 tense enough to have any great effect upon her 
 actions. Possibly we must believe her when she 
 declares, 
 
 " Had he not resembled .. 
 My father as he slept, I had done 't." 
 
 But this resemblance does not prevent her from 
 placing the daggers where Macbeth cannot miss 
 them ; from giving the signal for the deed ; from 
 
 1 See above, p. 122. 
 
172 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 following her husband's retreating steps with 
 strained attention ; from entering a room near the 
 scene she would not witness in order to assure 
 herself of the successful issue. She can even 
 picture the murderer in the very act of striking the 
 blow and at the same time remain calm enough to 
 note that " the surfeited grooms do mock their 
 charge with snores," 
 
 Again, her fainting on the discovery that Macbeth 
 has killed the two grooms has been interpreted as 
 an indubitable sign of returning moral sensibility. 
 Let us assume for the sake of argument that the 
 swoon is genuine ; that the fact that she needs 
 help at the exact moment when Macbeth begins 
 talking too much is merely a matter of chance. 
 Even so, the conclusion does not follow with neces- 
 sity, for the incident is susceptible of several dif- 
 ferent explanations. Macbeth's detailed description 
 of the appearance of the murdered Duncan and the 
 sleeping attendants, perhaps in connection with 
 the disappearance of the effects of the wine, may 
 have awakened her to a realizing sense of her 
 position ; and the horror with which it inspired 
 her may have been just that which she sought to 
 banish by the wine.^ 
 
 ^ Tlie following passage from Feuerbach's work, already cited, 
 describes a case so nearly parallel to the swoon of Lady Macbeth as 
 here interpreted, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. Andreas 
 Bichel. a day laborer, lured two young girls into his house and 
 killed them, in order to sell their clothes. At no time after his 
 arrest did he show the slightest trace of remorse ; and throughout 
 his examination he maintained his self-control perfectly, except on 
 
Virtue and Happiness 173 
 
 To be sure, Lady Macbeth, like her husband, can 
 deal in very effective oratory. Witness the beau- 
 
 the occasion to be described. He pleaded not guilty, and as there 
 had been no witnesses of the crime, progress was at first very slow. 
 For a long time the most that could be accomplished was to force 
 him to the admission of one murder, for which the circumstantial 
 evidence was overwhelming. But he so described the conditions 
 that brought it about as to reduce his guilt to a minimum. Finally, 
 in accordance with a Bavarian law framed for such exigencies, he 
 was taken from the town in which the trial was being held to his 
 native village. " He was first brought into the magistrate's ofiice. 
 Immediately upon his entrance he was overcome by the thought 
 that he was now at the place where the crime had been committed, 
 and he was prevented from fainting only by being given some 
 water. The judge addressed him in kind and sensible words : 
 ' You are now,' he said, ' in your native town, near your home and 
 the scene of your crime. Confess the entire truth here and at 
 once. You will be taken to your own home, you will see the 
 corpses themselves.' But the culprit's will still remained stronger 
 than even the powerful feelings that threatened to destroy con- 
 sciousness. He persisted in the assertion that he knew nothing of 
 the second corpse alleged to have been found in his dwelling. 
 
 " Thereupon he was taken to his house. In the principal room 
 lay upon boards the two mangled corpses. He was led to the first 
 one. At this horrible sight he trembled in every limb ; the muscles 
 of his face twitched ; his expression grew terrible ; he demanded 
 water to moisten his lips and mouth. When asked whether he 
 recognized the corpse, he answered in a hollow voice : ' No ; I have 
 never before seen a corpse that has lain in the grave.' He was 
 then led to the second one. He could now no longer stand up- 
 right, but sank into a chair. His limbs trembled violently and his 
 face was disfigured with hideous contortions. He now declared 
 that he recognized this second body as Katherina Seidel. He was 
 asked to explain his emotion at the sight of the first corpse. ' I 
 trembled only for fear of the people,' was his answer. ' Who would 
 not tremble under circumstances like these ? ' and persisted in his 
 assertions of ignorance." Feuerbach, opus cit., p. 47. 
 
 The emotion that overcame Bichel was fear, as is shown by a 
 study of the entire case. The sight of his native village, then of 
 
174 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 tiful invocation beginning : " Come, you 
 spirits that tend on mortal thoughts." 
 But if this be a picture of a mind really battling 
 with temptation, we must suppose either a very 
 stupid dramatist or a very stupid woman. For if 
 Lady Macbeth had ever learned anything from 
 experience, she must have known that to keep pity 
 from doing its work one must drive it from the 
 mind by the thought of personal gain. The spirits 
 should have been bidden to fill her mind with 
 pictures of that future dignity to which she and 
 her husband aspired, with an imaginative foretaste 
 of the joys of luxury and power. As it stands, 
 therefore, the entire address seems to me to have 
 its source in the same temperament and character 
 that produced her husband's poetic effusions. Out- 
 bursts in this vein, to be sure, will hardly be ex- 
 pected from a Goneril, but demonstrably they can 
 come from a Lacenaire. They therefore prove 
 nothing beyond the most rudimentary moral capac- 
 ity, a capacity just sufficient for a touch of senti- 
 mentalism. This particular ebullition does not 
 even indicate a sentimentalism that is innate. As 
 the only piece of declamation in which she is 
 represented as indulging, — unless the remark 
 about her father belongs in the same category, — 
 it perhaps ought to be attributed to the principle 
 that husbands and wives occasionally drop into 
 
 his victims, brought home to his imagination for the first time the 
 extent of his danger and the momentousness of the issues in the 
 outcome of his trial. 
 
Virtue and Happiness 175 
 
 each other's mannerisms by mere force of imita- 
 tion. Hence, as soon as the necessity arose of 
 summoning every faculty to the task of toning up 
 the shattered nerves of her companion, she would 
 find no difficulty in throwing aside this loosely 
 worn habit. 
 
 The conclusion of the whole matter is that 
 Macbetli and Lady Macbeth are by nature proof 
 against attacks of remorse. Some slight dis- 
 comfort they may possibly feel for a time, but it 
 will quickly wear off, leaving no trace behind. 
 Armed as they are at this point, will they then 
 escape unscathed in their war against their fellow- 
 men? 
 
 The murder of Duncan is in the past. Treason 
 has done its worst. Macbeth is seated upon the 
 throne and Lady Macbeth is queen of Scotland. 
 She has succeeded ; her heart's desire is hers. But 
 there is no joy in her soul, for peace has gone 
 forever from her life. 
 
 " Nought 's had, all 's spent, 
 Where our desire is got without content : 
 'T is safer to be that which we destroy 
 Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy." 
 
 m. ii. 4. 
 
 We must remember that Lady Macbeth was not 
 a woman of great temperamental courage, as her 
 husband erroneously supposed. Real fearlessness 
 does not need to drink wine in order to make itself 
 bold. It can look fate in the eye, and when the 
 
176 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 worst presents itself to the imagination it does not 
 recoil with the cry : 
 
 " These deeds must not be thought 
 After these ways ; so, it will make us mad." 
 
 No, she was not insensible to the dangers that sur- 
 rounded her from the day she entered upon the 
 path of murder. They shook her frame ; there 
 were moments, at least, when she thought it better 
 to be dead than bear the agony of an uncertain 
 future. But she possessed a heroic, an almost 
 superhuman will. As long as she could act, even 
 though she had ceased to share altogether the 
 counsels of her lord, she merely suffered, but her 
 emotions did not overthrow her. But when Mac- 
 beth had gone into the field, and she was shut up 
 in a castle condemned to inactivity, then the terror 
 that had been locked up within her broke its 
 chains. The mind gave way under the strain of 
 anxiety and the tortured soul exhibited its hitherto 
 hidden agony, not, indeed, in prophecy, but in remi- 
 niscence. It is a single theme that we liear when 
 she comes before us for the last time : a little 
 water will not clear her of this deed. What then ? 
 They will be discovered ; and again and again she 
 lives through the fearful scenes in which her hus- 
 band's weakness threatens to mar all, and her resolu- 
 tion must be the source of his self-control as well as 
 her own. When the knocking at the castle gate 
 broke the silence of the night, when the disordered 
 imagination of her husband conjured up the ghost of 
 
Virtue and Happiness 177 
 
 Banquo, she seemed calm and self-possessed. But 
 now we know what storms were sweeping through 
 her mind, what storms have visited it since. 
 
 The common opinion that the sleep-walking scene 
 represents the workings of remorse is entirely 
 gratuitous, quite apart from the view we may take 
 of Lady Macbeth's character. A few of its expres- 
 sions may be so interpreted ; none of them must 
 be ; a majority cannot be. The dominant note is 
 plainly fear, fear that Macbeth will mar all by his 
 agitation, fear that these hands of hers can never 
 lose the telltale mark of blood. It is noteworthy 
 that Schiller, whose Kantian preconceptions were 
 the only assurance he needed that this must be a 
 representation of remorse, — it is noteworthy that 
 Schiller, when he came to translate this passage, 
 found himself compelled to embody his interpreta- 
 tion in language that has no counterpart in the 
 original. In Shakespeare's text the physician says : 
 
 " Foul whisperings are abroad : unnatural 
 
 deeds 
 Do breed unnatural troubles : infected 
 
 minds 
 To their deaf pillows will discharge 
 
 their secrets." 
 
 These lines Schiller translates : 
 
 " Unnatilrlich ungeheure 
 Verbrechen wecken unnatiirliche 
 Gewissensangst, uud die beladne Seele beichtet 
 Dem tauben Kissen ihre Schuld. 
 12 
 
 V. i. 79. 
 
lyS Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 If we read this scene as Shakespeare •wrote it, we 
 shall find no evidence of G-ewissensangst. 
 
 The " lesson" to be drawn from Macbeth, there- 
 fore, is not that remorse will come; that, as we 
 have seen, will depend upon the development of 
 the moral nature. What is represented is the 
 terror of those who set themselves up as the enemy 
 of mankind. It filled Lady Macbeth's waking 
 thoughts with scorpions, it tortured her nights with 
 timorous dreams. About her is the struggle to 
 keep from her enemies' grasp what she by vio- 
 lence has seized ; before her lies the day when one of 
 
 them will finally succeed. If it be true 
 J ". ■ that " they lose [the world] that do buy 
 
 it with much care ; " if it be true that 
 Othello m. u riches fineless is as poor as winter to 
 
 him that ever fears he shall be poor,'* 
 Lady Macbeth has lost in the game of life. She 
 goes to her death weak, poor, and broken in spirit. 
 This is no fancy picture, created to frighten the 
 bad and edify the good. Whether it was suggested 
 by the description of the life of the tyrant in Plato's 
 Republic, or by some account of the careers of the 
 famous Italian despots, cannot be determined. 
 At all events, it is a faithful representation of fact. 
 John Addington Symonds writes : " The life of 
 the despot was usually one of prolonged terror. 
 Immured in strong places on high rocks, or con- 
 fined to gloomy fortresses like the Milanese Castello, 
 he surrounded his person with foreign troops, pro- 
 tected his bed-chamber with a picked guard, and 
 
Virtue and Happiness 179 
 
 watched his meat and drink lest they should be 
 poisoned. . . . He had no real friends or equals, 
 and against his own family he adopted an attitude of 
 fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues 
 to which he was exposed. His timidity verged 
 on monomania. Like Alfonso II. of Naples, he 
 was tortured with the ghosts of starved or strangled 
 victims ; like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious 
 fascination of astrology ; like Filippo Maria Yis- 
 conti, he trembled at the sound of thunder,^ and 
 set one band of body-guards to watch another next 
 his person.2 He dared not hope for a quiet end. 
 No one believed in the natural death of a prince : 
 princes must be poisoned or poniarded. " ^ 
 
 But then there are the intrepid. They think all 
 men mortal but themselves, and cannot imagine 
 the dagger as ever reaching them. Cowards may 
 die many times before their death, but they face 
 the inevitable end but once. Success they feel sure 
 of ; it is their temperament to be optimistic. Who 
 shall pluck the reward from their hands ? 
 
 The art of the poet has shown us this, also. 
 Originally, Macbeth was more timorous than his 
 wife. At all events, if he felt no more fear, he had 
 not her art of driving it from the mind when action 
 
 1 Cf. Macbeth : " That I may tell pale-hearted rv i 85 
 
 fear it lies, 
 And sleep in spite of thunder." 
 
 2 Cf. Macbeth, Act III., scene iii., line 1 ff. It will not be for- 
 gotten that Macbeth, too, was visited by apparitions of the mur- 
 dered, and that in his terror he resorted to the occult. 
 
 8 The Age of the Despots, p. 118. 
 
1 80 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 was necessary. But he has received supernatural 
 assurance of safety from a source that he never 
 questions. He has, indeed, a war on his hands, but 
 he is a soldier by profession. And has he not been 
 told that he shall never be vanquished until great 
 ^ . „„ Birnam wood to hiah Dunsinane hill 
 
 IV. 1. 92. ° 
 
 shall come against him ? and that in 
 victory or defeat none of woman born 
 shall harm him ? Moreover, he has health and the 
 possession of all his faculties, wealth, power, and 
 the assured fame that follows in the train of the 
 kingly office. What lacks he yet ? 
 
 What lacks he yet ? Everything that makes 
 life worth having, for his desire is got without 
 content. Why without content ? He knows only 
 too well. 
 
 " That which should accompany old 
 
 age, 
 As honour, love, obedience, troops of 
 
 friends, 
 I must not look to have ; but, in their 
 
 V. iii. 24. stead. 
 
 Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, 
 
 breath. 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, 
 
 and dare not." 
 
 It was for pomp and power that he gave his soul 
 to the common enemy of man. But the one can 
 permanently amuse only a child ; the other he finds 
 an empty word unless the obedience rendered be 
 
virtue and Happiness i8i 
 
 prompted by loyalty and love. And this he can- 
 not have. For it is the nature of moral evil to 
 divide man from his fellow-man. The egoist thinks 
 he is merely deciding at each point in his career 
 whether he shall snatch this advantage or make 
 that sacrifice. In reality, he is deciding whether 
 he shall lead the broader or the narrower life. 
 With every attack upon others he will grow at the 
 same time more suspicious of his fellows and more 
 indifferent to their interests. If continued, this 
 attitude will extend to his friends, till finally even 
 those he once loved best will become nothing to him 
 except as they are instruments to some ulterior end. 
 Thus he is drawing away from others at the very time 
 when others are drawing away from him, till finally 
 there will come a day when his isolation is complete. 
 The bitterness of this last stroke was not with- 
 held from Macbeth. Not but that his wife, and 
 possibly some few others, may not have retained 
 till the end their devotion to him. The tragedy 
 of this man's loneliness lay in the fact that he had 
 become incapable of any feeling of unity with them. 
 They were now for him mere walking, gesticulating 
 statues, incapable of speaking to the needs of his 
 soul, and he was alone in this wilderness of lifeless 
 forms. The causes of this final estrangement can, 
 in part, be guessed ; in part they must remain 
 forever unknown. Whether it was that prolonged 
 misery had dulled Macbeth's sensibilities, and ren- 
 dered him incapable of all strong emo- cf. V. v. 
 tion ; whether it was that she, who was ^-^^- 
 
1 82 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 once nearest to him, had become in his eyes, like 
 the rest, merely a dangerous tool ; whether it was 
 that both husband and wife had wakened with a 
 shock, fatal to love, from their illusions respecting 
 each other, — who will venture to say ? Certain it 
 is, at all events, that these are not bare abstract 
 possibilities ; sooner or later, they must have come. 
 The first two would have been merely the inevita- 
 ble results of an unbridled egoism, and the condi- 
 tions into which it had thrust him. The last 
 derives its necessity from the special nature of the 
 relation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. 
 
 No careful observer can have failed to notice that 
 this man and this woman had never really known 
 each other. Misled by his sonorous phrases, she 
 had thought him too full of the milk of human 
 kindness to catch the nearer way ; she had thought 
 him without the wickedness that should attend am- 
 bition. Perhaps she was glad to be undeceived. 
 But in the early days of their married life had she 
 expected she would ever, waking or dreaming, 
 have to say, " Fie, my lord, fie ! A soldier and 
 af eared " ? And can a woman, even the most 
 timorous, and such Lady Macbeth was not, retain 
 her respect for the companion and protector whom 
 she must thus address, not once, but over and over 
 again ? 
 
 Macbeth, too, had been disillusioned. What can 
 he think of the judgment of the woman who, in 
 the fatal moment of action, had spurred on his will 
 with stinging words ? And can he forget that once 
 
virtue and Happiness 183 
 
 he had believed her literally invulnerable to fear, 
 and that in a burst of enthusiasm, he had hailed 
 her as one whose " undaunted mettle 
 should compose nothing but males " ? ' ' " 
 Now, he finds her strong indeed, but not, as he had 
 fondly imagined, immovably fixed. His respect, 
 or at least his admiration for her, is gone, even as 
 his respect for himself. And his love, be the 
 reasons what they will, has forsaken him, too. He 
 accordingly listens to the tidings of her death with 
 grim indifference : If not at this time, y ^ i7_23 
 she would have died hereafter ; fools 
 are dying every day. 
 
 Alas, for Macbeth ! Separated as he is from his 
 kind by the prison walls of hatred, with no inspir- 
 ing ideals, whether of service or character to give 
 content to his life, he feels he has lived long 
 enough. For if this be success, if it is to gain this 
 that men put rancors in the vessel of their peace, 
 then truly 
 
 " Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor 
 player 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the 
 
 stage L24. 
 
 And then is heard no more : it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and 
 
 fury, 
 Signifying nothing." 
 
 If it had come to this point, the catastrophe that 
 overwhelmed him from without was really a release. 
 
184 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Truly, the wages of Macbeth's sin were death, 
 death in life. 
 
 Impressive as is this revelation of the inner life 
 of the fear-free criminal, it will not completely 
 satisfy those who demand an inseparable connec- 
 tion between wickedness and misfortune. For it 
 may with much plausibility be argued that Mac- 
 beth's world-weariness and despair were the out- 
 come of an idiosyncrasy of temperament. Such a 
 complete collapse we should expect only where 
 there was an active and unsatisfied longing to re- 
 ceive, and perhaps even to give sympathy. This 
 longing is not incompatible with complete selfish- 
 ness. It is not infrequently found in the most 
 crassly egoistic, showing itself among other ways 
 in a preference for animal over human companion- 
 ship ; the former being chosen because it involves 
 no serious counter-demands. The existence of this 
 trait in Macbeth is inferable from what I have 
 called his sentimentalizing. His mind in playing 
 with the picture of itself as caring for others, be- 
 trays its craving for their interest in its own 
 welfare. But, it may be argued, the hunger for 
 fellowship cannot be a necessary constituent of 
 human nature. In some men it appears to be non- 
 existent; in others, rudimentary. Is not this 
 appearance fact ? 
 
 Problems of possibilities, it must be obvious, 
 do not belong within the province of the drama, 
 whose function it is to mirror certain, necessarily 
 narrow, areas of the existent. We jaiay infer 
 
Virtue and Happiness 185 
 
 with much plausibility, however, that Shakespeare 
 considered the desire for sympathy an all but uni- 
 versal phenomenon, appearing often like subter- 
 ranean streams in the most unpromising places. 
 He found it in a man like Richard III. : 
 
 " I shall despair. There is no creature 
 
 ^ Bichard III. 
 
 loves me : ^ ^ ^^ 
 
 And if I die, no soul shall pity me." 
 He found it in Gloucester's ruthless son : 
 " Yet Edmund was beloved ! " ^'^lld 
 
 This hunger may be forgotten in the first en- 
 thusiasm over some newly won success; but in 
 the barren days between great events, most of all 
 in the periods of depression and failure that spare 
 no man, it will return. These few touches of the 
 artist's brush, then, are a revelation of the bitter- 
 ness of soul that overwhelms the base mind when 
 the future looks black, when losses crowd upon 
 him, when failure has laid upon him her iron hand. 
 In these gloomy hours the unselfish may turn to 
 extra-personal interests. The satisfaction of these 
 will give content to their lives. But for the self- 
 centred there is only unsatisfied craving. 
 
 But however wide-spread the desire for human 
 fellowship may be, Shakespeare seems to teach 
 that it may occasionally fail. In lago, for instance, 
 there is no trace of it. He knows nothing of 
 family affection, of mutual confidences, helpful- 
 
1 86 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 ness, and brotherhood ; of delight in the service 
 either of his general or the state. So much joy, 
 of course, he can never possess. On the other 
 hand, its absence does not appear to distress him 
 in the least. Has he not, then, escaped his punish- 
 ment ? May he not find life, on the whole, a very 
 comfortable affair ? 
 
 The answer to this question has not been left 
 to conjecture. lago's mind harbors an inmate 
 as sombre as discontent. The cynicism of this 
 ruthless intriguer is not the active despair of 
 virtue which we find in Hamlet, for apart from 
 the fact that he has no love for it, he believes 
 in its existence here and there, and counts upon 
 it as one of the strings by which to pull his 
 marionettes. His cynicism is rather contempt for 
 the race as a herd of fools, often weak and always 
 stupid, a contempt that has its source partly in 
 the consciousness of his own powers, partly in 
 his incapacity to look with sympathetic vision 
 into the inner palpitating life of his less clever 
 fellow-men. Nothing but warm and deep sym- 
 pathies can save the superior person — or him who 
 supposes himself such — from a distaste for his 
 human environment as for the monotonous sandy 
 fiats of a vast desert, in the midst of which fate 
 has imprisoned him. For through the sympathies 
 alone is revealed the significance and worth of that 
 mingling of nobility and weakness, insight and 
 error, struggle and torpor, joy and sorrow, that 
 form the content of the commonplace life. lago's 
 
virtue and Happiness 187 
 
 every word and deed testify to this corroding 
 bitterness of soul. His existence is thus an essen- 
 tially joyless one, lightened as it is only by an 
 occasional gleam of satisfaction at his own acute- 
 ness and strength of will. 
 
 If lago had been dull of intellect he might, 
 of course, have escaped this experience — at what 
 cost I need hardly point out. Intellectual medi- 
 ocrity accompanied by emotional and volitional 
 barrenness has perhaps never attracted even the 
 most superficial amateur in the art of living. 
 Confining our attention, then, to the selfishness 
 of intellectual endowment, we discover that an 
 inexorable fate seems to have set before it these 
 alternatives : the isolation of an unsatisfied long- 
 ing for human fellowship ; the isolation of cynical 
 contempt. The former, we are distinctly taught, 
 will poison and reduce to less than nothingness 
 the most brilliant outward success. Whether the 
 latter finds adequate compensation in power, sta- 
 tion, and luxury, has been left for the spectator 
 to determine. If he agrees with the estimate 
 placed upon them by those Shakespearean charac- 
 ters who have learned their value from personal 
 experience, his problem will not be difficult. 
 
 The preceding study of the relation between 
 wickedness and its harvest has brought before 
 us the principal factors involved, in so far as 
 S-hakespeare has described them. Whether there 
 may not be some loop-hole through which guilt 
 occasionally escapes, especially where it is com- 
 
1 8 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 mingled with a certain share of goodness, an 
 inquiry that confines itself to his text cannot 
 undertake to decide. What it can and does show 
 is the nature of the most important tendencies 
 at work, and the insignificance of the chance in 
 favor of their neutralization. 
 
 Our result is no copy-book morality, no smug 
 assurance, Be good and you will be happy. The 
 gentle Desdemona, all love, all service ; Horatio 
 bending over the body of his dead friend ; Kent 
 broken upon the wheel to which his devotion has 
 bound him, — these are not happy. The leap 
 from the principle that moral enthusiasm is, at its 
 highest, a conditio sine qua non of happiness to 
 the principle that it is a sufficient condition of 
 happiness is so violent that it could hardly escape 
 the attention of any unbiased observer. Accord- 
 ingly, I should not think of giving a moment's 
 consideration to such a doctrine if it had not 
 been either tacitly assumed or expressly asserted 
 by certain very " profound thinkers," and in 
 particular by certain "profound" Shakespearean 
 critics. 
 
 For one who is willing to see things as they 
 are, there can be no question of the fundamental 
 value of a well-endowed intellect, especially in 
 stirring times and in highly organized societies. 
 Not only are the specific joys of the intellectual 
 life, including the consciousness of intellectual 
 power, forever closed to those who stand no higher 
 than a Chinese coolie; it is equally certain that 
 
virtue and Happiness 189 
 
 tact, — one-half of which is sagacity, — keenness of 
 observation, retentiveness of memory, and power of 
 analysis and of inference, must be ranked among 
 the important instruments for the attainment of 
 the various goods of life. In Shakespeare's tran- 
 script, their part is nowhere minimized. In the 
 success of Henry Y. and the failure of Brutus ; 
 in the mistakes of Cordelia and the misfortunes 
 of Edgar and Gloucester ; in the tragic blindness 
 of Othello; yes, in the wreck of Timon's faith, 
 defects of intellect are fully as potent as sins 
 of will. 
 
 Nor is there any refusal, at least in the great 
 masterpieces, to acknowledge the role of that incal- 
 culable and intractable factor that men call chance. 
 Its range, to be sure, is reduced to a minimum ; 
 but such treatment would be demanded under 
 any circumstances by the principles of dramatic 
 art. The function of tragedy is to awaken awe 
 (not fear, as Aristotle taught) and pity. Some- 
 where within the length and breadth of human life 
 we must therefore be brought into the presence of 
 power. And of this the intellect and the will of 
 man are the chief seat. Still more impressive, 
 however, even though it terrify, is the revelation 
 of power that we behold in those unbending 
 resistless laws of life that enfold man and bear 
 him onward to destruction. Before the sweep of 
 these mighty energies the accidental must be kept 
 in the background. Accident, to be sure, is not 
 lawless. But it is the product of a confluence of 
 
ipo Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 forces, the necessity for which usually cannot be 
 seen, or at least realized. Furthermore, the acci- 
 dental, as that which is occasional, lacks the massive- 
 ness which gives power much of its hold upon the 
 imagination. Tragedy, therefore, must use chance 
 sparingly. But while Shakespeare minimizes to the 
 utmost the influence of this factor, he does not and 
 cannot entirely conceal it. The aged Lear craves 
 love and sympathy. No one can help remember- 
 ing that marriage with a different wife might have 
 given him affectionate daughters, and that, as it 
 is, if death had taken Goneril and Regan in their in- 
 fancy, the old king never would have seen his train 
 disquantitied, or been driven out into the night and 
 storm. Illustrations of the principle are number- 
 less. Consider one more. Not even an Alfred or 
 a St. Louis is perfect. Evidently whether the flaw 
 in their characters shall be fatal or relatively harm- 
 less will depend upon circumstances. This appears 
 with perfect clearness in Othello. Shakespeare 
 has used every resource at his command to make 
 Othello's fate the outcome of his character. His 
 suspicions of Desdemona's unfaithfulness do not 
 turn upon the chance loss of a handkerchief or the 
 casual meeting of Cassio and Bianca. They spring 
 
 from the hot impetuosity he drew from 
 333-479. his barbaric ancestors. But these 
 
 deadly forces might have remained 
 quiescent forever if he had not hitherto been sur- 
 rounded by honorable men, if he had known some- 
 thing of women except by hearsay, or if lago had 
 
Virtue and Happiness 191 
 
 taken service with Genoa rather than Venice. 
 They might have been shut up in harmlessness had 
 the Turkish fleet come down upon Cyprus and thus 
 given Desdemona and Cassio time to clear them- 
 selves. Even an accidental delay of five minutes 
 in the commission of the murder might have 
 brought the explanation that would have prevented 
 the catastrophe. 
 
 Life, as Mr, Spencer has taught us, is an ad- 
 justment of inner to outer relations. Thus it is 
 possible for the external factor, which we have 
 been calling chance, to take the precedence in 
 determining individual fate. Shakespeare's one 
 illustration of this in the field of tragedy is the 
 youthful work, Romeo and Juliet. But in bring- 
 ing danger and trial to a happy termination he 
 does not hesitate to show what it can do. In All 's 
 Well that Ends Well the virtues of Helena would 
 have had no room in which to work, had it not 
 been for a series of very unusual though doubtless 
 possible accidents. In Cymbeline the lovers, and in 
 The Winter's Tale parents and daughter, are re- 
 stored to each other by a chain of circumstances that 
 genius and heroism could never by themselves have 
 forged. While, if any concatenation of chances 
 could be appropriately used as an illustration for 
 the text, "Fortune brings in some boats Cym. iv. 
 that are not steer'd," it would be the ^- ^^■ 
 disclosure of the intrigue in Much Ado about 
 Nothing through the collision, so to speak, between 
 loquacity and simplicity under the dripping eaves of 
 
192 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Leonato's palace. In life as in whist, what is given 
 from without has a part in the result. 
 
 The only way to avoid this conclusion is to 
 maintain, with Job's friends, that the fortunate are 
 really the righteous (nowadays they call themselves 
 " the fittest"), the unfortunate are really the wicked. 
 This style of exegesis, when applied to the minor 
 characters of Macbeth, for instance, leads us to 
 such conclusions as the following : " The gracious 
 Duncan falls, obviously not without being himself 
 to blame for his fate, for whether the numerous 
 revolts against his government, in the suppression 
 of which Macbeth proved his heroism, were the 
 result of arbitrary rule and injustice, or (as the 
 source from which Shakespeare drew his subject 
 has it) of unroyal weakness and concession, still, 
 he is open to the reproach of not having properly 
 fulfilled his duties as king. His sons are suspected 
 of having slain their father, owing to their precipi- 
 tate flight, which, though prudent, was unmanly, 
 and have, therefore, to suffer banishment. Banquo, 
 in self-complacent conceit, believes in the promises 
 for his future good fortune, and thus brings de- 
 struction upon his own head. Macduff's wife and 
 children, lastly, suffer for the thoughtlessness of 
 their natural protector, who, in thinking only of 
 himself, and forgetful of his duty as father and 
 husband, leaves them behind to secure his own 
 safety. He is punished by their death, which at the 
 same time is Lady Macduff's punishment for the 
 unloving asperity with which she rails at her 
 
Virtue and Happiness 193 
 
 husband's conduct, and thus gives us an insight 
 into a marriage which was perhaps also a motive 
 for Macduff's hasty and secret flight." ^ Examining 
 this formidable list of casualties it will be impossible 
 for the reader who has reached middle life to 
 refrain from feeling highly flattered at finding 
 himself alive.^ 
 
 The preceding justification of the ways of Shake- 
 speare with his characters is the fruit of German 
 thoroughness. But the greatest achievement in this 
 manner must be set down to the credit of Missouri, 
 The untimely death of Desdemona is commonly 
 looked upon as presenting some difficulties to the 
 good-happy theory of life. Some thinkers have ex- 
 plained it by pointing out that she told fibs ; others 
 have reminded us that she disobeyed her father. 
 But such considerations are either ignored or 
 brushed aside by the St. Louis critic, for he has a 
 profounder thought. The crime of Desdemona, he 
 tells us, consisted in marrying a man of a different 
 
 1 Hermann Ulrici, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, Book IV. 
 chap. iv. English translation by L. Dora Schmitz, Vol. I., p. 
 474. 
 
 2 The most ingenious part of this critique is undoubtedly the 
 punishment of Macduff through the death of his children. Readers 
 of John G. Saxe may remember a parallel case. Hoho of the 
 Golden Belt was a high-born Chinese who murdered seven wives 
 in succession on grounds of financial exigencies. Having been 
 detected in his last venture, he was condemned by an unfeeling 
 judge to be hanged. But through the interposition of his friends 
 his punishment was graciously commuted by the Emperor to the 
 decapitation of his three brothers, and the beating of his slaves 
 three times a day for a month. 
 
 13 
 
194 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 race.^ In fairness to Mr. Snider I ought to add 
 that he does not for a moment suppose that the 
 gentle Desdemona meant the least harm in the 
 world. But he thinks that they who unwittingly 
 ally themselves with the powers of evil must expect 
 the same fate as the conscious seekers after wicked- 
 ness. Possibly they must. But if right and wrong 
 depend upon the intention, this is an arrangement 
 which our sense of justice can never call moral. In 
 fact, when Job's friends are reduced to such straits 
 as this, they have practically given up their case. 
 
 It is obvious whither our study has been leading 
 us. Happiness requires the co-operating activity 
 of two factors. The first is the desire or taste 
 within ; the second is the means of satisfying 
 or meeting it, which in the last analysis are sup- 
 plied directly or indirectly by the physical or social 
 environment. Accordingly the question of happi- 
 ness can no more be decided by confining attention 
 to the former condition alone than it can by an ex- 
 amination of the latter. However, the environment 
 commonly supplies a certain minimum of material. 
 In such cases deep and wide-spreading moral and, 
 if possible, intellectual interests, united with the 
 patience, self-control, and skill to make the most 
 out of our store, afford an apparent independence 
 of externals, and thus promise a happiness that no 
 storm shall be able to sweep away. This promise 
 will be fulfilled in the great majority of instances. 
 
 1 Denton J. Snider, System of Shakespeare's Dramas, Vol. I. 
 p. 104 ff. 
 
Virtue and Happiness 195 
 
 But we cannot lay down a universal law, for there 
 is a mysterious exception. Shakespeare has shown 
 us that there is a condition in which no internal 
 worth, no gift of genius, no harmonious adjustment 
 of outer resources to inner needs and wishes can 
 avail to give contentment or inspire the desire to 
 see to-morrow's sun. 
 
 The representation of this fact we owe to the 
 difficulties in which the poet involved himself by his 
 habit of using as material for his plots old stories 
 that had caught the popular fancy. Of all prepos- 
 terous fabrications that he ever deigned to employ, 
 those that form the basis of the Merchant of Venice 
 are the most absurd ; and among these the prize for 
 inanity must certainly be awarded to the story of 
 the pound of flesh. It assumes that an experienced 
 man of affairs, possessing a credit that would have 
 given him his choice of terms, accepts a loan from 
 a money-lender whose obvious aim in the transac- 
 tion is to get a chance to murder him by due pro- 
 cess of law. Or, if this interpretation be rejected on 
 the ground that Antonio would naturally suppose 
 he would have no difficulty in paying off the debt, 
 the assumption must be that a thoroughly honor- 
 able man enters into an arrangement by which he 
 plans to obtain a loan without interest from an 
 acknowledged enemy. 
 
 We are furthermore required to believe that as 
 the report of one disaster follows upon another, 
 this practical business man neither makes an effort 
 to communicate with his friend a few miles distant 
 
196 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 — who in his new-found happiness has forgotten 
 his benefactor, — nor consults a lawyer, nor (ap- 
 parently) makes any attempt to borrow money 
 from professional money lenders or from the 
 brother merchants whom he had himself so often 
 assisted. We may indeed suppose that he ap- 
 proached his friends and was unsuccessful, as 
 Timon was ; but this hypothesis would introduce 
 a tragic element into the drama which I think 
 lay outside of the intention of the poet. Besides, 
 it would not help in the least. For it is absurd to 
 suppose that no money lender could be found, if not 
 in Venice, then elsewhere, who could be induced to 
 lend him a comparatively small sum — fifty thou- 
 sand dollars in present values — at a rate of interest 
 high enough to cover the risk. Even this is not a 
 complete statement of the absurdities of the situa- 
 tion, but I forbear. 
 
 These manifold difficulties are overcome by a 
 device than which nothing simpler could be im- 
 agined. Antonio is represented at the opening 
 of the play as overclouded with a profound mel- 
 ancholy. He is weary of life, and cares nothing 
 to draw out a joyless existence to a greater length. 
 He has too much principle to deliberately seek 
 death; but if chance will have him killed then 
 chance may kill him. The situation, it may be re- 
 membered, recurs in As You Like It, 
 1. 11. 
 
 195-205. and again in Cymbeline, a fact that will 
 
 y. i. 22-83 ; not surprise the reader who has noticed 
 
 the frequency with which a device is 
 
Virtue and Happiness 197 
 
 repeated that has once proved effective. I must 
 add that the idea need not have been original with 
 Shakespeare. If he had read Montaigne's Essays 
 either in the original or in the unpublished manu- 
 script of Florio's translation, he may have been 
 familiar with the passage in which the acute 
 Frenchman, echoing, no doubt, a suggestion of 
 Xenophon, clears up a somewhat similar incident 
 which has occasioned much perplexity. " In 
 observing the wisdom of Socrates and many cir- 
 cumstances of his condemnation," writes Mon- 
 taigne, " I should dare to believe that he himself, 
 by collusion, in some measure purposely contrib- 
 uted to it; fearing by a longer life, he having 
 then reached his seventieth year, to see his lofty 
 mind and universal knowledge cramped and stupe- 
 fied by old age." ^ 
 
 In converting the string-pulled puppet of the 
 Italian story into a living creature of flesh and 
 blood, Shakespeare has done more than supply one 
 of his characters with an intelligible motive for 
 walking into an open trap ; he has negatived — 
 whether he knew it or not — the universality of a 
 certain theory of life. Antonio has wealth, friends, 
 social and business position, and an outlet for his 
 energies through commercial transactions that 
 carry his thoughts to the four corners of the world. 
 He impresses us as being a man of culture, and his 
 generosity to all that needed help in Venice speaks 
 of a life enriched by the enthusiasm of humanity. 
 
 1 Essays, Book III., chap, ii., sub Jin. 
 
198 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 By all the rules, he ought to be happy ; yet he is 
 sad and knows not why. "We attempt to explain 
 this mysterious fact by a reference to temperament, 
 a word which, in the main, marks our ignorance. 
 But this we do know : with some, unmotived mel- 
 ancholy is a companion through life ; with others, 
 as Antonio, it comes without warning from a clear 
 sky, and may again as unexpectedly disappear. 
 Where it abides, intellectual endowment, cultivated 
 tastes, and character, are as powerless to produce 
 real joy in existence as is wealth or any other stock 
 target of the conventional moralist. 
 
 In facing this fact, the correlative truth will, of 
 course, not be forgotten. There are men of small 
 intellectual and moral calibre, harassed, it may be, 
 by financial troubles or ill-health, stripped of friends 
 through the incursions of death, whose cheerfulness, 
 nevertheless, flows on like a great river. The bar- 
 ren lands through which they journey glow with a 
 light that comes all from within. And as they 
 look back upon what we should call life's rough 
 and lonely way, they declare they would gladly 
 travel the same road a second time. Such persons 
 do not appear in Shakespeare's plays, for he has 
 no room for detailed studies of commonplace men 
 or commonplace lives. Falstaff we cannot consider 
 an example ; for, apart from other objections, he 
 seems to be gay rather than happy. Perhaps the 
 nearest approach to the type is the rogue, Autoly- 
 cus, in The Winter's Tale. But he is nothing more 
 than a sketch ; so that whether his jokes and his 
 
virtue and Happiness 199 
 
 songs stand for mere gayety, or for childlike, un- 
 motived joy in being alive, we cannot determine. 
 The sunshine in the faces of the best among the 
 southern negroes of the last generation shows how 
 little in the way of outer accessories or inner re- 
 sources these natures require. 
 
 Out of the complicated mass of details that have 
 passed before our view, the law of the correlation 
 between character and welfare emerges with un- 
 mistakable clearness. Evil-doing tends to loss, 
 reckoning values as even the evil-doer himself 
 would estimate them. Even where the result is 
 not " outer " failure, we may expect to find a life 
 poor in compelling and satisfying interests, bare of 
 enthusiasm, haunted by a sense of isolation. On 
 the other hand, the tendency of virtue is exactly 
 the reverse, if by virtue be understood active de- 
 votion to moral ideals, and not the mere frigid 
 respectability that is content with a negative stain- 
 lessness. Other things being equal, the man vivi- 
 fied and inspired by these ideals will attain success 
 where the evil-minded and the lukewarm miscarry. 
 And even when the success that the crowd strug- 
 gles for is missed, or when fortune checkers the 
 journey with suffering and disappointment, other 
 tendencies are at work in his favor. In so far as 
 he habitually dwells within the circle of other men's 
 lives, his sorrows are divided, his joys multiplied ; 
 and his interests, by their mere extent, assume a 
 fixity and a security unknown to him who risks 
 his all in a single ship. However, here, as in the 
 
200 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 case of health, culture, and every other good, we 
 can speak of nothing more inevitable than tenden- 
 cies. In the intricate, close-woven web of life no 
 thread runs straight. The conjunction is more 
 nearly universal, however, for wickedness than for 
 virtue, because it requires a smaller combination 
 of conditions to make us miserable than to make 
 us happy. Thus it comes about that the laws 
 which link consequences with conduct are more 
 easily discoverable in the life of a criminal than in 
 the life of a saint. 
 
 In the commentary of Gervinus we may read 
 that Richard III. came to grief " in consequence 
 of the merited justice and due punishment of God," 
 This seems to mean that he was cut off by an 
 arbitrary interference with the order of things on 
 the part of an external omnipotent Agency. That 
 doctrine was not derived from the text. For the 
 gory drama that came from the hands of the youth- 
 ful Shakespeare distinctly teaches that, given man 
 as he is, it lies in the very nature of moral evil to 
 react upon the perpetrator with effects similar in 
 kind to those which issue from his own will. And 
 as the young dramatist gains in power and insight, 
 and the human world in its completeness begins to 
 take form under his magician's wand, he shows 
 that the laws which make the evil-doer "merely 
 All's WeU his own traitor " depend upon the in- 
 IV. iii. 25. most Constitution of man as a social 
 being ; that they hold, whatever view we may take 
 of human origin or destiny ; that they no more 
 
Virtue and Happiness 201 
 
 need regulation from without to assure their con- 
 tinued working than do the laws of physiology ; 
 that we are not called upon to have faith in them, 
 but have only to shake ourselves free from the 
 mental sluggishness into which we allow ourselves 
 to sink, and see them for ourselves. 
 
 It is now possible to answer, in part, at least, the 
 third of the great problems forced upon our atten- 
 tion by the phenomena of moral imbecility.^ To 
 the conscienceless, the good man's ideals of con- 
 duct necessarily seem absurd and contemptible, 
 the good man a stupid weakling. Dostoieffsky 
 writes of a noted bandit, a fellow-convict with him 
 in his Siberian prison : " I tried once or twice to 
 speak to Orloff about his exploits ; this was evi- 
 dently a sore point with him, but nevertheless he 
 always answered me readily. But when it dawned 
 upon him that I was appealing to his conscience, 
 his whole manner changed at once ; he stared at 
 me with an expression of mingled pride, contempt, 
 and even pity, as if I had suddenly become in his 
 eyes a miserable, silly little boy, to whom he could 
 not talk as he would have done to a grown-up man. 
 A moment later he burst into a good-humored 
 laugh, and I am afraid that he may often have 
 laughed at the remembrance of my words." ^ It is 
 in this spirit that the royal brigand, Richard III., 
 adds to the blessing of his mother the ironical epi- 
 logue, " and make me die a good old Richard m. 
 man." It is possible, we see, to meet ^^- "• ^^' 
 
 1 See above, p. 131. * Buried Alive, chap. iv. 
 
202 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 contempt with contempt, and if Albany may say 
 Lear IV. ^^ Goneril, " Wisdom and goodness to 
 ii- 38. the vile seem vile," it will be quite in 
 
 Cf . Dionyza her spirit to reply : " Wisdom and 
 in Pericles goodness to the milk-livercd and the ser- 
 IV. iii. 49-51. ^., , Ji • . 4. .. ,■> 
 
 Vile seem absurdly important matters. 
 Who, then, is right, or are both equally right, each 
 from his own point of view ? 
 
 Contempt is the reaction upon supposed weak- 
 ness, whether of intellect or of will. That perfec- 
 tion of character means not weakness of will but 
 power has already been shown.^ That the evil- 
 doer who kills his better impulses is an intellectual 
 weakling should now be evident. For if it is the 
 part of wisdom to guide oneself by probabilities, 
 then the evil-doer in choosing the worse has taken 
 the foolish part. I do not say he will discover that 
 he might have done better. What he will find is 
 that the world is a dreary place for such as he, 
 and its promises lies. Meanwhile those he calls 
 fools have placed themselves in the way of obtain- 
 ing the good gifts which wait for those who are 
 warm of heart and strong of will. Compare the 
 career of Henry V. with that of his father ; com- 
 pare the life of Prospero with that of lago. The 
 former in each case contains not merely more to 
 admire but, quite apart from the joy of possessing 
 the admirable, more to satisfy. Moral laws, then, 
 possess at least this much objectivity : they are the 
 
 1 See above, p. 18 ff. 
 
Virtue and Happiness 203 
 
 laws of both individual and social welfare in the 
 widest sense of the term. Whether they possess 
 or indeed require objectivity in any other sense is 
 a problem that lies beyond the boundaries of our 
 inquiry. 
 
CHAPTER YIII 
 ETHICS AND METAPHYSICS 
 
 We have now completed our survey of the moral 
 life so far as Shakespeare can serve as guide. But 
 our studies, especially our studies in crime, have 
 left us with problems more tremendous and, to 
 many persons, more insistent than any we have as 
 yet considered. The world-old perplexities about 
 non-moral and moral evil, — failure, and suffering, 
 and wickedness, — have forced themselves upon 
 our attention and press for solution. 
 
 The place and function of evil in the world is a 
 subject that evidently lies outside the sphere of 
 descriptive ethics. We may talk glibly — and cor- 
 rectly, too, — about adjustment to the needs of ex- 
 istence. But why, we must go on to inquire, were 
 not the conditions of existence so arranged that 
 those fitted for survival should be at the same time 
 fitted to live a thoroughly satisfactory life, and to 
 play their part in a perfect social order. To an- 
 swer such questions we must know the purpose of 
 the universe, or whether it really has a purpose. 
 We must know whether this passing life is a part 
 of a larger whole. ^ Most of all we must know 
 whether there is a Providential government of the 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 205 
 
 world. We are learning that all is law : may we 
 believe with similar confidence that all is love ? If 
 this great question can only be answered in the 
 affirmative we can let the other puzzles go. The 
 solutions of the problem of evil offered from time 
 to time by " God's spies " may make us smile ; but 
 faith will now serve instead of knowledge, and we 
 shall feel that we can afford to wait. Thus does 
 ethics lead up to the supreme problem of meta- 
 physics. Thus does our own study lead up to the 
 question : What does Shakespeare teach about the 
 nature of ultimate reality ? 
 
 If we think it worth while to attempt an answer 
 to this question we must realize that our inquiry 
 has been given a different direction from that 
 which it has been following in the preceding 
 chapters. There we were studying the results of 
 the dramatist's observations. What generaliza- 
 tions he formed on the basis of the material he 
 collected, or whether he sought to classify and 
 arrange it at all, did not concern us in the least. 
 Here, on the other hand, the man behind the work 
 is everything. What he thought about an order of 
 reality inaccessible to observation has become the 
 object of investigation. 
 
 Since the days of Kant it has been generally 
 agreed that all metaphysics must rest upon a theory 
 of knowledge. That is to say, before attempting a 
 solution of the problem of the nature and constitu- 
 tion of the supersensible, we must take stock of 
 our intellectual resources, must ask ourselves 
 
2o6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 whether there are means at our disposal for accom- 
 plishing our purpose. In like manner we shall do 
 well to preface our own special inquiry with a few 
 prolegomena to every future system of dramatic 
 hermeneutics. "We must ask how a writer of plays 
 can disclose his views on matters metaphysical, 
 provided he makes use of no medium of expression 
 but the stage. Lack of thought on this subject 
 has been the ruin of many a beautiful system of 
 Shakespearean theology. 
 
 The first device which suggests itself is that 
 employed by Goethe in Faust. The play opens, 
 we remember, with a prologue in heaven that shall 
 justify the ways of God with the tempted and err- 
 ing seeker for life's summum bonum ; it closes 
 with the reception into Paradise of the same soil- 
 stained traveller, who through his many wanderings 
 had been ever dimly conscious of the direction of 
 his goal. But this very example shows how fal- 
 lacious may be any inference from the creation to 
 the mind of the creator. Only in the vaguest and 
 most shadowy fashion do the introduction and con- 
 clusion of Faust represent Goethe's beliefs. And 
 it is not essentially inaccurate to maintain that 
 these scenes meant neither more nor less to him 
 than did the Norse mythology to the composer of the 
 Ring des Nibelungen. Hence, when we see the 
 supersensible represented upon the stage we are 
 bound to ask first, what is its artistic significance, or 
 what facts of this life does it symbolize ? Further- 
 more, the dramatist knows we must ask it. If it 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 207 
 
 have such significance, if it symbolize non-meta- 
 physical truths, we have no criterion for determin- 
 ing how much is creed and how much is art. 
 
 The application of this principle to our own 
 problem is obvious. On the wind-swept platform 
 before the Castle of Elsinore appears a visitor from 
 another world. What does this apparition mean ? 
 At least this much : though one rise from the dead, 
 Hamlet cannot be moved to action. A short time 
 will pass and the impression that made his brain 
 reel will have retained only so much force as to 
 make him uneasy in his inactivity. Within a week, 
 or possibly a fortnight, a gentleman of Normandy 
 will arrive in Denmark, bringing remarkable re- 
 ports from Paris of Laertes' skill with the rapier. 
 At once emulation will suggest to Hamlet a wel- 
 come substitute for duty. And from that time 
 forth, while his father's spirit is waiting impa- 
 tiently for the promised vengeance, he will spend 
 his days in continuous practice to become the 
 equal of a careless young gallant in swordsman- 
 ship.^ This midnight vision thus tells us nothing 
 
 ^ These facts are obtained by comparing Act IV., scene vii., 11. 
 71-106, the dialogue between the king and Laertes, with what 
 Hamlet himself says to Horatio in Act V.j scene ii., 1. 220. The 
 time can be determined in either of two ways. First from Hamlet's 
 words : " Since [Laertes] went into France I have been in con- 
 tinual practice." Laertes left Denmark on the same day on which 
 the dead king's ghost appeared to Hamlet. Second : Laertes and 
 the king form their plot against Hamlet's life within a very short 
 time after the presentation of the Murder of Gonzago by the 
 players. This was four months after King Hamlet's death, as 
 appears from Act III., scene ii., 1. 136. The interval between the 
 death of the king and the interview upon the castle platform, was a 
 
!2o8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 of Shakespeare's beliefs about a life beyond the 
 grave. For whether it be thought to represent in 
 itself fact or fancy, it belongs where it is in virtue 
 of its artistic effectiveness and the revelation it 
 affords of Hamlet's character. 
 
 There is, however, one way in which a dramatist 
 can stamp unequivocally his confession of faith 
 upon the products of his imagination. That 
 doughty old gladiator, Ben Jonson, never left auditor 
 or reader in a moment's doubt about certain of his 
 metaphysical views. That he regarded atheism as 
 a contemptible hypothesis, and that he rejected 
 totally the puritan theory of salvation, are witnessed 
 by the abuse heaped at every turn upon the 
 adherents of these doctrines. A thoroughly objec- 
 tive dramatist, however, would be incapable of such 
 enormities. Shakespeare, for instance, never per- 
 mits one character after another to indulge in 
 wholesale abuse of any class of men, except in the 
 case of the " mob." And even the unpleasant im- 
 pression left in our minds by the wearisome girding 
 at the many-headed multitude is mitigated by the 
 sympathy uniformly exhibited in his treatment of 
 the humble and commonplace individuals whose 
 coming together forms its substance. 
 
 Theological beliefs Shakespeare never attacks 
 through their adherents. It is, indeed, quite gener- 
 
 little less than two months (see Act I., scene ii., 1. 138). If, there- 
 fore, we subtract the two months that have elapsed since the arrival 
 of the Norman {IV., vii., 82,) we can hardly date it at a point more 
 than a fortnight removed from the night on which Hamlet received 
 his commission. 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 209 
 
 ally supposed that in Malvolio and Angelo puri- 
 tanism is held up to ridicule and contempt. But 
 no assumption could be more arbitrary. Angelo 
 is not an ordinary hypocrite, as is often asserted. 
 He is a man who thinks himself a servant of con- 
 science, whereas in reality he is merely a slave of 
 respectability. The possession of unlimited power 
 reveals his true character to himself as it does 
 to the world. But were he Tartuffe himself, it 
 would not follow that some one else must be 
 a whited sepulchre. Least of all that the doc- 
 trines of predestination and absolute decrees must 
 be false. Malvolio, again, is drawn without a trace 
 of bitterness. It would make no difference even 
 if he were not, for he is declared not to be a puri- 
 tan. " Sometimes he is a kind of puritan," says 
 the sharp-tongued Maria. " 0, if I t, n. ii. 
 thought that, I 'Id beat him like a dog ! " ^- i5i. 
 replies Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Indeed, the tradi- 
 tional view as to the tendency of this piece of 
 characterization turns the facts topsy-turvy. For 
 surely if to be pilloried by a fool is the highest 
 form of praise, no eulogy upon a religious sect 
 could have been more flattering than Sir Andrew's 
 abuse. 
 
 A dramatist, however, might make use of another 
 device for presenting his own metaphysical views. 
 He could exhibit them as the beliefs of his best 
 and wisest characters. This does not differ in 
 principle from Ben Jonson's method, but in actual 
 operation it is at least compatible with decency. 
 
 14 
 
2IO Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 According to what seems to be at present a wide- 
 spread opinion, Shakespeare availed himself of this 
 device. And if we may believe some intelligent 
 men who claim to have either read or seen the 
 plays, he used it to recommend theological and 
 metaphysical agnosticism. Waiving for the pres- 
 ent the more general assertion, let us consider 
 the proposition that Shakespeare's most completely 
 rounded characters are skeptics. 
 
 This statement, in the form in which it usually 
 appears, can be shown to be baseless. Brutus — 
 to begin with the opening play of the third period 
 — seems to have shared with the contemporaneous 
 Stoics their uncertainty about a future life. But 
 we have no ground to question his confession of 
 faith in " a providence of some high powers that 
 J. c. govern us below." To be sure, a false 
 
 V. i. 107. conception of honor does not permit 
 him to act upon it in the decisive matter of taking 
 his life. But in this respect he differs not at all 
 from many a duellist of a later age, nor, indeed, 
 from the high-minded Hector, who also, as may 
 be remembered, prefers the good opinion of others 
 before an acknowledged duty. 
 
 The reputation of Hamlet as the typical doubter, 
 the imaginative incorporation of the spirit of 
 Montaigne, is one of the most extraordinary vaga- 
 ries of Shakespearean criticism. Here is a man 
 whose fate turns upon a visit from a disembodied 
 spirit ; a man who is expected by his father to 
 count it a double wrong for the victim of assas- 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics an 
 
 sination to be cut off in the midst of his sins, with 
 no chance to purge his soul by the ministrations 
 of the priest ; a man who fears no ghost, because 
 he can say : 
 
 " And for my soul, what can it do to that, Hamlet I. 
 Being a thing immortal as itself ? " iv- 66. 
 
 a man who, when the opportunity to discharge his 
 commission thrusts itself upon him, succeeds in 
 disguising to himself his own unwillingness to 
 take the irrevocable step by the consideration 
 that to kill one engaged in prayer is to send his 
 soul to a better world ; a man so com- m. iii. 
 pletely dominated by the religious view '''3-95. 
 of life that he falls into the error of mis- cf. m. iv. 
 taking the results of his own insight for ?2^P^^: 
 
 . 1 • r. P IV. li. 12- 
 
 the miraculous interference of Provi- 23, iv. iii. 
 
 dence in his behalf. Truly, a skeptic of ^9'7^}} ^' 
 
 ^ u. 4-11. 
 
 this kind would have little to fear from 
 
 the fires of the Inquisition. 
 
 What, then, lies upon the other side ? Nothing 
 but an ambiguous phrase or two in the great solilo- 
 quy of Act III. " To be, or not to be : " 
 I have known intelligent men who 
 understand this as the expression of a doubt about 
 immortality. As a matter of fact, the context 
 shows that Hamlet is here dallying with the 
 thought of suicide. " To sleep : perchance to 
 dream." Immortality, we are told, is 
 here presented as nothing more than a 
 bare possibility. Such, indeed, is the most natural 
 
212 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 interpretation of these five words when isolated 
 from their context. And although the effect of 
 the "perchance" seems to be neutralized by the 
 subsequent treatment of the possibility as a factor 
 sufficiently important to determine the direction 
 of action, yet it must be confessed that the passage 
 does not seem easy to harmonize with the explicit 
 declarations of other portions of the text. Two 
 explanations of the phrase are possible. One is 
 that for the moment Shakespeare had forgotten 
 Hamlet, and was bodying forth his own world- 
 weariness, his own doubts, and fears, and long- 
 ings for release. As the commentators have 
 pointed out, there is much to commend this view. 
 For instance, complaints about 
 
 " The law's delay, 
 L. 72. The insolence of office and the spurns 
 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes," 
 
 sound rather oddly in the mouth of a prince, unless 
 
 we suppose him to be taking an exceptionally ob- 
 
 iective view of the evils of life. And, 
 
 L. 79 
 
 " the undiscover'd country from whose 
 
 bourn no traveller returns," still remains, after all 
 the ingenuity that has been expended upon it, an 
 inappropriate expression for one who has seen his 
 father rise from the grave. This hypothesis is thus 
 not without some plausibility. But since its ac- 
 ceptance would involve us in the inconclusive con- 
 troversies of Shakespearean biography, we ought to 
 try to get along without it. This seems perfectly 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 213 
 
 possible. For the diflficulties disappear if we as- 
 sume that there are two Hamlets : the one confident 
 as a parish priest of the truth of his religion ; the 
 other a student of the world's thought, who some- 
 times rubs his eyes in uncertainty whether his 
 beliefs are dream or substance. The basis on 
 which this hypothesis rests is far from being an 
 impossibility. Some of the most thoroughly con- 
 vinced Christians know moments of darkness, 
 when the foundations of religious faith seem to 
 be crumbling beneath their feet. We shall hardly 
 count Alfred Edersheim a theological skeptic. Yet 
 he makes this confession : " Let no one dare to 
 say that the faith of John the Baptist failed, at 
 least till the dark waters have rolled up to his own 
 soul. For mostly all and each of us must pass 
 through some like experience ; and only our own 
 hearts and God know how death-bitter are the 
 doubts, whether of head or of heart, when question 
 after question raises, as with devilish hissing, its 
 head, and earth and heaven seem alike silent to 
 us." ^ Unless tlie dramatist has deceived us, such 
 moods were but occasional in Hamlet. His pre- 
 vailing attitude was one of faith. 
 
 Not to weary the reader with more details to 
 the same effect, we may pass on to the last of the 
 " skeptics," namely Prospero. Every school-boy 
 knows the lines ending, " our little life Tempest iv. 
 is rounded with a sleep." This, it is ^- ^^'^^ 
 
 1 Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. 
 Vol. I., p. 667. 
 
214 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 asserted, can mean only that death ends all. If 
 so, St. Luke must have been denying the immor- 
 tality of the soul when, in describing the stoning 
 of Stephen, he wrote : " When he had said this he 
 fell asleep."^ When we speak of sleep we may 
 think of the awakening after unconsciousness, or 
 of the unconsciousness itself. Common fairness, 
 therefore, ought to make us admit that Prospero's 
 words are wholly ambiguous. With the recogni- 
 tion of this fact there remains but one passage that 
 even promises a clue to his beliefs about the super- 
 I ii 169 sensible world. " We came ashore," he 
 tells Miranda, " by Providence divine." 
 But again hope fails. For you may interpret this 
 as meaning just what it says, or you may assume 
 that Prospero was talking down to Miranda because 
 she was young and a woman. Whichever alterna- 
 tive you choose, you will discover nothing in the 
 rest of the play to disturb your convictions. 
 
 We have assured ourselves, I trust, that we have 
 no right to set down Shakespeare's best characters 
 as uniformly skeptics. From this statement it 
 may perhaps be inferred that they agree in holding 
 certain positive theological and metaphysical doc- 
 trines. This is a point that we shall proceed to 
 investigate. 
 
 The most prominent heroic figure of the sec- 
 ond period of Shakespeare's dramatic career is 
 Henry V. As Prince Hal he is a boy, and noth- 
 ing more; but as king he represents devotion to 
 
 1 Acts vii., 60. 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 215 
 
 God and joyful trust in Him, carried to the highest 
 point attainable by the active temperament. This, 
 it may be objected, was in the chronicle. So was 
 much else that is rigorously excluded, as his un- 
 pitying persecution of the Lollards and the plots to 
 which it gave rise. Shakespeare used the chron- 
 icles as Michael Angelo the quarries of Carrara ; 
 he looked them over and took what suited his 
 purpose. We must recognize, therefore, that it 
 is by deliberate choice that Henry V, is presented 
 as profoundly convinced of the truth of the funda- 
 mental doctrines of Christian theology. 
 
 The first great figures of the third period are 
 Brutus and Hamlet. Brutus, we remember, exhibits 
 belief in a providential government of the world, 
 but he seems to have little or no faith in immor- 
 tality. We hear nothing from him of a meeting 
 with his friend in a future life, when anticipation 
 would certainly have found expression. Hamlet, 
 too, believes in a divinity that shapes our ends ; he 
 believes his soul immortal. But there are moods 
 in which life after death is little more than a 
 " perchance." 
 
 As we proceed the clouds grow blacker. A 
 short time after the appearance of Hamlet, as most 
 authorities agree, Measure for Measure was put 
 on the stage. Its principal male character, the 
 Duke of Vienna, must be considered, I think, a 
 doubter or a positive disbeliever in a God of love 
 and in immortality, in spite of an isolated m. for M. 
 utterance which on the surface seems ^- *• *85-7. 
 
2 1 6 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 to indicate the contrary.^ For when called upon 
 to prepare Claudio for his supposed impending 
 death he has no better consolation to offer than 
 the prospect of deliverance from the evils of this 
 life. There he stands in the guise of a priest ; the 
 culprit before him believes in a life after death, for 
 he shrinks back from the horrors of purgatory. 
 Yet the duke can tell nothing of the grace of God, 
 or the joys of heaven. He can only point to life 
 as a thing that none but fools would keep, 
 and death as a release from a painful, 
 meaningless treadmill. 
 
 The preceding conclusion was based upon a 
 single datum. More abundant evidence meets us 
 when we come to the study of King Lear's most 
 perfect character. Those about Kent profess at 
 one time or another their faith in an all-just Provi- 
 dence ; Kent is silent. He finds himself in the 
 Lear n. stocks. " Fortune, good night : smile 
 ii. 180. once more ; turn thy wheel ! " is his 
 
 comment. As we proceed, we discover that his 
 " fortune " is the very negation of Pi'ovidence. 
 „ ... «-^ Por if, in the phrase, " If fortune brag 
 
 V. lu. 280. ' r J o 
 
 of two she loved and hated," you re- 
 
 1 If the position taken in the text is correct, the dnke in this 
 passage must be understood as talking after the manner of the 
 people. However, even if it could be shown that he believed 
 nothing but fear of eternal punishment could restrain a criminal 
 nature, it would not follow that he believed in the reality of such 
 punishment. In Act II., scene iii., 11. 30-34, he is plainly speak- 
 ing in his character as confessor. This attitude towards wrong- 
 doing nowhere recurs in his lines. 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 217 
 
 place " fortune " by God, you get what is little 
 short of blasphemy. Our last sight of Kent is 
 when he comes to bid liis king and master aye 
 good-night. If " aye " means anything, ... 
 he is expecting a sleep that has no to- 
 morrow's waking. After all, there is to be no 
 farewell between them ; Lear is beyond that. When 
 the last breath has left the weary body, Kent knows 
 it is well with the old king. He is no longer 
 stretched upon the rack of this tough world. But 
 not a word falls from Kent's lips of a better land 
 in which we shall meet with a recompense for our 
 afflictions. 
 
 Most of these facts have been noticed before ; but 
 one circumstance has as yet, so far as I know, 
 entirely escaped attention. Kent was not always 
 an unbeliever. At the beginning of the play, when 
 he is still one that fortune loves, he addresses his 
 master : 
 
 " Eoyal Lear, 
 Whom I have ever honour'd as my king, 
 Loved as my father, as my master fol- 
 
 low'd, 
 As my great patron thought on in my 
 
 prayers." 
 
 This is no mere conventional mode of speech, like 
 " the gods reward your kindness ! " . 
 
 or " God bless you." It is part of a 
 solemn conjuration in which every word is intended 
 to have its full value. Moreover, the prayers Kent 
 
 I. i. 141. 
 
21 8 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 addressed to heaven, were no mere form. He is 
 too honest, too single-minded, and too blunt to 
 trifle with religious observances that mean nothing 
 to him. Finally, one who could step between Lear's 
 safety and his formidable wrath does not pray in 
 order to be seen of men. Nor can the appearance 
 of this expression be set down to accident. I know 
 the casual reader of the plays will smile at this 
 statement ; but there are no accidents in the great 
 tragedies. Least of all in King Lear. In the 
 compass of thirty -two hundred lines is told a story 
 almost as full of incident as War and Peace, 
 crowded with characters as clearly conceived and 
 as completely developed as those of the Russian 
 novel. These wonderful results are accomplished 
 by an employment of suggestion that has no par- 
 allel in literature. The effect of every word is 
 carefully measured ; it always reveals something ; 
 it may reveal much. What, then, is inferable from 
 this innocent-looking phrase ? As a prosperous 
 nobleman, Kent has never had any occasion to 
 doubt the existence of Providence. Evil he must 
 liave seen, but he has never known, or at any rate 
 realized, its worst possibilities. Then comes over- 
 whelming misfortune to one he loves, coupled with 
 the revelation of malignant wickedness in those 
 whom he has personally known. As a result, God 
 has gone from his world. The sufferings and the 
 heartlessness in his master's family cost him not 
 only his life, but also his religious faith. 
 
 Three or four years pass, and then, if a plausible 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 219 
 
 chronology be correct, appears a series of romantic 
 dramas which practically close Shakespeare's ca- 
 reer as an author. They are Pericles, Cymbeline, 
 The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. In these, 
 especially in the first three, there is noticeable a 
 great alteration in tone. Now, when suspicion 
 casts its shadow over an innocent life, the vital 
 forces are preserved from blight by faith in powers 
 divine, through whom 
 
 " Innocence shall make „ „ „, 
 
 W. T. III. 
 False accusation blush and tyranny ii 31 
 
 Tremble at patience." 
 
 When men are led to good by devious paths whose 
 end, as they walked, could not be seen, they con- 
 fess it is the gods 
 
 " That have chalk'd forth the way Tempest V. 
 Which brought us hither." i- 203. 
 
 The human instrument of deliverance from evil is 
 a minister of God. Gratitude for pro- pericies v. 
 tecting care, submission under afflic- i"- 59-63. 
 tion as " a punishment or trial," are the Pericles v. 
 
 i. 200—201 ■ 
 
 uniform attitude in either extremity of cym, y. v.' 
 fortune. The passages cited are not 476-8. 
 isolated utterances, acceptable to some, Cym. ni. 
 repudiated by others. They represent w. T. v. i. 
 the atmosphere in which all these men 171-174. 
 and women habitually live. 
 
 Our investigation thus shows us that the repre- 
 sentative figures of Shakespeare's dramas are neither 
 
220 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 exclusively believers in a providential order nor 
 exclusively skeptics. We discover, moreover, that 
 if we arrange his works in their probable chrono- 
 logical order, the metaphysical beliefs of these 
 selected characters arrange themselves in a kind 
 of Hegelian spiral. We pass from naive, unmedi- 
 ated confidence, through doubt, to a certainty that 
 has included and overcome its skepticism. 
 
 What more natural than to infer from these facts 
 the course of Shakespeare's own religious history ? 
 As a man of thirty-five his mind is illumined, 
 warmed, and vivified by a spontaneous, vigorous 
 trust in God. Then, as the meaning and extent 
 of human suffering and wickedness are revealed, 
 there arise questionings, then doubts, then denial. 
 His mind, like his works, is shrouded in gloom, a 
 gloom pierced by no ray of light from a higher 
 world. Finally comes deliverance. He reconquers 
 the faith of his youth, though he holds it with a 
 different spirit. Evil he now recognizes as a fact, 
 but he sees in part, at least, how it can form an 
 element in a divine plan. Justice and love rule 
 the world, and we may believe they do all things 
 well. 
 
 Plausible as this inference from the work to the 
 architect may seem, I cannot think we ought to 
 allow ourselves to accept it. The structure of con- 
 jecture is too large and heavy for the slight founda- 
 tion of indisputable fact which is the best it is 
 possible to supply. In interpreting the plays them- 
 selves we may be less rigorous. Each of them is a 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 221 
 
 group of problems or puzzles, set for the spectator's 
 pleasure and profit. The answers lie deep where 
 the superficial and the indolent shall never find 
 them. They will take Lady Macbeth's words, he 
 " is too full 0' the milk of human kind- Macbeth i. 
 ness to catch the nearest way," as the ^- ^^■ 
 key to Macbeth's character. They will innocently 
 believe that seasoned liar, the Duke of Vienna, 
 when he tells Friar Thomas he is dis- m. for M. 
 guising himself merely to watch the ^- ^- 19-54. 
 enforcement of an unpopular law. No, the drama- 
 tist is subtle and will let no one win the prize who 
 is not willing to observe carefully, to think patiently, 
 — and to pay for more than one ticket of admission. 
 But it lies in the very nature of the game that the 
 solution must not be beyond the reach of human 
 ingenuity. We must have data in sufficient 
 number, and none of them, when viewed in its 
 proper relation to the rest, ought to be misleading. 
 Therefore, in a properly constructed drama the 
 most probable explanation of an action or character, 
 even if it be only barely probable, is the true one. 
 This holds even where the number of our data is 
 ridiculously small, for we must believe we were 
 given all we need. 
 
 Not so in life. Nature has entered into no 
 tacit agreement with us to preserve all that is 
 required for the answers to our questions, and 
 to provide a corrective for misleading facts. 
 Hence the vanity of most attempts, considering 
 the paucity of our data, to worm the secrets of 
 
222 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 Shakespeare's life out of his written "works. I 
 do not claim that the plays reveal absolutely 
 nothing about the mind and the experience which 
 were their source ; here and there we may un- 
 doubtedly detect the man in the pattern he is 
 weaving. But I do maintain that the material 
 brought together in the preceding paragraphs, or 
 the material as yet presented by any other student 
 of Shakespeare, is totally inadequate for the con- 
 struction of a theory of his positive theological 
 beliefs. 
 
 Quite apart from this general ground for sus- 
 pending judgment, the facts we have been passing 
 in review are susceptible of more than one explana- 
 tion. Even if they constrained us — as they do 
 not — to the conclusion that at different periods 
 the dramatist was specially interested in some one 
 of the various phases of religious belief, a consider- 
 able number of grounds for such interest could 
 easily be suggested. Among these, acceptance, 
 whether in part or whole, of the creed delineated 
 can hardly urge an exceptional claim. Our pro- 
 legomena, at least in so far as Shakespeare is con- 
 cerned, must therefore close with a profession of 
 ignorance. 
 
 This secret we may never hope to pierce. But 
 the poet's thought about the relation of belief in a 
 providential order to the tasks and problems of 
 every-day life he has recorded where all may read. 
 He has shown, over and over again, the power of 
 such belief to comfort, sustain, and strengthen the 
 
Ethics and Metaphysics 223 
 
 soul in its conflict with calamity, passion, and public 
 wrong. He has also affirmed with equal distinctness 
 the possibility of living and conquering without it. 
 There are men even to-day who are not ashamed to 
 proclaim from the housetops their unwillingness to 
 fight the good fight until assured of being on the 
 winning side. In inspiring contrast to them stand 
 certain of Shakespeare's characters who, cheered 
 by no sure faith either in personal reward or the 
 ultimate triumph of the good cause, deliberately 
 range themselves on the side of right, and hold 
 their allegiance in defeat as in victory. " Vic- 
 trix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni." " The 
 gods took the side of the victorious cause, but 
 Cato the side of the vanquished." This is the 
 temper in which Brutus and Kent fought, en- 
 dured, and died. 
 
 Such men, Shakespeare saw, are facts. He was, 
 furthermore, convinced that their judgments of 
 value would still remain sound, the ends they pur- 
 sued worth attaining, even if the universe should 
 turn out to be nothing better than a lifeless 
 machine. For if his tragedies are studies in fail- 
 ure, failure does not consist for him, as it does 
 and must for Dante and Bunyan, in losing the 
 chance of heaven, whether through the omission of 
 some rite, through entanglement in a plausible 
 heresy, or through death in the midst of unrepented 
 and unexpiated sin. Just as little does it consist 
 in disobedience to a supersensible law, or failure to 
 prepare for some higher mode of existence. The 
 
224 Shakespeare's Portrayal of Moral Life 
 
 tragedy of life, in his eyes, is that men do not know 
 how to gain the best in life itself, or that knowing, 
 they have not the power to guide will by insight, or 
 that knowing and willing, they may be cut off from 
 attainment by forces beyond their art to control. 
 Such an attitude is not incompatible with beliefs 
 and aspirations that pierce the senses' tenuous 
 veil. But it gives the lie alike to the theology of 
 Tridentine priest and Genevan theocrat. Further- 
 more, it could never coexist with the dogma un- 
 weariedly proclaimed, that where man possesses no 
 metaphysical creed his interest in the passing show 
 of things is an illusion, and his morality a parasite. 
 " Oar days are few ; therefore, let us make the 
 most of them," wrote the imperial sage, Marcus 
 Aurelius. "Our days are few. Emptied of tran- 
 scendental significance, they are vain and worth- 
 less ; let us throw them away," cries the Kantian 
 philosophy. The former is the creed of Shake- 
 speare, as of Shakespeare's heroes. 
 
 " The time of life is short ! 
 
 To spend that shortness basely were too 
 1 Henry IV. , 
 
 V. ii. 82. l«^g' 
 
 If life did ride upon a dial's point, 
 
 Still ending at the arrival of an hour." 
 
 A call to action this ; a message of cheer and 
 courage to an age that sees the old theology van- 
 ishing into air and knows not yet what the new 
 shall be. 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 jEsthetic moral judgments, 65; 
 72. 
 
 Albany, Duke of, 5. 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well, justifi- 
 cation of the title, 147. 
 
 Altruism as a motive in King Lear, 
 2 ; as a motive in other plays, 6 ; 
 in the absence of strong emotion, 
 7, 38; possibilitj' of a conflict 
 with egoism, 8 ; not identical with 
 desire for perfection of character, 
 23, 89; or with aversion from 
 sympathetic pain, 87; concep- 
 tions of its proper limits, 9 ; Sidg- 
 wick's solution, 13 ; in moral im- 
 beciles, 121. 
 
 Angelo (in Measure for Measure), 
 not a hypocrite, 209. 
 
 Antipathy, immediate, for certain 
 vices, 25. 
 
 Antonio (in Merchant of Venice), 
 his personality, 197 ; why he ac- 
 cepted Shy lock's offer, 196; 12; 
 81. 
 
 Antony, character of, 141. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, prediction 
 of conduct in, 141; conceptions 
 of relation between freedom and 
 responsibility in, 156. 
 
 Approbation, relation to motive, 1, 
 64 ; two grounds of moral appro- 
 bation, 65; source of conscious- 
 ness of obligation, 59. 
 
 Authoritism defined, 40. 
 
 Autolycus, 128 ; 198. 
 
 Balfour, Arthur, on the popular 
 belief in free-will, 157. 
 
 Banquo, a man without principle, 
 24. 
 
 Beauty of character, sensitiveness 
 to in Shakespeare's world, 16; its 
 forms, 17. 
 
 Bertram's character, 145. 
 
 "Born criminal," in the plaj's, 99, 
 165; his essential characteristics, 
 116 ; female approaches male type, 
 129. ,See, also. Moral Imbe- 
 cility, 
 
 Bosanquet, 74. 
 
 Brutus, Marcus, his desire for post- 
 humous fame, 85; his religious 
 beliefs, 210, 215; 7, 14, 25; 58; 
 81. 
 
 Camillo, 7, 9. 
 
 Cassius, desire for posthumous fame, 
 85. 
 
 " Chance," its role in the plays, 189. 
 
 Character, causes of, 143; the per- 
 fect, 23. 
 
 Claudius, King, 26; 62. 
 
 Coleridge, 13; 104; 113; 167. 
 
 Conscience defined, 97 ; awakening 
 of in Queen Gertrude, 97; ab- 
 sence of, 99. 
 
 Coriolanus (the plaj'), a study in 
 the workings of political forces, 
 51. 
 
 Coriolanus, why he opposed the 
 concessions to the plebeians, 52 ; 
 why unwilling to dissemble, 71. 
 
 Criminals, their use of euphemistic 
 terms, 110; their desire for com- 
 panionship in punishment, 126; 
 their indifference to punishment 
 
228 
 
 Index 
 
 in a future life, 128; Shake- 
 speare's portrayal of, in general, 
 129. <See, also, Moral Imbe- 
 cility. 
 
 Desdemona, attempts to find a 
 moral justification for her early- 
 death, 193; 12. 
 
 Desire, objects of. See Good. 
 
 Despine, 110; 118; 121; 124; 126; 
 131; 137. 
 
 Determinism and indeterminism 
 defined, 135 ; their relation to the 
 possibility of forecasting conduct, 
 137 ; autonomic and fatalistic de- 
 terminism distinguished, 136 ; the 
 former is the implicit creed of a 
 majority of the characters, 137, 
 152; the two exceptions, 154. 
 
 Dostoieffsky, 120; 127; 201. 
 
 Eder.sheim, 213. 
 
 Egoism, its reaction upon the agent, 
 181, 187. See, also, Altruism. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, nature of her 
 claims to the English throne, 44. 
 
 Ellis, Ha velock, 119; 124. 
 
 Elze, Karl, 104. 
 
 Enobarbus, 142; 15, 37; 9, 34. 
 
 Ethics, problems of, ix, 1; possi- 
 ble divergence between its theo- 
 ries and its data, 74. 
 
 Eudffimonism defined, 65. 
 
 Falstaff, indifferent to all pun- 
 ishment in a distant future, 128 ; 
 15 ; 62. 
 
 Fame, desire for, part played by, 
 15, 80; desired as an end in itself, 
 81. 
 
 Fatalism defined, 134. 
 
 Faulconbridge (Philip), his char- 
 acter, and his place in King John, 
 48. 
 
 Faust. 78 n. 
 
 Ferri, 120. 
 
 Feuerbach, 121; 123; 172 n. 
 
 Fichte, J. G., on our consciousness 
 of the supernatural source of the 
 moral law, 32 ; 10 ; 35. 
 
 Foster, Sir Michael, 45. 
 
 Freedom of the will, four meanings 
 of the term, 132 ; what forms re- 
 garded as essential to responsi- 
 bility, 131, 135, 152. See, also. 
 Determinism, Responsibility. 
 
 Gertrude, Queen, awakening of 
 conscience in, 97. 
 
 Gervinus, 200. 
 
 Giles, 120. 
 
 Gloucester (in King Lear), source 
 of his devotion to Lear, 4; 92. 
 
 Goethe, 78 n ; 206. 
 
 Goneril, contrasted with Regan, 105 ; 
 a moral imbecile, 108; discloses 
 a trace of moral sensitiveness, 
 109. 
 
 Good (6o»?<m) defined, 78; the good 
 as the desired, 78, 94; the con- 
 tent of, 79; no one formula for 
 its content if defined merely as 
 the desired, 93; problem of an 
 objective standard of, 94 ; neces- 
 sity of such a standard, 77; pres- 
 ent state of the general problem, 
 95. 
 
 Good name, value attributed to, 15, 
 80. 
 
 Hamlet, his character, 61 ; chooses 
 to become an expert fencer rather 
 than to set about avenging his 
 father, 207; his views on the re- 
 lation of free-will and responsi- 
 bility, 154; cause of his perplex- 
 ity, 158; his alleged skepticism, 
 210,215; 27; 34; 39; 81, 84. 
 
 Happiness, relation of the external 
 and internal factors, 194. 
 
 Hazlitt, 113. 
 
 Hector, 82. 
 
 Helena (in All 's Well), her charac- 
 ter, 145 ; her deception, 69 ; 191. 
 
Index 
 
 229 
 
 Henry IV. (the play), penalty of 
 treachery in, 160. 
 
 Henry V., his character not trans- 
 formed on ascending the throne, 
 149; his virtues rewarded, 161; 
 asserts his personal rights, 11 ; 
 has no scruples about his title to 
 the throne, 48 ; his view of the 
 nature of political obligation, 51, 
 67 ; a believer in the doctrines of 
 Christian theology, 214; 23. 
 
 Henry VI., his character, 20; has 
 scruples about his title to the 
 throne, 48. 
 
 Heredity, its place in the making 
 of character according to Shake- 
 speare's people, 143; Shake- 
 speare's own view, 144. 
 
 Heroic type of moral beauty, 18. 
 
 Hippias, 75. 
 
 Honor, defined, 14 ; value attached 
 to it, 14. 
 
 Hudson, 103. 
 
 Iago, a moral imbecile, 109; mo- 
 tives for his intrigue, 112; looks 
 upon his victims with contempt, 
 168 ; exhibits no desire for sym- 
 pathy or love of others, 185; the 
 penalty of his egoism, 186. 
 
 Idj'llic type of moral beauty, 21. 
 
 Ihering, 12. 
 
 Indeterminism. See Detekmin- 
 
 ISM. 
 
 Intuitionism, . its theory of the 
 source of the moral law, 40 ; what 
 it mistakes for direct intimations 
 of the divine will, 73. 
 
 Isabella, not willing to make an ab- 
 solute sacrifice for her brother, 
 11, 13; ends for which she is 
 willing to sacrifice veracity, 67; 
 her moral self-consciousness, 
 25. 
 
 JoNSON, Ben, how he made his 
 plays reflect his theology, 208. 
 
 Judgment as the equivalent of rea- 
 son, 37. 
 Justice a product of pity, 67. 
 
 Kant, his view of the nature of 
 morality, 29; asserts the con- 
 sciousness of the supersensible 
 origin of the moral law to be 
 universal, 32, 33; denies exist- 
 ence of all forms of moral insensi- 
 bility, 114. 
 
 Kent, source of his devotion to 
 Lear, 3; his death, 4; his skepti- 
 cism and its causes, 216. 
 
 King Lear, sources of moral life as 
 represented in, 56; cf., also, 2; 
 prediction of conduct united with 
 imputation of responsibility, 153 ; 
 employment of suggestion in, 
 218. 
 
 Kreyssig, 57. 
 
 Lacenaire, his character as dis- 
 played at his trial, 124; love for 
 a cat and indifference to human 
 life, 122; use of euphemistic 
 terms, 110; his poetry, 126, 127. 
 
 Lady Macbeth, is without moral 
 scruples, 170; traces of senti- 
 mentalizing, 173; her sufferings 
 due to terror, 175 ; sleep-walking 
 scene not a representation of re- 
 morse, 177; does not understand 
 her husband; 182. 
 
 Lear, 2 ; 190. 
 
 Lepidus, his character, 157; on 
 freedom and responsibility, 156 ; 
 cause of his perplexity, 158. 
 
 Lincoln, President, his theory of 
 unselfishness, 88. 
 
 Lombroso, 120; 122; 126; 130. 
 
 Lombroso and Ferrero, 129. 
 
 Las*- as an element in moral 
 beauty, 17; not desired merely 
 as a means of self-realization, 86 ; 
 in moral imbeciles, 122. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., 100 n. 
 
230 
 
 Index 
 
 Loyalty, nature of, 43; loyalty to 
 God, nature of, 41, 54; relation 
 of, to consciousness of moral dis- 
 tinctions, 55; place of loyalty to 
 God in the plaj's, 56. 
 
 Macbeth (the play), the cumula- 
 tive effects of evil-doing exhibited 
 in, 162 ; Ulrici on evil-doing and 
 its punishment in, 192; its sub- 
 ject, 163; not a tragedy of re- 
 morse, 165. 
 
 Macbeth, indifference to punish- 
 ment in a future life, 129; is 
 without scruples and remorse, 
 165, 175; traces of conscience, 
 168; sentinientalism, 169; lone- 
 liness and world-weariness, 180; 
 alienation from Lady Macbeth, 
 181; relation of his despair to his 
 temperament, 184; comparison 
 with Italian despots, 179. 
 
 Madness, desire for, 91. 
 
 Malvolio, 209. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, 224. 
 
 Merchant of Venice, absurdities in 
 stoni' of the pound of flesh, 195; 
 how Shakespeare deals with these 
 diflSculties, 196. 
 
 Metaphysics. See Religious be- 
 lief. 
 
 Miracle, agency in transformation 
 of character denied, 149. 
 
 Miranda, 22; 25. 
 
 Montaigne, 197. 
 
 Moral imbecility defined, 116; 
 broader and narrower use of the 
 term, 117 ; sometimes innate, 120; 
 traces of higher qualities by its 
 side, 121 ; indifference to the 
 future, 127; evidence of its ex- 
 istence, 117; Shakespeare's de- 
 lineation of, 99, 165. 
 
 Moral judgments, always deter- 
 mined by ideals, 64, 74; two 
 forms of, 65. 
 
 Moral life, its fundamental fact, 1. 
 
 Motives at foundation of moral 
 life as represented by Shake- 
 speare : altruism, 2 ; the place of 
 egoism, 9; the sentiment of 
 honor, 14; immediate antipathy 
 for certain vices, 25 ; cf . also 64 ; 
 as represented by Kantianism, 
 30; by rationalism, 35; by au- 
 thoritism, 40; God's motives in 
 commanding and man's in obey- 
 ing, 54. 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing, 191. 
 
 Nature, morality defined as obe- 
 dience to, 75. 
 Nietzsche, 19. 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 46, 139. 
 
 Objectivity of moral distinctions, 
 
 201. 
 Obligation, consciousness of, its 
 
 nature, 59; as conceived by au- 
 
 thoritism, 55. 
 Obligation, political, grounds of, 
 
 45 ; as conceived in the plaj'S, 46 ; 
 
 sometimes based on the right of 
 
 property, 52. 
 Othello (the plaj-), prediction of 
 
 conduct in, 140 ; place of the ac- 
 cidental in, 190. 
 Othello, his love for Desdemona, 
 
 86, 91. 
 
 Pain, aversion from, 91. 
 
 Perdita, 22. 
 
 Philanthropy, WT' 
 
 Pleasure, desire for, 90; not sole 
 ultimate object of desire, 85, 87, 
 90. 
 
 Pompey, Sextus, 24. 
 
 Prediction of conduct, examples, 
 138; bearing on free-will contro- 
 versy, 137. 
 
Index 
 
 231 
 
 Prospero, his religious creed, 213 
 7; 23. 
 
 Psychologist's fallacy, defined, 8 
 examples, 8, 23. 
 
 Punishment, justification of, 66 
 craving for, 118. 
 
 Puritanism, not attacked by Shake- 
 speare, 208. 
 
 Ratiokalism, as a form of trans- 
 cendentalism, defined, 35. 
 Reason, morality as obedience to, 
 35; as a motive in the plays, 
 36. 
 Religious belief, in Shakespeare's 
 characters, 58, 210; of Shake- 
 speare, 220 ; relation to morality, 
 58, 62, 222. 
 Remorse, cause of, 160; examples 
 of, 159; absence of, in Shake- 
 speare's worst criminals, 99, 167, 
 170 ; testimony of the authorities 
 on criminal psychology, 116. 
 Renan, 19. 
 
 Responsibility, relation to freedom, 
 131, 135, 152; Shakespeare's 
 characters regard it as compatible 
 with determinism, 152; two ex- 
 ceptions to this rule, 154. 
 Richard II. (the play), representa- 
 tion of obligation in, 41 ; penalty 
 of treachery in, 160. 
 Richard II., his character, 46; 47; 
 
 80. 
 Richard III. (the play), authorship 
 of, 100 n. ; interpolation in, 103. 
 Richard III., a moral imbecile, 100; 
 his moral insensibility declared 
 congenital, 121; his failure due 
 to his own misdeeds, 200; 111, 
 129, 168,201; 185. 
 Romantic dramas, their theology, 
 213, 219. 
 
 Saxe, John G., 193 n. 
 
 Schiller, nature of morality as por- 
 
 trayed in his plays, 36 ; his trans- 
 lation of the phj'sician's speech 
 in Macbeth, 177 ; 21. 
 Self-realization, desire for, 79, 90; 
 not sole ultimate object of desire, 
 81, 86, 89, 90. 
 Sentimentality in moral imbeciles, 
 123; in Macbeth, 169; in Lady 
 Macbeth, 173. 
 Shakespeare, scanty evidence of his 
 theories of ethics, xi, 221; his 
 representation of the objects of 
 human desire agrees with the 
 doctrines of modern authorities, 
 95 ; fidelity to fact in his portraj-al 
 of criminals, 129; his views on 
 heredity, 144, 149 ; ignores and 
 implicitly denies theory of origin 
 of virtue and vice held by Eliza- 
 bethan church, 151 ; his views on 
 distribution of desire for sym- 
 pathy, 185 ; his treatment of the 
 accidental, 189; does not reveal 
 his theology in Hamlet, 207, 212; 
 does not attack theological beliefs 
 through their adherents, 208; his 
 religious beliefs, 220; his view of 
 the place of religious belief in 
 life, 222; his view of the nature 
 of failure in life, 223. 
 
 Sidgwick, Professor, 13. 
 
 Snider, D. J. on the death of Des- 
 demona, 193. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 191. 
 
 Symonds, on the life of the Italian 
 despots, 178. 
 
 Sympathy, desire for, its distribu- 
 tion, 185. 
 
 Taswell-Longmead, 45. 
 
 Timon, his last banquet, 26; com- 
 bines moral condemnation with 
 avowal of determinism, 153. 
 
 Tragedy, its function, 189; its use 
 of the accidental, 189. 
 
 Transcendentalism, its account of 
 
232 
 
 Index 
 
 the moral life: (1) Kantianism, 
 30; (2) rationalism, 35; (3) au- 
 thoritism, 40; definition of con- 
 science, 97; incompatible with 
 Shakespeare's representation of 
 the moral motives, 64 ; denies 
 moral irabecilit}', 114; denies 
 congenital moral imbecility, 120. 
 Types of moral perfection, 25. 
 
 Ulkici on the punishment of evil- 
 doing in Macbeth, 192. 
 
 Utilitarian moral judgments de- 
 fined, 65; examples, 66. 
 
 Veracity, casuistry of, 67. 
 Vienna, Duke of, a skeptic in the- 
 ology, 215; 10; 34; 67, 221. 
 
 Waineweight, Thomas, 124. 
 Wendell, Barrett, 106. 
 Wordsworth, 21. 
 
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