3 182202201 2033 JN VERS TV OF CAL FORN A SAN DIEGO 3 1822 02201 2033 .J3 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due APR Is 1997 MAY 3 1997 MAR 1 Z 1S38 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WOMEN : MORAL, PO- ETICAL, AND HISTORICAL. THE DIARY OF AN ENNUYEE. MEMOIRS OF THE LOVES OF THE POETS. Bio- graphical Sketches of Women celebrated in Ancient and Mod- ern Poetry. STUDIES, STORIES, AND MEMOIRS. SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE, AND CHAR- ACTER. With a Steel Engraving of Raphael's Madonna del San Sisto. MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY ITALIAN PAINTERS (Cimabue to Bassano). LEGENDS OF THE MADONNA as represented in ance oi being read. ALDA. I am not sure of that. The vile taste fo- satire and personal gossip will not be eradicated, I sup- pose, while the elements of curiosity and r-wilioi in human nature; but as a fashion of !>*>>? INTRODUCTION. IS tore, 1 think it is passing away ; at all events it u not my forte. Long experience of what is called "the world," of the folly, duplicity, shallownesa, selfishness, which meet us at every turn, too soon unsettles our youthful creed. If it only led to the knowledge of good and evil, it were well; if it only taught us to despise the illusions and retire from the pleasures of the world, it would be better. But it destroys oar belief it dims our perception of all abstract truth, virtue, and happiness ; it turns life into a jest, and a very dull one too. It makes us indifferent to beauty, and incredulous of good- ness ; it teaches us to consider self as the centre on which all actions turn, and to which all motives are to be referred. MEDON. But this being so, we must either revolve with these earthly natures, and round the same centre, or seek a sphere for ourselves, and dwell apart I trust it is not necessary to do either. While we are yet young, and the passions, powers, and feelings, in their full activity, create to us a world within, we cannot look fairly on the world with- out: all things then are good. When first we throw ourselves forth, and meet burs and briars on every aide, which stick in our very hearts ; and fair tempting fruits which turn to bitter ashes in ihe taste, then we exclaim with impatience, all things are evlL But at length comes the calm 16 INTRODUCTION. hour, when they who look beyond the superficies of things begin to discern their true bearings; when the perception of evil, or sorrow, or sin. brings also the perception of some opposite good, which awakens our indulgence, or the knowl- edge of the cause which excites our pity. Thus it is with me. I can smile, nay, I can laugh "till, to see folly, vanity, absurdity, meanness, ex- posed by scornful wit, and depicted by others in fictions light and brilliant. But these very things, when I encounter the reality, rather make me sad than merry, and take away all the inclination, if I had the power, to hold them up to derision. M F.DON. Unless, by doing so, you might correct them. ALDA. Correct them 1 Show me that one human being who has been made essentially better by satire 1 O no, no! there is something in human nature which hardens itself against the lash something in satin which excites only the lowest and worst of our propensities. That avowal in Pope I most be proud to see MOD not afraid of God, afraid of me ! has ever filled me with terror and pity XXDOH. From its truth perhaps ? ENTnOi)UCTIOS. 17 ALDA. From its arrogance, for the truth is, that a vica never corrected a vice. .Pope might be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience : but that terror made no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin, he admin- istered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on " the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged creature that, having the lineaments of a man, yet preyed on a man, and afterwards coming to a stream to drink, and be- holding his own face therein, and that he had made his prey of a creature like himself, pined away with repentance. So should those do, who having made themselves mischievous mirth out of the sins and sorrows of others, remembering their own humanity, and seeing within themselves the ame Lineaments so should they grieve and pine away, self-punished. "Tis an old allegory, and a sad one and but too much to the purpose. I abhor the spirit of ridicule I dread it and ] despise it I abhor it because it is in direct coo* a 18 INTRODUCTION. tra Jiction to the mild and serious spirit of Cbri iianity; 1 fear it, because we find that in every tate of society in which it has prevailed as a fashion, and has given the tone to the manners and literature, it marked the moral degradation and approaching destruction of that society ; and 1 despise it, because it is the usual resource of the shallow and the base mind, and, when wielded by the strongest hand with the purest intentions, an inefficient means of good. The spirit of satire reversing the spirit of mercy which is twice blessed, seems to me twice accursed ; evil in those who indulge it evil to those who are the objects of it. "Peut-e'tre fallait-il que la punition des im. prudens et des faibles fut confide a la maligmt, car la pure vertu n'eut jamais 6t6 aasez cruelle." ALDA. That is a woman's sentiment. MEDON. True it was; and I have pleasure in remind- ing you that a female satirist by profession is ye* an anomaly in the history of our literature, as a female schismatic is yet unknown in the history of our religion. But to what do you attribute the number of satirical women we meet in society ? ALDA. Not to our nature ; out to a state of . oeity ut INTRODUCTION. 19 which the levelling spirit of persiflage has been !ong a fashion ; to the perverse education which fosters it; to affections disappointed or unem- ployed, which embitter the temper; to faculties misdirected or wasted, which oppress and irritate the mind ; to an utter ignorance of ourselves, and the common lot of humanity, combined with quick and refined perceptions and much superficial cul- tivation ; to frivolous habits, which make serious thought a burden, and serious feeling a bane if suppressed, if betrayed, a ridicule. Women, gen- erally speaking, are by nature too much subjected to suffering in many forms have too much of fancy and sensibility, and too much of that faculty which some philosophers call veneration, to be naturally satirical. I have known but one woman eminently gifted in mind and person, who is also distinguished for powers of satire as bold as merci- less ; and she is such a compound of all that nature can give of good, and all that society can teach of evil MEDOH. That she reminds us of the dragon of old, which was generated between the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth. No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who had every talent and every charm under heavec but once in so many tours was fated to become v serpent No, I return 80 INTRODUCTION. to my first position. It is not by exposing folly aitd scorning fools, that we make other people wiser or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and examples of the kindly and generous affections to show how the human soul is dis- ciplined and perfected by suffering to prove how much of possible good may exist in things evil and perverted how much hope there is for those who despair how much comfort for those whom a heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit of the day O would I could do this ! On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waist- coat, they now send them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and (lowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech. ALDA. Yon laugh at me ! perhaps I deserve it No, in truth; I am a little amused, but inoe* honestly attentive : and perhaps wish I could think toore like you. But to proceed : I allow that witk INTRODUCTION. 2t this view of the case, you could not well have chosen your illustrations from real life ; but why Dot from history ? As far as history could guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here lost sight of her ; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been done or have occurred ; but when we come to inquire into motives and characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory authority we can refer to. Women are illustrious in history, not from what they have been in them- selves, but generally in proportion to the mischief they have done or caused. Those characters best fitted to my purpose are precisely those of which history never heard, or disdains to speak ; of those which have been handed down to us by many dif- "erent authorities under different aspects we cannot judge without prejudice; in others there occur certain chasms which it is difficult to supply ; and hence inconsistencies we have no means of recon- ciling, though doubtless they might be recorciled if we knew the whole, instead of a part. MED03J But instance instance I 12 INTRODUCTION. Examples crowd upon me; but take the first that occurs. Do you remember that Duchesse de Longueville, whose beautiful picture we were look- ing at yesterday ? the heroine of the Fronde ? think of that woman bold, intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious ! who made men rebels with a smile ; or if that were not enough, the lady was not scrupulous, apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was too much ! And then think of the same woman protecting the vir- tuous philosopher Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned ; and from motives which her worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even to her own servants pre- paring his food herself, watching for his safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her pa- tience, her discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that were little to a woman of her temper,) but endured a lengthened trial, all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continual self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain, dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now if Shakspeare had drawn the character of the Duchesse de Longueville, he would have shown u the same individual woman in both situations : for the same being, with the same faculties, and pas- lions, and powers, it surely was : whereas in hi* tory, we see in one case a fury of discord, 'a womai without modesty or pity ; and in the other an INTRODUCTION. 28 f benevolence, and a worshipper of goodness ; and nothing to connect the two extremes in our fancy. MEDON. But these are contradictions which we meet on every page of history, which make us giddy with doubt, or sick with belief, and are the proper sub- jects of inquiry for the moralist and the philosopher I cannot say that professed moralists and philos- ophers did much to help me out of the dilemma ; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there ; his characters combine history and real life ; they are complete individuals, whose hearts and souls are laid open before us : all may behold, and all judge for themselves. But all will not judge alike No; and herein lies a part of their wonderful jruth. We hear Shakspeare's men and women dis- cussed, praised and dispraised, liked, disliked, aa real human beings ; and in forming our opinions of them, we are influenced by our own characters, habits of thought, prejudices, feelings, impulses, just 14 INTRODUCTION. as we are influenced with regard to our acquaint- ances and associates. MEDON. But we are then as likely to misconceive and misjudge them. ALDA. Yes, if we had only the same imperfect means of studying them. But we can do with them what we jannot do with real people: we can unfold the whole character before us, stripped of all preten- sions of self-love, all disguises of manner. We can take leisure to examine, to analyze, to correct our own impressions, to watch the rise and progress of various passions we can hate, love, approve, con- demn, without offence to others, without pain to ourselves. MEDON. In this respect they may be compared to those exquisite anatomical preparations of wax, which those who could not without disgust and horror dis- sect a real specimen, may study, and learn the mysteries of our frame, and all the internal work- ings of the wondrous machine of life. I ALDA. And it is the safer and the better way for us at Jeast. But look that brilliant rain-drop trembling there in the sunshine suggests to me another illufr tration. Passion, when we contemplate / through INTRODUCTION. 25 the medium of imagination, is like a ray of light transmitted through a prism; we can calmly, and with undazzled eye, study its complicate na- ture, and analyze its variety of tints ; but passion brought home to us in its reality, through our own feelings and experience, is like the same ray trans- mitted through a lens, -blinding, burning, consnm ing where it falls. MEDON. Your illustration is the most poetical, I allow ; but not the most just. But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large ? is the founda- tion you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral superstructure you raise upon it ? You know the prevalent idea is, that Shakspeare's women are inferior to his men. This assertion is constantly repeated, and has been but tamely refuted. ALDA. Professor Richardson V MEDON. He is as dry as a stick, and his refutation not successful even as a piece of logic. Then it is not sufficient for critics to assert this inferiority and want of variety : they first assume the fallacy, then urgue upon it. Gibber accounts for it from the circumstance that all the female parts in Shak- ipeare's time were acted by boys there were no *omen on th-3 stage ; and Mackenzie, who ought k> havo known better, says that he was not so happy INTRODUCTION. in his delineations of love and tenderness, as of the other passions; because, forsooth, the majesty of his genius could not stoop to the refinements of del- icacy ; preposterous ! Stay ! before we waste epithets of indignation, let us consider. If these people mean that Shak- peare's women are inferior in power to his men, I grant it at once ; for in Shakspeare the male ana female characters bear precisely the same relation to each other that they do in nature and in society they are not equal in prominence or in power they are subordinate throughout Richardson re- marks, that " if situation influences the mind, and if uniformity of conduct be frequently occasioned by uniformity of condition, there wiusf be a greater diversity of male than of female characters," which is true ; add to this our limited sphere of action, consequently of experience, the habits of self-control rendering the outward distinctions of character and passion less striking and less strong all this we see in Shakspeare as in nature : foi instance, Juliet is the most impassioned of the female characters, but what are her passions com. pared to those which shake the soul of Othello ? " Even as the dew-drop on the myrtle-leaf To the vex'd sea." Look at Constance, frantic for the loss of her son then look at Lear, maddened by the ingratitude of INTRODUCTION. 27 bis daugLters: why it 13 the, west wind bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and mountains tremble to their bases ! MBDON. True ; and Lady Macbeth, with all her soaring ambition, her vigor of intellect, her subtlety, her courage, and her cruelty what is she, compared to Richard HI. ? ALDA. I will tell you what she is she is a woman. Place Lady Macbeth in comparison with Richard ITT., and you see at once the essential distinction between masculine and feminine ambition though both in extreme, and overleaping all restraints of conscience or mercy. Richard says of himself, that he has " neither pity, love, nor fear : " Lady Mac- beth is susceptible of all three. You smile ! but that remains to be proved. The reason that Shak- speare's wicked women have such a singular hold upon our fancy, is from the consistent preservation of the feminine character, which renders them more terrible, because more credible and intelligible not like those monstrous caricatures we meet with in history MKDON. In history ? this is new 1 ALDA. Yes ! I repeat, in historv, where certain isolated 28 INTRODUCTION. facts and actions are recorded, without any rela don to causes, or motives, or connecting feelings and pictures exhibited, from which the considerate mind turns in disgust, and the feeling heart has no relief but in positive, and I may add, reasonable incredulity. I have lately seen one of Correggio's finest pictures, in which the three Furies are repre- sented, not as ghastly deformed hags, with talons and torches, and snaky hair, but as young women, with fine luxuriant forms and regular features, and a single serpent wreathing the tresses like a ban- deau but such countenances ! such a hideous ex- pression of malice, cunning, and cruelty ! and the effect is beyond conception appalling. Leonardo da Vinci worked upon the same grand principle oi art in his Medusa Where it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone * * * * * 'Tis the melodious tints of beauty thrown Athwart the hue of guilt and glare of pain, That humanize and harmonize the strain. And Shakspeare, who understood all truth, worked out his conceptions on the same principle, having said himself, that " proper deformity shows not in the fiend so horrid as in women." Hence it is that whether he portrayed the wickedness founded in perverted power, as in Lady Macbeth; or th wickedness founded in weakness, as in Gertrude Lady ABIC, or Cressida, he is the more fearfully INTRODUCTION. 2S jnpressive, because we cannot claim for ourselvei n exemption from the same nature, before which, in ita corrupted state, we tremble with horror or shrink with disgust Do you remember that some of the commentators of Shakspeare have thought it incumbent on their gallantry to express their utter contempt for the scene between Richard and Lady Anne, as a mon- strous and incredible libel on your sex ? They might have spared themselves the trouble. Lady Anne is just one of those women whom we Bee walking in crowds through the drawing-rooms of the world the puppets of habit, the fools of for- tune, without any particular inclination for vice, or any steady principle of virtue ; whose actions are inspired by vanity, not affection, and regulated by opinion, not by conscience : who are good while there is no temptation to be otherwise, and ready victims of the first soliciting to evil. In the case of Lady Anne, we are startled by the situation : not three months a widow, and following to the sep- ulchre the remains of a husband and a father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them. In such a ease it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend himself to tempt her successfully ; but in a less critical moment, a Sir less subtle and andacious seducer woul 1 hav 10 INTRODUCTION sufficed. Cressida is another modification of vanity weakness, and falsehood, drawn in stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Ores- sidas, polished and refined externally, whom chance and vanity keep right, whom chance and vanity lead wrong, just as it may happen. When we read in history of the enormities of certain women, per- fect scarecrows and ogresses, we can safely, like the Pharisee in Scripture, hug ourselves in our secure virtue, and thank God that we are not as others are but the wicked women in Shakspeare are portrayed with such perfect consistency and truth, that they leave us no such resource they frighten us into reflection they make us believe and tremble. On the other hand, his amiable women are touched with such exquisite simplicity they have so little external pretensions and are so un- like the usual heroines of tragedy and romance, that they delight us more " than all the nonsense of the beau-ideal ! " We are flattered by the per- ception of our own nature in the midst of so many charms and virtues: not only are they what we could wish to be, or ought to be, but what we per- suade ourselves we might be, or would be, under a different and a happier state of things, and, per- haps, some time or other may be. They are not Ituck up, like the cardinal virtues, all in a row, lor us to admire and wonder at they are not mere poetical abstractions nor (as they have beet termed) mere abstractions of the affections, Bat common clay ta'en from the common eartJi, INTRODUCTION. SI Moulded by God, and tempered by tht tears Of augels, to the perfect form of woman. MEDON. Beautiful lines ! Where are they ? I quote from memory, and I am afraid rately, from a poem of Alfred Tennyson's. Well, between argument, and sentiment, and logic, and poetry, you are making out a very plausible case. I think with you that, in the in- stances you have mentioned, (as Lady Macbeth and Richard, Juliet, and Othello, and others,) the want of comparative power is only an additional excellence ; but to go to an opposite extreme of delineation, we must allow that there is not one of Shakspeare's women that, as a dramatic character, can be compared to Falstaff. ALDA. No ; because any thing like Falstaff in the form of woman any such compound of wit, sensuality, and selfishness, unchecked by the moral senti- ments and the affections, and touched with the same vigorous painting, would be a gross and monstrous caricature. If it could exist in nature, we might find it in Shakspeare ; but a moment'* reflection shows us that it would be essentially an impossible combination of faculties in a female. 9? INTRODUCTION. MEDON. It strikes me, however, that his humorous women are feebly drawn, in comparison with some of the female wits of other writers. ALDA. Because his women of wit and humor are not introduced for the sole purpose of saying brilliant things, and displaying the wit of the author ; they are, as I will show you, real, natural women, in whom wit is only a particular and occasional modi- fication of intellect. They are all, in the first place, affectionate, thinking beings, and moral agents; and then witty, as if by accident, or as the Duchesse de Chaulnes said of herself, " par la grace de Dieu." As to humor, it is carried as far as possible in Mrs. Quickly ; in the termagant Catherine ; in Maria, in " Twelfth Night ; " in Juliet's nurse ; in Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page. What can exceed in humorous naivete", Mrs. Quickly*s upbraiding Falstaff, and her concluding appeal " Didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch thee thirty shillings ? " Is it not exquisite irresistible ? Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page are both " merry wives, * but how perfectly discriminated ! Mrs. Ford has the most good nature Mrs. Page is the cleverer of the two, and has more sharpness in her tongue, more mischief in her mirth. In all these instancei I allow that the humor is more or less vulgar ; bu' a humorous woman, whether in high or low life has always a tinge of vulgarity. INTRODUCTION. 33 MEDOJC. I should like to see that word vulgar properly defined, and its meaning limited at present it if the most arbitrary word in the language. ALDA. Yes, like the word romantic, it is a convenient " exploding word," and in its general application signifies nothing more than " see how much finer I am than other people ! " * but in literature and character I shall adhere to the definition of Ma- dame de Stael, who uses the word vulgar as the reverse of poetical. Vulgarity (as I wish to apply the word) is the negative in all things. In litera- ture, it is the total absence of elevation and depth in the ideas, and of elegance and delicacy in the expression of them. In character, it is the absence of truth, sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of vulgarity of character ; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation. If you would gee how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential distinction of sex into con- nderation, still maintain that Shakspeare's female characters are not, in truth, in variety, in power See Foster's Essay on the \ppllcation of the word Essays, TO!. I ft 14 INTRODUCTION. equal to liis men, I think I shall prove the con trary. MEDON. I observe that you have divided your illustra- tions into classes ; but shades of character so melt into each other, and the various faculties and powers are so blended and balanced, that all clasg- ification must be arbitrary. I am at a loss to con- ceive where you have drawn the line ; here, at the head of your first chapter, I find ' Characters of Intellect" do you call Portia intellectual, and Hermione and Constance not so ? I know that Schlegel has said that it is impossible to arrange Shakspeare's characters in classes : yet some classification was necessary for my purpose. I have therefore divided them into characters in which intellect and wit predominate ; characters in which fancy and passion predominate; and characters in which the moral sentiments and affections predominate. The historical characters I have considered apart, as requiring a different mode of illustration. Portia I regard as a perfect model of an intellectual woman, in whom wit is tempered by sensibility, and fancy regulated by strong reflection. It is objected to her, to Bea- trice, and others of Shakspeare's women, that th display of intellect is tinged with a coarseness of manner belonging to the age in which he wrota To reoiark that the conversation and letters of INTRODUCTION. SI highbi 2d and virtuous women of that time were more bold and frank in expression than any part of the dialogue appropriated to Beatrice and Rosa- lind, ma/ excuse it to our judgment, but does not reconcile it to our taste. Much has been said, and more might be said on this subject but I would rather not discuss it. It is a mere difference of manner which is to be regretted, but has nothing to do with the essence of the character. I think you have done well in avoiding the topic altogether ; but between ourselves, do you really think that the refinement of manner, the cen- sorious, hypocritical, verbal scrupulosity, which is carried so far in this " picked age " of ours, is a true sign of superior refinement of taste, and purity of morals? Is it not -rather a whiting of the sepulchre ? I will not even allude to indi- vidual instances whom we both know, but does it not remind you, on the whole, of the tone of French manners previous to the revolution that " decence," which Horace Walpole so admired,* veiling the moral degradation, the inconceivable profligacy of the higher classes? Stay I have not yet done not to you, but for you, I will add thus much; our modern idea of delicacy appar- ently attaches more importance to words than tc things to manners than to morals. You will hear * Correspondence, TOl. IM. 16 INTRODUCTION. people inveigh against the improprieties of Shak* ipeare, with Don Juan, or one of those infernal French novels I beg your pardon lying on their tr ilet table. Lady Florence is shocked at the sal- lies of Beatrice, and Beatrice would certainly stand aghast to see Lady Florence dressed for Almack's BO you see that in both cases the fashion makes the indecorum Let her ladyship new model her gowns! ALDA. Well, well, teave Lady Florence I would rather hear you defend Shakspeare. 1 think it is Coleridge who so finely observes that Shakspeare ever kept the high road of human life, whereon all travel, that he did not pick out by-paths of feeling and sentiment ; in him we have no moral highwaymen, and sentimental thieves and rat-catchers, and interesting villains, and ami- able, elegant adulteresses h-la-mode Germanorum no delicate entanglements of situation, in which the grossest images are presented to the mind disguised under the superficial attraction of style and sentiment He flattered no bad passion, dis- guised no vice in the garb of virtue, trifled with with no just and generous principle. He can make us laugh at folly, and shudder at crime, yet *till preserve our love for our fellow-beings, and Bur reverence for ourselves. He has a lofty and a fearless trust in his own powers, and in the beaut* INTRODUCTION 91 and excellence of virtue ; and with his eye fixed on the lode-star of truth, steers us triumphantly among shoals and quicksands, where with any other pilot we had been wrecked : for instance, who but himself would have dared to bring into close contact two such characters as lago and Desdemona? Had the colors in which he has arrayed Desdemona been one atom less transpar- ently bright and pure, the charm had been lost ; she could not have borne the approximation: some shadow from the overpowering blackness of Ms character must have passed over the sun- bright purity of hers. For observe that lago'a disbelief in the virtue of Desdemona is not pre- tended, it is real. It arises from his total want of faith in all virtue ; he is no more capable of con- ceiving goodness than she is capable of conceiv- ing evil. To the brutish coarseness and fiendish malignity of this man, her gentleness appears only a contemptible weakness ; her purity of affection, which saw " Othello's visage in his mind," only a perversion of taste ; her bashful modesty, only a cloak for evil propensities ; so he represents them with all the force of language and self-conviction, and we are obliged to listen to him. He rips her to pieces before us he would have bedeviled an angel ! yet such is the unrivalled, though passive delicacy of the delineation, that it can stand it tnhurt, untouched I It is wonderful ! yet natura, M it is wonderful 1 Af*sr all, there are people in 4ie world, whose opinions and feelings are tain tec 58 INTRODUCTION. Dy an habitual acquaintance with the evil side of lociety, though in action and intention they remain right; and who, without the real depravity of heart and malignity of intention of lago, judge ai he does of the character and productions of others. Heaven bless me from such critics ! yet if genius, youth, and innocence could not escape unslut red, can I hope to do so ? I pity from my soul the persons you allude to for to such minds there can exist few uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art. Ay " the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them melancholy." * 1C ou pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have we here ? " Characters of Imagination Juliet Viola;" are these romantic young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice ? Are they to serve as examples or as warnings f< ftie youth of this enlightened age ? ALDA. Aa warnings, of course what else ? MRDON. Against the dangers of romance? hut wher An Oriental pro7rb INTRODUCTION. 39 lie they? " Vraiment," as B. Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit a [a maison." Where are they these disciples of poetry and romance, these victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown roses all conscience and tenderness whom it is so necessary to guard against too much confidence in others, and too little in themselves where are they? ALDA. Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too vio- lent in their hatred of vice, too sincere in friend- ship, too faithful in love, too active and disinterested in the cause of truth MEDON. Very fair ! But seriously, do you think it neces- sary to guard young people, in this selfish and cal- culating age, against an excess of sentiment and imagination ? Do you allow no distinction between the romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought ? Do you bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthu- liasin? Methinks it is rather superfluous; and lhat another doctrine is needed to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of uay be gently hinted to the few who are in dajige 40 INTRODUCTION. of being misled by an excess of the generous im- pulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, 1 think, be proclaimed by sound of trumpet amid the mocks of the world. No, no ; there are young women in these days, but there is no such thing aa youth the bloom of existence is sacrificed to a fashionable education, and where we should find the rose-buds of the spring, we see only the full- blown, flaunting, precocious roses of the hot-bed. Blame then \hsAforcing system of education, the most pernicious, the most mistaken, the most far- reaching in its miserable and mischievous effect**, that ever prevailed in this world. The custom which shut up women in convents till they were married, and then launched them innocent and ignorant on society, was bad enough ; but not worse than a system of education which inundates us with hard, clever, sophisticated girls, trained by know- ing mothers, and all-accomplished governesses, with whom vanity and expediency take place of con- science and affection (in other words, of romance) " frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore ; " with feel- 'ings and passions suppressed or contracted, not governed by higher faculties and purer principles ; with whom opinion the same false honor which sends men out to fight duels stands instead of the rtrongth and the light of virtue within their own Bouls. Hence the strange anomalies of artificub lociety girls of sixteen who are models of manner INTRODUCTION. 41 auracles of prudence, marvels of learning, who ineer at sentiment, and laugh at the Juliets and the Imogens; and matrons of forty, who, when the passions should be tame and wait upon the judg oient, amaze the world and put us to confusion with tneir doings. MEDON. Or turn politicians to vary the excitement - Uow I hate political women 1 ALDA. Why do you hate them ? MEDOM. Because they are mischievous. ALDA. But why are they mischievous ? MEDON. Why ! why are they mischievous ? Nay, ask them, or ask the father of all mischief, who has not a more efficient instrument to further his designs in this world, than a woman run mad with politics. The number of political intriguing women of this time, whose boudoirs and drawing-rooms are the foyers of party-spirit, is another trait of resemblance between the state of society now, and that which existed at Paris before the revolution. ALDA. And do you think, like some interesting young ii INTRODUCTION. lady in Miss Edgeworth's tales, that " women haT nothing to do with politics ? " Do you mean to say that women are not capable of comprehending the principles of legislation, or of feeling an interest in the government and welfare of their country, or of perceiving and sympathizing in the progress ol great events ? That they cannot feel patriotism ? Believe me, when we do feel it, our patriotism, like our courage and our love, has a purer source than with you ; for a man's patriotism has always some unge of egotism, while a woman's patriotism is gen- erally a sentiment, and of the noblest kind. MEDON. I agree in all this ; and all this does no\ mitigate my horror of political women in general, who are, I repeat it, both mischievous and absurd If you could but hear the reasoning in these feminine co- teries ! but you never talk politics. Indeed I do, when I can get any one to listen to me ; but I prefer listening. As for the evil you complain of, impute it to that imperfect education which at once cultivates and enslaves the intellect, and loads the memory, while it fetters the judgment Women, however well read in history, never gen- eralize in politics ; never argue on any broad or general principle ; never reason from a considera- tion of past events, their causes and consequence* But they are always political through their affeo ESTIIODUCTION. 43 taon^, their prejudices, their personal liaisons, thwr hopes, their fears. MEDOX. If it were no worse, I could stand it ; for that ii t least feminine. ALDA. But most mischievous. For hence it is that we make such blind partisans, such violent party wo- mer, and such wretched politicians. I never heard a woman talk politics, as it is termed, that I could not discern at once the motive, the affection, the secret bias which swayed her opinions and inspired her arguments. If it appeared to the Grecian sage so " difficult for a man not to love himself, nor the things that belong to him, but justice only ? " how much more for woman ! Then you think that a better education, based on truer moral principles, would render women more reasonable politicians, or at least give then? Borne right to meddle with politics ? ALDA. It would cease in that case to be meddling, as you term it, for it would be legitimized. It is easy to incer at political ana mathematical ladies, and quoto Lord Byron but O leave those angry common- places to others ! they dvi not come well from you. Do not force me to remind you, that women hav It INTKODUCTIOH. achieved enough to silence them forever,* and how often must that truism be repeated, that it u not a woman's attainments which make her amiable or unamiable, estimable or the contrary, but her qualities ? A time is coming, perhaps, when the education of women will be considered, with a view to their future destination as the mothers and nurses of legislators and statesmen, and the cultivation oi their powers of reflection and moral feelings super- sede the exciting drudgery by which they are now crammed with knowledge and accomplishments. Well till that blessed period arrives, I wish you would leave us the province of politics to ourselves. I see here you have treated of a very different class of beings, " women in whom the affections and the moral sentiments predominate," Are there many Buch, think you, in the world ? Yes, many such ; the development of affection and sentiment is more quiet and unobtrusive than that of passion and intellect, and less observed; it is more common, too, therefore less remarked ; but in women it generally gives the prevailing tone to the character, except where vanity has been made the ruling motive. * In our own time, Madame do Stacl, Mrs. SomorHHe, Hair!* 4 Martlne.au, Mrs. Marcel ; we need not go back to the Roland* nd Agues!, nor even to our own Lucy Hutchinfon. INTRODUCTION. 4* Except ! I Admire your exception ! You make this case the rule the exception. Look round the world, ALDA. You are not one of those with whom that common phrase " the world " signifies the circle, whatever and wherever that may be, which limits our indi- vidual experience as a child considers the visible horizon as the bounds which shut in the mighty universe. Believe me, it is a sorry, vulgar kind of wisdom, if it be wisdom a shallow and confined philosophy, if it be philosophy which resolves all human motives and impulses into egotism in one sex, and vanity in the other. Such may be the way of the world, as it is called the result of a very artificial and corrupt state of society, but such is not general nature, nor female nature. Would you see the kindly, self-sacrificing affections de veloped under their most honest but least poetical guise displayed without any mixture of vanity, and unchecked in the display by any fear of being thought vain ? you will see it, not among the pros- perous, the high-born, the educated, " far, far re- moved from want, and grief, and fear," but among the poor, the miserable, the perverted among those habitually exposed to all influences that harden and deprave. MKDOJT. I beliove it nay, I know it ; but how should yot 46 INTRODUCTION. know it, or anything of the strange places of refug which truth and nature have found in the two ex tremes of society ? ALDA. It is no matter what I have seen or known ; and for the two extremes of society, I leave them to the author of Paul Clifford, and that most exquisitt painter of living manners, Mrs. Gore. St. Giles's is no more nature than St. James's. I wanted character in its essential truth, not mortified by particular customs, by fashion, by situation. 1 wished to illustrate the manner in which the affec- tions would naturally display themselves in women whether combined with high intellect, regulated by reflection, and elevated by imagination, or exist- ing with perverted dispositions, or purified by the moral sentiments. I found all these in Shakspeare ; his delineations of women, in whom the virtuous and calm affections predominate, and triumph ove? shame, fear, pride, resentment, vanity, jealousy, are particularly worthy of consideration, and per- fect in their kind, because so quiet in their effect. Several critics have remarked in general tenni on those beautiful pictures of female friendship, and of the generous affection of women for each other, which we find in Shakspeare. Other writers, especially dramatic writers, have found ample food for wit and satiric delineation in the littleness of "eminmo spite and rivalry, in the mean spirit of INTRODUCTION. 47 sompetitioa, the petty jealousy of superior charms, the mutual slander and mistrust, the transient leagues of folly or selfishness miscalled friendship- the result of an education which makes vanity the ruling principle, and of a false position in society. Shakspeare, who looked upon women with the spirit of humanity, wisdom, and deep love, has done justice to their natural good tendencies and kindly sympathies. In the friendship of Beatrice and Hero, of Rosalind and Celia ; in the description of the girlish attachment of Helena and Hermia, he has represented truth and generous affection rising superior to all the usual sources of female rivalry and jealousy ; and with such force and simplicity, and obvious self-conviction, that he absolutely forces the same conviction on us. Add to these the generous feeling ->f Viola for her rival Olivia ; of Julia for her rival Sylvia ; of Helena for Diana ; of the old Countess for Helena, in the same play ; and even the affection of the wicked queen in Hamlet for the gentle Ophelia, which prove that Shakspeare thought (and when did he ever think other than the truth?) that women have by nature " virtues that are merciful," and can be just, tender, and true to their sister women, whatever wits and worldlings, and satiristi ind fashionable poets, may say or sing of us to the contrary. There is another thing which he hai most deeply felt and beautifully represented the 48 ENTRGDUCTIOK. distinction between masculine and feminine cour- age. A man's courage is often a mere anima. quality, and in its most elevated form a point of honor. But a woman's courage is always a virtue, because it is not required of us, it is not one of the means through which we seek admiration and ap- plause ; on the contrary, we are courageous through our affections and mental energies, not through our vanity or our strength. A woman's heroism ia always the excess of sensibility. Do you remember Lady Fanshawe putting on a sailor's jacket, and his ' blue thrum cap," and standing at her husband's eide, unknown to him during a sea-fight ? There she stood, all bathed in tears, but fixed to that spot. Her husband's exclamation when he turned and discovered her " Good God, that love should make such a change as this ! " is applicable to all the acts of courage which we read or hear of in women. This is the courage of Juliet, when, after summing up all the possible consequences of her own act, till ehe almost maddens herself with terror, she drinks the sleeping potion ; and for that passive fortitude which is founded in piety and pure strength of af- fection, such as the heroism of Lady Russel and Gertrude de Wart, he has given us some of the noblest modifications of it in Hermione, in Cordelia, in Imogen, in Katherine of Arragon. MEDOlf. And what do you call the courage of Lady Mao INTRODUCTION. 41 My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white. And again, A little water clears us of this deed, How easy is it then ! li this is not mere masculine indifference to blood and death, mere firmness of nerve, what is it ? ALDA. Not that, at least, which apparently you deem it ; you will find, if you have patience to read me to the end, that I have judged Lady Macbeth very differently. Take these frightful passages with the context take the whole situation, and you will see that it is no such thing. A friend of mine truly observed, that if Macbeth had been a ruffian with- out any qualms of conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been the one to shrink and tremble ; but that which quenched him lent her tire. The absolute necessity for self-command, the strength of her rea- son, and her love for her husband, combine at this critical moment to conquer all fear but the fear of detection, leaving her the full possession of her fac- ulties. Recollect that the same woman who speaks with such horrible indifference of a little water clearing the blood-stain from her hand, sees in im- agination that hand forever reeking, forever pol- uted : and when reason is no longer awake and paramount over the violated feelings of nature and womanhood, we beheld her making unconscious 4 00 INTRODUCTION. efforts to wash out that " damned spot," and sigb ing, heart-broken, over that little hand which all the perfumes of Arabia will never sweeten more. MEDON. I hope you have given her a place among the women in whom the tender affections and moral sentiments predominate. ALDA. You laugh ; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more accurate classification than plac- *n her amon the historical characters. Apropos to the historical characters, I hope you have refuted that insolent assumption, (shall 1 call it?) that Shakspeare tampered inexcusably with the truth of history. He is the truest of all his- torians. His anachronisms always remind me of those in the fine old Italian pictures ; either they are insignificant, or, if properly considered, are really beauties ; for instance, every one knows that Correggio's St. Jerome presenting his books to the Virgin, involves half-a-dozen anachronisms, to ay nothing of that heavenly figure of the Mag ialon, in the same picture, kissing the feet of thj infant Saviour. Some have ridiculed, some have tKCused this strange combination of inaccuracies but is it less one of the divinest pieces of senti- ment and poetry that ever breathed and glowed INTRODUCTION: 51 from tlie canvas ? You remember too the famous nativity by some Neapolitan painter, who has placed Mount Vesu vius and the Bay of Naples in the background ? .In these and a hundred other instances, no one seems to feel that the apparent absurdity involves the highest truth, and that the sacred beings thus represented, if once allowed as objects of faith and worship, are eternal under jvery aspect, and independent of all time and all locality. So it is with Shakspeare and his ana- chronisms. The learned scorn of Johnson and some of his brotherhood of commentators, and the eloquent defence of Schlegel, seem in this case superfluous. If he chose to make the Delphic oracle and Julio Romano contemporary what does it signify? he committed no anachronisms of character. He has not metamorphosed Cleopatra into a turtle-dove, nor Katherine of Arragon into a sentimental heroine. He is true to the spirit and even to the letter of history; where he de- viates from the latter, the reason may be found in some higher beauty and more universal truth. I have proved this, I think, by placing parallel with the dramatic, character all the historic testi- mony I could collect relative to Constance, Cleo- patra, Katherine of Arragon, &c. Analyzing the character of Cleopatra must have 52 INTKODUCTION. been something like catching a meteor by the tail, and making it sit for its picture. Something like it, in truth ; but those of Miranda and Ophelia were more embarrassing, because they seemed to defy all analysis. It was like intercept- ing the dew-drop or the snow-flake ere it fell to earth, and subjecting it to a chemical process. Some one said the other day that Shakspeare had never drawn a coquette. What is Cleopatra but the empress and type of all the coquettes that ever were or are ? She would put Lady herself to school. But now for the moral ALDA. The moral ! of what ? MEDON. Or* your book. It has a moral, I suppose. ALDA. It has indeed a very deep one, which those who icek will find. If now I have answered all your considerations and objections, and sufficiently ex- plained my own views, may I proceed ? MEDON. If you please I am prepared to listen in ear eat. CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. PORTIA. WE bear it asserted, not seldom by way of 0013* pliment to us women, that intellect is of no sex. If this mean that the same faculties of mind are common to men and women, it is true; in any other signification it appears to me false, and thft reverse of a compliment. The intellect of woman bears the same relation to that of man as her physical organization ; it is inferior in power, and different in kind. That certain women have surpassed certain men in bodily strength or intel- lectual energy, does not contradict the general principle founded in nature. The essential and invariable distinction appears to me this : in men the intellectual faculties exist more self-poised and self-directed more independent of the rest of tho character, than we ever find them in women, with whom talent, however predominant, is in a much greater degree modified by the sympathies and moral qualities. In thinking over all the distinguished women D4 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. cau at this moment call to mind, I recollect but one., who, in the exercise of a rare talent, belied her sex, but the moral qualities had been first per- verted.* It is from not knowing, or not allowing this general principle, that men of genius have committed some signal mistakes. They have given us exquisite and just delineations of the more pecu- liar characteristics of women, as modesty, grace, tenderness ; and when they have attempted to poi^ tray them with the powers common to both sexes, as wit, energy, intellect, they have blundered in some respect; they could form no conception of intellect which was not masculine, and therefore Lave either suppressed the feminine attributes alto- gether and drawn coarse caricatures, or they have made them completely artificiaLf Women dis- tinguished for wit may sometimes appear mascu- line and flippant, but the cause must be sought elsewhere than in nature, who disclaims all such. Hence the witty and intellectual ladies of our comedies and novels are all in the fashion of some particular time ; they are like some old portrait* * Artemisia Qentileschi, an Italian artist of the seventeenth eentury, painted one or two pictures, considered admirable ai works of art, of which the subjects are the most vicious and bar- barous conceivable. I remember one of these in the gallery of Florence, which I looked at once, but once, and wished then, a* I do now, for the privilege of burning it to ashes. t Lucy Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, may be placet next to Desdemona; Diana Vernon is (comparatively) a failure M eT"ry woman will allow; while the masculine lady Gera!iin m Miss Edgeworth's tale of Ennui, and the intellectual Corinn* rp consistent, essential women; the distinction is more ea*il felt tiiau analyzed PORTIA. 5i i*hich caii still amuse and ptease by the beauty of the workmanship, in spite of the graceless costume or grotesque accompaniments, but from which we turn to worship with ever new delight the Floras and goddesses of Titian the saints and the vir- gins of Raffaelle and Domenichino. So the Milla- mants and Belindas, the Lady Townleys and Lady Teazles are out of date, while Portia and Rosalind, in whom nature and the feminine character are paramount, remain bright and fresh to the fancy as when first created. Portia, Isabella, Beatrice, and Rosalind, may be classed together, as characters of intellect, because, when compared with others, they are at once dis- tinguished by their mental superiority, in Portia, it is intellect kindled into romance by a poetical imagination ; in Isabel, it is intellect elevated by religious principle ; in Beatrice, intellect animated by spirit ; in Rosalind, intellect softened by sensi- bility. The wit which is lavished on each is pro- found, or pointed, or sparkling, or playful but always feminine ; like spirits distilled from flowers, it always reminds us of its origin ; it is a volatile essence, sweet as powerful; and to pursue the isomparison a step furthei, the wit of Portia is like ottar of roses, rich and concentrated; that of Rosalind, like cotton dipped in aromatic vinegar ; the wit of Beatrice is like sal volatile ; and that of r Isabel, like the incense wafted to heaven. Of Jiese four exquisite characters, considered as dra- toatic and poetical conceptions, it is difficult to pro 66 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. bounce which is most perfect in its way, mort admirably drawn, most highly finished. But if considered in another point of view, as women and individuals, as breathing realities, clothed in flesh and blood, I believe we must assign the first rank to Portia, as uniting in herself in a more eminent degree than the others, all the noblest and most lovable qualities that ever met together in woman ; and presenting a complete personification of Pe- trarch's exquisite epitome of female perfection : n vago spirito ardento, E'n alto intelletto, un puro core. It is singular, that hitherto no critical justice has been done to the character of Portia ; it is yet more wonderful, that one of the finest writers on the eternal subject of Shakspeare and his perfections, should accuse Portia of pedantry and affectation, and confess she is not a great favorite of his a confession quite worthy of him, who avers his pre- dilection for servant-maids, and his preference of the Fannys and the Pamelas over the Clementina! and Clarissas.* Schlegel, who has given several pages to a rapturous eulogy on the Merchant of Venice, simply designates Portia as a " rich, beauti- ful, clever heiress : " whether the fault lie in the writer or translator, I do protest against the word clever.f Portia clever ! what an epithet to apply HailHt's Essayn, vol. ii. p. 167. t I am informed that the original German word is geistrtick* Utonlly, rich in soul or spirit, a just and beautiful epithet. 9l tt PORTIA. 5 4 to tLw heavenly compound of talent, feeling, wis- dom, beauty, and gentleness 1 Now would it not be well, if this common and comprehensive word were more accurately defined, or at least more accurately used? It signifies properly, not so touch the possession of high powers, as dexterity in the adaptation of certain faculties (not necessarily of a high order) to a certain end or aim not always the worthiest. It implies something com- monplace, inasmuch as it speaks the presence of the active and perceptive, with a deficiency of the feeling and reflective powers ; and applied to a wo- man, does it not almost invariably suggest the idea of something we should distrust or shrink from, if not allied to a higher nature V The profligate French women, who ruled the councils of Europe in the middle of the last century, were clever women ; and that philosopheress Madame du Chate- let, who managed, at one and the same moment, the thread of an intrigue, her cards at piquet, and a calculation in algebra, was a very clever woman I If Portia had been created as a mere instrument to bring about a dramatic catastrophe if she had merely detected the flaw in Antonio's bond, and used it as a means to baffle the Jew, she might have been pronounced a clever woman. But what Por- tia does, is forgotten in what she is. The rare and harmonious blending of energy, reflection, and feel- lag, in her fine character, maice the epithet clevei lound like a discord as applied to her, and placa Jier infinitely beyond the slight praise of Richardson IW CHAKACTKKS OF INTELLECT. nd Schlcgel, neither of whom appear to have ftillj comprehended her. These and other critics have been apparently ac dazzled and engrossed by the amazing character ol Shylock, that Portia has received less than justice at their hands ; while the fact is, that Shylock is not a finer or more finished character in his way, than Portia is in hers. These two splendid figures are worthy of each other ; worthy of being placed together within the same rich framework of en- chanting poetry, and glorious and graceful forms. She hangs beside the terrible, inexorable Jew, the brilliant lights of her character set off by the shad- owy power of his, like a magnificent beauty- breathing Titian by the side of a gorgeous Rem- brandt Portia is endued with her own share of those delightful qualities, which Shakspeare has lavished on many of his female characters ; but besides the dignity, the sweetness, and tenderness which should distinguish her sex generally, she is individualized by qualities peculiar to herself; by her high mental powers, her enthusiasm of temperament, her decis- ion of purpose, and her buoyancy of spirit These are innate ; she has other distinguishing qualities more external, and which are the result of the cir- cumstances in which she is placed. Thus she ia th heiress of a princely name and countless wealth a train of obedient pleasures have ever waited ttmnd her; and from infancy she has breathed an tfaaospherc redolent of perfume and blandishment PORTIA. 59 Accordingly there is a commanding grace, a high- bred, auy elegance, a spirit of magnificence in all that she does and says, as one to whom splendor had been familiar from her very birth. She treads as though her footsteps had been among marble palaces, beneath roofs of fretted gold, o'er cedar floors and pavements of jasper and porphyry amid gardens full of statues, and flowers, and foun- tains, and haunting music. She is full of penetra- tive wisdom, and genuine tenderness, and lively wit ; but as she has never known want, or grief, or fear, or disappointment, her wisdom is without a touch of the sombre or the sad ; her affections are all mixed up with faith, hope and joy ; and her wit has not a particle of malevolence or causticity. It is well known that the Merchant of Venice ia founded on two different tales; and in weaving together his double plot in so masterly a manner, Shakspeare has rejected altogether the character of the astutious Lady of Belmont with her magic po- tions, who figures in the Italian novel. With yet more refinement, he has thrown out all the licen- tious part of the story, which some of his contem- porary dramatists would have seized on with avidity, and made the best or worst of it possible ; and he has substituted the trial of the caskets from anothei lource. * We are not told expressly where Belmont * In the " Mercatante di Venezia " of Ser. Giovanni, we haw the whole story of Antonio and Bassanie, and part of the story put not the character of Portia. The incident of the casket* if Vom the Gesta Romanoruw 10 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. u situated ; but as Bassanio takes ship to go thithet from Venice, and as we find them afterwards order- ing horses from Belmont to Padua, we will imagine Portia's hereditary palace as standing on some lovely promontory between Venice and Trieste, overlooking the blue Adriatic, with the Friub mountains or the Euganean hills for its background, such as we often see in one of Claude's or Poussin's elysian landscapes. In a scene, in a home like this, Shakspeare, having first exorcised the original pos- sessor, has placed his Portia ; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving circumstancea of the story, become natural, probable, and neces- sary in connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, and enchantment. From the four quarters of the earth they come To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint The Hyrcanian desert, and the vasty wilds Of wide Arabia, are as thoroughfares now, For princes to come view fair Portia; The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head Spits in the face of heaven is no bar To stop the foreign spirits; but they come As o'er a orook to see fair Portia. The sudden plan which she forms for the release of her husband's friend, her disguise, and her de portment as the young and learned doctor, woulo tppear forced and improbable in any other womaa PORTIA. 61 But in Portia are the simple and natural result of ker character.* The quickness with which she perceives the legal advantage which may be taken of the circumstances ; the spirit of adventure with which she engages in the masquerading, and the decision, firmness, and intelligence with which she executes her generous purpose, are all in perfect keeping, and nothing appears forced nothing aa introduced merely for theatrical effect. But all the finest parts of Portia's character are brought to bear in the trial scene. There she shines forth all her divine self. Her intellectual powers, her elevated sense of religion, her high honorable principles, her best feelings as a woman, are all displayed. She maintains at first a calm self-command, as one sure of carrying her point in the end ; yet the painful heart-thrilling uncertainty in which she keeps the whole court, until suspense verges upon agony, is not contrived for effect merely ; it is necessary and inevitable. She has two objects in view ; to deliver her husband's friend, and to maintain her husband's honor by the discharge of his just debt, though paid out ot her own wealth ten times over. It is evident that she would rather owe the safety of Antonio to any thing rather than the legal quibble with which her cousin Bellario has armed her, and which she In that age, delicate points of law were not determined by "Se ordinary judges of the provinces, but by doctors of law, wh ore called from Bologna, Padua, and other places celebrated fix *ir legal colleges 22 CdARACTERS OF INTELLECT. reserves as a last resource. Thus all the speeches addressed to Shylock in the first instance, are either direct or indirect experiments on his tem- per and feelings. She must be understood from the beginning to the end as examining, with in- tense anxiety, the effect of her own words on hia mind and countenance ; as watching for that relent- ing spirit, which she hopes to awaken either by reason or persuasion. She begins by an appeal to bis mercy, in that matchless piece of eloquence, which, with an irresistible and solemn pathos, falls upon the heart like " gentle dew from heaven : " but in vain ; for that blessed dew drops not more fruitless and unfelt on the parched sand of the desert, than do these heavenly words upon the ear of Shylock. She next attacks his avarice : Shylock, there's thrice thy money offered thee I Then she appeals, in the same breath, both to hif avarice and his pity : Be merciful! Take thrice thy money. Bid me tear the bond. All that she says afterwards hei (Strong expres- sions, which are calculated to strike a shuddering horror through the nerves the reflections she interposes her delays and circumlocution to give rime for any latent feeling of commiseration to dis- play itself all, all are premeditated and tend ii the same manner to the object she has in view Thus Yon mast prepare yonr bosom for his knife. Therefore lay bare your bosom ! PORTIA. 6S JThese two speeches, though addressed apparently to Antonio, are spoken at Shylock, and are evi- dently intended to penetrate Ms bosom. In the lame spirit she asks for the balance to weigh the pound of flesh ; and entreats of Shylock to have a surgeon ready Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge, To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death 1 SHYLOCK. Is it so nominated in the bond? PORTIA. It is not so expressed but what of that ? 'Twere good you do so much, for charity. So unwilling is her sanguine and generous spirit to resign all hope, or to believe that humanity is absolutely extinct in the bosom of the Jew, that phe calls on Antonio, as a last resource, to speak for himself. His gentle, yet manly resignation the deep pathos of his farewell, and the affectionate allusion to herself in his last address to Bassanio Commend me to your honorable wife; Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death, &c. are well calculated to swell that emotion, which through the whole scene must have been laboring suppressed within her heart. At length the crisis arrives, for patience and womanhood can endure no lorger; and when Shylock, carrying uis savage bent " to the last ftour of act," springs on his victim "A sentence 14 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. some, prepare ! " then the smothered scorn, indig- nation, and disgust, burst forth with an impetuosity which interferes with the judicial solemnity she had at first affected ; particularly in the speech Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh. Shed thou no blood ; nor cut thou less, nor more, But just the pound of flesh ; if thou tak'st more, Or less than a just pound, be it but so much As makes it light, or heavy, in the substance, Or the division of the twentieth part Of one poor scruple ; nay, if the scale do turn But in the estimation of a hair, Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate. But she afterwards recovers her propriety, and triumphs with a cooler scorn and a more self- possessed exultation. It is clear that, to feel the full force and dramatic beauty of this marvellous scene, we must go along with Portia as well as with Shylock; we must understand her concealed purpose, keep in mind her noble motives, and pursue in our fancy the under current of feeling, working in her mind throughout The terror and the power of Shylock's character, his deadly and inexorable malice, would be too oppressive; the pain and pity too intolerable, and the horror of the possible issue too overwhelming, but for the intellectual relief afforded by this double source of interest and con templation. I come now to that capacity for warm and gen> trous affection, that tenderness of heart, whicfc PORTIA. 69 render Portia not less lovable as a woman, than admirable for her mental endowments. The affec- tions are to the intellect, what the forge is to the metal ; it is they which temper and shape it to all good purposes, and soften, strengthen, and purify it. What an exquisite stroke of judgment in the poet, to make the mutual passion of Portia and Bassanio, though unacknowledged to each other, anterior to the opening of the play ! Bassanio's confession very properly comes first : BASSANIO. In Belmont is a lady ricUy left, And she is fair, and farjr than that word, Of wond'rous virtues : sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages ; ***** and prepares us for Portia's half betrayed, uncon- scious election of this most graceful and chivalrous admirer NERISSA. Do you not remember, lady, in your father's time, a Venetian, a scholar, and a soldier, that came hither in company of the Marquis of Montferrat ? PORTIA. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so he was called. NERISSA. True, madam; he of all the men that ever myfool- toh eyes looked upon, was the best deserving a fail lady. PORTIA. I remember him well; and I rennmbsr him worthy d "hy praise. ft 66 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. Our interest is thus awakened for the loven from the very first ; and what shall be said of the casket-scene with Bassanio, where every line which Portia speaks is so worthy of herself, so full of sen- timent and beauty, and poetry and passion ? Too naturally frank for disguise, too modest to confess her depth of love while the issue of the trial re- mains in suspense, the conflict between love and fear, and maidenly dignity, cause the most delicious confusion that ever tinged a woman's cheek, or dropped in broken utterance from her lips. I pray you, tarry, pause a day or two, Before you hazard ; for in choosing wrong, I lose your company ; therefore, forbear awhile ; There's something tells me, (but it is not love,) I would not lose you ; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality: But lest you should not understand me well, (And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought ) I would detain you here some month or two Before you venture for me. I could teach you How to choose right, but then I am forsworn; So will I never be : so you may miss me ; But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin, That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eye*, They have o'erlooked me, and divided me: One half of me is yours, the other half yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, theu yours, And so all yours ! The short dialogue between the loyera u at inimte. PORTIA. 17 BASSANIO. Let me choose j For, as I am, I live upon the rack. Upon the rack, Bassanio ? Then confess What treason there is mingled with your lof None, but that ugly treason of mistrust, Which makes me fear the enjoying of my lore There may as well be amity and life 'Tween snow and fire, as treason and my love. PORTIA. Ay ! but I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak any thing. BASSANIO. Promise me life, and I'll confess the truth. PORTIA. Well then, confess, and live. BASSANIO. Confess and love Had been the very sum of my confession! happy torment, when my torturer Doth teach me answers for deliverance ! A prominent feature in Portia's character is tha confiding, buoyant spirit, which mingles with aU Her thoughts and affections. And here let me ob erve, that I never yet met in real life, nor eve* read in tale or history, of any woman, distinguished 8 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. for intellect of the highest order, who was i.ot also remarkable for this trusting spirit, this hopefalnesi Mid cheerfulness of temper, which is compatible \vith the most serious habits of thought, and the most profound sensibility. Lady Wortley Montagu was one instance ; and Madame de Stael furnishea another much more memorable. In her Corinne, whom she drew from herself, this natural brightness of temper /s a prominent part of the character. A disposition to doubt, to suspect, and to despond, in the young, argues, in general, some inherent weak- ness, moral or physical, or some miserable and rad- ical error of education ; in the old, it is one of the first symptoms of age ; it speaks of the influence of Borrow and experience, and foreshows the decay of the stronger and more generous powers of the soul. Portia's strength of intellect takes a natural tinge from the flush and bloom of her young and prosper- ous existence, and from her fervent imagination. In the casket-scene, she fears indeed the issue of the trial, on which more than her life is hazarded but while she trembles, her hope is stronger than her fear. While Bassanio is contemplating th caskets, she suffers herself to dwell for one momen' on the possibility of disappointment and misery. Let mnsio sound while he doth make h:s choice; Then if he lose, he makes a swaiv-like end, *" Fading in music : that the comparison May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream And watery death-bed for him. POUTIA. 09 Then immediately follows that revulsion of feel- ing, so beautifully characteristic of the hopeful, trusting, mounting spirit of thia noble creature. But he maywin! And what is music then ? then music is Even as the nourish, when true subjects bow To a new-crowned monarch : such it is As are those dulcet sounds at break of day, That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear, And summon him to marriage. Now he goes With no less presence, but with much more love Than young Alcides, when he did redeem The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy To the sea monster. I stand here for sacrifice. Here, not only the feeling itself, born of the elastic and sanguine spirit which had never been touched by grief, but the images in which it cornea arrayed to her fancy, the bridegroom waked by music on his wedding-morn, the new-crowned monarch, the comparison of Bassanio to the young Alcides, and of herself to the daughter of Laome- don, are all precisely what would have suggested themselves to the fine poetical imagination of Por- tia in such a moment. Her passionate exclamations of delight, when Bassanio has fixed on the right casket, are as strong as though she had despaired before. Fear and doubt she could repel ; the native elasticity of her mind bore up against them; vet she makes us feel, that, aa the sudden joy overpowers her almost to Tainting, the disappointment would as certainly kave killed her. /O CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. How all the other passions fleet to air, As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, And shudd'riug fear, and green-eyed jealousy ? love! be moderate, allay thy ecstasy; In measure rain thy joy scant this excess ; 1 feel too much thy blessing: make it less, For fear I surfeit! Her subsequent surrender of herself in aeai t and loul, of her maiden freedom, and her vast posses- sions, can never be read without deep emotions for not only all the tenderness and delicacy of a devoted woman, are here blended with all the dignity which becomes the princely heiress of Bel- mont, but the serious, measured self-possession of her address to her lover, when all suspense is over, and all concealment superfluous, is most beautifully consistent with the character. It is, in truth, an awful moment, that in which a gifted woman first discovers, that besides talents and powers, she has also passions and affections ; when she first begins to suspect their vast importance in the sum of her existence ; when she first confesses that her happi- ness is no longer in her own keeping, but is sur- rendered forever and forever into the dominion of another ! The possession of uncommon powers of mind are so far from affording relief or resource in the first intoxicating surprise I had almost said terror of such a revolution, that they render it more intense. The sources of thought multiply beyond calcuUtion the sources of feeling; umi mingled, they rush together, a torrent deep at POKTIA. 7' rtrong. Because Portia is endued with that en larged comprehension which looks before and after, ihe does not feel the less, but the more : because from the bjight of her commanding intellect she can contemplate the force, the tendency, the con- sequences of her own sentiments because she is fiilly sensible of her own situation, and the value of all she concedes the concession is not made with less entireness and devotion of heart, less con- ridence in the truth and worth of her lover, than when Juliet, in a similar moment, but without any such intrusive reflections any check but the in- stinctive delicacy of her sex, flings herself and her fortunes at the feet of her lover : And all my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay, And follow thee, my lord, through all the world.* In Portia's confession, which is not brea'thed from a moonlit balcony, but spoken openly in the pres- ence of her attendants and vassals, there is nothing of the passionate self-abandonment of Juliet, nor of the artiess simplicity of Miranda, but a concious- ness and a tender seriousness, approaching ti olemnity, which are not less touching. Yon see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, Such as I am : though for myself alone, i would not be ambitious in my wish, To wish myself much better; yet, for you, I would be trebled twenty time* myself; / thousand times more fair, ten thousand limM Borneo and Juliet, Act ii. Scene 2. *1 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. More rich ; that only to stand high in your account I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, Exceed account; but the full sum of me Is sum of something ; which to term in gross, Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractis'd, Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn ; and happier than this, She is not bred so dull but she can learn ; Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit Commits itself to yours to be directed, As from her lord, her governor, her king. Myself and wh#t mine, to you and yours Is now converted. But now, I was the lord, Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now, This house, these servants, and this same myself', Are yours, my lord. We must also remark that the sweetness, th solicitude, the subdued fondness which she after- wards displays, relative to the letter, are as true to the softness of her sex, as the generous self-denial with which she urges the departure of Bassanio, (having first given him a husband's right over her- elf and all her countless wealth,) is oonsistent with a reflecting mind, and a spirit at once tender reasonable, and magnanimous. It is not only in the trial scene that Portia'i acuteness, eloquence, and lively intelligence are evealed to us ; they are displayed in the first i&. tance, and kept up consistently to the end. He reflections, arising from the most usual aspects ot nature, and from the commonest incidents of life tie in such a poetical spirit, and are at the sam POKTIA. 7J tme so pointed, so profound, that they have passed into familiar and daily application, with all the force of proverbs. If to do, were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be dona, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended ; and, I think, The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren. How many things by season, seasoned are To their right praise and true perfection ! How far that little candle throws his beams ! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. A substitute shines as brightly as a king, Until a king be by ; and then his state Empties itself, as doth an inland brook, Into the main of waters. Her reflections on the friendship between her husband and Antonio are as full of deep meaning as of tenderness ; and her portrait of a young ,ox- eomb, in the same scene, is touched with a truth ind spirit which show with what a keen observing )y,j she has looked upon men and things. I'll hold thee any wager, When we are both accou'^er'd like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, A-id wear my dagger with the traver grace M CHAKACTKRS OF INTELLECT. And speak, between the change of man and boy With a reed voice ; and turn two mincing step* Into a manly stride ; and speak of frays, Like a fine bragging youth ; and tell quaint lies- How honorable ladies sought my love, Which I denying, they fell sick and died ; I could not do withal : then I'll repent, And wish, for all that, that I had not killed them ; And twenty of these puny lies I'll tell, That men should swear, I have discontinued school Above a twelvemonth ! And in the description of her various suitors, in the first scene with Nerissa, what infinite power, wit, and vivacity ! She half checks herself as she is about to give the reins to her sportive humor : " In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker." But if it carries her away, it is so perfectly good- natured, so temperately bright, so lady-like, it is ever without offence ; and so far, most unlike the satirical, poignant, unsparing wit of Beatrice, " mis- prising what she looks on." In fact, I can scarce conceive a greater contrast than between the vivac- ity of Portia and the vivacity of Beatrice. Portia, with all her airy brilliance, is supremely soft and dignified; every thing she says or does, displays her capability for profound thought and feeling, aa well as her lively and romantic disposition ; and aa I have seen in an Italian garden a fountain fling- ing round its wreaths of showery light, while the many-colored Iris hung brooding above it, in ita calm and soul-felt glory ; so in Portia the wit is tver kept subordinate to the poetry, and we stiU 75 feel the tender, the intellectual, and the imagina- tive part of the character, as superior to, and pre- siding over its spirit and vivacity. In the last act, Shylock and his machinations be- ing dismissed from our thoughts, and the rest of the dramatis personce assembled together at Belmont, fcll our interest and all our attention are riveted ou Portia, and the conclusion leaves the most de- lightful impression on the fancy. The playful equivoque of the rings, the sportive trick she puts on her husband, and her thorough enjoyment of the jest, which she checks just as it is proceeding beyond the bounds of propriety, show how little she was displeased by the sacrifice of her gift, and are all consistent with her bright and buoyant spirit. In conclusion, when Portia invites her com- pany to enter her palace to refresh themselves after their travels, and talk over " these events at full," the imagination, unwilling to lose sight of the brilliant group, follows them in gay procession from the lovely moonlight garden to marble halls and princely revels, to splendor and festive mirth, to love and happiness. Many women have possessed many of those qualities which render Portia so delightful. She is in herself a piece of reality, in whose possible existence we have no doubt : and yet a human being, in whom the moral, intellectual, and sen- Jient faculties should be so exquisitelv blended and proportioned tc each other; and these again, in armouy with all outward aspects and influence* T6 CHAUA.CTKUS OF INTELLECT. probably neve" existed certainly could not now exist. A woman constituted like Portia, and placed in this age, and in the actual state of society, would find society armed against her ; and instead of be- ing like Portia, a gracious, happy, beloved, and loving creature, would be a victim, immolated in Gre to that multitudinous Moloch termed Opinion. Vrith her, the world without would be at war with the world within ; in the perpetual strife, either her nature would " be subdued to the element it worked in," and bending to a necessity it could neither escape nor approve, lose at last something of its original brightness; or otherwise a per- petual spirit of resistance, cherished as a safeguard, might perhaps in the end destroy the equipoise ; firmness would become pride and self-assurance ; and the soft, sweet, feminine texture of the mind, settle into rigidity. Is there then no sanctuary for such a mind ? Where shall it find a refuge from the world ? Where seek for strength against it- self? Where, but in heaven ? Camiola, in Massinger's Maid of Honor, is said to emulate Portia ; and the real story of Camiola (for she is an historical personage) is very beautiful She was a lady of Messina, who lived in the begin* aing of the fourteenth century ; and was the con- temporary of Queen Joanna, of Petrarch and Boc* -;io. It fell out in those days, that Prince Or- umdo of Arragon, the younger brother of the King pf Sicily, having taken the command of a nava* Knnament against the Neapolitans, was defeated PORTIA. 77 wounded, taken prisoner, and confined by Rolmrt f Naples (the father of Queen Joanna) in one of his strongest castles. As the prince had distin- guished himself by his enmity to the Neapolitans, and by many exploits against them, his ransom was fixed at an exorbitant sum, and his captivity was unusually severe ; while the King of Sicily, who had some cause of displeasure against his brother, and imputed to him the defeat of his armament, re- fused either to negotiate for his release, or to pay the ransom demanded. Orlando, who was celebrated for his fine person and reckless valour, was apparently doomed to languish away the rest of his life in a dungeon, when Camiola Turinga, a rich Sicilian heiress, de- voted the half of her fortune to release him. But as such an action might expose her to evil com- ments, she made it a condition, that Orlando should marry her. The prince gladly accepted the terms, and sent her the contract of marriage, signed by his hand ; but no sooner was he at liberty, than ho refused to fulfil it, and even denied all knowledge of his benefactress. Camiola appealed to the tribunal of state, pro- duced the written contract, and described the obli- gations she had heaped on /his ungrateful and un- generous man ; sentence was given against him ; and he was adjudged to Camiola, not only as her rightful husband, but as a property which, accord tog to the laws of war in that age, she had purchased ith her gold. The dv of marriapre was fixed f8 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. -Orlando presented himself with a splendid retinae amiola also appeared, decorated as for her bridal but instead of bestowing her hand on the recreant ihe reproached him in the presence of all with hii breach of faith, declared her utter contempt for hu baseness; and then freely bestowing on him the sum paid for his ransom, as a gift worthy of hia mean soul, she turned away, and dedicated herselt and her heart to heaven. In this resolution she remained inflexible, though the king and all the court united in entreaties to soften her. She took the veil ; and Orlando, henceforth regarded as one who had stained his knighthood, and violated his faith, passed the rest of his life as a dishonored man, and died in obscurity. Camiola, in " The Maid of Honor," is, like Por- tia, a wealthy heiress, surrounded by suitors, and " queen o'er herself: " the character is constructed upon the same principles, as great intellectual power, magnanimity of temper, and feminine ten- derness; but not only do pain and disquiet, and the change induced by unkind and inauspicious in- fluences, enter into this sweet picture to mar and cloud its happy beauty, but the portrait itself may be pronounced out of drawing ; for Massinger ap- parently had not sufficient delicacy of sentiment to work out his own conception of the character with perfect consistency. In his adaptation of the story he represents the mutual love of Orlando and Ca- miola as existing previous to the captivity of th former, and on his part declared with many vowt PORTIA. 79 M eternal faith, yet she requires a written contract of marriage before she liberates him. It will per- haps be said that she has penetrated his weakness, and anticipates his falsehood : miserable excuse ! how could a magnanimous woman love a man, whose falsehood she believes but possible f or lov- ing him, how could she deign to secure herself by such means against the consequences ? Shakspeare and Nature never committed such a solecism. Ca- miola doubts before she has been wronged; the Qrmness and assurance in herself border on harsh- ness. What in Portia is the gentle wisdom cf a noble nature, appears, in Camiola, too much a spirit of calculation : it savors a little of the count- ing house. As Portia is the heiress of Belmont, and Camiola a merchant's daughter, the distinction may be proper and characteristic, but it is not in favor of Camiola. The contrast may be thus il- lustrated : CAMIOLA. You have heard of Bertoldo's captivity and the king's neglect, the greatness of his ransom; jifty thousand jrowns, Adorni ! Two parts of my estate ! Yet I M love the gentleman, for to you I will confess my weak- ness, that I purpose now, when he is forsaken by tin king and hii own hopes, to ransom him. Maid of Honor, Act. ft. PORTIA. What sum owes he the Jew? BASSANIO. For me three thousand ducat*. BO CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. POKTIA. What! no morel Pay him six thousand and deface the bond, Double six thousand, and then treble that, Before a friend of this description Shall lose a hair thro' my Bassanio's fault. You shall have gold T ) pay the petty debt twenty times o'er. Merchant of Feme*. Camiola, who is a Sicilian, might as well have been born at Amsterdam : Portia could have only existed m Italy. Portia is profound as she is brilliant; Camiola is sensible and sententious ; she asserts her dignity very successfully ; but we cannot for a mo- ment imagine Portia as reduced to the necessity of asserting hers. The idiot Sylli, in " The Maid of Honor," who follows Camiola like one of the de- formed dwarfs of old time, is an intolerable viola- tion of taste and propriety, and it sensibly lowers our impression of the principal character. Shak- epeare would never have placed Sir Andrew Ague- cheek in constant and immediate approximation with such a woman as Portia. Lastly, the charm of the poetical coloring is wholly wanting in Camiola, so that when she is placed in contrast with the glowing eloquence, the luxuriant grace, the buoyant spirit of Portia, the effect is somewhat that of coldness and formality. Notwithstanding the dignity and the beauty of Massinger's delineation, and the noble self-devotion f Camiola, which I acknowledge and admire, the PORTIA. 81 hro characters will admit of no comparison an sources of contemplation and pleasure. It is observable that something of the intellectual brilliance of Portia is reflected on the other female characters of the " Merchant of Venice," so as to preserve in the midst of contrast a certain harmony and keeping. Thus Jessica, though properly kept subordinate, is certainly A most beautifu 1 . pagaii a most sweet Jew. She cannot be called a sketch or if a sketch, she is like one of those dashed off in glowing colora from the rainbow pallette of a Rubens ; she has a rich tinge of orientalism shed over her, worthy of her eastern origin. In any other play, and in any other companionship than that of the matchless Portia, Jessica would make a very beautiful heroine of herself. Nothing can be more poetically, more classically fanciful and elegant, than the scenes be- tween her and Lorenzo ; the celebrated moonlight dialogue, for instance, which we all have by heart. Every sentiment she utters interests us for her: more particularly her bashful self-reproach, when lying in the disguise of a page ; I am glad 'tis night, you do not look upon m, For I am much asham'd of my exchange ; But love is blind, and lovirs cannot MM 82 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. The pretty follies that themselves commit; For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to a boy. And the enthusiastic and generous testimony to the superior graces and accomplishments of Portia comes with a peculiar grace from her lips. Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match. And on the wager lay two earthly women, And Portia one, there must be something else Pawned with the other; for the poor rude wcrld Hath not her fellow. We should not, however, easily pardon her for cheating her father with so much indifference, but for the perception that Shylock values his daughter far beneath his wealth. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear ! would she were hearsed at my foot, aud the ducats hi her coffin ! Nerissa is a good specimen of a common genus of characters ; she is a clever confidential waiting- woman, who has caught a little of her lady's ele- pance and romance ; she affects to be lively and sententious, falls in love, and makes her favor conditional on the fortune of the caskets, and in short mimics her mistress with good emphasis and discretion. Nerissa and the gay talkative Gratiano are as well matched as the incomparable Portif Mid her magnificent and captivating lover. ISABELLA. 83 ISABELLA. THE character of Isabella, considered as a poet- ical delineation, is less mixed than that of Portia; and the dissimilarity between the two appears, at first view, so complete that we can scarce believe that the same elements enter into the composi- tion of each. Yet so it is ; they are portrayed as equally wise, gracious, virtuous, fair, and young; we perceive in both the same exalted principle N and firmness of character ; the same depth of reflection and persuasive eloquence ; the same self-denying generosity and capability of strong affections; and we must wonder at that marvel- lous power by which qualities and endowments, essentially and closely allied, are so combined and modified as to produce a result altogether differ- ent. "O Nature! O Shakespeare! which of ye drew from the other? " Isabella is distinguished from Portia, and strong- ly individualized by a certain moral grandeur, a saintly grace, something of vestal dignity and pu- rity, which render her less attractive and more imposing; she is " severe in youthful beauty, "and inspires a reverence which would have placed her beyond the daring of one unholy wish or thought, except in such a man as Angeio O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook I B4 "U1ARACTKR8 OF INTELLECT. This impression of her character is conveyed from the very first, when Lucio, the libertine jestei whose coarse audacious wit checks at every feather, thus expresses his respect for her, I would not though 'tis my familiar siii With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest Tongue far from heart play with all virgins so. I hold you as a thing enskyed, and sainted ; By your renouncement an immortal spirit, And to be talked with in sincerity, As with a saint. A strong distinction between Isabella and Por- tia is produced by the circumstances in which they are respectively placed. Portia is a high-born heiress, " Lord of a fair mansion, master of her ser- vants, queen o'er herself; " easy and decided, aa one born to command, and used to it Isabella has also the innate dignity which renders her " queen o'er herself," but she has lived far from the world and its pomps and pleasures ; she is one of a consecrated sisterhood a novice of St Clare ; the power to command obedience and to con- fer happiness are to her unknown. Portia is a splendid creature, radiant with confidence, hope, and joy. She is like the orange-tree, hung at Dnce with golden fruit and luxuriant flowers, which has expanded into bloom and fragrance beneath favoring skies, and has been nursed into beauty by the sunshine and the dews of heaven. Isabella is ike a stately and graceful cedar, towering on som* tlpine cliff, unbowed and unscathed amid th ISABELLA 81 itorm. She gives us the impression of one who has passed under the ennobling discipline of suf- fering and self-denial: a melancholy charm tem- pers the natural vigor of her mind: her spirit seems to stand upon an eminence, and look down upon the world as if already enskyed and sainted; and yet when brought in contact with that world which she inwardly despises, she shrinks back with all the timidity natural to her cloistral education. This union of natural grace and grandeur with the habits and sentiments of a recluse, of auster- ity of life with gentleness of manner, of inflexible moral principle with humility and even bashful- ness of deportment, is delineated with the most beautiful and wonderful consistency. Thus when her brother sends *o her, to entreat her mediation, her first feeling is fear, and a distrust in her own powers: . . . Alat> ! what poor ability's in me To do him good ? Essay the power you have. ISABELLA. My power, alas ! I doubt. In the first scene with Angelo she seems divided between her love for her brother and her sense of pis fault ; between her self-respect and her maid- enly bashfulness. She begins with a kind of hesi- tation " at war 'tw-_xt will and will not : " and whei 4-ogelo quotes the law, and insists OD the justice of 86 CHAKACTKUS OF IXTELI.KCT. "his sentence, and the responsibility of his station, her native sense of moral rectitude and sever* principles takes the lead, and she shrinks back: just, but severe law ! I had a brother then Heaven keep your honor! (Retiring. Excited and encouraged by Lucio, and sup- ported by her own natural spirit, she returns to the charge, she gains energy and self-possession as she proceeds, grows more earnest and passionate from the difficulty she encounters, and displays that eloquence and power of reasoning for which we had been already prepared by Claudio's first allusion to her : In her youth There is a prone and speechless dialect, Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art, When she will play with reason and discourse, And well she can persuade. It is a curious coincidence that Isabella, exhort- ing Angelo to mercy, avails herself of precisely the same arguments, and insists on the self-same topics which Portia addresses to Shylock in her celebrated speech ; but how beautifully and how truly is the distinction marked ! how like, and yet how unlike ''ortia's eulogy on mercy is a piece of heavenly rhetoric ; it falls on the ear with a solemn meas- ortd harmony ; it is the voice of a descended angel Addressing an inferior nature : if not premeditated, It is at least part of a preconcerted scheme ; while Isabella's pleadings are poured from the abundance ISABELLA. 87 if her heart in broken sentences, and with the art- less vehemence of one who feels that life and death hang upon her appeal. This will be best under- itood by placing the corresponding passages IB immediate comparison with each other. PORTIA. The quality of mercy is not strain' d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd; It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes : 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings ; But mercy is above this sceptred sway It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. ISABELLA. Well, believe this, No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe. Become them with one half so good a grace As mercy does. PORTIA. Consider this That in the course of justice, none of us Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy; And that same prayer aoth teach ts all to render The deeds of mercy. ISABELLA. Alas! alas! Why all the souls that were, were forfeit ono; 18 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. And He, that might the 'vantage best have took, Found out the remedy. How would yon be, If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are ? 0, think on that, And mercy then will breathe within your lips, Like man new made I The beautiful things which Isabella is made fco otter, have, like the sayings of Portia, become proverbial ; but in spirit and character they are aa distinct as are the two women. In all that Portia says, we confess the power of a rich poetical imag- ination, blended with a quick practical spirit of observation, familiar with the surfaces of things, while there is a profound yet simple morality, a depth of religious feeling, a touch of melancholy, in Isabella's sentiments, and something earnest and authoritative in the manner and expression, as though they had grown up in her mind from long and deep meditation in the silence and solitude ol her convent cell : it is excellent To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. Could great men thunder, As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet: For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but thunder Merciful Heaven! Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Iplit'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak Than the soft myrtle. but man, proud man ! ISABELLA 81 Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep. Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them; But in the less, foul profanation. That in the captain's but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy. Authority, although it err like others, Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself That skins the vice o' the top. Go to youi bosom ; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth kno-vi That's like my brother's fault: if it confess A natural guiltiness such as his is, Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue Against my brother's life. Let me be ignorant, and hi nothing good, But graciously to know I am na better. The sense of death is most in apprehension ; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies . 'Tis not impossible But one, the wicked 'st caitiff on the ground, May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute As Angelo ; even so may Angelo, In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms, Be an arch villain. liei fine powers of reasoning, and that natural *0 CHARACTERS OK INTELLECT. aprightness and purity which no sophistry car warp, and no allurement betray, are farther di played in the second scene with Angela ANGKLO. What would you do? ISABELLA. As much for my poor brother as myself; That is, were I under the terms of death, The impression of keen whips I'd wear as ruble*, And strip myself to death as to a bed That, longing, I have been sick for, ere I'd yield My body up to shame. ANGKLO. Then must your brother die. And 'twere the cheaper way ; Better it were a brother died at once, Than that a sister, by redeeming him, Should die forever. Were you not than cruel as the sentence, That you have slander' d so 1 Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon. Are of two houses : lawful mercy is Nothing akin to foul redemption. ANGKLO. Ton seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant} ISABELLA 11 And rather proved the sliding of your brother A merriment than a vice. pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out, To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean: 1 something do excuse the thing I hate, For Ids advantage that I dearly love. Towards the conclusion of the play we have another instance of that rigid sense of justice, which is a prominent part of Isabella's character, and almost silences her earnest intercession for her brother, when his fault is placed between her plea and her conscience. The Duke condemns the vil- lain Angelo to death, and his wife Mariana entreats Isabella to plead for him. Sweet Isabel, take my part, Lend me your knees, and all my life to come I'll lend you all my life to do you service. Isabella remains silent, and Mariana reiterates her prayer. MARIANA. Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me, Hold up your hands, say nothing, I'll speak alii Isabel ! will yon not lend a knee ? Isabella, thus urged, breaks silence and appeals to the Duke, not with supplication, or persuasion, iut with grave argument, and a kind of dignified Smmility and conscious power, whbh are finelj >haracteristic of the individual woman I*J CI1AUAC1XR8 OF INTELLKCf. Most bounteous Sir, Lock, if it please you, on this man condemn' d, As if my brother liv'd ; I partly think A due sincerity povern'd his deeda Till he did look on me; since it is so Let him not die. My brothe* had but jn*fic, In that he did the thing for which he died. For Angelo, ilis art did not o'ertake his oad intent, That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subject^ Intents, but merely thoughts. In this instance, as in the one before mentioned, Isabella's conscientiousness is overcome by the only sentiment which ought to temper justice into mercy, the power of affection and sympathy. Isabella's confession of the general frailty of her BOX, has a peculiar softness, beauty, and propriety. She admits the imputation with all the sympathy of woman for woman ; yet with all the dignity of one who felt her own superiority to the weaknesi ihe acknowledges. ANGELO. Nay, women are frail too, ISABELLA. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselvea ; Which are as easy broke as they make forms. Women ! help heaven ! men their creation mar In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail , For we are soft as our complexions are, And credulous to false prints. Nor should we fail to remark the deeper inters* ISABELLA. 93 which is thrown round Isabella, by one part of her character, which is betrayed rather than exhibited in the progress of the action ; and for which we are not at first prepared, though it is so perfectly nat- ural. It is the strong under-current of passion and enthusiasm flowing beneath this calm and saintly self-possession ; it is the capacity for high feeling and generous and strong indignation, veiled beneath the sweet austere composure of the religious re- cluse, which, by the very force of contrast, power- fully impress the imagination. As we see in real life that where, from some external or habitual cause, a strong control is exercised over naturally pick feelings and an impetuous temper, they dis- play themselves with a proportionate vehemence when that restraint is removed ; so the very vio- lence with which her passions burst forth, when op- posed or under the influence of strong excitement, s admirably characteristic. Thus in her exclamation, when she first allow* Herself to perceive Angelo's vile design ISABELLA. Ha! little honor to be much believed, And most pernicious purpose ; seeming ! seeming I will proclaim thee, Angelo : look for it ! Sign me a present pardon for my brother, Or with an outstretched throat I'll tell the world Aloud, what man thou art ! And again, where she findr that the " outward tainted deputy," has, deceived her 4 CHARACTERS OK INTfcXLECT. O I will to him, and pluck out his eyes! Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel I Injurious world! most damned Angelo! She places at first a strong ani high-souled c< fiJence in her brother's fortitiNv and magnanimity judging him by her own lofty spirit : I'll to my brother; Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood, Yet hath he in him such a mind of honor, That had -lie twenty heads to tender down, On twenty bloody blocks, he'd yield them up Before his sister should her body stoop To such abhorr'd pollution. But when her trust in his honor is deceived by his momentary weakness, her scorn has a bitter- ness, and her indignation a force of expression al- most fearful ; and both are carried to an extreme, which is perfectly in character : faithless coward ! dishonest wretch ! Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? Is't not a kind of incest to take life From thine own sister's shame? What should I think* Heaven shield, my mother play'd my father fair! For such a Warped slip of wilderness Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance; Die! perish! might but my bending down, Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed. I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death. No word to Rave theo. ISABELLA. 95 The whole of this scene with Claudio is inexpres- libly grand in the poetry and the sentiment ; and the entire play abounds in those passages and phrases which must have become trite from familiar and constant use and abuse, if their wisdom and unequalled beauty did not invest them with an im- mortal freshness and vigor, and a perpetual charm. The story of Measure for Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of which there are several ver- sions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible tragedy, the Promos and Cassandra of George Whetstone, is supposed, from various coincidences, to have furnished Shakspeare with the groundwork of the play ; but the character of Isabella is, in con- ception and execution, all his own. The commen- tators have collected with infinite industry all the sources of the plot ; but to the grand creation of Isabella, they award either silence or worse than silence. Johnson and the rest of the black-letter crew, pass over her without a word. One critic, a lady-critic too, wl ose name I will be so merciful as to suppress, treats Isabella as a coarse vixen. Haz- litt, with that strange perversion of sentiment and want of taste which sometimes mingle with his piercing and powerful intellect, dismisses Isabella with a slight remark, that "we are not greatl) enamoured of her rigid chastity, nor can feel much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at another's expense." What shall we answer to such priticism ? Upon what ground can we read the from beginning to end, and doubt the angel- 9fi CHARACTERS OK INTELLECT purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible laps* from virtue ? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a lin against the light of heaven. Having waste ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary, And pitch our evils there ? Professor Richardson is more just, and truly Hums up her character as " amiable, pious, sen- Bible, resolute, determined, and eloquent : " but bit remarks are rather superficial. Schlegel's observations are also brief and gen- eral, and in no way distinguish Isabella from many other characters ; neither did his plan allow him to be more minute. Of the play altogether, he ob serves very beautifully, " that the title Measure foi Measure is in reality a misnomer, the sense of the whole being properly the triumph of mercy over strict justice : " but it is also true that there is " an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it."* Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our sym- pathy. But though she triumphs in the conclusion, her triumph is not produced in a pleasing manner. There are too many disguises and tricks, too many "bv-paths and indirect crooked ways," to conduct us to tne natural and foreseen catastrophe, which the Duke's presence throughout renders inevitable. This Duke seems to have a predilection for bring- Ing about justice by a most unjustifiable succession * Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. ISABELLA. 9? of falsehoods and counterplots. He really deserve* LuciiA satirical designation, who somewnere styles him "The Fantastical Duke of Dark Corners." But Isabella is ever consistent in her pure and up- right simplicity, and in the midst of this simulation, expresses a characteristic disapprobation of the part she is made to play, To speak so indirectly I am loth : I would say the truth.* She yields to the supposed Friar with a kind of forced docility, because her situation as a religious novice, and his station, habit, and authority, as her spiritual director, demand this sacrifice. In the end we are made to feel that her transition from the convent to the throne has but placed this noble creature in her natural sphere : for though Isabella, as Duchess of Vienna, could not more command our highest reverence than Isabella, the novice of Saint Clare, yet a wider range of usefulness and benevolence, of trial and action, was better suited to the large capacity, the ardent affections, the energetic intellect, and firm principle of such a woman as Isabella, than the walls of a cloister. The philosophical Duke observes in the very first cene Spirits are not finely touched, But to fine issues : nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But like a thrifty goddess she determines, Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and cse.f * Act IT. Scene 5. t f I. e. usury, interest. r 18 CHARACTERS OP INTELLECT. This profound and beautiful sentiment ia illu bated in the character and destiny of Isabella She says, of herself, that ' she has spirit to act whatever her heart approves ; " and what her heart approves we know. In the convent, (which may stand here poetically for any narrow and obscure situation in which euch a woman might be placed,) Isabella would not have been unhappy, but happiness would have been the result of an effort, or of the concentration of her great mental powers to some particular pur- pose; as St. Theresa's intellect, enthusiasm, ten- derness, restless activity, and burning eloquence, governed by one overpowering sentiment of devo- tion, rendered her the most extraordinary of saints. Isabella, like St Theresa, complains that the rules of her order are not sufficiently severe, and from the same cause, that from the consciousness of strong intellectual and imaginative power, and of overflowing sensibility, she desires a more " strict restraint," or, from the continual, involuntary ttroggle against the trammels imposed, feels iti necessity. ISABELLA. And have you nuns no further privileges ? FRANCI8CA. Are not these large enough? ISABELLA. Tea, truly; I speak, not as desiring more, But rather wishing a more strict restraint Upon the sisterhood 1 BEATRICE. 99 Such women as Desdemona and Ophelia would ave passed their lives in the seclusion of a nun- nery, without wishing, like Isabella, for stricter Bonds, or planning, like St. Theresa, the reforma- tion of their order, simply, because any restraint would have been efficient, as far as they were con- cerned. Isabella, " dedicate to nothing temporal," might have found resignation through self govern- ment, or have become a religious enthusiast : while " place and greatness " would have appeared to her strong and upright mind, only a more extended field of action, a trust and a trial. The mere trap- pings of power and state, the gemmed coronal, the ermined robe, she would have regarded as the out- ward emblems of her earthly profession ; and would have worn them with as much simplicity as her novice's hood and scapular ; still, under whatever guise she might tread this thorny world the same * angel of light." BEATEICE. SHAKSPEARE has exhibited in Beatrice a spir- ited and faithful portrait of the fine lady of his *WB time. The deportment, language, manners, ana allusirms, are those of a particular class in a partic- ular age; but the individual and dramatic char- acter which forms the groundwork, is strongly 00 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. iisoriminated and being taken from general na- ture, belongs to every age. In Beatrice, high jitellect and high animal spirits meet, and excite 3ach other like fire and air. In her wit (which ifl brilliant without being imaginative) there is a touch of insolence, not unfrequent in women wheii the wit predominates over reflection and imagina- tion. In her temper, too, there is a slight infusion of the termagant ; and her satirical humor plays with such an unrespective levity over all subjects alike, that it required a profound knowledge of women to bring such a character within the pale of our sympathy. But Beatrice, though wilful, is not wayward ; she is volatile, not unfeeling. She has not only an exuberance of wit and gayety, but of heart, and soul, and energy of spirit ; and is no more like the fine ladies of modern comedy, whose wit consists in a temporary allusion, or a play upon words, and whose petulance is displayed in a toss of the head, a flirt of the fan, or a flour- ish of the pocket handkerchief, than one of our modern dandies is h'ke Sir Philip Sydney. In Beatrice, Shakspeare has contrived that the poetry of the character shall not only soften, but .heighten its comic effect We are not only in- clined to forgive Beatrice all her scornful airs, all her biting jests, all her assumption of superiority ; but they amuse and delight us the more, when w find her, with all the headlong simplicity of a child, tailing at once into the snare laid for her afleo tions; when we see her, who thought a mail of BEATRICE. 101 Rod's making not good enough for her, who dis- sLined to be o'ermastered by " a piece of valian iust," stooping like the rest of her sex, Tailing he* proud spirit, and taming her wild heart to the lov- ing hand of him whom she had scorned, flouted, and misused, "past the endurance of a block." And we are yet more completely won by her gen- erous enthusiastic attachment to her cousin. When the father of Hero believes the tale of her guilt when Claudio, her lover, without remorse or a lin gering doubt, consigns her to shame; when the Friar remains silent, and the generous Benedick himself knows not what to say, Beatrice, confident in her affections, and guided only by the impulses of her own feminine heart, sees through the incon- sistency, the impossibility of the charge, and ex- claims, without a moment's hesitation, 0, on my soul, my cousin ia belied! Schlegel, in his remarks on the play of " Much Ado about nothing," has given us an amusing in- stance of that sense of reality with which we are impressed by Shakspeare's characters. He says of Benedick and Beatrice, as if he had known them personally, that the exclusive direction of their pointed raillery against each other " is a proof of a growing inclination." This is rot unlikely; and the same inference would lead us to suppose that this mutual inch'nation had commenced oefore the opening of the play. The very first words utterei Hy Beatrice are an inquiry after Benedick, thougk jcpressed with her usual arch impertinence : 102 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. I pray you, is Signior Montanto returned ftrcm th* wars, or no ? I pray you, how many hath he killed and eaten it these wars ? But how many hath he killed ? for indeed 1 promised to eat all of his killing. And in the unprovoked hostility with which sh falls upon him in hia absence, in the pertinacity and bitterness of her satire, there is certainly great argument that he occupies much more of her viioughts than she would have been willing to con- fess, even to herself. In the same manner Bene- dick betrays a lurking partiality for his fascinating enemy ; he shows that he has looked upon hei with no careless eye, when he says, There's her cousin, (meaning Beatrice,) an' she wer not possessed with a fury, excels her as much in beauty as the first of May does the last of December. Infinite skill, as well as humor, is shown in mak- ing this pair of airy beings the exact counterpart of each other; but of the two portrait", that of Benedick is by far the most pleasing, because the independence and gay indifference of temper, the laughing defiance of love and marriage, the satirical freedom of expression, common to both, jtre more becoming to the masculine than to the fem-nine character. Any woman might love such a cavalier is Benedick, and be proud of his affection ; hi valor, his wit, and his gayety sit so gracefully uj>on nim ! and his light scofl's against the power of love, are but just sufficient to render more piquant th iquost of this " heretic in I'espite of beauty. BEATRICE. 103 But a man might well be pardoned vcho should ihriuk from encountering such a spiiit as that of Beatrice, unless, indeed, he had " served an ap- prenticeship to the taming school." The wit of Beatrice is less good-humored than that of Bene- dick ; or, from the difference of sex, appears so. It is observable that the power is throughout ou oer side, and the sympathy and interest on his: which, by reversing the usual order of things, seems to excite us against the grain, if I may use such an expression. In all their encounters slw constantly gets the better of him, and the gentle- man's wits go off halting, if he is not himself fairly hors de combat. Beatrice, woman-like, generally has the first word, and will have the last. Thus, when they first meet, she begins by provoking tho merry warfare : I wonder thai: you will still be talking, Signior Bene- dick ; nobody marks you. BENEDICK. What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living? BEATRICE. Is it possible Disdain should die, while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy teelf must convert to disdain, if you come in her pres- ence. Tt is clear that she cannot for a moment endur* his neglect, and he can as little tolerate her scorn. Kothing that Benedidr addresses to Beatrice per- 04 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. wnally can equal the malicious force of some of her attacks upon him : he is either restrained by a feeling of natural gallantly, little as she deserves the consideration due to her sex, (for a female satirist ever places herself beyond the pale of such forbearance,) or he is subdued by her superior volubility. He revenges himself, however, in her absence : he abuses her with such a variety of comic invective, and pours forth his pent-up wrath with such a ludicrous extravagance and exaggera- tion, that he betrays at once how deep is his morti- fication, and how unreal his enmity. In the midst of all this tilting and sparring of their nimble and fiery wits, we find them infinitely anxious for the good opinion of each other, anu secretly impatient of each other's scorn : but Bea- trice is the most truly indifferent of the two ; the most assured of herself. The comic effect pro- duced by their mutual attachment, which, however natural and expected, comes upon us with all the force of a surprise, cannot be surpassed : and how exquisitely characteristic the mutual avowal 1 BENEDICK. Pj my sword, Beatrice, thon lovest me. BEATRICE. Do not swear by it, and eat it BENEDICK. I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make \'an eat it, that says, I love not you. BEATRICE. J05 BEATRICE. fFifl you not eat yoor word ? BENEDICK. With no sauce that can be devised to it: I protest, 1 love thee. BEATRICE. Why, then, God forgive me ! BENEDICK. What offence, *weet Beatrice ? BEATRICE. You stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to pro- test, I loved you. BENEDICK. And do it with all thy heart. BEATRICE. I love yon with so much of my heart, that there is none left to protest. But here again the dominion rests with Beatrice, and she appears in a less amiable light than her lover. Benedick surrenders his whole heart to her and to his new passion. The revulsion of feeling even causes it to overflow in an excess of fond- ness ; but with Beatrice temper has still the mas- tery. The affection of Benedick induces him to :hallenge his intimate friend for her sake, but the affection of Beatrice does not prevent her from risking the life of her lover. The character of Hero is well contrasted with lhat of Beatrice, and their mutual attachment k l06 CUARACTEIIS OF INTELLECT. rery beautiful and natural. When they are both on the scene together, Hero has but little to say for herself: Beatrice asserts the rule of a master spirit, eclipses her by her mental superiority, abashes her by her raillery, dictates to her, an- swers for her, and would fain inspire her gentle- hearted cousin with some of her own assurance. Yes, faith ; it is my cousin's duty to make a curtsey, and say, "Father, as it please you;" but yet, for aD that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else makfl another curtsey, and, " Father, as it please me." But Shakspeare knew well how to make one char- acter subordinate to another, without sacrificing the slightest portion of its effect ; and Hero, added to her grace and softness, and all the interest which attaches to her as the sentimental heroine of the play, possesses an intellectual beauty of her own. When she has Beatrice at an advantage, she re- pays her with interest, in the severe, but most animated and elegant picture she draws of her cousin's imperious character and unbridled levity of tongue. The portrait is a little overcharged, because administered as a corrective, and intended to bo overheard. But nature never firam'd a woman's heart Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice : Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eye*, Misprising what they look on; and her wit Values itself so highly, that to her All matter else seems weak ; she cannot lorw, Nor take no shape nor project of affection, She is so self-endeared. BEATRICE. 107 UR8VLA. Bore, sure, such carping is not commendable HERO. No : not to be so odd, and from all fashions, Aa Beatrice is cannot be commendable : But who dare tell her so ? If I should speak, She'd mock me into air: she would laugh m% Out of myself, press me to death with wit. Therefore let Benedick, like cover'd fire, Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly: It were a better death than die with mocks, Which is as bad as die with tickling. Beatrice never appears to greater advantage than in her soliloquy after leaving her conceal- ment " in the pleached bower where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun, forbid the sun to enter ; " she exclaims, after listening to this tirade against her- gelf, What fire is in mine ears ? Can this be true ? Stand I condemned for pride and scorn so much? The sense of wounded vanity is lost in bitter feel- ings, and she is infinitely more struck by what ia flaid in praise of Benedick, and the history of his u).posed love for her than by the dispraise of her- self. The immediate success of the trick is a most natural consequence of the self-assurance and mag- oanimity of her character ; she is so accustomed to assert dominion over the spirits of others, that she cannot suspect the possibility of a plot laid against herself. A haughty, excitable, an^ violent temper is an 08 ' CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. other of the characteristics of Beatrice ; but there is mure of impulse than of passion in her vehe- mence. In the marriage scene where she has be- held her gentle-spirited cousin, whom she love* the more for those very qualities which are mort unlike her own, slandered, deserted, and devoted to public shame, her indignation, and the eager- ness with which she hungers and thirsts after revenge, are, like the rest of her character, open, ardent, impetuous, but not deep or implacable. When she bursts into that outrageous speech Is he not approved in the height a villain that hath slandered, scorned, dishonored my kinswoman ? that 1 w?re a man! What! bear her in hand until they come to take hands ; and then, with public accusation, uncov- ered slander, unmitigated rancor God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place] And when she commands her lover, as the first proof of his affection, " to kill Claudio," the very consciousness of the exaggeration, of the contrast between the real good-nature of Beatrice and the Berce tenor of her language, keeps alive the comic effect, mingling the ludicrous with the serious. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the point and vivacity of the dialogue, few of the speeches ot Beatrice are capable of a general application, engrave themselves distinctly on the memory ; they sontain more mirth than matter ; and though wil oe the predominant feature in the dramatic por Jrait, Beatrice more charms and dazzles us by what ihe is than by what she says. It is not mere]" bet BEATRICE 109 sparkling repartees and saucy jests, it is the soul of wit, and the spirit of gayety in forming the whole character, looking out from her brilliant eyes, and laughing on her full lips that pout with scorn.--- which we have before us, moving and full of life On the whole, we dismiss Benedick and Beatrice to their matrimonial bonds rather with a sense of amusement than a feeling of congratulation or sym- pathy ; rather with an acknowledgment that they are well-matched, and worthy of each other than with any well-founded expectation of their domes- tic tranquillity. If, as Benedick asserts, they are both " too wise to woo peaceably," it may be added that both are too wise, too witty, and too wilful to live peaceably together. We have some misgiv- ings about Beatrice some apprehensions that poor Benedick will not escape the " predestinated scratched face," which he had foretold to him who should win and wear this quick-witted and pleasant- spirited lady; yet when we recollect that to the wit and imperious temper of Beatrice is united a magnanimity of spirit which would naturally place her far above all selfishness, and all paltry strug- gles for power when we perceive, in the midst of ner sarcastic levity and volubility of tongue, so much of generous affection, and such a high sense of female virtue and honor, we are inclined to hope the best. We think it possible that though the gentleman may now and then swear, and the lady icold, the native good-humor of the one, the really ine understanding of the other, and the valiu 1 10 CHARACTERS OF INTELLECT. Ihoy so evidently attach to each other's esteini, will ensurjB them a tolerable portion of domeatia felicity, and in this hope we leave them. ROSALIND. 1 COME now to Rosalind, whom 1 should have ranked before Beatrice, inasmuch as the greater degree of her sex's softness and sensibility, united with equal wit and intellect, give her the superiority as a woman ; but that, as a dramatic character, she is inferior in force. The portrait is one of infinitely more delicacy and variety, but of less strength and depth. It is easy to seize on the prominent feat- ures in the mind of Beatrice, but extremely diffi- cult to catch and fix the more fanciful graces of Rosalind. She is like a compound of essences, so volatile in their nature, and so exquisitely blended, that on any attempt to analyze them, they seem to escape us. To what else shall we compare her, all-enchanting as she is ? to the silvery summer clouds which, even while we gaze on them, shift their hues and forms dissolving into air, and light, and rainbow showers ? to the May-morning, flush with opening blossoms and roseate dews, and M charm of earliest birds ? " to some wild anO beautiful melody, such as some shepherd bo ROSALIND. Hi flight " pipe to Amarillis in the shade ?" to a mountain streamlet, now smooth as a mirror in which the skies may glass themselves, and anon leaping and sparkling in the sunshine or rather to the very sunshine itself? for so her genial spirit touches into life and beauty whatever it shines on 1 But this impression, though produced by th complete development of the character, and in the end possessing the whole fancy, is not imme- diate. The first introduction of Rosalind is less striking than interesting ; we see her a dependant, almost a captive, in the house of her usurping uncle ; her genial spirits are subdued by her situa- tion, and the remembrance of her banished father her playfulness is under a temporary eclipse. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry ! is an adjuration which Rosalind needed not when once at liberty, and sporting " under the green- wood tree." The sensibility and even pensivenesa of her demeanor in the first instance, render her archness and gayety afterwards, more graceful and more fascinating. Though Rosalind is a princess, she is a princess of Arcady; and notwithstanding the charming effect produced by her first scenes, we scarcely ever think of her with a reference to them, or associate her with a court, and the artificial append- ages of her rank. She was not made to " lord it o'er a fair mansion," and vake state upon her like the all- accomplished Portia , but to breathe the (ree 112 CHARACTERS OF WTELLICCT. air of heaven, and frolic among green leaves. Sh was not made to stand the siege of daring profli- gacy, and oppose high action and high passion to the assaults of adverse fortune, like Isabel ; but to " fleet the time carelessly as they did i' the golden age." She was not made to bandy wit with lords, and tread courtly measures with plumed and warlike cavaliers, like Beatrice ; but to QAIH-C on the green sward, and "murmur among living brooks a music sweeter than their own." Though sprightliness is the distinguishing charac- teristic of Rosalind, as of Beatrice, yet we find her much more nearly allied to Portia in temper and intellect. The tone of her mind is, like Portia's, genial and buoyant : she has something, too, of her softness and sentiment ; there is the same confiding abandonment of self in her affections; but the characters are otherwise as distinct as the situa- tions are dissimilar. The age, the manners, the circumstance in which Shakspeare has placed his Portia, are i_ot beyond the bounds of probability ; nay, have a certain reality and locality. We fancy her a contemporary of the Raffaelles and the Ariostos; the sea-wedde death, by chanting curtain verses which acted as a soell. u Rhyme them to death, as they do rats in Ireland," is a Una in one of Ben Jonson's comediei this will explain tomorouj allusion. 116 CHARACTERS OK INTELLECT. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell yon, deserve* u well a dark house and a whip us madmen do ; ana th reason why they are not so punished and cured is, thai the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in low too. A traveller ! By my faith you have great reason to b ad. 1 fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's ; then to have seen much and to have nothing, is to kiv-j rich eyes and poor hands. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller. Look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own eountry; bo out of love with your nativity, and almof-t chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. Break an hour's promise in love! He that will divide a minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be said of him that Cupid hath clapp'd him o' the shoulder, but I warrant him heart-whole. Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them but not for love. T could find in my heart to disgrace my man's apparel, and to cry like a woman ; but I must comfort the weaker vessel, as doublet and hose ought to show itself coura- geous to petticoat. Rosalind has not the impressive eloquence of Portia, nor the sweet wisdom of Isabella. Her longest speeches are not her best ; nor is her taunt- ing address to 1'hebe, beautiful and celebrated M ROSALIND. 117 it is, equal to Phebe's own description of her. The latter, indeed, is more in earnest.* Celia is more quiet and retired : but she rather fields to Rosalind, than is eclipsed by her. She la as full of sweetness, kindness, and intelligence, quite as susceptible, and almost as witty, though he makes less display of wit. She is described as less fair and less gifted ; yet the attempt to excite in her mind a jealousy of her lovelier friend, by placing them in comparison Thou art a fool ; she robs thee of thy name ; And thoa wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous, When she is gone- fails to awaken in the generous heart of Celia any other feeling than an increased tenderness and sympathy for her cousin. To Celia, Shakspeare has given some of the most striking and animated parts of the dialogue ; and in particular, that ex- quisite description of the friendship between her and Rosalind If she be a traitor, Why, so am I ; we have still slept together, Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together, And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, Still we were coupled and inseparable. Rouseeaa could describe Buch a character as Rosalind!, bul felled to represent it consistently. " N'est-ce pas de ton occur quo viennent les graces de ton enjouement? Tea railleries sont tea signes d'interet plus touchants que les complirents d'un Mitre. Tu caresses quand tu foiatres. Tu ris, mais ton rir 96netre 1'ame ; tu ris, mais tu fais pleurer de tendresse et je >oia presque toujours sericase avec les indifferent '' 118 CHARACTERS OI' J.NTKLLKC1. The feeling of interest and admiration thus e- cited for Celia at the first, follows her through the whole play. We listen to her as to one who has made herself worthy of our love ; and her silence expresses more than eloquence. Fhebe is quite an Arcadian coquette ; she IB a piece of pastoral poetry. Audrey is only rustic. A very amusing effect is produced by the conlraat between the frank and free bearing of the two princesses in disguise, and the scornful airs of the real Shepherdess. In the speeches of Phebe, and in the dialogue between her and Sylvius, Shak- speare has anticipated all the beauties of the Italian pastoral, and surpassed Tasso and Guarini. We find two among the most poetical passages of the play appropriated to Phebe ; the taunting speech to Sylvius, and the description of Rosalind in her page's costume ; which last is finer than the por- trait of Bathyllus in Anacreon. CHARACTERS OF PASSION AND IMAGINATION. JULIET. O LOVE ! thou teacher ' O Grief! thou tamei and Time, thou healer ol human hearts ! bring hither all your deep and serious revelations ! And ye too, rich fancies of unbruised, unbowed youth ye visions of long perished hopes shadows of un- born joys gay colorings of the dawn of existence ! whatever memory hath treasured up of bright and beautiful in nature or in art ; all soft and delicate images all lovely forms divinest voices and en- trancing melodies gleams of sunnier skies and fairer climes, Italian moonlights and airs that breathe of the sweet south," now, if it be pos- sible, revive to my imagination live once more to my heart! Come, thronging around me, all inspi- rations that wait on passion, on power, on beauty ; give me to tread, not bold, and yet unblamed, within the inmost sanctuary of ShaKspeare's genius, in Juliet's moonlight bower, and Miranda's en- chanted isle 1 ***** 120 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. It is not without emotion, that I attempt to touch on the character of Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her only to be exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them ! it u .mpossible to say any thing better ; but it is possible to say something more. Such in fact is the sim- plicity, the truth, and the loveliness of Juliet*! character, that we are not at first aware of its com- plexity, its depth, and its variety. There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we fee.* ac a whole ; arid to attempt to analyze the impres- sion thus conveyed at once to soul and sense, is as if while hanging over a half-blown rose, and revel- ling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet by leaflet, the better to display itg bloom and fragrance. Yet how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in its beauty ? Love, as a passion, forms the groundwork of the drama. Now, admitting the axiom of Rochefou- cauld, that there is but one love, though a thousand different I'opies, yet the true sentiment itself has aa many different aspects as the human soul of which it forms a part. It is not only modified by the individual character and temperament, but it is under the influence of climate and circumstance. The love that is calm in one moment, shall show itself vehement and tumultuous at another. Th .ove that is wild and passionate in the south, is deep JULIET. 121 H&d contemplative in the north ; as the Spanish or Roman girl perhaps poisons a rival, or stabs herself for the sake of a living lover, and the German 01 Russian girl pines into the grave for love of the false, the absent, or the dead. Love is ardent or deep, bold or timid, jealous or confiding, impatient or humble, hopeful or desponding and yet there are not many loves, but one love. All Shakspeare's women, being essentially women, either love or have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion is her state of being, and out of it she has no exist- ence. It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart ; the life-blood along her veins, " blending with every atom of her frame." The love that is so chaste and dignified in Portia so airy-delicate and fearless in Miranda so sweetly confiding in Perdita so playfully fond in Rosalind so constant in Imogen so devoted in Desde- mona so fervent in Helen so tender in Viola, is each and all of these in Juliet. All these remind us of her ; but she reminds us of nothing but her own sweet self; or if she does, it is of the Gismunda, or the Lisetta, or the Fiammetta of Boccaccio, to whom she is allied, not in the character or circum- rtances, but in the truly Italian spirit, the glowing, national complexion of the portrait.* * Lord Byron remarked of the Italian -women, (and he could ipeak avee connaissance de fait,) that they are the only women to the world capable of impressions, at once very sudden and urable ; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. 122 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. There was an Italian painter who said that the lecret of all effect in color consisted in white upon black, and black upon white. How perfectly did Shakspeare understand this secret of effect ! and how beautifully he has exemplified it in Juliet ? So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows ! Thus she and her lover are in contrast with all around them. They are all love, surrounded with all hate ; all harmony, surrounded with all discord : all pure nature, in the midst of polished and artifi- cial life. Juliet, like Portia, is the foster child of opulence and splendor ; she dwells in a fair city she has been nurtured in a palace she clasps her robe with jewels she braids her hair with rainbow- tinted pearls ; but in herself she has no more con- nection with the trappings around her, than the lovely exotic, transplanted from some Eden-like climate, has with the carved and gilded conser- vatory which has reared and sheltered its luxuriant beauty. But in this vivid impression of contrast, there ii nothing abrupt or harsh. A tissue of beautiful Mr. Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social position, IB led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves, and, weak in resist- ing the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength V her character for a display of constancy and devotedneM afterwards. Both these traits of national character are exempli led In Juliet Moore'* Lift of Byron, vol. ii. pp. 803, 838. 4U JULIET. 1 23 poetry weaves together the principal figures, and the subordinate personages. The consistent truth of the costume, and the exquisite gradations of re- lief with which the most opposite hues are approx- imated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic back- ground; nor are they, like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the dark- est and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of humanity ; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade of character in each, tends to the development of the sentiment which is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly be conceived, is interfused through all the characters ; the splendid imagery lavished upon all with the careless prodi- gality of genius, and the whole is lighted up into such a sunny brilliance of effect, as though Shak- speare had really transported himself into Italy, and had drunk to intoxication of her genial atmos- phere. How truly it has been said, that " although Romeo and Juliet are in love, they are not love- rick 1 " What a false idea would anything of the mere whining amoroso, give us of Romeo, such as he really is in Shakspeare the noble, gallant, ardent, brave, and witty 1 And Juliet with even less truth could the phrase or idea apply to her 1 The picture in " Twelfth Night " of the wan girl dying of love, " who pined in thought, and with a Screen and yellow melancholy," would never surely iccur to us, when thinking on the enamored and 124 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. impassioned Juliet, in whose bosom love keeps a fiery vigil, kindling tenderness into enthusiasm, enthusiasm into passion, passion into heroism ! No, the whole sentiment of the play is of a far different cast. It is flushed with the genial spirit of the south it tastes of youth, and of the essence of youth ; of life, and of the very sap of life.* We have indeed the struggle of love against evil destinies, and a thorny world ; the pain, the grief, the anguish, the terror, the despair; the aching adieu; the pang unutterable of parted affection ; and rapture, truth, and tenderness trampled into an early grave : but still an Elysian grace lingers round the whole, and the blue sky of Italy bends over all ! In the delineation of that sentiment which forms the groundwork of the drama, nothing in fact can equal the power of the picture, but its inexpressible sweetness and its perfect grace : the passion which has taken possession of Juliet's whole soul, has the force, the rapidity, the resistless violence of the tor- rent : but she is herself as " moving delicate," aa fair, as soft, as flexible as the willow that bends over it, whose light leaves tremble even with the motion of the current which hurries beneath them. But at the same time that the pervading sentiment is never lost sight of, and is one and the same throughont, the individual part of the character in ill its variety is developed, and marked with thn Uicest discrimination. For instance, the simplicity * La give dt la trie, Is an expression nMd somewhere by M de Stael. JULIET. 125 of Juliet Is very different from the simplicity of Miranda : her innocence is not the innocence of a desert island. The energy she displays does not once remind us of the moral grandeur of Isabel, or the intellectual power of Portia ; it is founded in the strength of passion, not in the strength of char- acter : it is accidental rather than inherent, rising with the tide of feeling or temper, and with it sub- siding. Her romance is not the pastoral i omance of Perdita, nor the fanciful romance of Viola ; it is the romance of a tender heart and a poetical imag- ination. Her inexperience is not ignorance : she has heard that there is such a thing as falsehood, though she can scarcely conceive it Her mother and her nurse have perhaps warned her against flattering vows and man's inconstancy ; or she has even Turned the tale by Ariosto told, Of fair Olympia, loved and left, of old! Hence that bashful doubt, dispelled almost as soon as felt Ah, gentle Romeo ! If thou dost love, pronounce it faitl Ally. That conscious shrinking from her own confe* on Fain would I dwell on form; fain, fain deny What I have spoke ! *"*ie ingenuous simplicity of her avowal- 126 CHAKACTERS OK PASSION, ETC. Or \f thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll f-own, and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo but else, not for the world! In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, An! therefore thou may'st think my 'huvior light, But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true Than those who have more cunning to be strange. And the proud yet timid delicacy, with which el* throws herself for forbearance and pardon upon the tenderness of him she loves, even for the lovt she bears him Therefore pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love, Which the dark night hath so discovered. In the alternative, which she afterwards placet before her lover with such a charming mixture of conscious delicacy and girlish simplicity, there in that jealousy of female honor which precept and education have infused into her mind, without on* real doubt of his truth, or the slightest hesitation i her self-abandonment : for she does not even wai to hear his asseverations ; But if thou mean'st not well, I do beseech the* To cease thy suit, and leave mi to my griefc ROMEO. So thrive my soul JULIKT. A thousand times, good night I JULIET. 127 But all these flutterings between native impulses Mid maiden fears become gradually absorbed, swept away, lost, and swallowed up m tie denth and en- Uiusiasrn of confiding love. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deop ; the more I give to you The more I have for both are infinite! AVhat a picture of the young heart, that sees no bound to its hopes, no end to its affections ( For " what was to hinder the thrilling tide of pleasure which had just gushed from her heart, from f ow- ing on without stint or measure, but experience, which she was yet without ? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of pleasure which her heart had just tasted, but indifference, to which she was yet a stranger ? What was tnere to check the ardor of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her breast, but disappointment, which she had never yet felt ? " * Lord Byron's Haidee is a copy of Juliet in the Oriental costume, but the development is epic, no* dramatic-! Characters of Shakspeare's Plays. t I must allude, but with reluctance, to another character, which I hare heard likened to Juliet, and often quoted as th heroine par excellence of amatory fiction I mean the Julie of Rousaeau'8 Nouvelle HeloYse ; I protest against her altogether. Aa a creation of fancy the portnvit is a compound of the most froM and glaring inconsistencies ; as false and impossible to th reflecting and philosophical mind, as the fabled Syrens, Hama- dryads and Centaurs to the eye of the anatomist. As a woman, 128 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. I remember no dramatic character, conveying the same impression of singleness of purpose, and devotion of heart and soul, except the Thekla of Schiller's Wallenstein ; she is the German Juliet far unequal, indeed, but conceived, nevertheless, in a kindred spirit I know not if critics have ever compared them, or whether Schiller is supposed to have had the English, or rather the Italian, Juliet in his fancy when he portrayed Thekla ; but there are some striking points of coincidence, while th* national distinction in the character of the passion leaves to Thekla a strong cast of originality.* The Julie belongs neither to nature nor to artificial society ; and tf the pages of melting and dazzling eloquence in which Rousseau baa garnished out his idol did not blind and intoxicate us, as the incense and the garlands did the votaries of Isis, we should be disgusted. Rousseau, having composed his Julie of the com- monest clay of the earth, does not animate her with fire from heaven, but breathes his own spirit into her, and then calls the " impettieoatod " paradox a woman. He makes her a peg on which to hang his own visions and sentiments and what send inents ! but that I fear to soil my pages, I would pick out a few tf them, and show the difference between this strange combina- tion of youth and innocence, philosophy and pedantry, sophist- ical prudery, and detestable grossibretf, and our own Juliet. No! if we seek a French Juliet, we must go far far back to the real HeioYw, to her eloquence, her sensibility, her fervor of pas- f 'on, her devotedness of truth. She, it least, married the man she loved, and loved the man she mairied, and more than died for him; but enough of both. * B. Constant describes her beautifully- -" Sa roix si douce aii travers ie bruit des armes, sa forme delicate au milieu de ee* homines tons converts de fer, la purete' de son ftme opposee leurs calculs avides, son calme celeste qni contraste avec lenn agitations, rMnplissent le spectateur d'une emotion constant* nother His visionary passion for the cold, inac- tessible Rosaline, forms but the prologue, the threshold, to the true the real sentiment which Tcceeds to it. This incident, which is found in the original story, has been retained by Shakspeare with equal feeling and judgment; and far from being a fault in taste and sentiment, far from pie- judicing us against Romeo, by casting on him, at the outset of the piece, the stigma of inconstancy, it becomes, if properly considered, a beauty in the drama, and adds a fresh stroke of truth to the por- trait of the lover. Why, after all, should we be offended at what does not offend Juliet herself ? for in the original story we find that her attention is first attracted towards Romeo, by seeing him " fancy sick and pale of cheer," for love of a cold beauty. We must remember that in those times every young cavalier of any distinction devoted himself, at his first entrance into the world, to the service of some fair lady, who was selected to be his fancy's queen ; and the more rigorous the beauty, and the more hopeless the love, the more honorable the slavery. To go about "metamor- phosed by a mistress," as Speed humorously ex- presses it,* to maintain her supremacy in charau at the sword's point ; to sigh ; to walk with folded arms ; to be negligent and melancholy, and to show a careless desolation, was the fashion of the day. The Surreys, the Sydneys, the Bayards, the Her- berts cf the time all those who were the mirron In the 'Two Genclemen of Verona." 184 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. " in which the noble youth did dress themselves, were of this fantastic school of gallantry the last remains of the age of chivalry ; and it was especially prevalent in Italy. Shakspeare has ridiculed : t in many places with exquisite humor ; but he wished to show us that it has its serious as well as its comic aspect. Romeo, then, is introduced to us with perfect truth of costume, as the thrall of a dream- ing, fanciful passion for the scornful Rosaline, who had forsworn to love; and on her charms and coldness, and on the power of love generally, he descants to his companions in pretty phrases, quite in the style and taste of the day.* Why then, brawling love, loving hate, any tbing, of nothing first create I heavy lightness, serious vanity, Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forois ! Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs ; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lover's eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lover's tears. There is an allusion to this court language of lore In "All IfWl that Knds Well," where Helena says, There shall your master have a thousand It reft A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign ; A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear, Hie humble ambition, proud humility, Hifl jarring concord, and his discord dulcut, His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world Of pretty fond adoj tious Christendoms That blinking Cupid gossips. ACT i. SCENE 1 The refitted from her mind to ours. The poetry is nol here the mere adornment, the outward garnishing of the character ; but its result, or rather blended with its essence. It is indivisible from it, and inter- fused through it like moonlight through the summer air. To particularize is almost impossible, since the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Juliet i one rich stream of imagery : she speaks in pictures and sometimes they are crowded one upon another '.hus in the balcony scene I have no joy of this contract to-night: It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightning which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens. This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. Again, for a falconer's voice To lore this tassel-gentle back again ! Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak alond, Else would I tear the ^ave where Echo lies, And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine With repetition of my Romeo's name. Here there are. three images in the course of na JULIET. 145 lines. In the same scene, the speech of twenty- two lines, beginning, Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face, contains but one figurative expression, the mask of night ; and every one reading this speech with the context, must have felt the peculiar propriety of ita simplicity, though perhaps without examining the cause of an omission which certainly is not for- tuitous. The reason lies in the situation and in the feeling of the moment ; where confusion, and anxiety, and earnest self-defence predominate, the excitability and play of the imagination would be checked and subdued for the time. In the soliloquy of the second act, where she if chiding at the nurse's delay : she is lame ! Love's heralds should be thoughts, That ten times faster glide than the sun's beams. Driving back shadows over low'ring hills : Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings ! How beautiful ! how the lines mount and float responsive to the sense ! She goes on Had she affections, and varm youthful blood, She'd be as swift in motion as a ball ; My words should bandy her to my sweet love, And his to me i The famous soliloquy, " Gallop apace, ye fiery- Tooted steeds," teems with luxuriant imagery. The trad adjuration, " Come night ! come Borneo 1 comt U CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. thou day in night I " expresses that fulness of eiv thusiastic admiration for her lover, which pooaooecf her whole soul; but expresses it as only Juliet could or would have expressed it, in a bold and beautiful metaphor. Let it be remembered, that, in this speech, Juliet is not supposed to be addressing an audience, nor even a confidante ; and I confess I have been shocked at the utter want of taste and refinement in those who, with coarse derision, or in a spirit of prudery, yet more gross and perverse, have dared to comment on this beautiful " Hymn to the Night," breathed out by Juliet in the silence and solitude of her chamber. She is thinking aloud ; it is the young heart " triumphing to itself in words." In the midst of all the vehemence with which she calls upon the night to bring Romeo to her arms, there is something so almost infantine in her perfect simplicity, so playful and fantastic in the imagery and language, that the charm of sen- timent and innocence is thrown over the whole ; and her impatience, to use her own expression, it truly that of " a child before a festival, that hath new robes and may not wear them." It is at the very moment too that her whole heart and fancy are abandoned to blissful anticipation, that the nurse enters with the news of Romeo's banishment ; and the immediate transition from rapture to de- spair has a most powerful effect It is the same shaping spirit of imagination which, iii the scene with the Friar, heaps together all im- ages of horror that ever hung upon a trouble* iruam. JULIET. 141 Obid c"3 leap, rather than many Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower, Or walk in thievish ways; or bid me lurk Where serpents are chain me with roaring bean, Or shut me nightly in a charnel-hpuse O'ercovered quite with dead men's rattling bonee; Or bid me go into a new made grave ; Or hide me with a dead man in his shroud ; Things that to hear them told have made me trembla But she immediately adds, And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstained wife to my sweet love ! In the scene where she drinks the sleeping jxv lion, although her spirit does not quail, nor her de- termination falter for an instant, her vivid fancy conjures up one terrible apprehension after another, till gradually, and most naturally in such a mind once thrown off its poise, the horror rises to frenzy her imagination realizes its own hideous crea- tions, and she sees her cousin Tybalt's ghost * In particular passages this luxuriance of fancy may seem to wander into excess. For instance^ O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant ! fiend angelical ! Dove-featherd raven! wolfish ravening lamb, &c. * Juliet, courageously drinking off the potion, after she ha* pSaced before herself in the most fearful colors all its possibU tonseqneucefl, is compared by Schlegol to the Simons story yt tVeianier an 1 his physician. 48 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. Yet tins highly figurative and antithetical ex- aberance of language is defended by Schlegel on itrong and just grounds ; and to me also it appears natural, however critics may argue against its taste or propriety.* The warmth and vivacity of Juliet's fancy, which plays like a light over every part of her character which animates every line she utter* which kindles every thought into a picture, and clothes her emotions in visible images, would natu- rally, under strong and unusual excitement, and in the conflict of opposing sentiments, run into some extravagance of diction.f With regard to the termination of the play, -which * Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other ; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm! Perhaps 'tis tender, too, and pretty, At each wild word to feel within A sweet recoil of lore and pity. And what if in a world of sin (0 sorrow and shame should this be true !) Such giddiness of heart and brain Comes seldom save from rage and pain, So talks as it's most used to dot COLERIDGE. These lines Room to me to form the truest comment on Juliet ' Wild exclamations against Romeo t " The censure," observes Schlegel. originates in a fancileM way of thinking, to which every thing appears unnatural that does not suit its tame insipidity. ITeuce an idea has been formed of pimple and natural pathos which consists in exclama- tions destitute of imagery, and nowise elevated above every-day Hie; but energetic passions electrify the whole mental power* tnd will, consequently, in highly-favored natures, express then in an ingenious and figuratlre manner " JULIKT. 14> Etas beiel, in her warm, breathing, human loveliness. Perdita does not appear till the fourth act, and 174 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. the whole of the character is developed in th course of a single scene, (the third,) with a com pleteness of effect which leaves nothing to be i-equired nothing to be supplied. She is first introduced in the dialogue between herself and Florizel, where she compares her own lowly state to his princely rank, and expresses her fears of the issue of their unequal attachment. With all her timidity and her sense of the distance which sepa- rates her from her lover, she breathes not a single word which could lead us to impugn either her delicacy or her dignity. FLORIZEL. These your unusual weeds to each part of you Do give a life no shepherdess, but Flora Peering in April's front ; this your sheep-shearing Is as the meeting of the petty gods, And vou the queen on't. PERDITA. Sir, my gracious lord, To cnide at your extremes it not becomes me; pardon that I name them : your high self, The gracious mark o' the land, you have obscured With a swain's bearing; and me, poor lowly maid, Most goddess-like prank'd up : but that our feasts In every mess have folly, and the feeders Digest it with a custom, I should blush To see you so attired ; sworn, I think To show myself a glass. The impression of her perfect beauty and airy elegance of demeanor is conveyed in two exquisite passages: PERDITA. 17* What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever. When you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms, Pray so, and for the ordering your affairs To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish yon A wave o* the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that ; move still, still so, and own No other function. I take thy hand ; this hand As soft as dove's down, and as white as it; Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow, That's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er. The artless manner in which her innate nobilitj of soul shines forth through her pastoral disguise, is thus brought before us at once : This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever Ran on the green sward; nothing she does or seems, But smacks of something greater than herself; Too noble for this place. Her natural loftiness of spirit breaks out where she is menaced and reviled by the King, as one whom his son has degraded himself by merely look- ing on ; she bears the royal frown without quailing ; but the moment he is gone, the immediate recollec- tion of herself, and of her humble state, of her hap- ess love, is full of beauty, tenderness, and nature : Even here undone ! I was much afeard : for once or twice, I was about to speak ; and tell him plainly I 7ft CHARACTERS OF PASSION, The self-same sun, that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, bat Looks on alike. Will't please, you Sir, be gone ? I told you what would come of this. Beseech yon, Of your own state take care; this dream of mine- Being now awake I'll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes, and weep. How often have I told yon 'twould be thai How often said, my dignity would last But till 'twere known ! FLORIZEL. It cannot fail, but by The violation of my faith ; and then Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together And mar the seeds within ! Lift up thy looks. ***** Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may Be thereat glean' d! for all the sun sees, or The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath To thee, my fair beloved 1 Perdita has another characteristic, which lends to the poetical delicacy of the delineation a certain strength and moral elevation, which is peculiarly striking. It is that sense of truth and rectitude, that upright simplicity of mind, which disdains all crooked and indirect means, which would not stoop for an instant to dissemblance, and is mingled with a noble confidence in her love and in her lover In this spirit is her answer to Camilla, who say tourtier like, PERDITA. 17T Besides, you know Prosperity's the very bond of love; Whose fresh complexion, and whose heart together Affliction alters. To which she replies, One of these is true; I think, affliction may subdue the cheek, But not take' in the mind. In that elegant scene where she receives the guests at the sheep-ehearing, and distributes the flowers, there is in the full flow of the poetry, a most beautiful and striking touch of individual character : but here it is impossible to mutilate the dialogue. Reverend sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue ; these keep Seeming and savor all the winter long; Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing! POLIXENES. Shepherdess, (A fair one are you,) well you fit our ages With flowars of winter. Sir, the year growing ancient, Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter, the fairest flowers o' the eoasoi Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowers, Which some call nature s bastards : of that kind Our rustic garden's barren , and I care not To get slips of them 12 7i CHARACTERS OF PASSIOX, ETC. POUXENM. Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do yot neglect them ? PERDITA. For I have heard it said, There is an art, which in their piedness, share* With great creating nature. POLIXEXIS. Say there be ; Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean ; so o'er that art Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, w many A gentle scion to the wildest stock ; And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather; bat The art itself is nature. PEKDITA. So it is. POLJXENES. Then make your garden rich in gilliflowers, And do not call them bastards. I'll not put The dibble in earth to set one slip of them; No more than were I painted, I would wish This youth should say 'twere well. It has been well remarked of this passage, that Perdita does not attempt to answer the reasoning PKRDITA. 179 tf Polixenes : she gives up the argument, buf, woman-like, retains her own opinion, or rather, her sense of right, unshaken by his sophistry. She goes on in a strain of poetry, which comes over the uoul like music and fragrance mingled : we seem to inhale the blended odors of a thousand flowers, till the sense faints with their sweetness ; and she con- cludes with a touch of passionate sentiment, which melts into the very heart : Proserpina! For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's wagon! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips, and The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one ! 0, these I lack, To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend To strew him o'er and o'er. FLORIZEL. What ! like a corse ? PEKDITA. No, like a bank, for Love to lie and play on; Not like a corse : or if, not to be buried, Bat quick, and in mine arms 1 This love of truth, this conscientiousness, which fonns so distinct a feature in the character of Per* 180 CUAUACTBRS OF PASSION, ETC. dita, and mingles with its picturesque delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, is maintained con- sistently to the last. When the two lovers fly together from Bohemia, and take refuge in the court of Leontes, the real father of Perdita, Florizel presents himself before the king with a feigned tale, in which he has been artfully instructed by the old counsellor Camillo. During this scene, Perdita does not utter a word. In the strait in which they are placed, she cannot deny the story which Florizel relates she will not confirm it Her silence, in epite of all the compliments and greetings of Leontes, has a peculiar and characteristic grace and, at the conclusion of the scene, when they are betrayed, the truth bursts from her as if instinc- tively, and she exclaims, with emotion, The heavens set spies upon us will not have Our contract celebrated. After this scene, Perdita says very little. The inscription of her grief, while listening to the re- lation of her mother's death, " One of the prettiest touches of nil, was, when at th relation of the queen's death, with the manner how she came by it, how attentiveness wounded her daughter: til from one sign of dolor to another, she did, with au alat 1 would fain say, bleed tears: " her deportment too as she stands gazing on th statue of Hermione, fixed in wonder, admiration vid norrow, as if she too were marble VIOLA. 18! royal piece ! Therw's magic in thy majesty, which has From thy admiring daughter ta'en the spirito, Standing like stone beside thee ! we touches of character conveyed indirectly, and which serve to give a more finished effect to tbj* beautiful picture. VIOLA. As the innate dignity of Perdita pierces through her rustic disguise, so the exquisite refinement of Viola triumphs over her masculine attire. Viola is, perhaps, in a degree less elevated and ideal than Perdita, but with a touch of sentiment more profound and heart-stirring ; she is " deep-learned in the lore of love," at least theoretically, and ipeaks as masterly on the subject as Perdita due* of flowers. DUKE. How dost thou ike this tune V VIOLA. It gives a very echo to the seat Where love is thron'd. And again, If I did love you in my master's flame, With such a suffering, such a deadly life in your denial 1 would find no sense, I would not understand it. I.S2 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, KTC. ILTVIA. Why, what would yon do? Make me a willow cabin at yMr gate, And call upon my soul within the house ; Write loyal cantons * of contemned love, And sing them loud even in the dead of night. Holla your name to the reverberate hills, And make babbling gossip of the air Cry out, Olivia ! you should not rest Between the elements of air and earth, But you should pity me. OLIVIA. You might do much. The situation and the character of Viola have been censured for their want of consistency and probability ; it is therefore worth while to examine how far this criticism is true. As for her situation in the drama, (of which she is properly the heroine,) it is shortly this. She is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria : she is alone and without protection in a strange country. She wishes to enter into the ser- vice of the Countess Olivia ; but she is assured tnat this is impossible ; " for the lady having recently lost an only and beloved brother, has abjured the light of men, has shut herself up in her palace, and will admit no kind of suit" In this perplexity Viola remembers to have heard her father speak with praise and admiration of Orsino, the Duke of I. e. canxons, songg VIOLA. 183 tie country ; and having asceii^ined that he is not married, and that therefore his court is not a proper asylum for her in her feminine character, she at- tires herself in the disguise of a page, as the best protection against uncivil comments, till she can gain some tidings of her brother. If we carry our thoughts back to a romantic and chivalrous age, there is surely sufficient probability here for all the purposes of poetry. To pursue the thread of Viola's destiny ; she is engaged in the service of the Duke, whom she finds " fancy-sick " for the love of Olivia. We are left to infer, (for so it is hinted in the first scene,) that this Duke who with his accomplishments, and his personal attrac- tions, his taste for music, his chivalrous tenderness, and his unrequited love, is really a very fascinating and poetical personage, though a little passionate and fantastic had already made some impression on Viola's imagination ; and when she comes to play the confidante, and to be loaded with favors and kindness in her assumed character, that she should be touched by a passion made up of pity, admiration, gratitude, and tenderness, does not, I think, in any way detract from the genuine sweet- ness and delicacy of her character, for " she never told her love." Now all this, as the critic wisely observes, may not present a very just picture of life ; and it may also fail to impart any moral lesson for the especia, orot of well-bred young ladies but is it not in and in nature ? Did it ever fail to charm 01 184 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. to interest, to seize on the coldest fancy, to touch the most insensible heart ? Viola then is the chosen favorite of the enamour- ed Duke, and becomes his messenger to Olivia, and the interpreter of his sufferings to that inaccessible beauty. In her character of a youthful page, she attracts the favor of Olivia, and excites the jealousy of her lord. The situation is critical and delicate but how exquisitely is the character of Viola fitted to her part, carrying her through the ordeal with all the inward and spiritual grace of modesty. What beautiful propriety in the distinction drawn between Rosalind and Viola ! The wild sweetness, the frolic humor which sports free and unblamed amid the shades of Ardennes, would ill become Viola, whose playfulness is assumed as part of her disguise as a court-page, and is guarded by the strictest delicacy. She has not, like Rosalind, a saucy enjoyment in her own incognito ; her disguise does not sit so easily upon her ; her heart does not beat freely under it As in the old ballad, where " Sweet William " is detected weeping in secret over her " man's array," * so in Viola, a sweet con- sciousness of her feminine nature is for ever break' bag through her masquerade : And on her cheek is ready with a blush Modest as morning, when she coldly eye* The youthful Phoebus. Percy's Rellqnes, rol. ill. Me the ballad of the ' Udy tor* C Berring Han." VIOLA. 184 She plays her part well, but never forgets not jdlows us to forget, that she is pJ tying a part. OLIVIA. Are you a comedian? VIOLA. No, my profound heart ! and yet by the very fangs rf Ualice I swear, I am not that I play ! And thus she comments on it : Disguise, I see thou art wickedness, Wherein the pregnant enemy does much; How easy is it for the proper false In women's waxen hearts to set their forms ! Alas ! our frailty is the cause, not we. The feminine cowardice of Viola, which will not allow her even to affect a courage becoming her attire, her horror at the idea of drawing a sword, is very natural and characteristic ; and produces a most humorous effect, even at the very moment it charms and interests us. Contrasted with the deep, silent, patient love of Viola for the Duke, we have the lady-like wilful- ness of Olivia ; and her sudden passion, or rather fancy, for the disguised page, takes so beautiful a coloring of poetry and sentiment, that we do not think her forward. Olivia is like a princess of romance, and has all the privileges of one ; she is, like Portia, high born and high bred, mistress over her servants but not like Portia. " queen o'er her- *lf." She has never it. her life been opposed ; the Irat contradiction, therefore, rouses all the woman 186 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. in her, and turns a caprice into a headlong pa lion ; yet she apologizes for herself. I have said too much onto a hoart of stone, And laid mine honor too unchary out; There's something in me that reproves my fault; But such a headstrong potent fault it is, That it but mocks reproof! And in the midst of her self-abandonment, never allows us to contemn, even while we pity her: What shall you ask of me that I'll deny. That honor, saved, may upon asking give ? The distance of rank which separates the Countess from the youthful page the real sex 01' Viola the dignified elegance of Olivia's deport- ment, except where passion gets the better of her pride her consistent coldness towards the Duke the description of that "smooth, discreet, and stable bearing" with which she rules her house- hold her generous care for her steward Malvolio, in the midst of her own distress, all these circum- stances raise Olivia in our fancy, and render her caprice for the page a source of amusement and interest, not a subject of reproach. Twelfth Night is a genuine comedy ; a perpetual spring of the gayest and the sweetest fancies. In artificial so- ciety men and women are divided into castes and classes, and it is rarely that extremes in character Cr manners can approximate. To blend into ont ksrmonious picture the utmost grace and refino> 187 m.ent of semiment, and the broadest effects of humor; the most poignant wit, and the most in- dulgent benignity ; in short, to bring before us in the same scene, Viola and Olivia, with Malvolio and Sir Toby, belonged only to Nature and to Shakspeare. OPHELIA. A WOMAN'S affections, however strong, are senti- ments, when they run smooth ; and become pas- sions only when opposed. In Juliet and Helena, love is depicted as a pas- sion, properly so called ; that is, a natural impulse, throbbing in the heart's blood, and mingling with the very sources of life ; a sentiment more or less modified by the imagination ; a strong abiding principle and motive, excited by resistance, acting upon the will, animating all the other faculties, and again influenced by them. This is the most com- plex aspect of love, and in these two characters, it is depicted in colors at once the most various, the most intense, and the most brilliant. In Viola and Perdita, love, being less complex, tppears more refined, more a sentiment than a yassion a compound of impulse and fancy, while ihe reflective powers and moral energies are more faintly developed. The same remark applies also > Julia and Silvia, in the Two Gentlemen of 188 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. Verona, and, in a greater degree, to Hermia anrt Helena in the Midsummer Night's Dream. In the two latter, though perfectly discriminated, Jove takes the visionary fanciful cast, which belongs to the whole piece ; it is scarcely a passion or a senti- ment, but a dreamy enchantment, a reverie, which a fairy spell dissolves or fixes at pleasure. But there was yet another possible modification of the sentiment, as combined with female nature ; and this Shakspeare has shown to us. He has por- trayed two beings, in whom all intellectual and moral energy is in a manner latent, if existing ; in whom love is an unconscious impulse, and imagina- tion lends the external charm and hue, not the in- ternal power ; in whom the feminine character ap- pears resolved into its very elementary principle* as modesty, grace,* tenderness. Without thes< a woman is no woman, but a thing which, luckily wants a name yet ; with these, though every othe> faculty were passive or deficient, she might still bo herself. These are the inherent qualities with which God sent us into the world : they may bo perverted by a bad education they may be ob- scured by harsh and evil destinies they may be overpowered by the development of some particular mental power, the predominance of some passion * By this word, aa used here, I would be understood to mean that inexpressible something within the soul, which tends to th food, the beautiful, the true, and is the antipodes to the vulgar the violent, and the false ; that which we see diffused externally vnr the form and movements, where there is perfect lunucenoi nd nnconaciouBneM, as In children. OPHELIA. 189 but they are never wholly crushed out of the woman's soul, while it retains those faculties which render it responsible to its Creator. Shakspeare then has shown us that these elemental feminine qualities, modesty, grace, tenderness, when ex- panded under genial influences, suffice to constitute a perfect and happy human creature : such is Mi- randa. When thrown alone amid harsh and ad- verse destinies, and amid the trammels and corrup- tions of society, without energy to resist, or will to act, or strength to endure, the end must needs be desolation. Ophelia poor Ophelia ! O far too soft, too good, too fair, to be cast among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life ! What shall be said of her ? for eloquence is mute before her ! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth like the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses such is the char- acter of Ophelia : so exquisitely delicate, it seema as if a touch would profane it ; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as upon hex 190 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. *wn. Her sorrows ask not words but tears ; and her madness has precisely the same effect thai would be produced by the spectacle of real in- sanity, if brought before us : we feel inclined to turn away, and veil our eyes in reverential pity and too painful sympathy. Beyond every character that Shakspeare haa drawn, (Hamlet alone excepted,) that of Ophelia makes us forget the poet in his own creation. Whenever we bring her to mind, it is with the same exclusive sense of her real existence, without reference to the wondrous power which called her into life. The effect (and what an effect !) is pro- duced by means so simple, by strokes so few, and so unobtrusive, that we take no thought of them. I* is so purely natural and unsophisticated, yet so profound in its pathos, that, as Hazlitt observes, it takes us back to the old ballads ; we forget that, in its perfect artlessness, it is the supreme and con- summate triumph of art. The situation of Ophelia in the story,* is that of a young girl who, at an early age, is brought from A life of privacy into the circle of a court a court euch as we read of in those early times, at once rude, magnificent, and corrupted. She is placed immediately about the person of the queen, and it i. . In the story of the drama: for in the original "History of Aoleth the Dane," from which Shakspeare drew his material* there is a woman introduced who is employed as an instrument to seduoe Anileth, I nt not eren the germ of the character or Ophelia. OVHELIA. 191 apparently her favorite attendant. The affection of the wicked queen for this gentle and innocent creature, is one of those beautiful redeeming touches, one of those penetrating glances into the secret springs of natural and feminine feeling which we find only in Shakspeare. Gertrude, who is not so wholly abandoned but that there remains within her heart some sense of the virtue she has forfeited, seems to look with a kind yet melancholy complacency on the lovely being she has destined for the bride of her son ; and the scene in which ghe is introduced as scattering flowers on the grave of Ophelia, is one of those effects of contrast in poetry, in character and in feeling, at once natural and unexpected ; which fill the eye, and make the heart swell and tremble within itself like the nightingales singing in the grove of the Furies in Sophocles.* Again, in the father of Ophelia, the Lord Cham- berlain Polonius the shrewd, wary, subtle, pom- pous, garrulous old courtier have we not the very man who would send his son into the world to see all, learn all it could teach of good and evil, but keep his only daughter as far as possible from every taint of that world he knew so well ? So that when she is brought to the court, she seems in her loveliness and perfect purity, like a seraph that had wandered out of bounds, and yet breathed on earth the air of paradise. When her father and ber brother find it necessary to ware her simplicity; * In the (E'lipug Ooloneu* 192 CHARACTERS OP PASSION, ETC. give her lessons of worldly wisdom, and instruct her " to be scanter of her maiden presence," for that Hamlet's vows of love "but breathe like sanctified and pious bonds, the better to beguile." we feel at once that it comes too late ; for from the moment she appears on the scene amid the dark conflict of crime anJ vengeance, and supernatural terrors, we know what must be her destiny. Once, at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest ; per- haps it was young, and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct which teaches to shun the brooding storm ; but so it was and I watched it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird hither and thither, with its silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a few giddy whirls, it fell blinded, affrighted, and bewil- dered, into the turbid wave beneath, and was swal- lowed up forever. It reminded me then of the fate of Ophelia ; and now when I think of her, 1 see again before me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm. It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her sinocence, and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her per- uon have attained maturity ; she is not aware of the nature of her own feelings ; they are prema- turely developed in their full force before she has rtrength to bear them ; and love and grief together "end and shatter the frail texture of her existence, jke the burning fluid poured into a crystal vast* 19S She says very hide, and what she does say seems rather intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart ; yet in those few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems innate, a par" of her being, " as dwells the gathered lightning in the cloud ; " and we never fancy her but with the dark splendid eyes and Titian-like complexion of the south. While in Ophelia we recognize as dis- tinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of the north, whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more conscious of being loved than of loving ; and yet, alas ! loving in the silent depths of her young heart far more than she is loved. "When her brother warns her against Hamlet'i 'importunities For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, Hold it a fashion, and a toy of blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward not permanent, sweet not lasting, The perfume and the suppliance of a minute No more ! khe replies with a kind of half eonso'ousnea* No more but BC ? LAERTES. Think i'. no more. 13 194 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. He concludes his admonition with that mod beautiful passage, in which the soundest sense, tht most excellent advice, is conveyed in a strain of the most exquisite poetry. The chariest maid is prodigal enough, If she unmask her beauty to the moon : Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes. The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd: And in the morn and liquid dew of youth, Contagious blastments are most imminent. She answers with the same modesty, yet with a kind of involuntary avowal, that his fears are not altogether without cause : I shall the effect of this good lesson keep As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whilst, like the pufTd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own read.* When her father, immediately afterwards, cate- chizes her on the same subject, he extorts from her, in short sentences, uttered with bashful reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but no* a word of her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible delicacy: it b one of those instances, common in Shakspeare, in which we are allowed to perceive what is " And recks not his owe read," i. t. heed* not hU own IAMOD, OPHELIA. ISA passing in the mind of a person, without any cou- Kiousness on their part. Only Ophelia herself is unaware that while she is admitting the extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is also betraying how deep is the impression it has made, how entire the lov with which it is returned. POLONIUS. What is between you? give me up the truth! OPHELIA. He hath, my lord, of late, made many tenders Of his affection to me. POLONIUS. Affection ! poh ! you speak like a green girl, Unsifted in such perilous circumstances. Do you believe his tenders, as you call them? OPHELIA. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; That you have taken these tenders for true pay Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more decxly Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus) you'll tender me a fool. OPHELIA. My lord, he hath importun'd me with love In honorable fashion. POLONIUS. Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to 196 CHARACTERS OF PA8SIOX, ETC. OPHELIA. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lor^ With almost all the holy vows of heaven. POLONICS. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. This is for all: would not, in plain tenns, from this time forth Have you so slander any moment's leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet, Look to't, I charge you : come your ways. OPHELIA. 1 shall obey, my lord. Besides its intrinsic loveliness, the character of Ophelia has a relative beauty and delicacy when considered in relation to that of Hamlet, which if the delineation of a man of genius in contest with the powers of this world. The weakness of volition, the instability of purpose, the contemplative sen- sibility, the subtlety of thought, always shrinking from action, and always occupied in " thinking too precisely on the event," united to immense intel- lectual power, render him unspeakably interesting: and yet I doubt whether any woman, who would have been capable of understanding and appreciat- ng such a man, would have passionately loved him. Let us for a moment imagine any one of Shak- ipcare's most beautiful and striking female char- acters in immediate connection with Hamlet Th gentle Uesdemona would never have despatched her household cares in haste, to listen to his philo OPHELIA. 191 speculations, his dark conflicts with hia own spirit, ijuch a woman as Portia would have itudied him ; Juliet would have pitied him ; Rosa- lind would have turned him over with a smile to the melancholy Jacques ; Beatrice would have laughed at him outright; Isabel would have rea- soned with him ; Miranda could but have won- dered at him : but Ophelia loves him. Ophelia, the young, fair, inexperienced girl, facile to every impression, fond in her simplicity, and cred- ulous in her innocence, loves Hamlet; not from what he is in himself, but for that which appears to her the gentle, accomplished prince, upon whom she has been accustomed to see all eyes fixed in hope and admiration, "the expectancy and rose of the fair state," the star of the court in which she moves, the first 'who has ever whispered Boft vows in her ear : and what can be more natural ? But it is not singular, that while no one enter- tains a doubt of Ophelia's love for Hamlet though never once expressed by herself, or asserted by others, in the whole course of the drama yet it is a subject of dispute whether Hamlet loves Ophelia, though she herself allows that he had importuned her with love, and " had given countenance to hil rait with almost all the holy vows of heaven ; " al- though in the letter which Polonius intercepted, Hamlet declares that he loves her " best, O most oest ! " though he asserts himself, with the wildest vehemence, l98 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ft 1C. I lov'd Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers Could nof, with all their quantity of lo*e, Make up my sum: still I have heard the question canvassed ; I have even heard it denied that Hamlet did love Cphelia. The author of the finest remarks I have yet seen on the play and character of Hamlet, leans to thia opinion. As the observations I allude to are con- tained in a periodical publication, and may not be at hand for immediate reference, I shall indulge myself (and the reader no less) by quoting the opening paragraphs of this noble piece of criticism, upon the principle, and for the reason I have al- ready stated in the introduction. " We take up a play, and ideas come rolling in upon us, like waves impelled by a strong wind. There is in the ebb and 'flow of Shakspeare's soul all the grandeur of a mighty operation of nature ; and when we think or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand, and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that we ought to attribute any sense of weakness, which may assail us during the content plation of his created worlds. " Shakspeare himself, had he even been as great a critic as a poet, could not have written a regular dissertation upon Hamlet So ideal, and yet so real an existence, could have been shadowed ou anly iu the colors of poetry. When a character leaht solely or chiefly with this world and its event* UJfHELlA. 199 when it acts and is acted upon by objects that have R palpable existence, we see it distinctly, as if it were cast in a material mould, as if it partook of the fixed and settled lineaments of the things on which it lavishes its sensibilities and its passions. We see in such cases the vision of an individual soul, as we see the vision of an individual counte- nance. We can describe both, and can let a Btranger into our knowledge. But how tell in words, so pure, so fine, so ideal an abstraction as Hamlet ? We can, indeed, figure to ourselves gen- erally his princely form, that outshone all others in manly beauty, and adorn it with the consummation of all liberal accomplishment. We can behold in every look every gesture, every motion, the future king, The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state ; The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, Th' observ'd of all observers. " But when we would penel/ate into his spirit, meditate on those things on which he meditates, ac- company him even unto the brink of eternity, lluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, oar with him into the purest and serenest region! of human thought, feel with him the curse of be- holding iniquity, and the troubled delight of think- ing on innocence, and gentleness, and beauty *ome with him from all tbe glorious dreams cher- hed by a uoble spirit in the halls of wisuora and 200 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ET7. philosophy, of a sudden into the gloomy courts ol sin, and incest, and murder ; shudder with bin over the broken and shattered fragments of all tht fairest Creations of his fancy, be borne with him at once, from calm, and lofty, and delighted specu- lations, into the very heart of fear, and horror, and tribulations, have the agonies and the guilt of otu mortal world brought into immediate contact with the world beyond the grave, and the influence of an awful shadow hanging forever on our thoughts, be present at a fearful combat between all the stir- red-up passions of humanity in the soul of man, a combat in which one and all of these passions are alternately victorious and overcome ; I say, that when we are thus placed and acted upon, how is it possible to draw a character of this sublime drama, or of the mysterious being who is its moving spirit ? In him, his character and situation, there is a con- centration of all the interests that belong to human- ity. There is scarcely a trait of frailty or of gran- deur, which may have endeared to us our most beloved friends in real life, that is not to be found in Hamlet. Undoubtedly Shakspeare loved him beyond all his other creations. Soon as he appears on the stage we are satisfied : when absent we long for his return. This is the only play which exists almost altogether in the character of one single person. Who ever knew a Hamlet in real life yet who, ideal as the character ij, feels not its reality ? This is the wonder. We love him not, wo. think of him, not because he is witty, brr.ius* OPHELIA. 20\ be was nielanch >ly, because he was filial ; but we love him because he existed, and was himself. This is the sum total of the impression. T Hlieve that, of every other character either in tragic or epic poetry, the story makes part of the conception ; but of Hamlet, the deep and permanent interest is the conception of himself. This seems to belong, not to the character being more perfectly drawn, but to there being a more intense conception of individ- ual human life than perhaps any other human composition. Here is a being with springs of thought, and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search. These springs rise from an unknown depth, and in that depth there seems to be a one- ness of being which we cannot distinctly behold, but which we believe to be there ; and thus irrec- oncilable circumstances, floating on the surface of his actions, have not the effect of making us doubt the truth of the general picture." * This is all most admirable, most eloquent, most true ! but the critic subsequently declares, that " there is nothing in Ophelia which could inaka her the object of an engrossing passion to so ma- jestic a spirit as Hamlet." Now, though it be with reluctance, and ever, considerable mistrust of myself, that I differ from * critic who can thus feel and write, I do not think lo : I do think, with submission, that the love of tlamlet for Ophelia is deep, is real, and is preeiselj * Blackwood'i Magazine, TOJ u. W2 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, KTU the kind of love which such a man as Hamlet would feel for such a woman as Ophelia. When the heathen would represent their JovA as clothed in all his Olympian terrors, they mounted him on the back of an eagle, and armed him with the lightnings ; but when in Holy Writ the Su- preme Being is described as coming in his glory, He is upborne on the wings of cherubim, and hia emblem is the dove. Even so our blessed religion, which has revealed deeper mysteries in the humar soul than ever were dreamt of by philosophy till she went hand-in-hand with faith, has taught us to pay that worship to the symbols of purity and in- nocence, which in darker times was paid to the manifestations of power : and therefore do I think that the mighty intellect, the capacious, soaring, penetrating genius of Hamlet may be represented, without detracting from its grandeur, as reposing upon the tender virgin innocence of Ophelia, with all that deep delight with which a superior nature contemplates the goodness which is at once perfect in itself, and of itself unconscious. That Hamlet regards Ophelia with this kind of tenderness, that he loves her with a love as intense as can belong to I nature in which there is, (I think,) much more of iiontemplation and sensibility than action or pas- lion is the feeling and conviction with which have always read the play of Hamlet. As to whether the mind of Hamlet be, or be not, touched with madness this is another point at me among critics, philosophers, ay, and phyri- OPHELIA. 20& iians. To me it seems that he is not so far disor- dered as to cease to be a responsible human being that were too pitiable : but rather that his mind is shaken from its equilibrium, and bewildered by the horrors of his situation horrors which his finr and subtle intellect, his strong imagination, and his tendency tc melancholy, at once exaggerate, and take from him the power either to endure, or " by opposing, end them." We do not see him as a lover, nor as Ophelia first beheld him ; for the days when he importuned her with love were before the opening of the drama before his father's spirit re- visited the earth ; but we behold him at once in a sea of troubles, of perplexities, of agonies, of ter- rors. Without remorse, he endures all its horrors ; without guilt, he endures all its shame. A loathing of the crime he is called on to revenge, which re- venge is again abhorrent to his nature, has set him at strife with himself; the supernatural visitation has perturbed his soul to its inmost depths; all things else, all interests, all hopes, all affections, appear as futile, when the majestic shadow comes lamenting from its place of torment " to shake him with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul !" . His love for Ophelia is then ranked by himself among those trivial, fond records which he has deeply sworn to erase from his heart and brain. He has no thought to link his temole destiny witb hers : he cannot marry her : he cannot reveal to her, young, gentle, innocent as she is, the terrific influences which have changed the whole current ' W4 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. of Iris life and purposes. In his distraction he over- acts the painful part to which he had tasked him- lelf ; he is like that judge of the Areopagus, who being occupied, with graver matters, flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom, and with such angry violence, that unwit- tingly he killed it. In the scene with Hamlet,* in which he madly outrages her and upbraids himself, Ophelia sayi very little : there are two short sentences in which ihe replies to his wild, abrupt discourse : HIM LET. I did love you once. OPHELIA. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe o. HAMLET. you should not have believed me : for virtue cannot M iiiocculate our old stock, but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. OPHELIA. I was the more deceived. Those who ever heard Mrs. Siddons read the play of Hamlet, cannot forget the world of meaning, of love, of sorrow, of despair, conveyed in these two simple phrases. Here, and in the soliloquy after' wards, where she says, And I of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows, we the only allusions to herself and her own f*o Act UJ. Men* 1. 206 mgs in the course of the play; and these, uttered almost without consciousness on her own part, con- tain the revelation of a life of love, and disclose the secret burthen of a heart bursting with its owr tmuttered grief. She believes Hamlet crazed ; she is repulsed, she is forsaken, she is outraged, where she had bes'owed her young heart, with all its hopes and wishes; her father is slain by the hand of her lover, as it is supposed, in a paroxysm of insanity : she is entangled inextricably in a web of horrors which she cannot even comprehend, and the result seems inevitable. Of her subsequent madness, what can be said '( What an affecting what an astonishing picture of a mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked ! past hope past cure ! There is the frenzy of excited passion there is the madness caused by intense and con- tinued thought there is the delirium of fevered nerves; but Ophelia's madness is distinct from these : it is not the suspension, but the utter destruc- tion of the reasoning powers ; it is the total imbecil- ity which, as medical people well know, frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Con- stan je is frantic ; Lear is mad ; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us a piti- ful spectacle ! Her wild, rambling fancies ; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness each equally purposeless Bnd causeless ; her snatches of old ballads, such aa perhaps her nurse sunc her to sleep with in her in- Suicv are all so true to the life, that we forget tc BOG CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shak ipeare alone so to temper such a picture that w ean endure to dwell upon it : Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness. That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would or couM have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of a young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose malady arose from a similar cause. The whole action of this play sweeps past va like a torrent, which hurries along in its dark and resistless course all the personages of the drama towards a catastrophe that is not brought about bv human will, but seems like an abyss ready dug to receive them, where the good and the wicked are whelmed together.* As the character of Hamlet nag been compared, or rather contrasted, with the Greek Orestes, being like him, called on to avenge a crime by a crime, tormented by remorseful doubts, and pursued by distraction, so, to me, the character * Ooethe. See the analysis of Hamlet in WUhelm Mefctor MIRAXDA. 2Ul of Ophelia bears a certain relation to that of the Greek Iphigenia,* with the same strong distinction between the classical and the romantic conception of the portrait. Iphigenia led forth to sacrifice, with her unresisting tenderness, her mournful sweetness, her virgin innocence, is doomed to perish by that relentless power, which has linked her destiny with crimes and contests, in which she has no part but as a sufferer; and even so, poor Ophelia, " divided from herself and her fair judg- ment," appears here like a spotless victim offered up to the mysterious and inexorable fates. " For it is the property of crime to extend ito mischiefs over innocence, as it is of virtue to ex- tend its blessings over many that deserve them not, while frequently the author of one or the other is not, as far as we can see, either punished 01 rewarded. "f But there's a heaven above us ! MIRANDA. We might have deemed it impossible to go beyond Viola, Perdita, and Ophelia, as pictures of feminize Deauty ; to exceed the one in tender delicacy, th pther in ideal gra^e, and the last in simplicity, S Shakspeare had not done this; and he alon * The IpUgenia in Aulia of Euripides. t Qooth* 808 CHABACrERS OF PASSIOtf. TC. could have done it Had he never created a Miranda, we should never have been made to feel how completely the purely natural and the purely ideal can blend into each other. The character of Miranda resolves itself into the very elements of womanhood. She is beauti- ful, modest, and tender, and she is these only ; they comprise, her whole being, external and internal. She is so perfectly unsophisticated, so delicately refined, that she is all but ethereal. Let us imagino any other woman placed beside Miranda even one of Shakspeare's own loveliest and sweetest creations there is not one of them that could sus- tain the comparison for a moment; not one that would not appear somewhat coarse or artificial when brought into immediate contact with this pure child of nature, this " Eve of an enchanted Paradise." What, then, has Shakspeare done ? " O wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man ! " he has removed Miranda far from all comparison with her own sex ; he has placed her between the demi-demon of earth and the delicate spirit of air. The next step is into the ideal and supernatural ; and the only being who approaches Miranda, with whom she can be contrasted, is Ariel. Beside the subtle essence of this ethereal sprite, this creature of elemental light and air, that " rau upon the winds, nxk the curl'd clouds, and in the colors of the rainbow lived," Miranda herself appears a palpable reality ft woman, " breathing thoughtful breath," a woman walking the earth in her mortal loveliness, with a MIRANDA. 201 heart as frail-strung, as passion-toucLud, as eve* fluttered in a female bosom. I have said that Miranda possesses merely the elementary attributes of womanhood, but each of these stand in her with a distinct and peculiar grace. She resembles nothing upon earth :, but do we therefore compare her, in our own minds, with any of those fabled beings with which the fancy of ancient poets peopled the forest depths, the fountain or the ocean ? oread or dryad fleet, sea- maid, or naiad of the stream ? We cannot think of them together. Miranda is a consistent, natural, human being. Our impression of her nymph-like beauty, her peerless grace, and purity of soul, has a distinct and individual character. Not only is she exquisitely lovely, being what she is, but we are made to feel that she could not possibly be other- wise than as she is portrayed. She has never be- held one of her own sex ; she has never caught from society one imitated or artificial grace. The impulses which have come to her, in her enchanted eolitude, are of heaven and nature, not of the world and its vanities. She has sprung up into beauty beneath the eye of her father, the princely magician ; her companions have been the rock and woods, the many-shaped, many-tinted clouds, and the silent stars ; her playmates the ocean bil- lows, that stooped their foamy crests, and ran rip- pling *o kiss her feet. Ariel and his attendant sprites hovered over her head, ministered duteoui to her every wish and presorted before hr 14 flO CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. pageants of beauty and grandeur. The very ai; made vocal by her fathers art, floated in music around her. If we can presuppose such a situation with all its circumstances, do we not behold in the character of Miranda not only the credible, but the natural, the necessary results of such a situa- tion ? She retains her woman's heart, for that it unalterable and inalienable, as a part of her being ; but her deportment, her looks, her language, her thoughts all these, from the supernatural and poetical circumstances around her, assume a cast of the pure ideal ; and to us, who are in the secret of her human and pitying nature, nothing ca^i be more charming and consistent than the effect which >he produces upon others, who never having bo held any thing resembling her, approach her as " a wonder," as something celestial : Be sure ! the goddess c.n whom these airs attend ! And again : What is this maid? Is she the goddess who hath severed us, And brought us thus together ? And Ferdinand exclaims, while gazing on her,- My spirits as in a dream are all bound up I My father's loss, the weakness that I feel, The wreck of all my friends, or this man's threat*, To whom I am subdued, are but light to me Might I but through my prison once a day Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth Let liberty make use of, space enough Have I in such a prison. MIRANDA. 21'. Contrasted with the impression of her refined nd dignified beauty, and its effect on all beholders, is Miranda's own soft simplicity, her virgin uino- aence, her total ignorance of the conventional forms and language of society. It is most natural that in a being thus constituted, the first tears should ipring from compassion, " suffering with those that ihe saw suffer : " the cry did knock Against my very heart. Poor souls 1 they perished. Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallowed, And the freighting souls within her; and that her first sigh should be offered to a love at once fearless and submissive, delicate and fond. She has no taught scruples of honor like Juliet ; no coy concealments like Viola ; no assumed dig- nity standing in its own defence. Her bashfulnesa is less a quality than an instinct ; it is like the self- folding of a flower, spontaneous and unconscious. I suppose there is nothing of the kind in poetry equal to the scene between Ferdinand and Mir- anda. In Ferdinand, who is a noble creature, we have all the chivalrous magnanimity with which man, in a high state of civilization, disguises his veal superiority, and does humblo homage to the being of whose destiny he dispose? ; while Miranda, the mere child of nature, is struck with wonder at Ver own now emotions Only conscious of her ! 1 2 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. own weakness as a woman, and ignorant of ihoM usages of society which teach us to dissemble the real passion, and assume (and sometimes abuse) an unreal and transient power, she is equally ready to place her life, her love, her service beneath hit feet MIRANDA. Alas, now ! pray you, Work not so hard: I would the lightning had Burnt up those logs, that you are enjoined to pQe! Pray set it down and rest you : when this burns, 'Twill weep for having weary'd you. My father Is hard at study ; pray now, rest yourself: He's safe for these three hours. FERDINAND. most dear mistress, The sun will set before I shall discharge What I must strive to do. If you'll sit down, I'll bear your logs the while. Pray give me thai, I'll carry it to the pile. FERDINAND. No, precious creature; I had rather crack my sinews, break my back, Than you should such dishonor undergo, While I sit lazy by. MIRANDA. It would become me Aa well as it does you; and I should do it MIRANDA. 211 With much more ease; for my good will is to it, And rours against. ***** MIRANDA. You look wearily. FERDINAND. No, noble mistress ; 'tis fresh morning with me When you are by at night. I do beseech you, (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,) What i your name? MIRANDA. Miranda. my father I have broke your 'hest to say so 1 FERDINAND. Adinir'd Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration ; worth What's dearest to the world ! Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard : and many a time The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues Have I liked several women ; nevei *.ny With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed And put it tf the foil. But you, you, So perfect and so peerless, are created Of every creature's best MIRANDA. I do not know One of my sex : no woman's face remember, Save, from my glass, mine own ; nor have I seen More that I may call men, than you, good friend, And my dear father How features are abroad 114 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. I am skill-less of: but, by my modesty, (Tho jewel in my dower,) I would not wish Any companion in the world 'but you ; Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of But I prattle Something too wildly, and my father's precept* Therein forget. FERDINAND. I am, in my condition A prince, Miranda I do think a king (I would, not so!) and would no more endure This wooden slavery, than I would suffer The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak The very Instant that I saw you, did My heart fly to your service ; there resides, To make me slave to it ; and for your sake, Am I this patient log-man. MIRANDA. Do you love mf ? FERDINAND. heaven ! earth ! bear witness to this sound And crown what I profess' with kind event, If I speak true : if hollowly, invert What best is boded me, to mischief 1 I, Beyond all limit of what else i' the world, Do love, prize, honor you. MIRANDA. I am a fool, Tc weep at what I am glad of. FERDINAND. Wherefore weep JM MIRANDA. 21ft MIRANDA. At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give ; and much less take, What I shall die to want But this is trifling : And all the more it seeks to hide itself, The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning i And prompt me, plain and holy innocence 1 I am your wife, if you will marry mri ; If not I'll die your maid: to be your fellow You may deny me ; but I'll be your servant Whether ycu will or 110 ! FERDINAND. My mistress, dearest 1 And I thus humble ever. MIRANDA. My husband, then ? FERDINAND. Ay, with a heart as willing, As bondage e'er of freedom. Here's my hand. MIRANDA. And mine with my heart hi it. And now farewell Till half an hour hence. As Miranda, being what she is, could only have bad a Ferdinand for a lover, and an Ariel for her attendant, so she could have bad with propriety na other father than the majestic and gifted being, who fondly claims her as " a thread of his own life nay, that for which he lives." Prospero, with iis magical powers, DJS superhuman wisdom, hu nor a! worth and grandeur, and nis kingly dignity 816 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. JB one of the most aublime visions that ever swept with ample robes, pale brow, and sceptred hand, before the eye of fancy. He controls the invisible world, and works through the agency of spirits not by any evil and forbidden compact, but solely by superior might of intellect by potent spells gathered from the lore of ages, and abjured when he mingles again as a man with his fellow men. He is as distinct a being from the necromancers and astrologers celebrated in Shakspeare's age, as can well be imagined:* and all the wizards of poetry and fiction, even Faust and S*. Leon, sink into commonplaces before the princely, the philo- sophic, the benevolent Prospero. The Bermuda Isles, in which Shakspeare has placed the scene of the Tempest, were discovered in his time : Sir George Somers and his companions having been wrecked there in a terrible storing brought back a most fearful account of those un- known islands, which they described as " a land of devils a most prodigious and enchanted place, subject to continual tempests and supernatural visitings." Such was the idea entertained of the " still-vext Bermoothes " in Shakspeare's age ; but later travellers describe them as perfect regions of encLantment in a far different sense ; as BO many Such as Cornelius Agrippa, Michael Scott, Dr. De. The la* mw the contemporary of Shakspeare. t In 1009, about three years before Shakspeare produced UM Psmpwt, which, though placed first in all the edition* of hit M one of the last of his dramas MIRAKDA. 211 'airy Edeiis, clustered like a knot of gems upon the bosom of the Atlantic, decked out in all the lavish luxuriance of nature, with shades of myrtle and cedar, fringed round with groves of coral in short, each island a tiny paradise, rich with perpetual blossoms, in which Ariel might have slumbered, and ever-verdant bowers, in which Ferdinand and Miranda might have strayed: so that Shakspeare, in blending the wild relations of the shipwrecked mariners with his own inspired fancies, has produced nothing, however lovely in nature and sublime in magical power, which does not harmonize with the beautiful and wondrous reality. There is another circumstance connected with the Tempest, which is rather interesting. It was produced and acted for the first time upon tho occasion of the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of James I. with Frederic, the elector palatine. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the fate of this amiable but most un- happy woman, whose life, almost from the period of her marriage, was one long tempestuous scene of trouble and adversity. ***** The characters which I have here classed together, as principally distinguished by the pre- dominance of passion and fancy, appear to me to ise, in the scale of ideality and simplicity, from Juliet to Miranda ; the last being in comparison so >sfined, so elevated above all stain of earth, that 118 CHARACTERS OF PASSION, ETC. ive can only acknowledge her in connection with it through the emotions of sympathy she feels and inspires. I remember, when I was in Italy, standing " at evening on the top of Fiesole," and at my feet I beheld the city of Florence and the Val d'Arno, with its villas, its luxuriant gardens, groves, and olive grounds, all bathed in crimson light. A trans- parent vapor or exhalation, which in its tint was almost as rich as the pomegranate flower, moving with soft undulation, rolled through the valley, and the very earth seemed to pant with warm life beneath its rosy veil. A dark purple shade, the forerunner of night, was already stealing over the east ; in the western sky still lingered the blaze of the sunset, while the faint perfume of trees, and flowers, and now and then a strain of music wafted upwards, completed the intoxication of the senses. But I looked from the earth to the sky, and im- mediately above this scene hung the soft crescent moon alone, with all the bright heaven to herself' and as that sweet moon to the glowing landscape beneath it, such is the character of Miranda com- pared to that of Juliet DHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS HERMIONE CHARACTERS in which the affections and the moral qualities predominate over fancy and all that Dears the name of passion, are not, when we meet with them in real life, the most striking and inter- esting, nor the easiest to be understood and appre- ciated ; but they are those on which, in the long run, we repose with increasing confidence and ever- new delight. Such characters are not easily ex- hibited in the colors of poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican ; and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian'a or Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less there is of marked expression or vivid color in a countenance or character, the more difficult to delineate it in such a manner as to captivate and interest us : but when this is done, and done to perfection, it is the miracle of poetry in painting, and of painting in poetry. Only Raf- faelle and Correggio have achieved it in one case, ind only Shakspeare in the otner !20 CHARACTERS OP THE AFFECTIONS. When, by the presence or the agency of som* predominant and exciting power, the feelings and affections arc upturned from the depths of the heart, and flung to the surface, the painter or the poet has but to watch the workings of the passions, thus in a manner made visible, and transfer them to his page or his canvas, in colors more or leM vigorous : but where all is calm without and around, to dive into the profoundest abysses of character, trace the affections where they lie hidden like th ocean springs, wind into the most intricate involu- tions of the heart, patiently unravel its most del icate fibres, and in a few graceful touches place be fore us the distinct and visible result, to do this demanded power of another and a rarer kind. There are several of Shakspeare's character* which are especially distinguished by this profound feeling in the conception, and subdued harmony of tone in the delineation. To them may be particu- larly applied the ingenious simile which Goethe baa used to illustrate generally all Shakspeare's char- acters, when he compares them to the old-fashioned watches in glass cases, which not only showed the index pointing to the hour, but the wheels and springs within, which set that index in motion. Imogen, Desdemona, and Hermione, are three women placed in situations nearly similar, and equally endowed with all the qualities which can render that situation striking and interesting. They are all gentle, beautiful, and innocent; all art models of conjugal submission, truth, and tender- HEEMIONE. 221 ness , and all are victims of the unfounded jealousy of their husbands. So far the parallel is close, but here the resemblance ceases ; the circumstances of each situation are varied with wonderful skill, and the characters, which are as different as it is pos- lible to imagine, conceived and discriminated with a power of truth and a delicacy of feeling yet more astonishing. Critically speaking, the character of Herruione is the most simple in point of dramatic effect, that of Imogen is the most varied and complex. Hermione is most distinguished by her magnanimity and her fortitude, Desdemona by her gentleness and refined grace, while Imogen combines all the best qualities of both, with others which they do not possess ; consequently she is, as a character, superior to either ; but considered as women, I suppose the preference would depend on individual taste. Hermione is the heroine of the first three acts of the Winter's Tale. She is the wife of Leontes, king of Sicilia, and though in the prime of beauty and womanhood, is not represented in the first bloom of youth. Her husband on slight grounds inspects her of infidelity with his friend Polixenes, king ol Bohemia ; the suspicion once admitted, and working on a jealous, passionate, and vindictive mind, becomes a settled and confirmed opinion. Hennionc is thrown into a dungeon ; her new-born enfant is taken from her, and by the order of her tosband, frantic with jealousy, exposed to death on - 'ert shore ; she is herself brought to a public !22 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECT tOK. trial for treason and incontinency, defends herself nobly, and is pronounced innocent by the oracle But at the very moment that she is acquitted, sh learns the death of the prince her son, who Conceiving the dishonor of his mother, Had straight declined, drooped, took it deeply, Fastened and fixed the shame on't in himself, Threw off his spirit, appetite, and sleep, And downright languished. She swoons away with grief, and her supposed Ae-ath concludes the third act The last two acta are occupied with the adventures of her daughter Perdita ; and with the restoration of Perdita to the arms of her mother, and the reconciliation of Her- mione and Leontes, the piece concludes. Such, in few words, is the dramatic situation. The character of Hermione exhibits what is never found in the other sex, but rarely in our own yet sometimes; dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness without weakness. To conceive a character in which there enters so much of the negative, required perhaps no rare and astonishing effort of genius, such as creaf id a Ju- liet, a Miranda, or a Lady Macbeth ; but to de- lineate such a character in the poetical form, to develop it through the medium of action and dia- logue, without the aid of description : to preserve its tranquil, mild, and serious beauty, its unimpas- rioued dignity, and at the same time keep tin Itrongest hold upon our sympathy and our imag HERMIONE. 223 ination ; and out of this exterior calm, produce the most profound pathos, the most vivid impression of life and internal power : it is this which renders the character of Hermione one of Shakspeare's masterpieces. Hermione is a queen, a matron, and a mother ' she is good and beautiful, and royally descended. A majestic sweetness, a grand and gracious simplic- ity, an easy, unforced, yet dignified self-possession, are in all her deportment, and in every word she utters. She is one of those characters, of whom it has been said proverbially, that " still waters run deep." Her passions are not vehement, but in her settled mind the sources of pain or pleasure, love or resentment, are like the springs that feed the moun- tain lakes, impenetrable, unfathomable, and inex- haustible. Shakspeare has conveyed (as is his custom) a part of the character of Hermione in scattered touches and through the impressions which she produces on all around her. Her surpassing beauty 6 alluded to in few but strong terms : This jealousy Is for a precious creature ; as she is rare Mast it be great. Praise her but for this her out-door term, 'Which, on my faith, deserves high speech : If one by one you wedded all the world, Or from the all that are, took something goo4 To make a perfect woman; she yon killed Would be unparillei3d. 524 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. I might haie looked upon my queen's foil eyes, Have taken treasure from her lips and left them More rich for what they yielded. The expressions " most sacred lady," " dread mistress," " wovereign," with which she is addressed or alluded to, the boundless devotion and respect of those around her, and their confidence in her goodness and innocence, are so many additional trokes in the portrait For her, my lord, I dare my life lay down, and will do't, sir, Please you t' accept it, that the quean is spotleai I' the eyes of heaven, and to you. Every inch of woman in the world, Ay, every dram of woman's flesh is false, If she be so. I would not be a stander-by to hear My sovereign mistress clouded so, without My present vengeance taken I The mixture of playful courtesy, queenly dignity tnd lady-like sweetness, with which she prevails OB Polixenes to prolong his visit, is charming. HERMIONK. You'll stay! POLIXKNES. No, madam. HERMIOMK. Nay, but yon wilt BKRMIONE, 22 POLIXENEB. may not, verily. HERMIONE. Verily! fou put me off with limber vows; but I, Tho' you would seek t' unsphere the stars with oathi Should still say, " Sir, no going! " Verily, You shall not go ! A lady's verily is As potent as a lord's. Will you go yet? Force me to keep you as a prisoner, Not like a guest V And though the situation of Hermione admits but of few general reflections, one little speech, inimi- tably beautiful and characteristic, has become almost proverbial from its truth. She says : One good deed, dying tongueless, Slaughters a thousand, waiting upon that. Our praises are our wajres; you may ride us With cne soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere With spur we heat an acre. She receives the first intimation of her husband's jealous suspicions with incredulous astonishment. It is not that, like Desdemona, she does not or can- not understand ; but she will not. When he ac- cuses her more plainly, she replies with a calm iigmiy : Should a villain say so- The most replenished villnin in the world He were as much more villain : you, my lord. D but mistake. 1ft 226 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. This characteristic composure of temper ncvei forsakes her ; and yet it is so delineated that the impression is that of grandeur, and never bordert upon pride or coldness : it is the fortitude of a gentle bu' a strong mind, conscious of its own in- nocence. Nothing can be more affecting than her calm reply to Leontes, who, in his jealous rage, heaps insult upon insult, and accuses her before her jwn attendants, as no better " than one of those to whom the vulgar give bold titles." How will this grieve you, When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that You have thus published me ! Gentle my lord, You scarce can right me thoroughly then, to say You did mistake. Her mild dignity and saint-like patience, com- bined as they are with the strongest sense of the cruel injustice of her husband, thrill us with admi- ration as well as pity ; and we cannot but see and feel, that for Hermione to give way to tears and feminine complaints under such a blow, would be quite incompatible with the character. Thus SIM lays of herself, as she is led to prison : There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favorable. Good my lord*, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are ; the want of which vain dew Perchauce shall dry your pities ; but I have That honorable grief lodged here, that burn* IIKRMIONI!. 227 Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lordq With thought so qualified as your charities Shall best instru:t you, measure me : and so The king's will be performed. When she is brought to trial for supposed crimes, tailed on to defend herself, " standing to prate and talk for life and honor, before who please to come and hear," the sense of her ignominious situation all its shame and all its horror press upon her, and would apparently crush even her magnanimous ipirit, but for the consciousness of her own worth and innocence, and the necessity that exists for a* erting and defending both. If powers divine Behold our human actions, (as they do, I doubt not, then, but innocence shall make False accusation blush, and tyranny Tremble at patience. ***** For life, I prize it As I weigh grief, which I would spare. For honor 'Tis a derivative from me to mine, And only that I stand for. Her earnest, eloquent justification of herself, and her lofty sense of female honor, are rendered more affecting and impressive by that chilling despair that contempt for a life which has been made bitter to her through unkindness, which is betrayed in *very word of her speech, though so calmly char- acteristic. When she enumerates the unmerited in- tuits which have been heaped upon her, it is with 828 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. wit asperity or reproach, yet in a tone which showi now completely the iron has entered hor sool Thus, when Leontes threatens her with death : Sir, spare year threats ; The bug which you would fright me with, I seek. To ine can life be no commodity; The crown and comfort of my life, your favor, I do give lost ; for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went. My second joy, The first-fruits of my body, from his presence I am barr'd, like one infectious. My third comfort Starr' d most unluckily! is from my breast, The innocent milk in its most innocent mouth, Hilled out to murder. Myself on every post Proclaimed a strumpet; with immodest hatred. The childbed privilege denied, which 'longs To women of all fashion. Lastly, hurried Here to this place, i' the open air, before I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege, Tell me what blessings I have here alive, That I should fear to die. Therefore, proceed, But yet hear this; mistake me not. No! life, I prize it not a straw: but for mine honor. ( Which I would free,) if I shall be condemned Vpon surmises; all proof sleeping else, But what your jealousies awake; I tell you, 'Tis rigor and not law. The character of Hcrmione is considered open to criticism on one point I have heard it remark d tuat when she secludes herself from the worlo for stxteen years, during which time she is mourned u de.id by her repentant husband, and is not woo to relent fVom her resolve by his sorrow, his re- DERMIONE. 221 toorse, his constancy to her memory ; such conduct^ wgues the critic, is unfeeling as it is inconceivable in a tender and virtuous woman. Would Imogen have done so, who is so generously ready to grant a pardon before it be asked ? or Desdemona, who does not forgive because she cannot even resent ? No, assuredly ; but this is only another proof of the wonderful delicacy and consistency with which Shakspeare has discriminated the characters of all three. The incident of Hermione's supposed death and concealment for sixteen years, is not indeed very probable in itself, nor very likely to occur in every-day life. But besides all the probability nec- essary for the. purposes of poetry, it has all the likelihood it can derive from the peculiar character of Hermione, who is precisely the woman who could and would have acted in this manner. In such a mind as hers, the sense of a cruel injury, in- flicted by one she had loved and trusted, without awakening any violent angei or any desire of ven- geance, would sink deep almost incurably and lastingly deep. So far she is most unlike eithei Imogen or Desdemona, who are portrayed as much more flexible in temper ; but then the circumstance* under which she is wronged are very different, and far more unpardonable. The self-created, frantic jealousy of Leontes is very distinct from that of Othello, writhing under the arts of lago : or that of Posthumus, whose understanding has been cheated by the most damning evidence of his wife's infidel- *r The jealousy which in Othello and Posthumui J80 HARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. IB an error of judgment, in Leontes is a vice of tM Mood ; lie suspects without cause, condemns without proof; he is without excuse unless the mixture ol pride, passion, and imagination, and the predispo- rition to jealousy with which Shakspeare has pop- trayed him, be considered as an excuse. Hermione has been openly insulted : he to whom she gav herself, her heart, her soul, has stooped to the weak- ness and baseness of suspicion ; has doubted her truth, has wronged her love, has sunk in her esteem, and forfeited her confidence. She has been branded with vile names; her son, her eldest hope, is dead dead through the false accusation which has stuck infamy on his mother's name ; and her innocent babe, stained with illegitimacy, disowned and re- jected, has been exposed to a cruel death. Can we believe that the mere tardy acknowledgment of her innocence could make amends for wrongs and agonies such as these ? or heal a heart which must have bled inwardly, consumed by that untold grief, " which burns worse than tears drown ? " Keeping in view the peculiar character of Hermione, such as she is delineated, is she one either to forgive hastily or forget quickly? and though sle might, in her solitude, mourn over her repentant husband, would his repentance suffice to restore him at onc to his place in her heart : to efface from her strong and reflecting mind the recollection of his miserable weakness ? or can we fancy this high-souled woma > left childless through the injury which has bee indicted OK her, widowed in heart by the unwortb IIKHMIOXE. 231 jness of him sae loved, a spectacle of gnef to all to her husband a continual reproach and humilia- tion walking through the parade of royalty in the court which had witnessed her anguish, her shame, her degradation, and her despair ? Methinks that the want of feeling, nature, delicacy, and consist- ency, would lie in such an exhibition as this. In a mind like Hermione's, where the strength of feel- ing is founded in the power of thought, and where there is little of impulse or imagination, " the depth, but not the tumult of the soul," * there are but two influences which predominate over the will, time and religion. And what then remained, but that, wounded in heart and spirit, she should retire from the world ? not to brood over her wrongs, but to study forgiveness, and wait the ful- filment of the oracle which had promised the ter- mination of her sorrows. Thus a premature rec- onciliation would not only have been painfullj inconsistent with the character ; it would also have deprived us of that most beautiful scene, in which Hermione is discovered to her husband as the statue w image of herself. And here we have another Uistance of that admirable art, with which the -The gods approve The depth, and not the tumult of the soul. WORDSWORTH. ' H poevait y avoir des vagues majestueuses et non de 1'oragt an son cceur," was finely observed o" Madame de Stael In bar naturer years ; it woulc' have beea *riie of Hermione at any ri~l of her life. 232 CHARACTERS OF TH* JFFECTIONb. dramatic character is fitted to the circumstances in which it is placed : that perfect command ove nef own feelings, that complete self-possession nece*- laiy to this extraordinary situation, la consistent with all that we imagine of Hermione: in any other woman it would be so incredible as to shock all our ideas of probability. This scene, then, is not only one of the most picturesque and striking instances of stage effect to be found in the ancient or modern drama, but by the skilful manner in which it is prepared, it has, wonderful as it appears, all the merit of consistency and truth. The grief, the love, the remorse and impatience of Leontes, are finely contrasted with the astonishment and admiration of Perdita, who, gazing on the figure of her mother like one en- tranced, looks as if she were also turned to marble. There is here one little instance of tender remem- brance in Leontes, which adds to the charming impression of Hermione's character. Chide me, dear stone ! that I may say indeed Thou art Hermione; or rather thou art she In thy not chiding, for she was as tender As infancy and grace. Thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty warm life As now it coldly stands when first I woo'd her I Fhb effect produced on the different persons of th Irama by this living statue an effect which at tb HERMIOXK. 23. lame moment Is, and' is not illusion the manne? m which the feelings of the spectators become entangled between the conviction of death and the impression of life, the idea of a deception and the feeling of a reality ; and the exquisite coloring of poetry -and touches of natural feeling with which the whole is wrought up, till wonder, expectation, and intense pleasure, hold our pulse and breath luspended on the event, are quite inimitable. The expressions used here by Leontes, Thus she stood, Even with such life of majesty warm Ufe. The fixture of her eye has motion in't. And we are mock'd by art! And oy Polixines, The very life seems warm upon her lip, Appear strangely applied to a statue, such as w usually imagine it of the cold colorless marble; but it is evident that in this scene Hermione per- sonates one of those images or effigies, such as we may see in the old gothic cathedrals, in which the tone, or marble, was colored after nature. I remember coriing suddenly upon one of these effigies, either at Basle or at Fribourg, which made me start : the figure was large as life ; the drapery of crimson, powdered with stars of gold ; the face and eyes, and hair, tinted af:er nature, though ished truth, and the soft submission of Desdemona. On the other perfections of this tragedy, consid- ered as a production of genius on the wonderful characters of Othello and lago on the skill with which the plot is conducted, and its simplicity which a word unravels,* and on the overpowering horror of the catastrophe eloquence and analyt- ical criticism have been exhausted ; I will only add t that the source of the pathos throughout of thai * Consequences are so lii ksd together, that the exclamation of Emilia, thou dull Moor.' That handkerchief thou speakest of 1 found by fortu ae, and did give my husband ! b sufficient to reveal to Othello the whole history of hi* raia 252 CHARACTERS OF TUB AFFECTION*. pathos which at once softens and deepens the tragl\ effect lies in the character of Desdemona, Nc woman differently constituted could have excited the same intense and painful compassion, without losing something of that exalted charm, which in- vests her from beginning to end, which we are apt to impute to the interest of the situation, and to the poetical coloring, but which lies, in fact, in the very essence of the character. Desdemona, with all her timid flexibility and soft acquiescence, is not weak ; for the negative alone is weak ; and the mere pres- ence of goodness and affection implies in itself a ipecies of power ; power without consciousness, power without effort, power with repose that soul of grace ! I know a Desdemona in real life, one in whom the absence of intellectual power is never felt as a defi- ciency, not the absence of energy of will as impair- ing the dignity, nor the most imperturbable serenity, as a want of feeling : one in whom thoughts appear mere instincts, the sentiment of rectitude supplies the principle, and virtue itself seems rather a nec- essary state of being, than an imposed law. No shade of sin or vanity has yet stolen over that bright innocence. No discord within has marred the loveliness without no strife of the factitious world without has disturbed the harmony within. The comprehension of evil appears forever fhui out, as if goodness had converted all tilings to itself; and all to the pure in heart must necessarily be pure. The impression produced is exactly that IMOGEN. 255 t/f the character of Desdemona ; genius is a rare thing, but abstract goodness is rarer. In Desde- mona, we cannot but feel that the slightest manifes- tation of intellectual power or active will would have injured the dramatic effect. She is a victim consecrated from the first, " an offering without blemish," alone worthy of the grand final sacrifice ; all harmony, all grace, all purity, all tenderness, all truth ! But, alas ! to see her fluttering like a cherub in the talons of a fiend ! to see her O poor Desdemona ! IMOGEN. WE come to Imogen. Others of Shakspeares characters are, as dramatic and poetical concep- tions, more striking, more brilliant, more powerful ; but of all his women, considered as individuals rather than as heroines, Imogen is the most perfect. Portia and Juliet are pictured to the fancy with more force of contrast, more depth of light and shade ; Viola and Miranda, with more aerial deli- cacy of outline ; but there is no female portrait that can be compared to Imogen as a woman none in which so great a variety of tints are mingled to- gether into such perfect harmony. In her, we have \\l the fervor of youthful tenderness, all the ro- jaance of youthful fancy, all the enchantment of Jeal grace, the bloom of beauty, the brightnesi tf intellect and the dignity of rank, taking a pe- 864 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. culiar hue from the conjugal character which M ehed over all, like a consecration and a holy charm. In Othello and the Winter's Tale, the interest ex- cited for Desdemona and Hermione is divided with others : but in Cymbeline, Imogen is the angel of light, whose lovely presence pervades and animate* the whole piece. The character altogether may be pronounced finer, more complex in its elements, and more fully developed in all its parts, than those of Hermione and Desdemona ; but the position in which she is placed is not, I think, so fine at least, not so effective, as a tragic situation. Shakspeare has borrowed the chief circumstance* of Imogen's story from one of Boccaccio's tales.* A company of Italian merchants who are assem- bled in a tavern at Paris, are represented as con- versing on the subject of their wives : all of them express themselves with levity, or sekpticism, or BCorn, on the virtue of women, except a young Ginoese merchant named Bernabo, who maintains, that by the especial favor of Heaven he possesses a wife no less chaste than beautiful. Heated by the wine, and excited by the arguments and the coarse raillery of another young merchant, Ambrogiolo, Bernabo proceeds to enumerate the various perfec- tions and accomplishments of his Zinevra. He praises her loveliness, her submission, and her dis- cretion her skill in embroidery, her graceful ser- vice, in which the best trained page of the court could not exceed her ; and he adds, as rarer ao Decamerone. Novella, 9mo. Oiornata, 2do. IMOGEN. 254 roniplishments, that she could mount a horse, fly a hawk, write and read, and cast up accounts, as well as any merchant of them all. His enthusiasm only excites the laughter and mockery of his compan- ions, particularly of Ambrogiolo, who, by the most artful mixture of contradiction and argument, rouses the anger of Bernabo, and he at length ex- claims, that he would willingly stake his life, his head, on the virtue of his wife. This leads to the wager which forms so important an incident in the drama. Ambrogiolo bets one thousand florins of gold against five thousand, that Zinevra, like the rest of her sex, is accessible to temptation that in less than three months he will undermine her virtue, and bring her husband the most undeniable proofs of her falsehood. He sets off for Genoa, in order U accomplish his purpose ; but on his arrival, all that he learns, and all that he beholds with hjs own eyes, of the discreet and noble character of the lady, make him despair of success by fair means ; he therefore has recourse to the basest treachery. By bribing an old woman in the service of Zin- evra, he is conveyed to her sleeping apartment, con- cealed in a trunk, from which he issues in the dead of the night ; he takes note of the furniture of the chamber, makes himself master of her purse, her morning robe, or cymar, and her girdle, and of a certain mark on her person. He repeats these ob- servations for two nights, and, furnished with these evidences of Zinevra's guilt, he returns to Paris, tnd lays them before the wretched husband. Bor- B66 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. nabo rejects every proof of his wife's infidelity except that which finally convinces Posthumus When Ambrogioto mentions the " mole, cinque- potted," he stands like one who has received a poniard in his heart ; without further dispute he pays down the forfeit, and filled with rage and despair both at the loss of his money and the false- hood of his wife, he returns towards Genoa ; he retires to his country house, and sends a messenger to the city with letters to Zinevra, desiring that she would come and meet him, but with secret orders to the man to despatch her by the way. The ser- vant prepares to execute his master's command, but overcome by her entreaties for mercy, and his own remorse, he spares her life, on condition that she will fly from the country forever. He then disguises her in his own cloak and cap, and brings back to her husband the assurance that she is killed, and that her body has been devoured by the wolves. In the disguise of a mariner, Zinevra then embarks on board a vessel bound to the Le- vant, and on arriving at Alexandria, she is taken into the service of the Sultan of Egypt, under the name of Sicurano; she gains the confidence of her master, who, not suspecting her sex, sends Ser as captain of the guard which was appointed for the protection of the merchants at the fair of Acre. Here she accidentally meets Ambrogiolo, and sees in his possession the purse and girdle, which she immediately recognizes as her own. In reply tc her inquiries, he relates with fiendish exultatioi IMOGEN. 257 the manner in which he had obtained possession of them, and she persuades him to go back with her to Alexandria. She then sends a messenger to Genoa in the name of the Sultan, and induces her husband to come and settle in Alexandria. At a proper opportunity, she summons both to the pres- ence of the Sultan, obliges Ambrogiolo to make a full confession of his treachery, and wrings from her husband the avowal of his supposed murder of herself : then falling at the feet of the Sultan dis- covers her real name and sex, to the great amaze- ment of all. Bernabo is pardoned at the prayer of his wife, and Ambrogiolo is condemned to be fastened to a stake, smeared with honey, and left to be devoured by the flies and locusts. This hor- rible sentence is executed ; while Zinevra, enriched by the presents of the Sultan, and the forfeit wealth of Ambrogiolo, returns with her husband to Genoa, where she lives in great honor and happiness, and maintains her reputation of virtue to the end of her life. These are the materials from which Shakspeare has draw the dramatic situation of Imogen. He has also endowed her with several of the qualities which are attributed to Zinevra ; but for the essen- tial truth and beauty of the individual character, for the sweet coloring of pathos, and sentiment, and poetry interfused through the whole, he is in- debted onl}- to nature and himself. It would be a waste of words to refute certain uitics who have accused Shakspeare of a want of 5.18 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. judgment in the adoption of the story ; of having transferred the manners of a set of intoxicated merchants and a merchant's wife to heroes and princesses, and of having entirely destroyed the interest of the catastrophe.* The truth is, that Shakspeare has wrought out the materials before him with the most luxuriant fancy and the most wonderful skill. As for the various anachronisms, And the confusion of names, dates, and manners, over which Dr. Johnson exults in no measured terms, the confusion is nowhere but in his own heavy obtuseness of sentiment and perception, and his want of poetical faith. Look into the old Italian poets, whom we read continually with still increas- ing pleasure ; does any one think of sitting down to disprove the existence of Ariodante, king of Scotland ? or to prove that the mention of Proteus and Pluto, baptism and the Virgin Mary, in a breath, amounts to an anachronism ? Shakspeare, by throwing his story far back into a remote and uncertain age, has blended, by his " own omnipo- tent will," the marvellous, the heroic, the ideal, and the classical, the extreme of refinement and the extreme of simplicity, into one of the loveliest fictions of romantic poetry ; and, to use SchlegePi expression, " has made the social manners of the latest times harmonize with heroic deeds, and even Irith the appearances of the gods.f But, admirable as is the conduct of the whoU * Vidt Dr. Johnson, and Dnnlop's History of Fiction. * BM Haditt and SchJegel on the catastrophe of Cymbeltn* IMOGEN. 259 p(ay, rich in variety of character and in pictu- resque incident, its chief beauty and interest is derived from Imogen. When Ferdinand tells Miranda that she was M created of every creature's best," he speaks like A lover, or refers only to her personal charms : the same expression might be applied critically to the character of Imogen ; for, as the portrait of Miranda is produced by resolving the female character into its original elements, so that of Imogen unites the greatest number of those qualities which we imag- ine to constitute excellency in woman. Imogen, like Juliet, conveys to our mind the impression of extreme simplicity in the midst of the most wouderful complexity. To conceive her aright, we must take some peculiar tint from many char- acters, and so mingle them, that, like the combina- tion of hues in a sunbeam, the effect shall be as one to the eye. We must imagine something of the romantic enthusiasm of J;aiet, of the truth and constancy of Helen, of the dignified purity of Isabel, of the tender sweetness of Viola, of the self- possession and intellect of Portia combined to- gether so equally and so harmoniously, that we can scarcely say that one quality predominates over the other. But Imogen is less imaginative than Juliet, less spirited and intellectual than Portia, less serious than Helen and Isabel; her dignity ifl Hot so imposing as that of Hermione, it stands more n the defensive , her submission,though unbounded, not so passive as that of Desdemoua ; and thu% 160 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFKCTIOHS while she resembles each of these characters in- dividually, she stands wholly distinct from alL It is true, that the conjugal tenderness of Imogen is at once the chief subject of the drama, and the pervading charm of her character ; but it is not true, I think, that she is merely interesting from her tenderness and constancy to her husband. We we so completely let into the essence of Imogen's nature, thai we feel as if we had known and loved her before she was married to Posthumus, and that her conjugal virtues are a charm superadded, like the color laid upon a beautiful groundwork. Neither does it appear to me, that Posthumus is unworthy of Imogen, or only interesting on Imogen's account. His character, like those of all the other persons of the drama, is kept subordinate to hers : but this could not be otherwise, for she is the proper subject the heroine of the poem. Every thing ia done to ennoble Posthumus, and justify her love for him ; and though we certainly approve him more for her sake than for his own, we are early prepared to view him with Imogen's eyes ; and not only excuse, but sympathize in her admiration of one Who sat 'mongst men like a descended god. ***** Who lived in court, which it is rare to do, Most praised, most loved : A sample to the youngest ; to the more mature, A glass that feated them. And with what beauty and delicacy is IMOGEN. 261 and matronly character discriminated ! Her love for her husband is as deep as Juliet's for her lover, but without any of that headlong vehemence, that fluttering amid hope, fear, and transport that giddy intoxication of heart and sense, which be- longs to the novelty of passion, which we feel once, and but once, in our lives. We see her love for Posthumus acting upon her mind with the force of an habitual feeling, heightened by enthusiastic passion, and hallowed by the sense of duty. She asserts and justifies her affection with energy in- deed, but with a calm and wife-like dignity : CYMBELLNE. Thou took'st a beggar, would'st have made my throne A seat for baseness. IMOGEN. No, I rather added a lustre to it CYMBELLNE. thou vile one! Sir, It is your fault that I have loved PosthnmuB ; You bred him as my playfellow, and he is A man worth any woman ; overbuys me, Almost the sum he pays. Compare also, as examples of the most delicate Uscrimination of character and feeling, the parting scene Between Imogen and Posthumus, that between (tomec and Juliet, and that between Troilus and Z62 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTION* Cressida : compare the confiding matronly tendei* Hess, the deep but resigned sorrow of Imogen, with {he despairing agony of Juliet, and the petulant grief of Cressida. When Posthumus Is driven into exile, he to take a last farewell of his wife : IMOGEN. My dearest husband, I something fear my father's wrth, but nothing (Always reserved my holy duty) what His rage can do on me. You must be gone, And I shall here abide the hourly shot Of angry eyes : not comforted to live, But that there is this jewel in the world That I may see again. POSTHUMUS. My queen ! my mistress I O, lady, wep no more ! lest I give cause To be suspected of more tenderness Than doth become a man. I will remain The loyal'st husband that did e'er plight trotk ***** Should we be taking leave As long a term as yet we have to live, The loathness to depart would grow Adieu I IMOGEN. Nay, stay a little: Wore yon but riding forth to air yourself, Such parting were too petty. Look hero, IOT, This diamaud was m- mother's; take it, heart' But keep it till you woo another wife, When Imogen is dead ! IMOGEN. 263 Imogen, in whose tenderness there is nothing jealous or fantastic, does not seriously apprehend that her husband will woo another wife when she is dead. It is one of those fond fancies which women are apt to express in moments of feeling, merely for the pleasure of hearing a protestation to the contrary. When Posthumus leaves her, she does not burst forth in eloquent lamentation ; but that silent, stunning, overwhelming sorrow, which renders the mind insensible to all things else, it represented with equal force and simplicity. IMOGEN. There cannot be a pinch in death More sharp than this is. CTMBELINE. disloyal thing, That should'st repair my youth ; thou heapest A year's age on met IMOGEN. I beseech you, sir, Harm not yourself with your vexation ; I Am senseless of your wrath ; a touch more rare * Subdues all pangs, all fears. OYMBELINB. Past grace? obedience? IMOGEN. Past hope, and in despair that way past grace. In the same circumstances, the impetuous excited * More rare '. t. more exquisitely poignant. 164 CHARACTERS OF THE AFIECTIONS. feelings of Juliet, and her vivid imagination, lend gomething far more wildly agitated, more intensely poetical and passionate to her grief. JULIET. Art than gone so? My love, my lord, my friend ' I must hear from thee every day i' the hour, For in a minute there are many days by this count I shall be much in years, Ere I again behold my Romeo ! ROMEO. Farewell I I will omit no opportunity That may convey my greetings, love, to thee. JULIET. O ! think'st thou we shall ever meet again? ROMEO. 1 doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our time to come. JULIET. God I I have an ill-divining soul: Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, As one dead in the bottom of a tomb : Either my eye-sight fails, or thou look'st pale, We have no sympathy with the pouting di* appointment of Cressida, which is just like that of a spoilt child which has lost its sugar-plum, without tenderness, passions, or poetry : and, in short, per fectly characteristic of that vain, fickle, d-ssolute. keartless woman, " unstable as water." IMOGEN. 965 CRESSIDA. And is it true that I must go from Troy? TROILUS. A hateful truth. CRESSIDA. What, and from Troilus too? TROILUS. From Troy and Treilus. CRESSIDA. Is it poasible? TROILUS, And suddenly, CRESSIDA. I most then to the Greeks ? TROILUS. No remedy. CRESSIDA. A woeful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks I When shall we see again? TROILUS. Hear me, my love. Be tliou but true of heart CRESSIDA. I true! How now? what wicked deem is thai? T3OILU8. Nay, we must use expostulation kindly, For it is parting from us ; ! speak not, be thou true, as fearing thee; For I will throw my glove to Death himself CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. That there's no maculation in thy heart ; But be thou true, say I, to fashion in My sequent protestation. Be thou true, And I will see thee. CRESSIDA.J heaven* ! be true again heavens ! you love me not TKOH.CS. Die I a villain, then ! In this I do not call your faith in question, So mainly as my merit - But be not tempted. CBESSLDA. Do you think I will? In the eagerness of Imogen to meet her husband there is all a wife's fondness, mixed up with the breathless hurry arising from a sudden and joyftu lurprise ; but nothing of the picturesque eloquence, the ardent, exuberant, Italian imagination of Juliet, who, to gratify her impatience, would have her heralds thoughts ; press into her service the nim- ble pinioned doves, and wind-swift Cupids, change the course of nature, and lash the steeds of Phoeboi to the west. Imogen only thinks " one score of miles, 'twixt sun and sun," slow travelling for lover, and wishes for a horse with wings for a horse with wings ! Hear'st thou, Pioanio ? He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell m IMOGEN. 26' How far 'tis thither. If one of mean affairs May plod it in a week, why may not I Glide thithir in a day? Then, true Pisanio, (Who long's." like me, to see thy lord who long'st let me bate, but not like me yet long'st, But in a fainter kind not like me, For mine's beyond beyond,) say, and speak thick (Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing To the smothering of the sense) how far is it To this same blessed Milford ? And by the way, Tell me how Wales was made so happy, as To inherit such a haven. But, first of all, How we may steal from hence ; and for the gap That we shall make in time, from our hence going And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence* Why should excuse be born, or e'er begot? We'll talk of that hereafter. Pr'ythee speak, How many score of miles may we well ride 'Twixt hour and hour? PISANIO. One score, 'twixt sun and sun, Madam,'s enough for you; and too much too. IMOGEN. Why, one that rode to his execution, man, Could never go so slow ! There are two or three other passages bearing on the conjugal tenderness of Imogen, which must De noticed for the extreme intensity of the feeling, *nd the unadorned elegance of the expression. 1 would thou grew'st unto tne shores o' the haven And question' dst every sail : if he should write, And I not have it, 'twere a paper lost 1G8 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. As offer' J mercy is. What was the last That he spake to thee? PI8AJJIO. 'Twas, His queen! hia quern I IMOGEN. Then wav'd his hankerchief ? PISANIO. And kiss'd it, mad%m. IMOGEN. Senseless linen ! happier therein than I ! And that was all? PISANIO. No, madam; for so long As he oonld make me with this eye or ear Distinguish him from others, he did keep The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief Still waving, as the fits and stirs of his mind Could best express how slow his soul sail'd on, How swift his ship. IMOGEN. Thou shoold'st have made him As little as a crow, or less, ere left To after-eye him. PISANIO. Madam, so I did. IMOGEN. 1 wonld have broke my eye-strings; cracked theaa, To look npon him; till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle ; Nay, followed him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat to air; and then Have turn'd mine eye, and wept. IMOGEN. 269 Two little incidents, which are introduced with the most unobtrusive simplicity, convey the strong- est impression of her tenderness for her husband, Bnd with that perfect unconsciousness on her part, which adds to the effect. Thus when she has lost her bracelet Go, bid my woman Search for a jewel, that too casually, Hath left my arm. It was thy master's : 'shrew me, If I would lose it for a revenue Of any king in Europe. I do think I saw't this morning; confident I am, Last night 'twas on mine arm 1 kiss'd it. 1 hope it has not gone to tell my lord That lieisi aught but lie. It has been well observed, that our consciousness that the bracelet is really gone to bear false witness against her, adds an inexpressibly touching effect to the simplicity and tenderness of the sentiment. And again, when she opens her bosom to meet the death to which her husband has doomed her, he finds his letters preserved next her heart. What's here I The letters of the loyal Leonatus ? Soft, we'll no defence. The scene in which Posthumus stakes his ring on the virtue of his wife, and gives lachimo per- mission to tempt her, is taken from the story. The baseness and folly of such conduct have been justly censured ; but Shakspeare, feeling that Posthumus needed every excuse, has managed the quarrelling cene between him and lachimo with the most ad> 270 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. mirable skill. The manner in which his high spirit is gradually worked up by the taunts of this Italiar fiend, is contrived with far more probability, and much less coarseness, than in the original tale. In the end he is not the challenger, but the challenged; and could hardly (except on a moral principle, much too refined for those rude times) have declined the wager without compromising his own courage and his faith in the honor of Imogen. IACHIMO. I durst attempt it against any lady in the world. POSTHUMU8. You are a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion; and I doubt not you sustain what you're worthy of, by your attempt. IACHIMO. What's that? POSTHUMCS. A repulse: though your attempt, as you call it, deserr* more a punishment too. PHILARIO. Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly let it die as it was born, and I pray you be better ao- quainted. IACHIMO. Would I had put my estate and my neighbor's on the approbation of what I have said ! POSTHUMCS. What lady would you choose to assail? IACHIMO. Toon, whom in constancy you think stands to safe IMOGEN. 271 In the interview between Imogen and lachimo, he does not begin his attack on her virtue by a direct accusation against Posthumus ; but by dark hints and half-uttered insinuations, such as lago uses to madden Othello, he intimates that her hus- band, in his absence from her, has betrayed her love and truth, and forgotten her in the arms of another. All that Imogen says in this scene is comprised in a few lines a brief question, or a more brief remark. The proud and delicate reserve with which she veils the anguish she suffers, is inimitably beautiful. The strongest expression of reproach he can draw from her, is only, " My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." When he continues in the same strain, she exclaims in an agony, " Let me hear no more." When he urges her to revenge, she asks, with all the simplicity of virtue, " How should I be re- venged? " And when he explains to her how she is to be avenged, her sudden burst of indignation, and her immediate perception of his treachery, and the motive for it, are powerfully fine: it is not only the anger of a woman whose delicacy has been shocked, but the spirit of a princess insulted in her court. Away ! I do condemn mine ears, that have So long attended thee. If thou wert honorable, Thou would' st have told this tale for virtue not For such an end thou seek'st, as base as strange Thou wrong' st a gentleman, who is as far From thy report as thou from honor ; and Solicit'st here a lady that disdains Thee and toe devi! alike. 872 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. It has been remarked, that " her readiness U pardon lachimo's false imputation, and his designi against herself, is a good lesson to prudes, and may show that where there is a real attachment to virtue, there is no need of an outrageous antipathy to vice."* This is true ; but can we fail to perceive that the instant and ready forgiveness of Imogen is ac- counted for, and rendered more graceful and char- acteristic by the very means which lachimo employs to win it ? He pours forth the most enthusiastic praises of her husband, professes that he merely made this trial of her out of his exceeding love for Posthumus, and she is pacified at once ; but, with exceeding delicacy of feeling, she is represented as maintaining her dignified reserve and her brevity of speech to the end of the scene, f We must also observe how beautifully the char- acter of Imogen is distinguished from those of De9- demona and Hermione. When she is made ac- quainted with her husband's cruel suspicions, we Bee in her deportment neither the meek submission of the former, nor the calm resolute dignity of the latter. The first effect produced on her by her husband's letter is conveyed to the fancy by the exclamation of Pisanio, who is gazing on her as sh reads. What shall I need to draw my svord? The paper Characters of Shakflpcare's Playi. fidt act i. Been* 7. IMOGEN. 278 Has cut her throat already! No, 'tis slander, Whose edge is sharper than the sword ! And in her first exclamations we trace, besides as- tonishment and anguish, and the acute sense of the injustice inflicted on her, a flash of indignant spirit, which we do not find in Desdemona or Hermione False to his bed! What is it to be false? To lie in watch there, and to think of him ? To weep 'twixt clock and clock ? If sleep charge nature, To break it with a fearful dream of him, And cry myself awake ? that's false to his bed, Is it? This is followed by that affecting lamentation over the falsehood and injustice of her husband, in which she betrays no atom of jealousy or wounded self-love, but observes in the extremity of her an- guish, that after his lapse from truth, " all good seeming would be discredited," and she then re- signs herself to his will with the most entire sub- mission. In the original story, Zinevra prevails on the servant to spare her, by her exclamations and en- treaties for mercy. " The lady, seeing the poniard, and hearing those words, exclaimed in terror, ' Alas ! have pity on me for the love of Heaven I do not become the slayer of one who never offend- ed thee, only to pleasure another. God, who knows all things, knows that I have never done that which could merit auch a reward from my husband's hand.' " IS 174 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIOHB. Now let us turn to Shakspeare. Imogen say*,-- Come, fellow, be thon honest; Do thou thy master's bidding: when thon. seest him, A little witness my obedience. Look ! I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit The innocent mansion of my love, my heart. Fear not; 'tis empty of all things but grief: Thy master is not there, who was, indeed, The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike! The devoted attachment of Pisanio to his royal mistress, all through the piece, is one of those side touches by which Shakspeare knew how to give additional effect to his characters. Cloten is odious ; * but we must not overlook the peculiar fitness and propriety of his character, in connection with that of Imogen. He is precisely the kind of man who would be most intolerable to such a woman. He is a fool, so is Slender, and The character of Cloten has been pronounced by aora un- natural, by others inconsistent, and by others obsolete. Th following passage occurs in one of Miss Seward'g letters, vol. ill p. 246: " It is curious that Shakspeare should, in so singular character as Cloten, have given the exact prototype of a being whom I once knew. The unmeaning frown of countenance, thi hunting gait, the burst of voice, the bustling insignificance, UM fever and ague fits of valor, the froward tetchiness, the unprin- cipled malice, and, what is more curious, those occasional gleam* of good sense amidst the floating clouds of folly which generally darkened and confused the man's brain, and which, in the char- acter of Cloten, we are apt to impute to a violation of unity U character; but in the some-time Captain C , I saw that thf tortrait of Cloten was not out of nature." IMOGEN. 27fl Sir Andrew Aguecheek : but the folly of Cloten is not only ridiculous, but hateful ; it arises not so much from a want of understanding as a total want of heart ; it is' the perversion of sentiment, rather than the deficiency of intellect ; he has occasional gleams of sense, but never a touch of feeling. Imogen describe? herself not only as " sprighted with a fool," but as " frighted and anger"d worse." No other fool but Cloten a compound of the boo- by and the villain could excite in such a mind aa Imogen's the same mixture of terror, contempt, and abhorrence. The stupid, obstinate malignity of Cloten, and the wicked machinations of the queen A father cruel, and a step-dame false, A foolish suitor to a wedded lady justify whatever might need excuse in the conduct of Imogen as her concealed marriage and her flight from her father's court and serve to call out several of the most beautiful and striking parts of her character: particularly that decision and vivacity of temper, which in her harmonize so beautifully with exceeding delicacy, sweetness, and lubmission. In the scene with her detested suitor, there is at first a careless majesty of disdain, which is aduura- ble. I am much sorry sir, Yon put me to forget a lady's manners, By being so verbal ; * and learn now, foi all, 1. i.ftiU of vordt. 176 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce, By the very truth of it, I care not for you, And am so near the lack of charity, (T' accuse myself,) I hate you; which I had rather You felt, than make 't my boast. But when he dares to provoke her, by reviling the absent Posthumus, her indignation heighteni ner scorn, and her scorn sets a keener edge on hoi indignation. CLOTEN. For the contract you pretend with that base wretch, One bred of alms, and fostered with cold dishes, With scraps o' the court; it is no contract, none. IMOGEN. Profane fellow! Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more, But what thou art, besides, thou wert too baso To be his groom ; thou wert dignified enough, Even to the point of envy, if 'twere made Comparative for your virtues, to be styl'd The under hangman of his kingdom ; and hated For being preferr'd so well. He never can meet more mischance than come To be but nam'd of thee. His meanest garment That ever hath but clipp'd his body, is dearer In my respect, than all the hairs above thee, Were tlwy all made such men. Ono thing more must be particularly remarked because it serves to individualize the character Irom the beginning to the end of the poem. W* ire constantly sensible that Imogen, besides being IMOGEN 271 ft tendei and devoted woman, is a princess and a beauty, at the same time that she is ever superior to her position and her external charms. There is, for instance, a certain airy majesty of deportment a spirit of accustomed command breaking out every now and then the dignity, without the as- sumption of rank and royal birth, which is appar- ent in the scene with Cloten and elsewhere ; and we have not only a general impression that Imogen, like other heroines, is beautiful, but the peculiar style and character of her beauty is placed before us : we have an image of the most luxuriant love- liness, combined with exceeding delicacy, and even fragility of person : of the most refined elegance, and the most exquisite modesty, set forth in one or two passages of description ; as when lachimo is contemplating her asleep : Cytherea, How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily, And whiter than the sheets. 'Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o' the tnpor Bows toward her; and would underpeop her lids To see the enclos'd lights, now canopied Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd W?th blue of heaven's own tinctl The preservation of her feminine character \mder her masculine attire ; her delicacy, her modesty, and her timidity, are managed with the lame perfect consistency and unconscious grace as b Viola. And we must r.ct forget that her " neat 178 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFKCTIONft. rookery," which is so prettily eulogized by Gnide> rius: He cuts out roots in characters, And sauc'd our broths, as Juno had been sick, And he her dieter, formed part of the education of a princess in those remote times. Few reflections of a general nature are put into the mouth of Imogen ; and what she says is more remarkable for sense, truth, and tender feeling than for wit, or wisdom, or power of imagination The following little touch of poetry reminds us of Juliet : Ere I could Give him that parting kiss, which I had set Between two charming words, comes in my father; And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north, Shakes all our buds from growing. Her exclamation on opening her husband's letter reminds us of the profound and thoughtful tender* ness of Helen : learned indeed were that astronomer That knew the stars, as I his characters ! He'd lay the future open. The following are more in the manner at babel; Most miserable Is the desire that's glcrious : bless'd be those, How mean soe'er, that have their honest will*, That seasons comfort, IMOGEN. S7I Against self-slaughter There Is a prohibition so divine That cravens my weak hand. Thus may poor fools Believe false teachers; though those that are betray' d Do feel the reason sharply, yet the traitor Stands in worse case of woe, - Are we not brothers ? So man and man should be ; But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike. Will poor folks lie That have afflictions on them, knowing 'tis A punishment or trial ? Yes : no wonder, When rich ones scarce tell true : to lapse in fulness Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood Is worse in kings than beggars. The sentence which follows, and which I believe has become proverbial, has much of the manner of Portia, both in the thought and the expression : Hath Britain all the sun that shines ? Day, night, Are they not but in Britain ? I' the world's volum Our Britain seems as of it, but not in it ; In a great pool, a swan's nest; pr'ythee, think There's livers out of Britain. * * * * * The catastrophe of this play has been much admired for the peculiar skill with which all the various threads of interest are gathered together tt last, and entwined with the destiny of Imogen. it may be added, that one of its chief beauties if 280 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. the manner in which the character of Imogen \i not only preserved, but rises upon us to the con- clusion with added grace : her instantaneous for- pveness of her husband before he even asks it, when she flings herself at once into his arms Why did you throw your wedded lady from you? and her magnanimous reply to her father, when he tells her, that by the discovery of her two brothcn he has lost a kingdom No I have gain'd two worlds by it clothing a noble sentiment in a noble image, give the finishing touches of excellence to this most enchanting portrait. On the whole, Imogen is a lovely compound of goodness, truth, and affection, with just so much of passion and intellect and poetry, as serve to lend to the picture that power and glowing richness of effect which it would otherwise have wanted ; and of her it might be said, if we could condescend to quote from any other poet with Shakespeare open before us, that "her person was a paradise, and her soul the cherub to guard it." * CORDELIA. THERE is in the beauty of Cordelia's chai actor fen effect too sacred for words, and almost too deef Dry den. CORDELIA. 281 for tears ; within her heart is a fathomless well of f/urest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and obscurity, never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily seize : there is little external development of intellect, less of passion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few scenes there is matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough for twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies, Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and passion, approaches near to perfection ; and in her adapta- tion, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action, may be pronounced altogether per- fect. The character, to speak of it critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be compre- hended at once, or easily ; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known \ier long before we could have known her truly. Most people, I believe, have heard the story of the young German artist Miiller, who, whila employed in copying and engraving llafTuelle'* Madonna del Sisrto, was so penetrated by its cele- 18!* CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. tial beauty, so distrusted his own power to do justice to it, that between admiration and despair he fell into a sadness ; thence through the visual gradations, into a melancholy, thence into madness ; and died just as he had put the finishing stroke to his own matchless work, which had occupied him for eight years. With some slight tinge of thii concentrated kind of enthusiasm I have learned to contemplate the character of Cordelia ; I have looked into it till the revelation of its hidden beauty, and an intense feeling of the wonderful genius which created it, have filled me at once with delight and despair. Like poor Miiller, but with more reason, I do despair of ever conveying, through a different and inferior medium, the im- pression made on my own mind to the mind of another. Schlegel, the most eloquent of critics, concludes his remarks on King Lear with these words : " Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment of her excellence can neither satisfy those who have studied the character, nor convey a just conception of it to the mere reader. Amid the awful, the overpower- ing interest of the story, amid the terrible convul- sions of passion and suffering, and pictures of moral and physical wretchedness which harrow up the soul, the tender influence of Cordelia, lik that of a celestial visitant, is felt and acknowledgeC CORDELIA. 283 irithout being quite understood. Like a soft star mat shines for a moment from behind a stormy cloud and the next is swallowed up in tempest and darkness, the impression it leaves is beautiful and dep, but vague. Speak of Cordelia to a critic or to A general reader, all agree in the beauty of the portrait, for all must feel it; but when we come to details, I have heard more various and opposite opinions relative to her than any other of Shakspeare's characters a proof of what I have advanced in the first instance, that from the simplicity with which the character is dramatically treated, and the small space it occu- pies, few are aware of its internal power, or its wonderful depth of purpose. It appears to me that the whole character rests upon the two sublimest principles of human action, the love of truth and the sense of duty ; but these, when they stand alone, (as in the Antigone,) are apt to strike us as severe and cold. Shakspeare has, therefore, wreathed them round with the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of feeling and inspiring affection. The first part of the play shows us how Cordelia is loved, the second part how she can love. To her father she is the object of a secret preference, his agony at her supposed unkindness draws from him the confession, that he had loved her moat, and " thought to set his rest on her kind nursery." Till then she had been " his best object, the argu- ment of his praise, balm of his age, most best, most 884 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. dearest 1 " The faithful and worthy Kent ic ready to brave death and exile in her defence : and afterwards a farther impression of her benign sweetness is conveyed in a simple and beautiful manner, when we are told that " since the lady Cordelia went to France, her father's poor fool had much pined away." We have her sensibility " when patience and sorrow strove which should express her goodliest:" and all her filial tenderness when she commits her poor father to the care of the physician, when she hangs over him as he is sleeping, and kisses him as she contemplates the wreck of grief and majesty. my dear father ! restoration hang Its medicine on my lips : and let this kiss Repair those violent harms that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made ! Had you not been their father, these white flakes Had challenged pity of them ! Was this a face To be exposed against the warring winds, To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder In the most terrible and nimble stroke Of quick cross lightning? to watch, (poor perdu!) With thin helm ? mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire. Her mild magnanimity shines out in her fareweL to her sisters, of whose real character she is p fcctly aware : Ye jewels of our father! with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you I I know ye what ye are, And like a sister, am most loath to call CORDELIA. 235 I oar faults as tLey are nam'd. Use well our father, To your professed bosoms I commit him. But yet, alas ! stood I within his grace, I would commend him to a better place; So farewell to you both. GONERIL. Prescribe not us our duties i The modest pride with which she replies to tha L)uke of Burgundy is admirable ; this whole pas- age is too illustrative of the peculiar character of Cordelia, as well as too exquisite, to be mutilated I yet beseech your majesty, (If, for I want that glib and oily heart, To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known, It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, No unchaste action, or dishonored step That hath deprived me of your grace and favor; But even for want of that, for which I am richer ; A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue I am glad I have not, tho' not to have it Hath lost me in your liking. LEAR. Better thou fladst not been born, than not to have pleased me bettei FRANCE. Is it tut this ? a tardiness of nature, That often leaves the history unspoke Which it intends to do ? My lord of Burgundy, That say you to the lady ? love is not love Chen it is mingled with respects that stand 186 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. Alocf from the entire point. Will you hare her? She is herself a dowry. BURGUNDY. Royal Lear, Give but that portion which yourself proposed. And here I take Cordelia by the hand Duchess of Burgundy. LEAR. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm. BURGUNDT. I am sorry, then, you have lost a father That you must lose a husband. CORDELIA. Peace be with Burgundy ! Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife. FRANCE. Fairest Cordelia! thou art more rich, being poor, Most choice, forsaken, and most lov'd, despised ! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon. She takes up arms, " not for ambition, but a deal lather's right." In her speech after her defeat, we have a calm fortitude and elevation of soul, arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting hei above all consideration of self. She observes, \V e are not the first Who with best meaning have incurred the wont I She thinks and fears only for her father. COB DELIA. Mi for thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; Myself would else out-frown false fortune's frown. To complete the picture, her very voice is chaiv Uteristic, " ever soft, gentle, and low ; an excel- lent thing in woman." But it will be said, that the qualities here ex- emplified as sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity fortitude, generous affection are qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shaks- peare's characters to Imogen, for instance, who unites them all ; and yet Imogen and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia, and to Cordelia the con- jugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain perfectly distinct as women. What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia that peculiar and indi- vidual truth of character, which distinguishes her from every other human being ? It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition, " which often leaves the history unspoke which it intends to do ;" a subdued quietness of deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her emotions, her language and her manner ; mak- ing the outward demonstration invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only is the portrait singularly beautiful and inter- esting ia itself, but the conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of the tory, is rendered consistent and natural by the tronderful truth and delicacy with which thii 888 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. peculiar disposition is sustained throughout the play. In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively imagination, such a character aa that of Cordelia is calculated above every other tc impress and captivate us. Any thing like mystery, any thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed. But this feeling is a part of our young life : when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol then do we seek, we ask, we \thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tender ness, which revives in us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the ex- cess of love is welcomed, not repelled : it is gra- cious to us as the sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves. Lear is old " fourscore and upward" but we see what he has been in former days : the ardent passions of youth have turned to rashness and wilfulness : he is long passed that age when we are more blessed in what we bestow than in what we receive. When he ays to his daughters, " I gave ye all 1 " we feel that he requires all in return, with a jealous, restless, txacting affection which defeats its own wishea How many such are there in the world I How many CORDELIA. 28 to sympathize with the fiery, fond old man, when he shrinks as if petrified from Cordelia's quiet calm reply! LEAR. Now our joy, Although the last mt least What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters' ? Speak ' CORDELIA. Nothing, my lord. LEAR. Nothing! OORDKUA. Nothing. LEAR. Nothing can come of nothing: speak again! CORDELIA. Unhappy that I am ! I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond ; nor more, nor less. Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has pen- etrated the vile characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their " plaited cunning ; " and would retire from all competition with what she so dis- dains and abhors, even into the opposite extreme ? In such a case, as she says herself What should Cordelia do? ';ove and be silent? For the very expressions of Lear to 890 CHARACTERS OF THE AFFECTIONS. What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters' ? are enough to strike dumb forever a generous, del icate, but shy disposition, such as Cordelia's, bj holding out a bribe for professions. If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this de- liberate coolness would strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy ; but it is beautifully repre- sented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result of feelings habitually, if not natur- ally, repressed: and through the whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition the same absence of all display the same sobriety of speech veiling the most profound affections the same quiet steadiness of purpose the same shrink- ing from all exhibition of emotion. " Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur," was a viva voce observation of Madame de Stael, when disgusted by the sentimental affectation of ner imitators. This " pudeur," carried to an ex- cess, appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the description of her deport- ment when she receives the letter of the Earl of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisten ami the wretched condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us : KENT. Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief? GENTLEMAN. Ay, sir, she took them, and read them in my presence COR DELIA. 291 And now and then an ample tear stole down Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queoa Over her passion; who, most rebel-like Sought to be king over her. O then it moved her! GENTLEMAN. Not to a rage. Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart, Cried, Sisters 1 sisters ! Shame of ladies ! Sisters I What, f the storm f f the night f Let pity not be believed. Then she shook The holy water from her heavenly eyes; * * * * # Then away she started, To deal with grief alone. Here the last line the image brought before ui of Cordelia starting away from observation, "to deal with grief alone," is as exquisitely beautiful as it is characteristic. But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to that scene, in which her poor father recognizes her, and in the intervals of distraction asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's eharacter, her quiet but intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man, are Brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained with such a deep intuitive knowledge f the innermost w >r lings cf the human heart, that B92 CHARACTERS O* THE AFFECTIONS. K there is nothing surpassing this scene in Shaki peare himself, so there is nothing that can be com- pared to it in any other writer. CORDELIA. How does my royal lord ? How fares your majesty? LEAR. Yon do me wrong to take me out of the grave. Thoa art a soul in bliss ; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead . CORDEl JA. Sir, do you know me? LEAR. 1 oa are a spirit, I know: when did yon die? CORDELIA. Still, still far wide ! PHYSICIAK. He's scarce awake : let him alone awhile. LEAR. Where have I been? Where am I ? Fair daylight I I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity To see another thus. I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands: Let's see. I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured Of my condition. CORDELIA. look upon me, sir, And hold your hands in benediction o'er me No, sir, you must not kneel. LEAR. Pray, do not mock me: 1 am a very foolish, fond old man, CORDELIA. 291 Fourscore and upwards ; and to deal plainly with you, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Metkinks I should know you, and know this man, Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments ; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at m5 For as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. CORDELIA. And so I am, I am. LEAR. Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray you weep not. If you have poison for me I will drink it. I know you do not love me ; for your sisters Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: Yoa have some cause, they have not. CORDELIA. No cause, no cause ! As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact, can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father are conveyed to their prison : Shall we not see these daughter* and these sittert f The irony here is so b : tter and intense, and at the vune time so quiei, so feminine, so dignified in tb expression, that who b'tf Cordelia would havt t94 OnARACTEBS OF THE AFFECTIONS. uttered it in the same manner, or would have con iensed such ample meaning into so few and simple words ? We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and great part of the fourth act ; but towards the conclusion she reappears. Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness being carried to its extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, " like an engine wrenching our frame of nature from its fixed place," then, like a redeem- ing angel, she descends to mingle in the scene, w loosening the springs of pity in our eyes," and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed terrible ! wondrous ter- rible ! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are left only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own sensa- tions, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelm- ing as the catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of absolute unmitigated despair.' Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for heaven our earth is not good enough for her : and Lear ! O who, after sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life prolonged ? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand ? a crown apon that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath ? on which the deep dread- Do" ted thunders and the winged lightnings baa ipent their fury ? O never, never I CORDELIA. 294 Lt him pass! he hates h:m That would upon the rack of this rough world Stretch him out longer. In tbe story of King Lear and his three daugh- ters, as it is related in the " delectable and nellifluous " romance of Perceforest, and in the Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia defeats her sisters, and re- places her father on his throne. Spenser, in his version of the story, has followed these authorities Shakspeare has preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some lost tradi- tion. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have altered Romeo and Juliet : they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of the play exit with drums and colors flying to be married to Edgar. Now any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be imagined. " I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, " what ideas of art and dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy a melancholy one for hard-hearted spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce manners depicted in bis play, the extremes of virtue and vice in U 896 CHARACTERS OP THE AFFECTIONS. persons, belong to the remote period of the story.* There is no attempt at character in the old nai> ratives ; Regan and Goneril are monsters of in- gratitude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by he? filial piety ; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human being; we have a perception of innate character apart from all accidental circumstance: we see that if Cor- delia had never known her father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia ; less distinctly herself; that is, woman of a steady mind, of calm but deep affections,, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved deportment. As to Regan and Goneril " tigers, not daugh- ters" we might wish to regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable ; but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for the prototype of Cordelia : there was a Julia Alpinula, the young priestess of Aventicum, f who, unable to save her father's life by the sacrifice of her own, died with him " infeluc patris, infelix proles" but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter, too. I re * King Lear may be supposed to hare lived about one thousand "ear* before the Christian era, being the forth or fifth in descent rom King Brut, the great-grandson of Jfaeas, and the fabulouf bander of the kingdom of Britain. t She it commemorated by Lord Byron. Vide Childe Hr.rol& tfcntolii. CORDELIA. 29. Hember seeing at Genoa, Guido's " Pieta Romana," in which the expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from her bosom, is per- fect, but it is not a Cordelia : only Raffaelle could have painted Cordelia. But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the same basis : they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural affection ; and in both, love, as a passion, is knpt entirely out of sight : for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the objects of devoted attachment yet to have portrayed them as influenced by pas- sion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which is one source of power ; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity and grandeur of soul, which equally, distinguishes both neroines. The spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as different as possible ; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone, who plays a principal part in two fine tragedies, and ia distinctly and completely made out, is considered fcs a masterpiece, the very triumph of the ancient classical drama ; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's characters which arc equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and superior to her in ^nishing of outline, as well as in the richness of the poetical coloring. When CEdipus, pursued by tne vengeance of the 898 CHARACTEBS OF THE AFFECTIONS gods, deprived of sight by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons, wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter Antigone ; who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the " CEdipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the picture presented to us is won- derfully solemn and beautiful. The patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone ; the scene in which she pleads for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his offending son ; her remon- strance to Polynices, when she entreats him not to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and powerfully delineated ; and in her lamentation over CEdipus, when he perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, appar- ent even through the stiffness of the translation. Alas ! I only wished I might have died With my poor father; wherefore should I ask For longer life ? O I was fond of misery with him ; E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved When he was with me. my dearest father Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid, Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still Wert dear, and shall be ever. Even as he wished he died, In a strange land for snob was his dsir CORDELIA. 299 A shady turf covered his lifeless limbs, Noi nnlamented fell ! for these eyes, My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time E'er blot thee from my memory. The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting grt of the tragedy of " (Edipus Coloneus : " her Msterly affection, and her heroic self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding the rites of sepulture to Polynices, (as the invadei of his country,) and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave, enters in the first scene, an- nouncing her fixed resolution to brave the threat- ened punishment : her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from it, on which Aa- tigone replies : Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask Thy poor assistance I would scorn it now ; Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself: Let me perform but that, and death is welcome. I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down By my dear brother; loving and beloved, Ws'U rest together. 8ha proceeds to execute her generous purpose JOO CHARACTERS OT THE AFFECTIONS. ihe covers with earth the mangled corse of Poljr nices, pours over it the accustomed libations, U detected in her pious office, and after nobly defend- ing her conduct, is led to death by command of the tyrant : her sister Ismene, struck with sham* and remorse, now comes forward to accuse her- self as a partaker in the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation on the misery of perishing " without the nuptial song a virgin and a slave," she dies a V antique she strangles herself to avoid a lingering death. Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her grave : but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover. Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry and character : she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed before us as to command our admiration. According to the classical ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace, a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste ind our understanding, while they fill and exalt ie imagination : but in Cordelia it is not th CORDELIA. 301 sternal coloring or form, it is not what she says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism of Cor- delia is more passive and tender it melts into our heart ; and in the veiled loveliness and unostenta- tious delicacy of her character, there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, " with downcast eyes beneath th' almighty dove ? " and as that heavenly form is connected with our human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her filial love, hel irrongs, her sufferings, and her tears HISTORICAL CHARACTERS* CLEOPATRA, 1 CANNOT agree with one of the most philo wphical of Shakspeare's critics, who has asserted " that the actual truth of particular events, in pro- portion as we are conscious of it, is a drawback on the pleasure as well as the dignity of tragedy." If this observation applies at all, it w equally just with regard to characters : and in either case can we admit it ? The reverence and the simpleness of heart with which Shakspeare has treated the received and admitted truths of history I mean according to the imperfect knowl- edge of his time is admirable ; his inaccuracies are fsw : his general accuracy, allowing for the distinction between the narrative and the dramatic form, is acknowledged to be wonderful. He did not steal the precious material from the treasury ot bistory, to debase its purity, new-stamp it arbi- trarily with effigies and legends of his own devising, and then attempt to pass it current, like Dryden, Racine, and the rest of those poetical coiners : he only rubbed off the rust, purified and brightened >t, so that history herself has been known U teceiye it back as sterling. CLEOPATRA. 30fc Truth, wherever manifested, should be sacred : so Shakspeare deemed, and laid no profane hand upon her altars. But tragedy majestic tragedy, is worthy to stand before the sanctuary of Truth, and to be the priestess of her oracles. "Whatever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thought from within ; " * whatever is pitiful in the weakness, sublime in the strength, or terrible in the perversion of human intellect, these are the domain of Tragedy. Sibyl and Muse at once, she holds aloft the book of human fate, and is the interpreter of its mysteries. It is not, then, making a mock of the serious Borrows of real life, nor of those human beings who lived, suffered and acted upon this earth, to array them in her rich and stately robes, and pre- sent them before us as powers evoked from dust and darkness, to awaken the generous sympathies, the terror or the pity of mankind. It does not add to the pain, as far as tragedy is a source of emotion, that the wrongs and sufferings represented, the guilt of Lady Macbeth, the despair of Constance, ,he arts of Cleopatra, and the distresses of Kath- erine, had a real existence ; but it adds infinitely to the moral effect, as a subject of contemplation and ft lesson of conduct, f Milton. t " That th treachery of King John, the death of Arthur, and 104 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. I shall be able to illustrate these observation* more fully in the course of this section, in which we will consider those characters which are drawn from history ; and first, Cleopatra. Of all Shakspeare's female characters, Miranda and Cleopatra appear to me the most wonderful The first, unequalled as a poetic conception ; the latter, miraculous as a work of art. If we could make a regular classification of his characters, these would form the two extremes of simplicity and complexity ; and all his other characters would be found to fill up some shade or gradation be- tween these two. Great crimes, springing from high passions, grafted on high qualities, are the legitimate source of tragic poetry. But to make the extreme of littleness produce an effect like grandeur to make the excess of frailty produce an effect like power- to heap up together all that is most unsubstantial, frivolous, vain, contemptible, and variable, till the worthlessness be lost in the magnitude, and a sense of the sublime spring from the very elements of littleness, to do this, belonged only to Shakspeare that worker of miracles. Cleopatra is a brilliant antithesis, a compound of contradictions, of all that MM grief of Constance, had a real truth in history, sharpens th Hnse of pain, while it hangs a leaden weight on the bean and the imagination. Something whispers us that we hare no right to make a mock of calamities like these, or to turn the truth of things into the puppet and plaything of our fancies." Set Characters of Shakspeare's Plays. To consider i:ic \ I. CHARACTERS. for the display of that passionate maternal tenclei ness, which was a strong and redeeming feature in Cleopatra's historical cnaracter; but it is not left nntouche ] , for when she is imprecating mischiefs on herself, she wishes, as the last and worst of pos- sible evils, that " thunder may smite Caesarion ! " 7*. representing the mutual passion of Antony ai.d Cleopatra as real and fervent, Shakspeare has adhered to the truth of history as well as to gen- eral nature. On Antony's side it is a species of infatuation, a single and engrossing feeling : it is, in short, the love of a man declined in years for a woman very much younger than himself, and who has subjected him to every species of female en- chantment. In Cleopatra the passion is of a mixed nature, made up of real attachment, combined with the lo B of pleasure, the love of power, and the love of self. Not only is the character most com- plicated, but no one sentiment could have existed pure and unvarying in such a mind as hers ; her passion in itself is true, fixed to one centre ; but like the pennon streaming from the mast, it flutters and veers with every breath of her variable tem- per : yet in the midst of all her caprices, follies, and even vices, womanly feeling is still predomi- nant in Cleopatra : and the change which takes place in her (^portment towards Antony, when their evil fortun* darkens round them, is as beauti- ful and interesting in itself as it is striking anj natural. Instead of the airy caprice and provohr 'tog petulance she displays in the first scenes, we CLEOPATRA. 823 have a mixture of tenderness, and artifice, and fear, and submissive blandishment. Her behavior, for instance, after the battle of Actium, when she quails before the noble and tender rebuke of her lover, is partly female subtlety and partly natural CLEOPATRA. my lord, my lord, Forgive my fearful sails ! I little thought You would have follow'd. ANTONY. Egypt, thou know'st too well My heart was to the rudder tied by the string's, And thou should'st tow me after. O'er my spirit Thy full supremacy thou know'st; and that Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods Command me. CLEOPATRA. 0, my pardon? ANTONY. Now I must To the young man send humble treaties, dodgs And palter in the shifts of lowness ; who With half the bulk o' the world play'd as I pleaVd, Making and man-ing fortunes. You did know How much you were my conqueror ; and that My sword, made weak by my affection, would Obey it on all cause. CLEOPATRA. pardon, pardon ! ANTONY. Fall not a tear, I say ; one of them rates .ill that is won and lost. Give me a kiM fcven this repays met 526 HISTORICAL CHARACTKRb. It is perfectly in keeping with the individual character, that Cleopatra, alike destitute of nionu strength and physical courage, should cower terri- fied and subdued before the masculine spirit of her lover, when once she has fairly roused it. Thus Tasso's Armida, half siren, half sorceress, in the moment of strong feeling, forgets her incantations, and has recourse to persuasion, to prayers, and to tears. Lascia gl' incanti, e vuol provar se vaga E supplice belta sia miglior mnga. Though the poet afterwards gives us to under- stand that even in this relinquishment of art there was a more refined artifice. Nella doglia amara Gia tutte non oblia 1' arti e le frodi. And something like this inspires the conduct of Cleopatra towards Antony in his fallen fortunes. The reader should refer to that fine scene, where Antony surprises Thyreus kissing her hand, " that kingly seal and plighter of high hearts," and ragea like a thousand hurricanes. The character of Mark Antony, as delineated by Shakspcare, reminds me of the Farnese Hercules. There is an ostentatious display of power, an ex- aggerated grandeur, a colossal effect in the whole conception, sustained throughout in the pomp of ihe language, which seems, as it flows along, to re- ound with the clang of arms and the music of the revel. The coarseness and violence of the historic portra't are a little kept down ; but every word CLEOPATRA. 32T which Antony utters is characteristic of the arro- gant but magnanimous Roman, who " with half the bulk o' the world played as he pleased," and was himself the sport of a host of mad (and bad) pas- sions, and the slave of a woman. History is followed closely in all the details of the catastrophe, and there is something wonderfully grand in the hurried march of events towards the conclusion. As disasters hem her round, Cleopatra gathers up her faculties to meet them, not with the calm fortitude of a great soul, but the haughty, tameless spirit of a wilful woman, unused to reverse or contradiction. Her speech, after Antony has expired in her arms, I have always regarded as one of the moat wonderful in Shakspeare. Cleopatra is not a wo- man to grieve silently. The contrast between the violence of her passions and the weakness of her sex, between her regal grandeur and her excess of misery, her impetuous, unavailing struggles with the fearful destiny which has compassed her, and the mixture of wild impatience and pathos in her agony, are really magnificent She faints on the body of Antony, and is recalled to life by the cries of her women :-r- IRA8. Royai Egypt empress ! CLEOPATRA. Nc more, but e'en a woman ! * and commanded Clef patra replies to tie first word she hears on recoverir g ivtf rf No more on emprea, but a mere woman ! " S'28 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. By such poor passion as the maid that milks, And does the meanest chares. It were for nw To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods: To tell them that our world did equal theirs Till they had stolen our jewel. All's but naught. Patience is sottish, and impatience does Become a dog that's mad. Then is it sin To rush into the secret house of death Ero death dare come to us ? How do you, women ? What, what? good cheer! why how now, Charmima? My noble girls ! ah, women, women 1 look Our lamp is spent, is out. We'll bury him, and then what's brave, what's noble. Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, And make death proud to take us. But although Cleopatra talks of dying " after the high Roman fashion," she fears what she most de- sires, and cannot perform with simplicity what costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice, which was so strong a trait in her his- torical character, which led to the defeat of Ac- tium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve, till she had " tried conclusions infinite of easy ways to die," Shakspeare has rendered with the finest possible effect, and in a manner which heightens instead of diminishing our respect and interest Timid by nature, she is courageous by the mere force of will, and she lashes herself up with high-sounding words into a kind of false dar- ing. Her lively imagination suggests every incen- tive which can spur her on to the deed she hai resolved, yet trembles to contemplate. She pio tares to herself all the degradations which must CLEOPATRA. 329 Attend her captivity , and let it be observed, that those which she anticipates are precisely such as a vain, luxurious, and haughty woman would espec- ially dread, and which only true virtue and mag- nanimity could despise. Cleopatra could have endured the loss of freedom ; but to be led in tri- umph through the streets of Rome is insufferable. She could stoop to Caesar with dissembling courtesy, and meet duplicity with superior art ; but " to b chastised " by the scornful or upbraiding glance of the injured Octavia " rather a ditch in Egypt I" If knife, drugs, serpents, have Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe. Your wife, Octavia, with her modest eyes, And still conclusion,* shall acquire no honor Demurring upon me. Now Iras, what think'st thou ? fhon, an Egyptian puppet, shall be shown In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves, With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall Uplift us to the view. In their thick breaths, Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded, And forc'd to drink their vapor. IRAS. The gods forbid! CLJEOPATKA. Nay, 'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors Will catch at us like strumpets ; and scald rhymer* Ballad us out o' tune. The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us and present * '. . Mdate determination. JOHXIOB 310 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Onr Alexandrian revels. Antony Shall be brought drunken forth ; and I shall M Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness. She then calls for her diadem, her robes of state, %nd attires herself as if " again for Cydnus, to meet Mark Antony." Coquette to the last, she must make Death proud to take her, and die, "phoenix like," as she had lived, with all the pomp of preparation luxurious in her despair. The death of Lucretia, of Portia, of Arria, and others who died " after the high Roman fashion," is sublime according to the Pagan ideas of virtue, and yet none of them so powerfully affect the im- agination as the catastrophe of Cleopatra. The idea of this frail, timid, wayward woman, dying with heroism from the mere force of passion and will, takes us by surprise. The Attic elegance of her mind, her poetical imagination, the pride of beauty and royalty predominating to the last, and the sumptuous and picturesque accompaniment! with which she surrounds herself in death, carry to its extreme height that effect of contrast which prevails through her life and character. No arts, no invention could add to the real circumstance! of Cleopatra's closing scene. Shakspeare ha! ghown profound judgment and feeling in adhering closely to the classical authorities ; and to say tha* the language and sentiments worthily fill up the outline, is the most magnificent praise that can b given. The magical play of fancy and the ove* powering fascination of the character are kept up CLEOPATRA. 881 to ike last . and when Cleopatra, on applying th fcsp, silences the lamentations of her women : Peace! peace! Dost them not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse to sleep? These few words the contrast between the tender beauty of the image and the horror of the situa- tion produce an effect more intensely mournful than all the ranting in the world. The generous devotion of her women adds the moral charm which alone was wanting: and when Octavius hurries in too late to save his victim, and exclaims, when gazing on her She looks like sleep As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace, the image of her beauty and her irresistible arts, triumphant even in death, is at once brought before us, and one masterly and comprehensive stroke consummates this most wonderful, most daz- zling delineation. I am not here the apologist of Cleopatra's histor- ical character, nor of such women as resemble her: I am considering her merely as a dramatic portrait of astonishing beiuty, spirit, and originality. Sha h\s furnished the subject of two Latin, sixteen French, six English, and at least four Italian trag- edies ; * yet Shakspeare alone has availed himself * The Cleopatra of Jodelle was the first regular French tray ljr : the last French tragedy on the same subject was tho Cite 132 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. of all the interest of the story, without falsifying the character. He alone has dared to exhibit the Egyptian queen with all her greatness and all her littleness all her frailties of temper all her paltry arts and dissolute passions yet preserved the dramatic propriety and poetical coloring of the character, and awakened our pity for fallen gran- deur, without once beguiling us into sympathy with guilt and error. Corneille has represented Cleo- patra as a model of chaste propriety, magnanimity, constancy, and every female virtue ; and the effect is almost ludicrous. In our own language, we have two very fine tragedies on the story of Cleopatra : in that of Dryden, which is in truth a noble poem, and which he himself considered his masterpiece, Cleopatra is a mere commonplace " all-for-love " heroine, full of constancy and fine sentiments. For instance : My love's so true, That I can neither hide it where it is, Nor show it where it is not. Nature meant me A wife a silly, harmless, household dove, Fond without art, and kind without deceit. But fortune, that has made a mistress of mo, Has thrust me out to the wild world, unfurnished Of falsehood to be happy. patrt of Marmontel. For the representation of this tragedy Vaucanson, the celebrated French mechanist, invented an au- tomaton nsp, which crawled and biased to the life, to the gmt delight of the Parisians. But it appears that neither Vatican ton's asp, nor Clairon. could save C16opatre from a deserved fat*. Of the English tragedies, one was written by the Countess of Pembroke, the sister of Sir Philip Sydney; and is, I believe, th Irst instance in our language of original dramatic writing, by CLEOPATRA. 881 la this Antony's Cleopatra the Circe ol the Nile the "Venus of the Cydnus ? She never ottered any thig half so mawkish in her life. In Fletcher's " False One," Cleopatra is repre- sented at an earlier period of her history : and to give an idea of the aspect under which the charac- ter is exhibited, (and it does not vary throughout the play,) I shall give one scene ; if it be consid- ered out of place, its extreme beauty will form its best apology. Ptolemy and his council having exhibited to Csesar all the royal treasures in Egypt, he is so astonished and dazzled at the view of the accumu- lated wealth, that he forgets the presence of Cleo- patra, and treats her with negligence. The follow- ing scene between her and her sister Arsinoe occur* immediately afterwards. You're so impatient ! CLEOPATRA. Have I not cause? Women of common beauties and low births, When they are slighted, are allowed their angers- Why should not I, a princess, make him know The baseness of his usage ? ARSINOE. Yes, 'tis fit: put then again yon know what man CLEOPATRA. He's no mavf 134 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Fhe shadow of a greatness hangs upon him, And not the virtue ; he is no conqueror, Has suffered under the base dross of nature; Poorly deliver'd up his power to wealth. The god of bed-rid men taught his eyes treason Against the truth of love he has rais'd rebellion- Defied his holy flames. EROS. He will fall back again. And satisfy your grace. CLEOPATRA. Had I been old, Or blasted in my bud, he might have show'd Some shadow of dislike : but to prefer The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe, And the poor glow-worm light of some faint jewels Before the light of love, and soul of beauty how it vexes me ! He is no soldier: All honorable soldiers are Love's servants. He is a merchant, a mere wandering merchant, Servile to gain ; he trades for poor commodities, And makes his conquests thefts ! Some fortunate cap tains That quarter with him, and are truly valiant, Have flung th name of " Happy Caesar " on him; Himself ne'er won it. He's so base and covetous, He'll sell his sword for gold. ARSINOE. This is too bitter. CLEOPATRA. 0, 1 could curse myself, that was so foolish. Bo fondly childish, to believe his tongue His promising tongue ere I could catch his temper. CLEOPATRA. 388 f d trash enough to have cloyed his eyes withal, (His covetous eyes,) such as I scorn to tread on, Richer than e'er he saw yet, and more tempting; Had I known he'd stoop' d at that, I'd saved mine aoinar I had been happy still ! But let him take it. And let him brag how poorly I'm rewarded; Let him go conquer still weak wretched ladies ; Love has his angry quiver too, his deadly, And when he finds scorn, armed at the strongest I am a fool to fret thus for a fool, An old blind fool too ! I lose my health ; I will not, I will not cry ; I will not honor him With tears diviner than the gods he worships; [ will not take the pains to curse a poor thing. EROS. Do not ; you shall not need. CLEOPATRA. Would I Y ere prisoner Yo one I hate, that I might anger him I I will love any man to break the heart of himl Any that has the heart and will to kill him ! ARSUJOE. fake some fair truce. CLEOPATRA. I will go study mischief, And put a look on, arm'd with all my cunnings. Shall meet him like a basilisk, and strike him. Love! put destroying flame into mine eyes, Into my smiles deceits, that I may torture him That I may make him lov? to death, and laugh at him Enter APOLLODORUB. APOLLODORUS. C0sar commends his service to your grace 136 HISTORICAL CHARACTEI CLEOPATRA. His service ? What's his service ? EROS. Pray yon be patta* The noble Caesar loves still. CLEOPATRA. What's his wffl? AFOLLODORUS. He craves access unto your highness. CLEOPATRA. No; Bay no; I will have none to trouble me. Good sister I CLEOPATRA. None, I say. 1 will be private. Would thou hadst flung me into Nilus, keeper, When first thou gav'st consent to bring my body To this unthankful Caesar! APOLLODORU8. 'Twas your will, madam. Nay more, your charge upon me, as I honor'd you. You know what danger I endur'd. CLEOPATRA. Take this, (giving And carry it to that lordly Caesar sent thee; There's a new love, a handsome one, a rich one, One that w'Jl hug his mind: bid him make love to itt Tell the ambitious broker this will suffer Enter CLEOPATRA. 817 APOLLODORUS. He enters. CLEOPATRA. How! C2E8AR. I do not use to wait, lady Wbara I am, all the doors are free and open. CLEOPATRA. I guess so by your rudeness. C/ESAR. You're not angry? Things of your tender mould should be most gentle. Why should you frown? Good gods, what a set anger Have you forc'd into your face! Come, I must temper yon. What a coy smile was there, and a disdainful 1 How like an ominous flash it broke out from you ! Defend me, love ! Sweet, who has anger' d you ? CLEOPATR> Show him a glass ! That false face has betray'd me That base heart wrong'd me ! C/ESAR. Be more sweetly angry. I wrong'd yon, fair? CLEOPATRA. Away with your foul flatteries ; Thev are too gross ! But that I dare be angry, And with as great a god as Caesar is, To show how poorly I respect his neaory I would not speak to you. 12 138 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS C.fiSAR. Pray you, undo this riddle, And tell ine how I've vexed you. CLEOPATRA. Let me think first, Whether I may put on patience That will with honor suffer me. Know I hate yoa I Let that begin the story. Now I'll tell you. CAESAR. But do it mildly: in a noble lady, Softness of spirit, and a sober nature, That moves like summer winds, cool, vid blows ness, Shows blessed, like herself. CLEOPATRA. And that great blessedness. You first reap'd of me; till you taught my natnr% Like a rude storm, to talk aloud and thunder, Sleep was not gentler than my soul, and stiller. You had the spring of my affections, And my fair fruits I gave you leave to taste of; Y ou must expect the winter of mine anger. You flung me off before the court disgraced me When in the pride I appear'd of all my beauty Appear'd your mistress; took unto your eyes The common strumpet, love of hated lucre, Courted with covetous heart the slave of nature, Gave all your thoughts to gold, that men of glory, And minds adorued with noble love, would kick at ' Soldiers of royal mark scorn such base purchase; Beauty and honor are the marks they shoot at. I spake to you then, I courted you, and woo'd you, Called you dear Caesar, hung about you tenderly, Was proud to appear your friend CLEOPATRA. 889 CAESAR. You have mistaken me. CLEOPATRA. Bat neither eye, nor favor, not a smile Was I biessee of do!/ Octavia." Act T. wen* 2. 42 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. patra, Octavia is very properly kept in the back- ground, and far from any competition with her rival: the interest would otherwise have beet unpleasantly divided, or rather Cleopatra herself must have served but as a foil to the tender, vir- tuous, dignified, and generous Octavia, the very beau ideal of a noble Roman lady : Admired Octavia, whose beauty claims No worse a husband than the best of men; Whose virtues and whose general graces speak That which none else can utter. Dryden has committed a great mistake in bring- ing Octavia and her children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have thus violated the truth of history * might have been excusable, but to sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of Cleopatra : f he has presented us * Octavia was never in Egypt. t " The Octavia of Dryden is a much more important p*non- tge than in the Antony and Cleopatra of Shakspeare. She is, however, more cold and unamiable, for in the very short scenei In which the Octavia of Shakspeare is introduced, she is placed in rather an interesting point of view. But Dryden has himself Informed us that he was apprehensive that the justice of a wife'i c^dm would draw the audience to her side, and lessen theii Interest in the lover and the mistress. He seems accordingly t*. haw studiously lowered the character of the Injured Octavia who, In her conduct to her husband, shows much duty and little love." Sir W. Scott (in the same fine piece of criticiaa trcflxri to Dryden's All for Love) gives the preference to Shaks teare'g Cleopatra OCTAVIA. S43 with a regular scolding-match between the rivals, tn which they come sweeping up to each other from opposite sides of the stage, with their respec- tive trains, like two pea-hens in a passion. Shak- speare would no more have brought his captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol. The character of Octavia is merely indicated in a few touches, but every stroke tells. We see her with " downcast eyes sedate and sweet, and looks demure," with her modest tenderness and digni- fied submission the very antipodes of her rival Nor should we forget that she has furnished one of the most graceful similes in the whole compass of poetry, where her soft equanimity in the midst of grief is compared to The swan's down feather That stands upon the swell at flood of tide, And neither way inclines. The fear which seems to haunt the mind of Cleopatra, lest she should be " chastised by the sober eye" of Octavia, is exceedingly characteristic of the two women : it betrays the jealous pride of fcer, who was conscious that she had forfeited all real claim to respect ; and it places Octavia before ui 91 all the majesty of that virtue which could strike a 344 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. kind of envying and reniDrseful awe even into tha bosom of Cleopatra. What would she have thought and felt, had some soothsayer foretold to her the fate of her own children, whom she so tenderly loved ? Captives, and exposed to the rage of the Roman populace, they owed their existence to the generous, admirable Octavia, in whose mind there entered no particle of littleness. She received into her house the children of Antony and Cleo- patra, educated them with her own, treated them with truly maternal tenderness, and married them nobly. Lastly, to complete the contrast, the death of Octavia should be put in comparison with that of Cleopatra. After spending several years in dignified retire- ment, respected as the sister of Augustus, but more for her own virtues, Octavia lost her eldest son Marcellus, who was expressively called the " Hope of Rome." Her fortitude gave way under thii blow, and she fell into a deep melancholy, which gradually wasted her health. While she was thus declining into death, occurred that beautiful scene which has never yet, I believe, been made the subject of a picture, but should certainlv be added to my gallery, (if I had one,) and I would hang it opposite to the dying Cleopatra. Virgil was com- manded by Augustus to read aloud to his sister that book of the Eneid in which he had commemo- rated the virtues and early death of the yonnf llarrcllus. When he came to the lines VOLUMNIA. 845 1 flls youth, the blissful vision of a day, Shall just be shown on earth, then snatch' d away, &a foe mother covered her face, and burst into tears. But when Virgil mentioned her son by name, (" Tu Marcellus eris,") which he had artfully de- ferred till the concluding lines, Octavia, unable to control her agitation, fainted away. She afterwards, with a magnificent spirit, ordered the poet a gra- tuity of ten thousand sesterces for each line of the panegyric.* It is probable that the agitation she Buffered on this occasion hastened the effects of her disorder; for she died soon after, (of grief, says the historian,) having survived Antony about twenty years. 'tail' VOLUMNIA. OCTAVIA, however, is only a beautiful sketch, while in Volumnia, Shakspeare has given us the portrait of a Roman matron, conceived in the true antique spirit, and finished in every part Although Coriolanus is the hero of the play, yet much of the interest of the action and the final catastrophe turn upon the character of his mother, Volumnia, nd the power she exercised over his mind, by Irhich, according to the story, " she saved llonw In all. about two thousani riund*. P46 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. and lest her son." Her lofty patriotism, her patri cian haughtiness, her maternal pride, her eloquence, and her towering spirit, are exhibited with the utmost power of effect; yet the truth of female nature is beautifully preserved, and the portrait, with all its vigor, is without harshness. I shall begin by illustrating the relative position and feelings of the mother and son ; as these are of the greatest importance in the action of the drama, and consequently most prominent in the characters. Though Volumnia is a Roman matron, and though her country owes its salvation to her, it is clear that her maternal pride and affection are stronger even than her patriotism. Thus when her son is exiled, she burst into an imprecation against Rome and its citizens : Now the red pestilence strikes all trades in Rome, And occupations perish! Here we have the impulses of individual and feminine nature, overpowering all national and habitual influences. Volumnia would never have exclaimed like the Spartan mother, of her dead n, " Sparta has many others as brave as he ; ' bnt in a far different spirit she says to the Romans, Ere yov. go, hear this; As far aa doth the Capitol exceed The meanest nonse in Rome, so far my son, Whom you have banished, does exceed you all. In the very first scene, and before the intro- faction of the principal personages, one citizei VOLUMNIA. 344 beerves to another that the military exploits of Marcius were performed, not so much for hi country's sake " as to please his mother.** By th'ui admirable stroke of art, introduced with such sim- plicity of effect, our attention is aroused, and we are prepared in the very outset of the piece for the important part assigned *to Volumnia, and foi her share in producing the catastrophe. In the first act we have a .very graceful scene, in which the two Roman ladies, the wife and mother of Coriolanus, are discovered at their needle-work, conversing on his absence and danger, and are visited by Valeria : The noble sisters of Publicola, The moon of Rome ; chaste as the icicle, That's curded by the frost from purest snow, And hangs on Dian's tempJe! Over this little scene Shakspeare, without any display of learning, has breathed the very spirit of classical antiquity. The haughty temper of Volumnia, her admiration of the valor and high bearing of her son, and her proud but unselfish love for him. are finely contrasted with the modest sweetness, he conjugal tenderness, and the fond Bolicitude of his wife Virgilia. VOLUMNIA. When yet he was but tender-bodied, and the only son tf my womb; when youth with comeliness pluck' d aL faze his way; when, for a day of king's entreaties, i Vother should not sell him an hour from her beholding . considering how honor wool j become such a person ; 148 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. that it was no better than picture-like to hang l>y tbt wall, if renown made it not stir, was pleased to let bin seek danger where he was like to find fame. To a erne] war I sent him, from whence he returned, his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter 1 sprang not more in jjj at first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first see- ing he had proved himself a man. VIRGINIA. But had he died in the business, madam? how then? VOLCMNIA. Then his good report should have been my son ; I therein would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, and none less deaf khan thine and my good Marcius, I had rather eleven di nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit oat f action. Enter a GKNTLEWOMAS. Madam, the lady Valeria is come to visit you. V IRQ ILIA. Beseech you, give me leave to retire myself. VOLU1INIA. Indeed you shall not. Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum : See him pluck Aufidius down by the hair: As children from a bear, the Voices shunning him: Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus * Come on, you cowards ! you were got in fear, Though you were born in Kome." His bloody brow With his mail'd hand then wiping, forth he e;oei} Like to a harvest-man, that's task'd to mow Or all, or lose his hire. VIRGIUA. Hii bloody brow ! Jupiter, no blood 1 VOLUMNIA. 34* VOUJMNIA, Away, yon fool ! it more becomes a man Than gilt his trophy. The breast of Hecuba, When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier Than Hector's forehead, when it spit forth blood At Grecian swords contending. Tell Valeria We are fit to bid her welcome. [ExU (lem, VIEGILJA. Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius I VOLUMNIA. He'll beat Aufidius's head below his knee. And tread upon his neck. This distinction between the two females 19 as interesting and beautiful as it is well sustained. Thus when the victory of Coriolanus is proclaimed, Menenius asks, " Is he wounded ? " VIRGILIA. no, no, no ! VOLUMNIA. Yes, he is wounded I thank the gods for it ! And when he returns victorious from the wars, his high-spirited mother receives him with blessings and applause his gentle wife with " gracious silence " and with tears. The resemblance of temper in the mother and the son, modified as it is by the difference of sex, \nd by her greater age and experience, is exhibited with admirable truth. Volumnia, with all her pride &nd spirit, has some prudence and self-command fc tier language and deportnrent all is matured and 550 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. matronly. The dignified tone of authority she assumes towards her son, when checking his head- long impetuosity, her respect and admiration for his noble qualities, and her strong sympathy even with the feelings she combats, are all displayed in the scene in which she prevails on him to aootbi the incensed plebeians. VOLUMNIA. Pray be counselTd: I have a heart as little apt as yours, Bat yet a brain that leads my use of anger To better vantage. MENEN1U8. Well said, noble woman: Before he should thus stoop to the herd, but that The violent fit o' the time craves it as physio For the whole state, I would put mine armour no. Which I can scarcely bear. CORIOLAN08. What must I do? MENENIU8. Batum to the tribunes. OOEIOLAJUJS. WelL What then? what then? HENEHIUB Repent what you have spokr CORIOLANU8. For them ? I cannot do it to the god : Mmt I then do't to them? VOLUMNlA. 551 VOIUMNIA. You are too absolute) Fhough therein you can never be too noble, But when extremities speak. I pr'ythee now, my son, to them with this bonnet in thy hand ; And thus far having stretch'd it, (here be with ttaa > Thy knee bussing the stones, (for in such busiaew Action is eloquent, and the eyes of the ignorant More learned than the ears,) waving thy head, Which often, thus, correcting thy stout heart. Now humble, as the ripest mulberry, That will not hold the handling. Or, say to them, Thou art their soldier, and being bred in broils Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess, Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim, In asking their good loves ; but thou wilt frame Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far As thou hast power and person. MENENIUS. This but done, Even as she speaks, why all their hearts were youti For they have pardons, being asked, as free As words^o little purpose. VOLUMNlA. Pr'ythee now, Go, and be rul'd : although I know thou hadst rathei Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf Than flatter him in a bower. Only fair speech. coMnoua. T think 'twill serve, if he Can thereto frame his spirit. 352 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. VOLUMN1A He mtsT, vad will: Pi 'y thee, now say you will, and go about it. CORIOLANU8. Must I go show them my unbarb'd sconce ? Mart I With my base tongue give to my noble heart A lie, that it must bear? Well, I will do't; Yet were there but this single plot to lose, This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it, And throw it against the wind. To the market-plao* You have put me now to such a part, which never I shall discharge to the life. VOLUMNIA. [ pr'ythee now, sweet son, as thon hast said, My praises made thee first a soldier, so To have my praise for this, perform a part Thou hast not done before. CORIOLANT8. Well, I must do't: Away, my disposition, and possess me Borne harlot's spirit! ***** I will not do't: Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body's action, teach my mind A most inherent baseness. VOLUMNTA. At thy choice, then To beg of thee, it Is my more dishonor, 1 han thou of them. Come all to ruin : let Thy mother rather feel thy pride, than fear Thy dangerous stoutness: for I mock at death With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list VOLUMNI.JL. Sfl Thy yaliantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me- But owe thy pride thyself. CORIOLANCS, Pray be content; Mother, I am going to the market place Chide me no more. When the spirit of the mother and the son arc brought into immediate collision, he yields before her; the warrior who stemmed alone the whole city of Corioli, who was ready to face " the steep Tarpeian death, or at wild horses' heels, vagabond exile flaying," rather than abate one jot of his proud will shrinks at her rebuke. The haughty, fiery, overbearing temperament of Coriolanus, is drawn in such forcible and striking colors, that notlung can more impress us with the real grandem and power of Volumnia's character, than his bound- less submission to her will his more than filial tenderness and respect. Yon gods ! I prate. And the most noble mother of the world Leave nnsaluted. Sink my knee i' the earth Of thy deep duty more impression show Thau that of common sons ! When his mother appears before him as a rap> pliant, he exclaims, My mother bows ; As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod. 28 S54 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Here the expression of reverence, and the magtiif- icent image in which it is clothed, are equally characteristic both of the mother and the son. Her aristocratic haughtiness is a strong trait in Volumnia's manner and character, and her supreme contempt for the plebeians, whether they are to be defied or cajoled, is very like what I have heard expressed by some high-born and high-bred women of our own day. I muse my mother Does not approve me further, who was wont To call them woollen vassals; things created To buy and sell with groats ; to show bare heads In congregations; to yawn, be still, and wonder When one but of my ordinance stood up To speak of peace or war. And Volumnia reproaching the tribunes,- 'Twas you incensed the rabble Gate, that can judge as fitly of his worth, As I can of those mysteries which Heaven Will not have earth to know. There is all the Roman spirit in her exultation when the trumpets sound the return of Coriolanua. Hark ! the trumpets ! ttieee are the ushers of Marcius: before him He carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears. And in her speech to the gentle Virgilia, who if weeping her husband's banishment Leave this faint puling ! and lament as 1 do. In auger Juno-like ! VOI.UMXIA. 5A5 But the triumph of Volumnia's cliaiactei, the full display of all her grandeur of soul, her patriotism, her strong affections, and her sublime eloquence, are reserved for her last scene, in which she pleads for the safety of Rome, and wins from her angry eon that peace which all the swords of Italy and her confederate arms could not have purchased. The strict and even literal adherence to the truth of history is an additional beauty. Her famous speech, beginning " Should we be silent and not speak," is nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of expression, and the charm of metre superadded. I shall give the last lines of this address, as illustrating that noble and irresistible eloquence which was the crowning ornament of the character. One ex- quisite touch of nature, which is distinguished by italics, was beyond the rhetorician and historian, and belongs only to the poet. Speak to me, son; Thou hast affected the fine strains of honor, To imitate the graces of the gods; To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air, And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak? Think'st thou it honorable for a nobleman Still to remember wroiigs? Daughter, speak you: He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy; Perhaps thy childishness may move him more Than can our reasons. There is no man in the world More bound to his mother; yet here he l 164 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. less any qualities or personal accomplishment! which might have reconciled Constance to him as a husband. He was a man of diminutive stature and mean appearance, but of haughty and fero- cious manners, and unbounded ambition.* In a conference between this Earl of Chester and the Earl of Perche, in Lincoln cathedral, the latter taunted Randal with his insignificant person, and called him contemptuously ''Dwarf" " Sayst thon so ! " replied Randal ; " I vow to God and our lady, whose church this is, that ere long I will seem to thee high as that steeple ! " He was aa good as his word, when, on ascending the throne of Brittany, the Earl of Perche became his vassal. We cannot know what measures were used to force this degradation on the reluctant and high- spirited Constance ; it is only certain that she never considered her marriage in the light of a sacred ob- ligation, and that she took the first opportunity of legally breaking from a chain which could scarcely be considered as legally binding. For about a year she was obliged to allow this detested husband the title of Duke of Bretagne, and he administered the government without the slightest reference to her will, even in form, till 1189, when Henry II. died, execrating himself and his undutiful children. Whatever great and good qualities this monarch may have possessed, his conduct in Bretagne wai uniformly detestable. Even the unfilial behavioi if his sons may be extenuated ; for while he spent Tide Sii Peter Leicester's Antiquities of Cheater. CONSTANCE. 355 ftis Hfe, and sacrificed his peace, and violated overy principle of honor and humanity to compass their political aggrandizement, he was guilty of atrocious injustice towards them, and set them a bad exam- ple in his own person. The tidings of Henry's death had no sooner reached Bretagne than the barons of that country rose with one accord against his government, ban- ished or massacred his officers, and, sanctioned by the Duchess Constance, drove Randal de Blonde- ville and his followers from Bretagne ; he retired to his earldom of Chester, there to brood over his injuries, and meditate vengeance. In the mean time, Richard I. ascended the Eng- lish throne. Soon afterwards he embarked on his celebrated expedition to the Holy Land, having previously declared Prince Arthur, the only son of Constance, heir to all his dominions.* His absence, and that of many of her own tur- bulent barons and encroaching neighbors, left to Constance and her harassed dominions a short interval of profound peace. The historians of that period, occupied by the warlike exploits of the French and English kings in Palestine, make but little mention of the domestic events of Europe dur- ing their absence ; but it is no slight encomium on the character of Constance, that Bretagne flour- ished under her government, and began to recover from the effects of twenty years of desolating war. The seven years during which she ruled as aa * By the treat? ol Messina, 1190 3C6 HISTORICAL CHARACTKR8. independent sovereign, were not marked by any events of importance; but in the year 1196 ah caused her son Arthur, then nine years of age, tfl be acknowledged Duke of Bretagne by the States, and associated him with herself in all the acts of government There was more of maternal fondness than policy in this measure, and it cost her dear. Richard, that royal firebrand, had now returned to England : by the intrigues and representations of Earl Ran- dal, his attention was turned to Bretagne. He expressed extreme indignation that Constance should have proclaimed her son Duke of Bretagne, and her partner in power, without his consent, be being the feudal lord and natural guardian of the young prince. After some excuses and represent- ations on the part of Constance, he affected to be pacified, and a friendly interview was appointed at Pontorson, on the frontiers of Normandy. We can hardly reconcile the cruel and perfidious scenes which follow with those romantic and chiv- alrous associations which illustrate the memory of Coeur-de-Lion the friend of Blondel, and the an- tagonist of Saladin. Constance, perfectly unsus- picious of the meditated treason, accepted the invitation of her brother-in-law, and set out from fienncs with a small but magnificent retinue to join him at Pontorson. On the road, and within sight of the town, the Earl of Chester was posted with a troop of Richard's soldiery, and while the Duchesi prepared to enter the gates, where she expected U CONSTANCY. 36 J be received with honor and welcome, he suddenly rushed from his ambuscade, fell upon her and her uite, put the latter to flight, and carried off Con- itance to the strong Castle of St. Jaques de Beuv- ron, where he detained her a prisoner for eighteen months. The chronicle does not tell us how Ran- dal treated his unfortunate wife during this long imprisonment. She was absolutely in his power ; none of her own people were suffered to approach her, and whatever might have been his behavior towards her, one thing alone is certain, that so far from softening her feelings towards him, it seems to have added tenfold bitterness to her abhorrence and her scorn. The barons of Bretagne sent the Bishop of Rennes to complain of this violation of faith and justice, and to demand the restitution of the Duchess. Richard meanly evaded and tempor- ized : he engaged to restore Constance to liberty on certain conditions ; but this was merely to gain time. When the stipulated terms were complied with, and the hostages delivered, the Bretons sent a herald to the English king, to require him to fulfil his part of the treaty, and restore their be- loved Constance. Richard replied with insolent defiance, refused to deliver up either the hostages or Constance, and marched his army into the heart f the country. All that Bretagne had suffered previously was a* nothing compared to this terrible invasion ; and all Out the humane and peaceful government of Con- (68 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. stance had effected during seven years was at one* annihilated. The English barons and their savage and mercenary followers spread themselves through the country, which they wasted with fire and sword. The castles of those who ventured to de- fend themselves were razed to the ground ; the towns and villages plundered and burnt, and the wretched inhabitants fled to the caves and forests ; but not even there could they find an asylum ; by the orders, and in the presence of Richard, the woods were set on fire, and hundreds either per- ished in the flames, or were suffocated in the smoke. Constance, meanwhile, could only weep in her captivity over the miseries of her country, and tremble with all a mother's fears for the safety of her son. She had placed Arthur under the care of William Desroches, the seneschal of her palace, a man of mature age, of approved valor, and devot- edly attached to her family. This faithful servant threw himself, with his young charge, into the for- tress of Brest, where he for some time defied the power of the English king. But notwithstanding the brave resistance of the nobles and people of Bretagne, they were obliged to submit to the conditions imponed by Richard By a treaty concluded in 1198, of which the terms ara not exactly known, Constance was delivered from her captivity, though not from her husband but in the following year, when the death of Rich- fcrd had restored her to some degree of indepen* CONSTANCE. 369 lence, the first use she made of it was to divorce herself fiom Randal. She took this step with her usual precipitancy, not waiting for the sanction of the Pope, as was the custom in those days ; and soon afterwards she gave her hand to Guy, Count fe Thouars, a man of courage and integrity, who for some time maintained the cause of his wife and her son against the power of England. Arthur was now fourteen, and the legitimate heir of all the dominions of his uncle Richard. Constance placed him under the guardianship of the king of France, who knighted the young prince with his own hand, and solemnly swore to defend his rights against his usurping uncle John. It is at this moment that the play of King John opens ; and history is followed as closely as the dramatic form would allow, to the death of John. The real fate of poor Arthur, after he had been abandoned by the French, and had fallen into the hands of his uncle, is now ascertained ; but accord- ing to the chronicle from which Shakspeare drew his materials, he was killed in attempting to escape from the castle of Falaise. Constance did not live to witness this consummation of her calamities ; within a few months after Arthur was taken pris- ner, in 1201, she died suddenly, before she had Attained her thirty-ninth year ; but the cause of her death is not specified. Her eldest daughter Elinor, the legitimate heiress of England, Normandy, and Bretagne, died in captivity ; having been kept a prisoner in Bristol 24 170 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Castle from the age of fifteen. She w;i at that time so beautiful, that she was called proverbially M La belle Breton ne," and by the English the " Fair Maid of Brittany." She, like her brother Arthur, was sacrificed to the ambition of her uncles. Of the two daughters of Constance by Guy de Thouars, the eldest, Alice, became Duchess of Bretagne, and married the Count de Dreux, of the royal blood of France. The sovereignty of Bre- tagne was transmitted through her descendants in an uninterrupted line, till, by the marriage of the celebrated Anne de Bretagne with Charles VIIL of France, her dominions were forever united with the French monarchy. In considering the real history of Constance, three things must strike us as chiefly remarkable. First, that she is not accused of any vice, or any act of injustice or violence ; and this praise, though poor and negative, should have its due weight, con- sidering the scanty records that remain of her troubled life, and the period at which she lived a period in which crimes of the darkest dye were familiar occurrences. Her father, Conan, was con- sidered as a gentle and amiable prince " gentle even to feebleness ; " yet we are told that on one occasion he acted over again the tragedy of Ugo- !ino and Ruggiero, when he shut up the Count de Dol, with his two sons and his nephew, in a dungeon, and deliberately starved them to death ; an evenf Tecordid without any particular comment by the old chroniclers of Bretagne. It also appears that, CONSTANCE. 371 iuiing those intervals when Constance administered the government of her states with some degree of Independence, the country prospered under her way, and that she possessed at all times the love of her people and the respect of her nobles. Secondly, no imputation whatever has been cast on the honor of Constance as a wife and as a woman. The old historians, who have treated in a very un- ceremonious style the levities of her great-grand- mother Matilda, her grandmother Bertha, her god- mother Constance, and her mother-in-law Elinor^ treat the name and memory of our Lady Constance with uniform respect Her third marriage, with Guy de Thouars, has been censured as impolitic, but has also been de- fended ; it can hardly, considering her age, and the circumstances in which she was placed, be a just subject of reproach. During her hated union with Randal de Blondeville, and the years passed m a species of widowhood, she conducted herself with propriety : at least I can find no reason to judge otherwise. Lastly, we are struck by the fearless, determined spirit, amounting at times to rashness, which (3on- itance displayed on several occasions, when left to toe free exercise of her own power and will ; yet we see how frequently, with all this resolution and pride of temper, she became a mere instrument in Jie hands of others, and a victim to the superior iraft or power of her enemies. The inference ifl unavoidable ; there must have existed in the mind 572 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. >f Constance, with all her noble and amiable qua! ties, a deficiency somewhere, a want of firmness, a want of judgment or wariness, and a total want of self-control. ***** In the play of King John, the three principal characters are the King, Falconbridge, and Lady Constance. The first is drawn forcibly and accu- rately from history : it reminds us of Titian's por- trait of Caesar Borgia, in which the hatefulness of the subject is redeemed by the masterly skill of the artist, the truth, and power, and wonderful beauty of the execution. Falconbridge is the spirited creation of the poet. * Constance is certainly an historical personage ; but the form which, when we meet it on the record of history, appears like a pale indistinct shadow, half melted into its obscuro background, starts before us into a strange relief and palpable breathing reality upon the page of Shakspeare. Whenever we think of Constance, it is in her maternal character. All the interest which she excites in the drama turns upon her situation as the mother of Arthur. Every circumstance in Malone says, that " in expanding the character of the bM> terd, Shakspeare scorns to hare proceeded on the following slight feint in an old play on the story of King John : Next them a bastard of the king's deceased A hardy wild-head, rough and venturous." It to easy to say this ; yet who but Shakspeare could hm wn^d the lasi line into a Falconkridge? CONSTANCE. 373 Which she is placed, every sentiment she utters, has ft reference to him , and she is represented through the whole of the scenes in which she is engaged, aa alternately pleading for the rights, and trembling for the existence of her son. The same may be said of the Merope. In the four tragedies of which her story forms the subject,* we see her but in one point of view, namely, as a mere impersonation of the maternal feeling. The poetry of the situation is every thing, the character nothing. Interesting as she is, take Merope out of the circumstances in which she is placed, take away her son, for whom she trembles from the first scene to the last, and Merope in herself is nothing ; she melts away into a name, to which we can fix no other characteristic by which to distinguish her. We recognize her no longer. Her position is that of an agonized mother ; and we can no more fancy her under a different aspect, than we can imagine the statue of Niobe in a different attitude. But while we contemplate the character of Con- etance, she assumes before us an individuality per- fectly distinct from the circumstances around her. The action calls forth her maternal feelings, and places them in the most prominent point of view : but with Constance, as with a real human being, * The Greek Merope, which was esteemed one of the finest ol the tragedies of Euripides, is unhappily lost; those of Maffei, Al- ter!, and Voltaire, are well known. There is another Merope in Italian, which I hart not seen : the English Merope is merely w ad translation from Voltaire S74 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Ihe maternal affections are a powerful instinct, mod- ified by other faculties, sentiments, and impulse*, making up the individual character. We think of her as a mother, because, as a mother distracted tor the loss of her son, she is immediately presented before us, and calls forth our sympathy and our tears ; but we infer the rest of her character fiom what we see, as certainly and as completely as ii we had known her whole course of life. That which strikes us as the principal attribute of Constance is power power of imagination, of will, of passion, of affection, of pride : the moral energy, that faculty which is princ-ipally exercised in self-control, and gives consistency to the rest, is deficient ; or rather, to speak more correctly, the extraordinary development of sensibility and imag- ination, which lends to the character its rich poetical coloring, leaves the other qualities comparatively subordinate. Hence it is that the whole complexion of the character, notwithstanding its amazing gran- deur, is so exquisitely feminine. The weakness of the woman, who by the very consciousness of that weakness is worked up to desperation and defiance, the fluctuations of temper and the bursts of sublime passion, the terrors, the impatience, and the tears, re all most true to feminine nature. The energy of Constance not being based upon strength of character, rises and falls with the tide vf passion Her haughty spirit swells against resistance, and it ixcited into frenzy by sorrow and disappointnu-nt hile neither from her towering pride, nor hei CONSTANCE 87ft itveugth of intellect, can she borrow patience to lubmit, or fortitude to endure. It is, therefore, with perfect truth of nature, that Constance is first intro- duced as pleading for peace. Stay for an answer to your embassy, Lest unadvised you stain your swords with blood: My Lord Chatillon may from England bring That right in peace, which here we urge in ww; And then we shall repent each drop of blood, That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed. And that the same woman, when all her passion* are roused by the sense of injury, should afterwards exclaim, War, war! No peace! peace is to me a war! That she should be ambitious for her son, proud of his high birth and royal rights, and violent in de- fending them, is most natural ; but I cannot agree with those who think that in the mind of Constance, ambition that is, the love of dominion for its own sake is either a strong motive or a strong feeling : it could hardly be so where the natural impulses and the ideal power predominate in so high a degree. The vehemence with which she asserts the just and legal rights of her son is that of a fond mother and a proud-spirited woman, stung with the tense of injury, and herself a reigning sovereign, by birth and right, if not in fact : yet when be- reaved of her son, gref not only " fills the room up ?f her absent child," but seems to absorb every ther faculty and feeling even pride and angor 176 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. It id true that she exults over him as one whom nature and fortune had destined to be great, but in her distraction for his loss, she thinks of him only as her " Pretty Arthur." lord ! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son ! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure I No other feeling can be traced through the whole of her frantic scene : it is grief only, a mother*! heart-rending, soul-absorbing grief, and nothing else. Not even indignation, or the desire of re- venge, interfere with its soleness and intensity An ambitious woman would hardly have thus ad- dressed the cold, wily Cardinal : And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say, That we shall see and know our friends in heaveu . If that be true, I shall see my boy again : Fo r since the birth of Cain, "he first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek, And he will look as hollow as a ghost; As dim and merge as an ague's fit; And so he'll die; and rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven 1 shall not know him : therefore never, never. Must I behold my pretty Arthur more^ The bewildered pathos and poetry of this addreai eou.d be natural in r o woman, who did not unitd like Constance, the most passionate sensibility with t&e most vivid imagination. COX8TANCE. 371 It is true that Queen Elinor calls her on one oc- casion, " ambitious Constance ; " but the epithet is father the natural expression of Elinor's own fear and hatred than really applicable.* Elinor, in whom age had subdued all passions but ambition, dreaded the mother of Arthur as her rival m power, and for that reason only opposed the claims of the son : but I conceive, that in a woman yet in the prime of life, and endued with the peculiar disposition of Constance, the mere love of power would be too much modified by fancy and feeling to be called a passion. In fact, it is not pride, nor temper, nor ambition, nor even maternal affection, which in Constance gives the prevailing tone to the whole character ' it is the predominance of imagination. I do net mean in the conception of the dramatic portrait, but in the temperament of the woman herself. In the poetical, fanciful, excitable cast of her mind, in the excess of the ideal power, tinging all her affec- tions, exalting all her sentiments and thoughts, and animating the expression of both, Constance can only be compared to Juliet. In the first place, it is through the power of imagination that when under the influence of excited temper, Constance is not a mere incensed woman ; nor does she, in the style of Volumnia, * " Queen Elinor saw that if he were king, how his motbei Constance wouid look to bear the most rule in the realm of Eng u I. till her son should corns of a lawful age to gcrern of him tf " IIOLLNSHED. i78 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. * lament in anger, Juno-like," but rather like a ribyl in a fury. Her sarcasms come down like thunderbolts. In her famous address to Austria Lymoges! Austria! thou dost shame That bloody spoil! thou slave! thou wretch! them coward! &c. it is as if she had concentrated the burning spirit of scorn, and dashed it in his face : every word teems to blister where it falls. In the scolding scene between her and Queen Elinor, the laconic insolence of the latter is completely overborne by the torrent of bitter contumely which bursts from the lips of Constance, clothed in the most energetic, and often in the most figurative expressions. ELINOR. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France? CONSTANCE. Let me make answer; Thy usurping son. ELINOR. Out insolent ! thy bastard shall be king, That thou may'st be a queen, and check the CONSTANCE. My bed was ever to thy son as true, As thine was to thy husband; and this boy Liker in feature to his father Geffrey, Than thou and John in manners: being as llkt As rain to water, or devil to his dam. If y boy a bastard ! By my soul, I think CONST ANCK. 571 His father never was so true b>>got; It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother. ELINOR. There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father. CONSTANCE. There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thta ELINOR. Come to thy grandam, child. CONSTANCE. Do child ; go to its grandam, child : Give grandam kingdom, and its grandam will Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig : There's a good grandam. ARTHUR. Good my mother, peace ! I would that I were low la.d in my grave; I am not worth this coil that's made for ma KLINOK. Hi* mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps. CONSTANCE. Mow shan.3 upon you, whe'r she does or no ! His graiidam's wrongs, and not his mother's shame, Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyi Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee: Ay, with these crystal beads heav'n shall be tribe4 To do him justice, and revenge on you. 180 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. KLtNOR. fhon monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth I CONSTANCE. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth! Call me not slanderer; thou and thine usurp The dominations, royalties, and rights Of this oppressed boy. This is thy eldest on' MB Infortunate in nothing but in thee. ***** ELINOR. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce A will that bars the title of thy son. CONSTANCE. Ay, who doubts that? A will! a wicked will A woman's will a canker'd grandam's will I KINO 1MUI.1I'. Peace, lady: pause, or be more moderate. And in a very opposite mood, when struggling with the consciousness of her own helpless situ* lion, the same susceptible and excitable fancy ntill predominates : Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me ; For I am sick, and capable of fears; Oppressed with wrongs, and therefore full of fean . A widow, husbandless, subject to fears ; A woman, naturally born to fears ; And though thou now confess thou didst but jeat With my vexed spirits, I cannot take a truce, But they will quake and tremble all this day. CONSTANCE. 38! WTiat dost thou mean by shaking of thy head ? Why dost thou look so sadly on my son ? What means that hand upon that breast of thiod? Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum, Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds ? lie these sad signs confirmers of thy words ? * * * * * Fellow, begone ! I cannot brook thy sight This uews hath made thee a most ugly man ! It is the power of imagination which gives so peculiar a tinge to the maternal tenderness of Con- stance ; she not only loves her son with the fond instinct of a mother's affection, but she loves him with her poetical imagination, exults in his beauty and his royal birth, hangs over him with idolatry, and sees his infant brow already encircled with the diadem. Her proud spirit, her ardent enthusiastic fancy, and her energetic self-will, all combine with her maternal love to give it that tone and character which belongs to her only : hence that most beauti- ful address to her son, which coming from the lips of Constance, is as full of nature and truth a* of pathos and poetry, and which we could hardly lyuapathize with in any other : ARTHUR. I do beseech you, madam, be content. CONSTANCE. If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim, Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb, Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious. 182 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS Patched with ford moles and eye-offending mark*, I would not care I then would be content; For then I should not love thee ; no, nor thou Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown. But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy ! Nature and Fortune jouTd to make thee great: Of Nature's gifts thou mayest with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose : bnt Fortune, ! She is corrupted, chang'd, and won from thee; She adulterates hourly with thine uncle John; And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on France To tread down fair respect of sovereignty. It is this exceeding vivacity of imagination which in the end turns sorrow to frenzy. Constance is not only a bereaved and doating mother, but a generous woman, betrayed by her own rash confi- dence ; in whose mind the sense of injury mingling with the sense of grief, and her impetuous temper conflicting with her pride, combine to overset her reason ; yet she is not mad : and how admirably, how forcibly she herself draws the distinction be- tween the frantic violence of uncontrolled feeling and actual madness ! Thou art not holy to belie me so ; I am not mad : this hair I tear is mine ; My name is Constance; I was Geffrey's wifej Young Arthur is mj son, and he is lost : I am not mad; I would to Heaven I were! For then, 'tis like I should forget myself: 0, if I could, what grief should I forget! Not only ha? Constance words at will, and fa* CONSTANCE. 381 u the passionate feelings rise in her mind they are poured forth with vivid, overpowering eloquence ; but, like Juliet, she may be said to speak in pio tures. For instance : Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum? Like a proud river peering o'er its bounds. And throughout the whole dialogue there is th game overflow of eloquence, the same splendor of diction, the same luxuriance of imagery ; yet with an added grandeur, arising from habits of com- mand, from the age, the rank, and the matronly character of Constance. Thus Juliet pours forth her love like a muse in a rapture : Constance ravea in her sorrow like a Pythoness possessed with the spirit of pain. The love of Juliet is deep and in- finite as the boundless sea : and the grief of Con- stance is so great, that nothing but the round world itself is able to sustain it. I will instruct my sorrows to be proud; For grief is proud and makes his owner stoat. To me, and to the state of my great grief Let kings assemble, for my grief's so great, That no supporter but the huge firm earth Can hold it up. Here I and Sorrow sit; Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it ! An image more majestic, more wonderfully sub* lime, was never presented to the fancy ; yet almost qual as a flight of poetry is her apostrophe to th heavens ; 184 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS Arm, arm, ye heavens, against these perjured kinjp, A widow calls ! be husband to me, heavens ! And again O that my tongue were hi the thunder's mouth, Then with a passion would I shake the world ! Not only do her thoughts start into images, but bet feelings become persons : grief haunts her aa a living presence : Grief fills the room up of my absent child ; Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then have I reason to be fond of grief. And death is welcomed as a bridegroom ; she sees the visionary monster as Juliet saw " the bloody Tybalt festering in his shroud," and hear* one ghastly image upon another with all the wild luxuriance of a distempered fancy : amiable, lovely death ! Thou odoriferous stench ! sound rottenness ! Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, Thou hate and terror to prosperity, And 1 will kiss thy detestable bones; And put my eye-balls in thy vaulty brows ; And ring these fingers with thy household worms 4 And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dut; And be a carrion monster like thyself: COS8TAJSCE. 385 Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil'st, And buss thee as thy wife! Misery's love, come to me ! Constance, who is a majestic being, is majestic in her very frenzy. Maje.ty is also the characteristics of Hermione : but what a difference between her gilent, lofty, uncomplaining despair, and the elo- quent grief of Constance, whose wild lamentations, which come bursting forth clothed in the grandest, the most poetical imagery, not only melt, but abso- lutely electrify us I On the whole, it may be said that pride and ma- ternal affection form the basis of the character of Constance, as it is exhibited to us ; but that these passions, in an equal degree common to many human beings, assume their peculiar and individual tinge from an extraordinary development of intel- lect and fancy. It is the energy of passion which lends the character its concentrated power, as it is the prevalence of imagination throughout which dilates it into magnificence. Some of the most splendid poetry to be met with in Shakspeare, may be found in the parts of Juliet and Constance ; the most splendid, perhaps, excepting only the parts of Lear and Othello ; and for the same reason, that Lear and Othello as men, and Juliet and Constance as women, are dis- tinguished by the predominance of the same facul- ties, passion and imagination The sole deviation from history which may be considered as essentially interfemg with the truth 36 186 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. of tbe situation, is the entire omission of the char- acter of Guy de Thouars, so that Constance it incorrectly represented as in a state of widowhoud, at a period when, in point of fact, she was married. It may be observed, that her marriage took place just at the period of the opening of the drama that Guy de Thouars played no conspicuous part in the affairs of Bretagne till after the death of Constance, and that the mere presence of this per- sonage, altogether superfluous in the action, would have completely destroyed the dramatic interest of the situation ; and what a situation I One more magnificent was never placed before the mind's eye than that of Constance, when, deserted and betrayed, she stands alone in her despair, amid her false friends and her ruthless enemies!* The image of the mother-eagle, wounded and bleeding to death, yet stretched over her young in an atti- tude of defiance, while all the baser birds of prey are clamoring around her eyry, gives but a faint idea of the moral sublimity of this scene. Con- sidered merely as a poetical or dramatic picture, the grouping is wonderfully fine ; on one side, the vulture ambition of that mean-souled tyrant, John ; on the other, the selfish, calculating policy of Philip : between them, balancing their passions in his hand, the cold, subtle, heartless Legate : the fiery, reckless Falcon bridge ; the princely Louis; the still unconquered spirit of that wrangling ^ueen, old Elinor ; the bridal loveliness and mod * King John, Act 111. Seen* 1. QLF.KX ELINOR. 387 psty of Blanche ; the boyish grace and innocenc* >f young Arthur ; and Constance in the midst of Ihem, in all the state of her great grief, a grand .mpersonation of pride and passion, helpless at once and desperate, form an assemblage of fig- ures, each perfect in its kind, and, taken all to- gether, not surpassed for the variety, force, and iplendor of the dramatic and picturesque effect. QUEEN ELINOR. Elinor of Guienne, and Blanche of Castile, who form part of the group around Constance, are sketches merely, but they are strictly historical portraits, and full of truth and spirit At the period when Shakspeare has brought tfieee three women on the scene together, Elinor of Guienne (the daughter of the last Duke of Guienne and Aquitaine, and like Constance, the heiresa of a sovereign duchy) was near the close of her long, various, and unquiet life she was nearly seventy : and, as in early youth, her violent passions had overborne both principle and policy, go in her old age we see the same character, only modified by time ; her strong intellect and love of Dower, unbridlec 1 by conscience or principle, sur riving when otner passions were extinguished, 188 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. and rendered more dangerous by a degree of subtlety and self-command to which her youth had been a stranger. Her personal and avowed hatied for Constance, together with its motives, are men- tioned by the old historians. Holinshed expressly BS.ys, that Queen Elinor was mightily set against her grandson Arthur, rather moved thereto by envy conceived against his mother, than by any fault of the young prince, for that she knew and dreaded the high spirit of the Lady Constance. Shakspeare has rendered this with equal spirit Rod fidelity. QUEEN ELINOR. What iiow, my son ! have I not ever said, How that ambitious Constance would not cease, Till she had kindled France and all the world Upon the right and party of her son ? This might have been prevented and made whol With very easy arguments of love ; Which now the manage of two kingdoms must With fearful bloody issue arbitrate. KING JOHN. Our strong possession and our right for us ! QUEEN ELINOR. Your strong possession much more than your right Or else it must go wrong with you and me. So much my conscience whispers in your ear Which none but Heaven, and you, and I shall hear. Queen Elinor preserved to the end of her lift ftor influence over her children, and appears to merited their respect While intrusted witk BLANCHE. 389 fce government, during the absence of RLhard 1., ihe ruled with a steady hand, and made herself exceedingly popular ; and as long as she lived to direct the counsels of her son John, his affairs prospered. For that intemperate jealousy which converted her into a domestic firebrand, there was at least much cause, though little excuse. Elinor had hated and wronged the husband of her youth,* and she had afterwards to endure the negligence and innumerable infidelities of the husband whom she passionately loved : f " and so the whirligig of time brought in his revenges." Elinor died in 1203, a few months after Constance, and before the murder of Arthur a crime which, had she lived, would probably never have been consummated; for the nature of Elinor, though violent, had no tincture of the baseness and cruelty of her son. BLANCHE. BLANCHE of Castile was the daughter of Al- phonso IX. of Castile, and the grand-daughter of * Louis VII. of Franc*, whom she was accustomed to call, IK ton tempt, the monk. Elinor's adventures in Syria, whither sh tccompanied Louis on the second Crusade, would form romance. t Henry n. of England It is scarcely necessary to obsera %at the story of Fair Rosamond, as far as Elinor is concerned. a mere inventi >n of some ballad-maker >f later time* 190 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Elinor. At the time that she is introduced intt the drama, she was about fifteen, and her marriage with Louis VIIL, then Dauphin, took place in th abrupt manner here represented. It is not oftet that political marriages have the same happy result. We are told by the historians of that time, that from the moment Louis and Blanche met, they were inspired by a mutual passion, and that during a union of more than twenty-six years they were never known to differ, nor even spent more than a single day asunder * In her exceeding beauty and blameless reputa- tion ; her love for her husband, and strong domes- tic affections ; her pride of birth and rank ; her feminine gentleness of deportment ; her firmness of temper ; her religious bigotry ; her love of abso- lute power, and her upright and conscientious administration of it, Blanche greatly resembled Maria Theresa of Austria. She was, however, of a more cold and calculating nature ; and in pro- portion as she was less amiable as a woman, did he rule more happily for herself and others. There cannot be a greater contrast than between the acute understanding, the steady temper, and the cool intriguing policy of Blanche, by which he succeeded in disuniting and defeating the powers arrayed against her and her infant son, and the rash confiding temper and susceptible im- agination of Constance, which rendered herself LADY PERCY. 391 imil flfer son easy victims to the fraud or ambition of others. Blanche, during forty years, held in hei bands the destinies of the greater part of Europe, and is one of the most celebrated names recorded in history but in what does she survive to us ex- cept in a name ? Nor history, nor fame, though M trumpet-tongued," could do for her what Shak- peare and poetry have done for Constance. The earthly reign of Blanche is over, her sceptre broken, and her power departed. When will the reign of Constance cease ? when will her power depart ? Not while this world is a world, and there exists in it human souls to kindle at the touch of genius, and human hearts to throb with human sympathies ! ***** There is no female character of any interest in the play of Richard II. The Queen (Isabelle of France) enacts the same passive part in the drama that she does in history. The same remark applies to Henry IV. In this admirable play there is no female character of any importance ; but Lady Percy, the wife of Hotspur, is a very lively and beautiful sketch: she ii prightly, feminine, and fond; but without any thing energetic or profound, in mind or in feeling. Her gayety and spirit in the first scenes, are the result of youth and happiness, and nothing can be more natural than the utter dejection and broken- ness of heart which follow her husband's death: ihe is no heroine for war or tragedy ; she has n 192 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. thought of revenging her loss ; and even ner grief has something soft and quiet in its pathos. Hei ipeech to her father-in-law, Northumberland, in which she entreats him " not to go to the wars, and at the same time pronounces the most beauti- iui eulogium on her heroic husband, is a perfect piece of feminine eloquence, both in the feeling and in the expression. Almost every one knows by heart Lady Percy*! telebrated address to her husband, beginning, 0, my good lord, why are you thus alone ? End that of Portia to Brutus, in Julius Caesar, You've ungently, Brutus, Stol'n from my bed. The situation is exactly similar, the topics of remonstrance are nearly the same ; the sentiments and the style as opposite as are the characters of the two women. Lady Percy is evidently accus- tomed to win more from her fiery lord by caressei than by reason : he loves her in his rough way, " as Harry Percy's wife," but she has no real infl* ence over him : he has no confidence in her. LADY PERCY. In faith, I'll know your business, Harry that I will, I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir About this title, and hath sent for yon To line his enterprise, but if you PORTIA. 399 HOT8VUR. So far afootj i shall be weary, love ! Flic whole scene is admirable, but unnecessary bere, because it illustrates no point of character in her. Lady Percy has no character, properly so called ; whereas, that of Portia is very distinctly and faithfully drawn from the outline furnished by Plutarch. Lady Percy's fond upbraidings, and her half playful, half pouting entreaties, scarcely gain her husband's attention. Portia, with true matronly dignity and tenderness, pleads her right to share her husband's thoughts, and proves it too I grant I am a woman, but withal, A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife , I grant I am a woman, but withal, A woman well reputed Cato's daughter. Think you, I am no stronger than my sex Being so father' d and so husbanded'? * * * * BRUTUS. You are my true and honorable wife; As dear to me, as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart 1 Portia, as Shakspeare has truly felt and repre. pented the character, is but a softened reflection of that of her husband Bratus: in him we see an xcess of natural sensibility, an almost wcmanisb tenderness of heart, repressed by the tenets of hii austere philosophy: a stoic by profession, and in eaiity the reverse acting deeds against his natur 9?4 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. by the strong force of principle and will. In Portia there is the same profound and passionate feeling, and all her sex's softness and timidity, held in check by that self-discipline, that stately dignity, which she thought became a woman " so fathered and so husbanded." The fact of her inflicting OK herself a voluntary wound to try her own fortitude, Id perhaps the strongest proof of this disposition. Plutarch relates, that on the day on which Caesar was assassinated, Portia appeared overcome with terror, and even swooned away, but did not in her emotion utter a word which could affect the con- ipirators. Shakspeare has rendered this circum- itance literally. PORTIA. I pr'ythee, boy, ran to the senate house, Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone. Why dost thou stay ? LUCIUS. To know my errand, madam. PORTIA. I would have had thee there and here again, Ere I can tell thee what thou should'st do there. constancy! be strong upon my side: Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tonga* I 1 have a man's mind, but a woman's might. ... Ah me ! how weak a thing The heart of woman is 1 01 grow faint, &o. There is another beautiful incident related by Plutarch, which could not well be dramatized When Brutus and Portia parted for the last tinw PORTIA. 395 m the island of Nisida, she restrained all expression of grief that she might not shake his fortitude ; but afterwards, in passing through a chamber in which there hung a picture of Hector and Andromache, she stopped, gazed upon it for a time with a settled sorrow, and at length burst into a passion of tears.* If Portia had been a Christian, and lived in later times, she might have been another Lady Russel ; but she made a poor stoic. No factitious or exter- nal control was sufficient to restrain such an exu- berance of sensibility and fancy : and those who praise the philosophy of Portia and the heroism of her death, certainly mistook the character alto- gether. It is evident, from the manner of her death, that it was not deliberate self-destruction, " after the high Roman fashion," but took place in a paroxysm of madness, caused by overwrought und suppressed feeling, grief, terror, and suspense. Shakspeare has thus represented it : BRUTUS. Cassias ! I am sick of many griefs ! CASSIU8. Of your philosophy you make no use, If you give place to accidental evils. * When at Naples, I have often stood upon the rock at the z* ,reme point of Posilippo, and looked down upon the lit'Je Island f Nisida, and thought of this scene till I forgot the Lamrett* irhich now deforms it : deforms it. however, to the fancy only tor the building itself, as it rises from amid the Tines, the :y pre* and fig-trees which embosom it, looks beautiful at a 196 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. BRUTUS. K: man bears sorrow better; Poftia's Hal Portia? BBUTUB. She is dead. CA88IU8. How 'scap'd I killing when I cross'd you to\ insupportable and touching oss Upon what sickness? BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antonj Had made themselves so strong (for with her death These tidings came) with this the fell dittract, And, her attendants absent, swallowed fire. So much for woman's philosophy I MARGARET OF ANJOU. MALONE has written an essay, to prove froa external and internal evidence, that the three parts of King Henry VI. were not originally writ- ton by Shakspeare, but altered by him from two pld plays,* with considerable improvements and viditions of his own. Burke, Person, Dr. Warbur- * " The contention of the two Houses of York and Lancaster,' ta two parts, supposed by Maloue to hav been written abo MARGARET OF ANJOtJ. 39 1 km, and Dr. Farmer, pronounced this piece of tritioism convincing and unanswerable ; but Dr. Johnson and Steevens would not be convinced, and, moreover, have contrived to answer the un- answerable. " Who shall decide when doctors dis- agree ? " The only arbiter in such a case is one's own individual taste and judgment. To me it ap- pears that the three parts of Henry VI. have less of poetry and passion, and more of unnecessary verbosity and inflated language, than the rest of Shakspeare's works ; that the continual exhibition of treachery, bloodshed, and violence, is revolting, and the want of unity of action, and of a pervading interest, oppressive and fatiguing; but also that there are splendid passages in the Second and Third Parts, such as Shakspeare alone could have written : and this is not denied by the most skep- tical. * * I abstain from making any remarks on the character of Joan of Arc, as delineated in the First part of Henry VI.; first, be- cause I do not in my conscience attribute it to Shakspeare, and secondly, because in representing her according to the vulgar English traditions, as half sorceress, half enthusiast, and in the end, corrupted by pleasure and ambition, the truth of history, and the truth of nature, justice, and common sense, are equally Tiolated. Schiller has treated the character nobly : but in mak- ing Joan the slave of passion, and the victim of love, instead of the victim of patriotism, has committed, I think, a serious error In judgment and feeling; and I cannot sympathize with Madam* ie Stael's defence of him on this particular point. There was nr- tccasion for this deviation from the truth of things, and from Jie dignity and spotless purity of the character. ThU younj ,athu8iast, with her religious reveries, her simplicity, her hero- am, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfect!) 198 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Among the arguments against the authenticity of these plays, the character of Margaret of Anjoa has not been adduced, and yet to those who have gtudied Shakspeare in his own spirit, it will appear the most conclusive of all. When we compare her with his other female characters, we are struck at once by the want of family likeness ; Shakspear* was not always equal, but he had not two manners, as they say of painters. I discern his hand in par- ticular parts, but I cannot recognize his spirit IP the conception of the whole : he may h'ave laid on some of the colors, but the original design has a certain hardness and heaviness, very unlike his usual style. Margaret of Anjou, as exhibited in these tragedies, is a dramatic portrait of consider- able truth, and vigor, and consistency but she is not one of Shakspeare's women. He who knew so well in what true greatness of spirit consisted who could excite our respect and sympathy even for a Lady Macbeth, would never have given us a heroine without a touch of heroism ; he would not have portrayed a high-hearted woman, struggling unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of for- tune, meeting reverses and disasters, such as would feminine bearing In all her exploits, (for though the so often totf the van of battle unshrinking, while death was all around her, ihe nerer struck a blow, nor stained her consecrated sword with brad, another point in which Schiller has wronged her,) th'J heroine and martyr, over whose last momenta we shed burning (ears of pity and indignation, remains yet to be treated an Imuatin character, and I know but one person capable of doing MARGARET OF ANJOXT, 395 cave broken the most masculine spirit, with un shaken constancy, yet left her without a aingU personal quality which would excite our interest in her bravely-endured misfortunes; and this too in the very face of history. He would not have given us, in lieu of the magnanimous queen, the subtle and accomplished French woman, a mere " Ama- zonian trull," with every coarser feature of deprav- ity and ferocity; he would have redeemed her from unuaingled detestation ; he would have breathed into her some of his own sweet spirit he would have given the woman a soul. The old chronicler Hall informs us, that Queen Margaret "excelled all other as well in beauty and favor, as in wit and policy, and was in stomach and courage more like to a man than to a woman." He adds, that after the espousals of Henry and Mar- garet, " the king's friends fell from him ; the lords of the realm fell in division among themselves ; the Commons rebelled against their natural prince; fields were foughten ; many thousands slain ; and, finally, the king was deposed, and his son slain, and his queen sent home again with as much misery and sorrow as she was received with pomp and triumph." This passage seems to have furnished the ground- work of the character as it is developed in these plays with no great depth or skill. Margaret ia nortrayed with all the exterio' 1 graces of her sex ; is bold and artful, with spirit to dare, resolution to let. and fortitude to endure; but treacherone, 100 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS haughty, dissembling, vindictive, and fierce. TL oloody struggle for power in which she was en- gaged, and the companionship of the ruthless iron men around her, seem to have left her nothing of womanhood but the heart of a mother that last stronghold of our feminine nature ! So far the character is consistently drawn : it has something of the power, but none of the flowing ease of Shak- epeare's manner. There are fine materials not well applied ; there is poetry in some of the scenes and speeches ; the situations are often exceedingly poetical ; but in the character of Margaret herself, there is not an atom of poetry. In her artificial dignity, her plausible wit, and her endless volubil- ity, she would remind us of some of the most ad- mired heroines of French tragedy, but for that unlucky box on the ear which she gives the Duchess of Gloster, a violation of tragic decorum, which of course destroys all parallel. Having said thus much, I shall point out some of the finest and most characteristic scenes in which Margaret appears. The speech in which she expresses her scorn of her meek husband, and her impatience of the power exercised by those fierce overbearing barons, York, Salisbury, War- wick, Buckingham, is very fine, and conveys at faithful an idea of those feudal times as of the woman who speaks. The burst of female spite with which she concludes, is admirable Not all these lords do vex me half so much AH that proud dame, the Lord Protector's wifc. MARGARET OF ANJOU. 401 She sweeps ; t through the court with troops of ladle*, More like an empress than Duke Humphrey's wife. Strangers in court do take her for the queen: She bears a duke's revenues on her back, And in her heart she scorns our poverty. Shall I not live to be avenged on her? Contemptuous base-born callet as she is ! She vaunted 'mongst her minions t'other day, T he very train of her worst wearing gown Was better worth than all my father's lands, Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter. Her intriguing spirit, the facility with which she enters into the murderous confederacy against the good Duke Humphrey, the artful plausibility with which she endeavours to turn suspicion from her- self confounding her gentle consort by mere dint of words are exceedingly characteristic, but not the less revolting. Her criminal love for Suffolk (which is a dra- matic incident, not an historic fact) gives rise to the beautiful parting scene in the third act; a scene which it is impossible to read without a thrill of emotion, hurried away by that power and pathos which forces us to sympathize with the eloquence of grief, yet excites not a momentary interest either for Margaret or her lover. The ungoverned fury of Margaret in the first instance, the manner in which she calls on Suffolk to curse his enemies, and then shrinks back overcome by the violence of the spirit she had herself evoked, and terrified by the vehemence of his imprecations ; the transition t hr mind from the extremity of rage to tean 26 102 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. nd melting fondness, have been pronounced, and justly, to be in Shakspeare's own manner. Go, speak not to me even now begone. go not yet ! Even thus two friends condemn'd Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves, Leather a hundred times to part than die : Yet now farewell; and farewell life with thee! which is followed by that beautiful and inteoM burst of passion from Suffolk 'Tis not the hand I care for, wert thou hence; A wilderness is populous enough, So Suffolk had thy heavenly company: For where thou art, there is the world itself, Witn every several pleasure in the world ; And where thou art not, desolation 1 In the third part of Henry the Sixth, Margaret, engaged in the terrible struggle for her husband's throne, appears to rather more advantage. The indignation against Henry, who had pitifully yielded his son's birthright for the privilege of reigning unmolested during his own life, is worthy of her, and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of the Duke of York ; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner, ihe bitterness of her mockery, and the un womanly malignity with which she presents bin with the napkin stained with the blood of nil QUEBN MAKGARET. 40% youngest son, and u bids the father wipe his eyei withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion and horror. York replies in the celebrated speech, beginning She-wolf of France, and worse than wolves of Frans*, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth and taunts her with the poverty of her father, tilt most irritating topic he could have chosen. Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen, Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars, mounted, ride their horse to death. Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud ; But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small. 'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired; The contrary doth make thee wondered at. 'Tis government that makes them seem divine, The want thereof makes thee abominable. # * * * # tiger's heart, wrapped in a woman's hide ! How could'st thou drain the life-blood of the child To bid the father wipe his face withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman's face ? Women are soft, mild, pitiful and flexible, Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless] By such a woman as Margaret is here depicted nich a speech could be answered only in one way with her dagger's point and thus she answers it It ia some comfort to reflect that this trait of ferocity is not historical : the body of the Duk 104 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. of crk was found, after the battle, among thl heaps of slain, and his head struck off: but even this was not done by the command of Margaret. In another passage, the truth and consistency of the character of Margaret are sacrificed to the march of the dramatic action, with a very ill effect- Wheo her fortunes were at the very lowest ebb, and she had sought refuge in the court of the French king, Warwick, her most formidable enemy, upon some disgust he had taken against Edward the Fourth, offered to espouse her cause ; and proposed a match between the prince her son and his daughter Anne of Warwick the " gentle Lady Anne," who figures in Richard the Third. In the play, Margaret embraces the offer without a moment's nesitation : * we are disgusted by her versatile policy, and a meanness of spirit in no way allied to the magnanimous forgiveness of her terrible ad- versary. The Margaret of history sternly resisted this degrading expedient. She could not, she said, pardon from her heart the man who had been the primary cause of all her misfortunes. She mistrusted Warwick, despised him for the motives of his revolt from Edward, and considered that to match her son into the family of her enemy from mere policy as a species of degradation. It took Louis th See Henry VI. Part m. Act. ill. w. 8- QUEEJf MAROABKT. Warwick, these words hare turned my hate to lorn And I forgive and quite forget old faults, And Joy that thou becom'at King Henry'f flrtonl QUEEN MARGARET. 405 Eleventh, with all his art and eloquence, fifteen days to wring a reluctant consent, accompanied with tears, from this high-hearted woman. The speech of Margaret to her council of gener- als before the battle of Tewksbury, (Act v. scene 5,) is as remarkable a specimen of false rhetoric, as her address to the soldiers, on the e^e of the fight, is of true and passionate eloquence. She witnesses the final defeat of her army, the massacre of her adherents, and the murder of her son ; and though the savage Richard would willingly have put an end to her misery, and exclaims very pertinently Why should she live to fill the world with words? he is dragged forth unharmed, a woful spectacle of extremest wretchedness, to which death would have been an undeserved relief. If we compare the clamorous and loud exclaims of Margaret after the slaughter of her son, to the ravings of Con- Btance, we shall perceive where Shakspeare's genius did not preside, and where it did. Margaret, in bold defiance of history, but with fine dramatic effect, is introduced again in the gorgeous and polluted court of Edward the Fourth. There she stalks around the seat of her former greatness, like a terrible phantom of departed majesty, uncrowned, unsceptered, desolate, powerless or like a vampire thirsting for blood or like a grim prophetess of evil, imprecating that ruin on the head of her tnemies, which she lived to *ee realized. Th '(XJ HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. icenu following the murder of the princes in tb Tower, in which Queen Elizabeth and the Duchesi of York sit down on the ground bewailing their desolation, and Margaret suddenly appears from behind them, like the very personification of wo f and seats herself beside them revelling in theif despair, is, in the general conception and effect, grand and appalling. THE DUCHESS. O, Harry's wife, triumph not in my woes; God witness with me, I have wept for thine I QUEEN MARGARET. Bear with me, I am hungry for revenge, And now I cloy me with beholding it. Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward; Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward: Young York he is but boot, because both they Match not the high perfection of my loss. Thy Clarence he is dead, that stabb'd my Edward, And the beholders of this tragic play, The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey, Untimely smother' d in their dusky graves. Richard yet lives, hell's black intelligencer, Only reserv'd their factor, to buy souls And send them thither. But at hand, at hand, Ensues his piteous and unpitied end; Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar for him : saints prmj To have him suddenly convey'd from hence. Cancel his bond of life, dear God. I pray, That I may live to say, The dog is dead. * Horace iVilpole observes, that " It Is evident from th * tact of Shakspeure, that the house of Tudor retuiued all UM* KATIIEUINE OF ARRAGON. 40J She should have stopped here ; but the effect thus powerfully excited is marred and weakened by so much superfluous rhetoric, that we are tempted to exclaim with the old Duchess of York- Why should calamity be full of words? QUEEN KATHERINE OF ARRAGON. To have a just idea of the accuracy and beauty of this historical portrait, we ought to bring immediately before us those circumstances of Katherine's life and times, and those parts of her tharacter, which belong to a period previous to the opening of the play. We shall then be better able to appreciate the skill with which Shakspeare has applied the materials before him. Katherine of Arragon, the fourth and youngest daughter of Ferdinand, King of Arragon, and Isabella of Castile, was born at Alcala, whither her mother had retired to winter after one of the most terrible campaigns of the Moorish war that of 1485. Katherine had derived from nature no dazzling Lancasterian prejudices even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth In his play of Richard the Third, he seems to deduce the woel if the house of York from the jurses which Queen Margaret ha4 en ted against them ; and he could not give that weight to b g, without supposing a right in her to utter them." 108 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. qualities of mind, and no striking advantages of person. She inherited a tincture of Queen Isabella' haughtiness and obstinacy of temper, but neither her beauty nor her splendid talents. Her education under the direction of that extraordinary mother, had implanted in her mind the most austere prin- ciples of virtue, the highest ideas of female decorum, the most narrow and bigoted attachment to the forms of religion, and that excessive pride of birth and rank, which distinguished so particularly her family and her nation. In other respects, her un- derstanding was strong, and her judgment clear. The natural turn of her mind was simple, serious, and domestic, and all the impulses of her heart kindly and benevolent. Such was Katherine ; such, at least, she appears on a reference to the chron- icles of her times, and particularly from her own letters, and the papers written or dictated by her- self which relate to her divorce ; all of which are distinguished by the same artless simplicity of style, the same quiet good sense, the same resolute, yet gentle spirit and fervent piety. When five years old, Katherine was solemnly affianced to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Henry VII.; and in the year 1501, she landed in England, after narrowly escaping shipwreck on the southern coast, from which every adverse wind conspired to drive her. She was received : i Londor with great honor, and immediately on her arriv* tnitad to the young prince. He was then tifu-en nd Katherine in her seventeenth year KAT11ERINE OF ARRAGON. 409 Arthur, as it is well known, survived his marriage inly five m.>nths; and the reluctance of Henry VTI. to refund the splendid dowry of the Infanta, and forego the advantages of an alliance with the most powerful prince of Europe, suggested the idea of uniting Katherine to his second son Henry; after some hesitation, a dispensation was procured from the Pope, and she was betrothed to Henry in her eighteenth year. The prince, who was then only- twelve years old, resisted as far as he was able to do so, and appears to have really felt a degree of horror at the idea of marrying his brother's widow. Nor was the mind of King Henry at rest ; as his health declined, his conscience reproached him with the equivocal nature of the union into which h had forced his son ; and the vile motives of avarice and expediency which had governed him on this occasion. A short time previous to his death, he diswolved the engagement, and even caused Henry to sign a paper in which he solemnly renounced all idea of a future union with the Infanta. It is observable, that Henry signed this paper with re- luctance, and that Katherine, instead of being sent back to her own country, still remained in England. It appears that Henry, who was now about sev- enteen, had become interested for Kathenne, who was gentle and amiable. The difference of years was rather a circumstance in her favor ; for Henry was just at that age, when a youth is most likely to W captivated by a woman older than himself: and w sooner was he required to "enounce her, than 10 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. the inteiest she had gradually gained in his affec- tions, became, by opposition, a strong passion Immediately after m> father's death, he declared his resolution to take for his wife the Lady Kathe- rine of Spain, and none other; and when the matter was discussed in council, it was urged that, besides the many advantages of the match in a political point of view, she had given so " much proof of virtue, and sweetness of condition, as they knew not where to parallel her." About six weeks after his accession, June 3, 1509, the marriage was celebrated with truly royal splendor, Henry being then eighteen, and Katherine in her twenty-fourth year. It has been said with truth, that if Henry had tfed while Katherine was yet his wife, and Wolsey bis minister, he would have left behind him the Character of a magnificent, popular, and accom- plished prince, instead of that of the most hateful ruffian and tyrant who ever swayed these realms. Notwithstanding his occasional infidelities, and his impatience at her midnight vigils, her long prayers, and her religious austerities, Katherine and Henry lived in harmony together. He was fond of openly displaying his respect and love for her ; and she exercised a strong and salutary influence over his turbulent and despotic spirit When Henry set out on his expedition to France, in 1513, he left Katherine regent of the kingdom during his absence, irith full powers to carry on the war against tb Scot* ; and the Earl of Surrey at the bead of th KATHERINE OF AKttAGON. 411 tnny, as Ler lieutenant-general. It is curious to find Katherine the pacific, domestic, and unpre- tending Katherine describing herself as having ' her heart set to war," and " horrible busy " with making " standards, banners, badges, scarfs, and the like." * Nor was this mere silken preparation mere dalliance with the pomp and circumstance of war; for within a few weeks afterwards, her general defeated the Scots in the famous battle of Floddenfield, where James IV. and most of hia nobility were slain, f Katheriue's letter to Henry, announcing thifl event, so strikingly displays the piety and tendei- ness, the quiet simplicity, and real magnanimity of her character, that there cannot be a more apt ind beautiful illustration of the exquisite truth and keeping of Shakspeare's portrait. SIR, My Lord Howard hath sent me a letter, open to your Grace, within one of mine, by the which ye Bhall see at length the great victory that our Lord hath sent your subjects in your absence : and for this cause, it is no need herein to trouble youi Grace with long writing ; but to my thinking this battle hath been to your Grace, and all your realm, the greatest honor that could be, and more than ye ihould win all the crown of France, thanked be od for it ! And I am sure your Grace forgettetb * See her letters in Elite's Collection. t Under similar circumstances, one of Katherine's predncesacn, Wl^lpp^ of Hainault, had gaJned in her husband : s absence UM attle af Xeyille Cross, in which David Bruce was taken crisoiMr 412 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. not to do this, which shall be cause to send yon manv more such great victories, as I trust he shall do. My husband, for haste, with Rougecross, 1 could not send your Grace the pieco of the king of Scots' coat, which John Glyn now bringeth. In this your Grace shall see how I can keep my promise, sending you for your banners a kings coat. I thought to send himself unto you, but our Englishmen's hearts would not suffer it. It should have been better for him to have been in peace than have this reward, but all that God sendeth ia for the best. My Lord of Surrey, my Henry, would fain know your pleasure in the burying of the king of Scots' body, for he hath written to me so. With the next messenger, your Grace's pleasure may b herein known. And with this I make an end, pray- ing God to send you home shortly ; for without this, no joy here can be accomplished and for the same I pray. And now go to our Lady at Wal- gyngham, that I promised so long ago to see. At Woburn, the 16th day of September, (1513.) I send your Grace herein a bill, found in a Scot- tisbrnan's purse, of such things as the French king lent to the said king of Scots, to make war against you. beseeching you to send Mathew hither as soot is this messenger cometh with tidings of youi Brace. Your humble wife and true servant, KATHERIXE.* Hlls's Collection. We must keep in mind that Katherin* me a foreigner, and till after she was seventeen, never spoke o Irote word of English. CATHERINE OP ARRAGON. 413 The legality of the king's marriage with Kathe rine remained undisputed till 1527. In the course of that year, Anna Bullen first appeared at court, and was appointed maid of honor to the queen ; and then, and not till then, did Henry's union with his brother's wife " creep too near his conscience." In the following year, he sent special messengers to Rome, with secret instructions : they were re- quired to discover (among other " hard questions ") whether, if the queen entered a religious life, the king might have the Pope's dispensation to marry again ; and whether if the king (for the better inducing the queen thereto) would enter himself into a religious life, the Pope would dispense with the king's vow, and leave her there ? Poor Katherine ! we are not surprised to r"-ad that when she understood what was intendea against her, " she labored with all those passions which jealousy of the king's affection, sense of her own honor, and the legitimation of her daughter, could produce, laying in conclusion the whole fault on the Cardinal." It is elsewhere said, that Wol- sey bore the queen ill-will, in consequence of her reflecting with some severity on his haughty tern-! per, and very unclerical life. The proceedings were pending for nearly six years, and one of the causes of this long delay, in Bpite of Henry's impatient and despotic character, is worth noting. The old Chronicle tells us, that chough the men generally, and more particularly ihe priests and the nonles. sided with Henry in thii 114 HISTORICAL CHARACTLKo. matter, yet all the ladies of England were against H. They justly felt that the honor and welfare of no woman was secure if, after twenty years oi union, she might be thus deprived of all her righti as a wife ; the clamor became so loud and general, that the king was obliged to yield to it for a time, to stop the proceedings, and to banish Anna Bullea from the court. Cardinal Campeggio, called by Shakspeare Cam- peius, arrived in England in October, 1528. He at first endeavored to persuade Katherine to avoid the disgrace and danger of contesting her marriage, by entering a religious house ; but she rejected his advice with strong expressions of disdain. " I am," said she, " the king's true wife, and to him married ; and if all doctors were dead, or law of learning far out of men's minds at the time of out marriage, yet 1 cannot think that the court of Rome, and the whole church of England, would have consented to a thing unlawful and detestable as you call it Still I say I am his wife, and for him will I pray." About two years afterwards, Wolsey died, (in November, 1530;) the king and queen met for the last time on the 14th of July, 1531. Until that period, some outward show of respect and kindness had been maintained between them ; but the king then ordered her to repair to a private residence, nd no longer to consider herself as hii lawful wife. " To which the virtuous and mourn- mg queen replied no more than this, that to what- KATHERINE OF ARRAGOlf. 419 ever place she removed, nothing could remove he* from being the king's wife. And so they bid each other farewell and from this time the king neve* saw her more." * He married Anna Bullen in 1582, while the decision relating to his former marriage was still pending. The sentence of divorce to which Katherine never would submit, was finally pronounced by Cranmer in 1533 ; and the unhappy queen, whose health had been grad- nally declining through these troubles of heart, died January 29, 1536, in the fiftieth year of her age. Thus the action of the play of Henry VIII. includes events which occurred from the impeach- ment of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, to the death of Katherine in 1536. In making the deati of Katherine precede the birth of Queen Elizabeth, Shakspeare has committed an anachronism, not only pardonable, but necessary. We must remem- ber that the construction of the play required a happy termination ; and that the birth of Eliza- beth, before or after the death of Katherine, in- volved the question of her legitimacy. By thii slight deviation from the real course of events, Shakspeare has not perverted historic facts, but merely sacrificed them to a higher principle; and in doing so has not only preserved dramatic pro- priety, and heightened the poetical interest, but has given a strong proof both of his delicacy and Big judgment * Hall's Chronfck 116 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. If we also call to mind that in this play Rath erine is properly the heroine, and exhibited from first to last as the very " queen of earthly queens ; " that the whole interest is thrown round her and Wolsey the one the injured rival, the other the enemy of Anna Bullen and that it was written in the reign and for the court of Elizabeth, we ghall yet farther appreciate the moral greatness of the poet's mind, which disdained to sacrifice justice and the truth of nature to any time-serving expe- diency. Schlegel observes somewhere, that in the literal accuracy and apparent artlessness with which Shakspeare has adapted some of the events and characters of history to his dramatic purposes, he has shown equally his genius and his wisdom. This, like most of Schlegel's remarks, is profound and true ; and in this respect Katherine of Arra- gon may rank as the triumph of Shakspeare's genius and his wisdom. There is nothing in the whole range of poetical fiction in any respect re- sembling or approaching her; there is nothing comparable, I suppose, but Katherine's own por- trait by Holbein, which, equally true to the life, is yet as far inferior as Katherine's person was in- ferior to her mind. Not only has Shakspeare given us here a delineation as faithful as it is beau- *iful, of a peculiar modification of character ; but he has bequeathed us a precious moral lesson in this proof that virtue alone, (by which I mean here the Union of truth or conscience with benevolent afieo> KATHEUINE OF ARRAGOW. 417 fion the one the highest law, the other the purest impulse of the soul,) that such virtue is a suffi- cient source of the deepest pathos and power with out any mixture of foreign or external ornament : for who but Shakspeare would have brought before us a queen and a heroine of tragedy, stripped her of all pomp of place and circumstance, dispensed with all the usual sources of poetical interest, as youth, beauty, grace, fancy, commanding intellect ; and without any appeal to our imagination, with- out any violation of historical truth, or any sacri- fices of the other dramatic personages for the sake of effect, could depend on the moral principle alone, to touch the very springs of feeling in our bosoms, and melt and elevate our hearts through the purest and holiest impulses of our nature 1 The character, when analyzed, is, in the first place, distinguished by truth. I do not only mean its truth to nature, or its relative truth arising from its historic fidelity and dramatic consistency, but truth as a quality of the soul ; this is the basis of the character. We often hear it remarked that those who are themselves perfectly true and art- less, are in this world the more easily and fre- quently deceived a common-place fallacy : for we shall ever find that truth is as undeceived as it is undeceiving, and that those who are true to them- selves and others, may now and then be mistaken, or in particular instances duped by the intervention Df some other ariection or quality of the mind ; but they are generally free frum illusion, and thev * 27 118 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. leldom imposed upon in the long run by tlu. showi of things and superfices of characters. It is by thu integrity of heart and clearness of understanding, this light of truth within her own soul, and not through any acuteness of intellect, that Katherine detects and exposes the real character of \\olsey, though unable either to unravel his designs, or ce- that them. My lord, my lord, I am a simple woman, much too weak T' oppose your cunning. She rather intuitively feels than knows big duplicity, and in the dignity of her simplicity she towers above his arrogance as much as she scorns his crooked policy. With this essential truth are combined many other qualities, natural or acquired, all made out with the same uncompromising breadth of execution and fidelity of pencil, united with the utmost delicacy of feeling. For instance, the ap- parent contradiction arising from the contrast be- tween Katherine's natural disposition and the situation in which she is placed ; her lofty Castilian pride and her extreme simplicity of language and deportment; the inflexible resolution with which he asserts her right, and her soft resignation to unkindness and wrong ; her warmth of temper breaking through the meekness of a spirit subdued by a deep sense of religion ; and a degree of austerity tinging her real benevolence ; all thes qualities, opposed yet harmonizing, has Shakspoar* plat 3d before us in a few admirable scenes. KATHERINE OF ARRAGON. 411 Ratheriue is at first introduced as pleading before the king in behalf of the commonalty, who had been driven by the extortions of Wolsey into some illegal excesses. In this scene, which is true to history, we have her upright reasoning mind, her steadiness of purpose, her piety and benevo- lence, placed in a strong light. The unshrinking dignity with which she opposes without descending to brave the Cardinal, the stern rebuke addressed to the Duke of Buckingham's surveyor, are finely characteristic ; and by thus exhibiting Katherino as invested with all her conjugal rights and influ- ence, and royal state, the subsequent situations are rendered more impressive. She is placed in the first instance on such a height in our esteem and reverence, that in the midst of her abandonment and degradation, and the profound pity she after- wards inspires, the first effect remains unimpaired, and she never falls beneath it. In the beginning of the second act we are pre- pared for the proceedings of the divorce, and our respect for Katherine heightened by the general sympathy for " the good queen," as she is expres- sively entitled, and by the following beautiful eulogium on her character uttered by the Duke of Norfolk : He (Wolsey) counsels a divorce a loss of her That like a jewel hath hung twenty yean About his neck, yet never lost her lustre. Of her that loves him with that excellence That angels love go xl men with; even of her, 20 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. That when the greatest stroke of fortune fall*, Will bless the King! The scene in which Anna Bullen is introduced us expressing her grief and sympathy for her roya. mistress, is exquisitely graceful. Here's the pang that pinches? His highness having liv'd so long with her, and she 80 good a lady, that no tongue could ever Pronounce dishonor of her, by my life She never knew harm-doing. now, after So many courses of the sun enthron'd, Still growing in a majesty and pomp, the whicb To leave is a thousand-fold more bitter, than 'Tis sweet at first to acquire, after this procesa, To give her the avaunt ! it is a pity Would move a monster. OLD LADY. Hearts of most hard temper Melt and lament for her. ANNE. 0, God's will ! much better She ne'er had known pomp : though it be temporal. Yet if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce It from the bearer, 'tis a sufferance, panging AJ soul and body's severing. OLD LADT. Alas, poor lady! Bha's a stranger now again. ANWK. So much the mow Most pity drop upon her. Verily, I *wear 'tis better to be lowly born, KATHEKINE OF AKKAGON. 421 And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow. How completely, in the few passages appropri- ated to Anna Bullen, is her character portrayed ! with what a delicate and yet luxuriant grace is she iketched off, with her gayety and her beauty, hei levity, her extreme mobility, her sweetness of dis- position, her tenderness of heart, and, in short, all lier f dualities ! How nobly has Shakspeare done justice to the two women, and heightened our interest in both, by placing the praises of Katherine in the mouth of Anna Bullen 1 and how charac- teristic of the latter, that she should first express unbounded pity for her mistress, insisting chiefly on her fall from her regal state and worldly pomp, thus betraying her own disposition : For she that had all the fair parts of woman, Had, too, a woman's heart, which ever yet Affected eminence, wealth, and sovereignty. That she should call the loss of temporal pomp, once enjoyed, " a sufferance equal to soul and body's severing;" that she should immediately protest that she would not herself be a queen " No, good troth I not for all the riches under heaven !" and not long afterwards ascend without reluctance that throne and bed from which her royal mistress had been so cruelly divorced I ho\ natural 1 The portrait is not less true and ma lerly than th^t of Katherine but the character if 22 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. overborne by the superior moral firmness and in- irinsic excellence of the latter. That we may be more fully sensible of this contrast, the beautiful scene just alluded to immediately precedes Kathe- nne's trial at Blackfriars, and the description of Anna Bullen's triumphant beauty at her corona tion, is placed immediately before the dying scene of Kathenne ; yet with equal good taste and good feeling Shakspeare has constantly avoided all per- Bonal collision between the two characters; nor does Anna Bullen ever appear as queen except in the pageant of the procession, which in reading the play is scarcely noticed. To return to Katherine. The whole of the trial gcene is given nearly verbatim from the old chron- icles and records ; but the dryness and harshness of the law proceedings is tempered at once and elevated by the genius and the wisdom of the poet. It appears, on referring to the historical authorities, that when the affair was first agitated in council, Katherine replied to the long expositions and theo- logical sophistries of her opponents with resolute jimplicity and composure : " I am a woman, and kack wit and learning to answer these opinions ; but I am sure that neither the king's father nor my lather would have condescended to our marriage, if it had been judged unlawful. As to your saying that I should put the cause to eight persons of this realm, for quietness of the king's conscience, J pray Heaven to send his Grace a quiet conscience tnd this shall be your answer, that I sn\ I am hi) KATHERINE OF ARKAGOX. 428 Uwful wife, and to him lawfully married, thougfc bot worthy of it ; and in this point I will abide, tiL Ihe court of Rome, which was privy to the begin- ning, have mado a final ending of it." * Katherine's appearance in the court at Black- friars, attended by a noble troop of ladies and prelates of her counsel, and her refusal to answer the citation, are historical.-f Her speech to the king- Sir, I beseech you do me right and justice, And to bestow your pity on me, &c. &c. is taken word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throw- ing a coloring of poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or sentiment ; but by adhering to the calm argumentative sim- plicity of manner and diction natural to the woman, he has preserved the truth of character without lessening the pathos of the situation. Her chal- lenging Wolsey as a " foe to truth," and her very * Hall's Chronicle, p. 781. 4 The court at Blackfriars sat on the 28th of May, 1529. " Th oen being called, accompanied by the four bishops and others of her counsel, and a great company of ladies and gentlewomen following her; and after her ooeisance, sadly and with great ITuvity, she appealed from them to the court of Rome." Sti Hall and Cavendish' 1 ! Life of Wolse.y. The account which Hume gires of this scene is very elegant; fcn v after the affecting naive-' i of the >ld chroniclers, it J fa told and unsatisfactory. 124 HISTORICAf. CIIARACTKKS. expiessions, " I utterly refuse, yea, from my MHSJ abhor you for my judge," are taken from fact The sudden burst of indignant passion towards the cloM of this scene, In one who ever yet Had stood to charity, and displayed the effects Of disposition gentle, and of wisdom O'ertopping woman's power; is taken from nature, though it occurred on a dif- ferent occasion.* Lastly, the circumstance of her being called back after she had appealed from the court, and angrily refusing to return, is from the life. Master Griffith, on whose arm she leaned, observed that she was called : " On, on," quoth she ; " it maketh no matter, for it is no indifferent court for me, therefore I will not tarry. Go on your ways." f King Henry's own assertion, " I dare to say, my lords, that for her womanhood, wisdom, nobility, and gentleness, never prince had such another wife, and therefore if I would willingly change her I were not wise," is thus beautifully paraphrased jy Shakspeare: That man i' the world, who shall report he has A better wife, let him in nought be trusted, ?or speaking false in that ! Thou art, alone, " The queen answered the Duke of Suffolk very highly an4 ttMti.nately, with many high words : and suddenly, in a fury be departed from him in'o her privy chamber." Viit HaW CkrcnicU. Tidt Cavendish's Life of Wolsey. CATHERINE OF AHHAGOX. 425 If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness, (Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government, Obeying in commanding; and thy parts, Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out,) The queen of earthly queens. She is noble born, And, .'ike her true nobility, she has Carried herself towards me. The annotators on Shakspeare have all observed lie close resemblance between this fine passage-- Sir, I am about to weep; but, thinking that We are a queen, or long have dreamed so, certain The daughter of a king iny drops of tears I'll turn to sparks of fire. and the speech of Hermione I am not prone to weeping as our sex Commonly are, the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have That honorable grief lodged here, which burns Worse than tears drown. But these verbal gentlemen do not seem to have felt that the resemblance is merely on the surface, and that the two passages could not possibly change places, without a manifest violation of the truth of iharacter. In Hermione it is pride of sex merely la Katherine it is pride of place and pride of birth. Hermione, though so superoly majestic, is perfectly independent of her regal state : Katherine, though to meekly pious, will neither forget hers, nor allow t to be forgotte.i bv others for a moment. Hep 126 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. tnione, when deprived of that " crown and comfort of her life," her husband's love, regards all thingi else with despair and indifference except her femi- nine honor : Katherine, divorced and abandoned, itill with true Spanish pride stands upon respect, and will not bate one atom of her accustomed state Though nnqueened, yet like a queen And daughter to a king, inter me ! The passage A fellow of the royal bed, that owns A moiety of the throne a great king's daughter, here standing To prate and talk for life and honor 'fore Who please to come to hear,* would apply nearly to both queens, yet a single sentiment nay, a single sentence could not pos- tibly be transferred from one character to the other. The magnanimity, the noble simplicity, the purity of heart, the resignation in each how per- fectly equal in degree 1 how diametrically opposite in kind 1 f * Winter's Tale, act ill. scene 2. 1 I hart constantly abstained from considering any of theo* tharaeters with a reference to the theatre; yet I cannot help re- marking, that if Mrs. Siddons, who excelled equally in Uermion* nd Katherine, and threw such majesty of demeanor, such power, such picturesque effect, into both, could likewise feel and onTey the infinite contrast between the ideal grace, the classic*] repose and imaginative charm thrown round Hermlone, and th uatter-cf-fiict. arttas, prosaic nature of Katherine; bef ireen tht KATHERINK OF AltRAGON. 427 Once morfe to return to Katherine. We are told by Cavendish, that when Wolsey fcnd Campeggio visited the queen by the king's order she was found at work among her women, and came forth to meet the cardinals with a skein of white thread hanging about her neck ; that when Wolsey addressed her in Latin, she inter- rupted him, saying, " Nay, good my lord, speak to me in English, I beseech you ; although I under- stand Latin." " Forsooth then," quoth my lord, " madam, if it please your grace, we come both to know your mind, how ye be disposed to do in this matter between the king and you, and also to declare secretly our opinions and our counsel unto you, which we have intended of very zeal and obedience that we bear to your grace." " My lords, I thank you then," quoth she, " of your good wills ; but to make answer to your request I cannot so suddenly, for I was set among my maidens at work, thinking full little of any such matter; wherein there needeth a longer deliberation, and a better head than mine to make answer to so noble wise men as ye be. I had need of good sounsel in this case, which toucheth me so near ; and for any counsel or friendship that I can find .tn England, they are nothing to my purpose or profit. Think you, I pray you, my lords, will any Englishmen counsel, or be friendly unto me, poetical grandeur of the former, and the moral dignity of the Sitter, then she certainly exceeded all that I could ha? ta*d possible, even tc her wr adorful powers. 128 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. kgainst the king's pleasure, they being his subjects? Nay, forsooth, my lords! and for my counsel, in whom I do intend to put my trust, they be no* here ; they be in Spain, in my native country.* Alas ! my lords, I am a poor woman lacking both wit and understanding sufficiently to answer such approved wise men as ye be both, in so weighty a matter. I pray you to extend your good and in- different minds in your authority unto me, for I am a simple woman, destitute and barren of friend- ship and counsel, here in a foreign region ; and as for your counsel, I will not refuse, but be glad to hear." It appears, also, that when the Archbishop of York and Bishop Tunstali waited on her at her house near Huntingdon, with the sentence of the divorce, signed by Henry, and confirmed by act of parliament, she refused to admit its validity, she being Henry's wife, and not his subject The bishop describes her conduct in his letter : " She being therewith in great choler and agony, and always interrupting our words, declared that she would never leave the name of queen, but would persist In accounting herself the king's wife till death." This affecting passage is thus rendered by Shakspean: Nay, forsooth, my friends, They that must weigh out my affliction! They that my trust must grow to, live not her* They are, as all my other comforts, far hence, In mine own country, lords. Henry Tin. met W. * 1 CATHERINE OK ARRAGON. 4 '29 the official letter containing minutes of their eonfe.rence, was shown to her, she seized a pen, and dashed it angrily across every sentence in which he was styled Princess-dowager. If now we turn to that inimitable scene between Catherine and the two cardinals, (act iii. scene 1,) we shall observe how finely Shakspeare has con- densed these incidents, and unfolded to us all th workings of Katherine's proud yet feminine nature. She is discovered at work with some of her women she calls for music " to soothe her soul grown gad with troubles " then follows the little song, of which the sentiment is so well adapted to the oc- casion, while its quaint yet classic elegance breathea the very spirit of those times, when Surrey loved tnd sung. SONG. Orpheus with his lute-made trees, And the mountain-tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing: To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Every thing that heard him play Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads and then lay by In sweet music is such art, Killing care, and grief of heart, Fall asleep, on hearing, die. Hey are interrupted by the arrival of th tw 130 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. cardinals. Katherine's perception of theii subtlety ' her suspicion of their purpose her sense of her own weakness and inability to contend with them, and her mild subdued dignity, are beautifully rep- resented ; as also the guarded self-command with which she eludes giving a definitive answer ; but when they counsel her to that which she, who knows Henry, feels must end in her ruin, then the native temper is roused at once, or, to use Tunstall's expression, " the choler and the agony," burst forth in words. Is this your Christian counsel ? Out upon ye ! Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge That no king can corrupt. WOL8ET. Your rage mistakes us. QUEEN KATHER1HE. The more shame for ye ! Holy men I thought ye, Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues ; But cardinal sins, and hollow hearts, I fear ye: Mend them, for shame, my lords : is this your comfort, The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady? With the same force of language, and impetuotu jnct dignified feeling, she asserts her own conjugal truth and merit, and insists upon her rights. Ha\e I liv'd thus long, (let me speak myself, Since virtue finds no friends,) a wife, a true one A woman, (I dare say, without vain-glory,) Never yet branded with suspicion ' Hf I, with all my full affection*, CATHERINE OF ARRAGON. 431 Sttil met the king lov'd him next heaven, obey'd him Been out of fondness superstitious to him Almost forgot my prayers to content him. And am I thus rewarded? 'tis not well, lords, &c. My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty, To give up willingly that noble title four master wed me to: nothing but death Shall e'er divorce my dignities. a.nd this burst of unwonted passion is immediately followed by the natural reaction ; it subsides inta tears, dejection, and a mournful self-compassion. Would I had never trod this English ground, Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it. What will become of me now, wretched lady? I am the most unhappy woman living. Alas ! poor wenches 1 where are now your fortunes ? [ To her women. Shipwrecked upon a kingdom, where no pity, No friends, no hope, no kindred weep for me ! Almost no grave allowed me ! Like the lily that one* Was mistress of the field, and flourish' d, I'll hang my head and perish. Dr. Johnson observes on this scene, that all Kathe- rine's distresses could not save her from a quibble on the word cardinal. Holy men I thought ye, Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues; But cardinal Bins, and hollow learts, I fear ye I When we read this passage in connection with the lituation and sentiment, the scornful play upon thft 432 HISTORICAL CHAUACTERS. words is iiot only appropriate and natural, it se*m inevitable. Katherine, assuredly, is neither an imaginative nor a witty personage ; but we all ac- knowledge the truism, that anger inspires wit, and whenever there is passion there is poetry. In the instance just alluded to, the sarcasm springs natu- rally out from the bitter indignation of the moment In her grand rebuke of Wolsey, in the trial scene, how just and beautiful is the gradual elevation of her language, till it rises into that magnificent image You have by fortune and his highness' favors, Gone slightly o'er low steps, and now are mounted, Where powers are your retainers, &c. In the depth of her affliction, the pathos as nat- urally clothes itself in poetry. Like the lily. That was mistress of the field, and flourish' d, I'll hang my head and perish. But these, I believe, are the only instances of im- Rgery throughout ; for, in general, her language ii plain and energetic. It has the strength and sim- plicity of her character, with very little metaphor und less wit. In approaching the last scene ot Katherine's life, I feel as if about to tread within a sanctuary, where nothing befits us but silence and tears ; veneration K> strives with compassion, tenderness with awe.* Dr. Johnson IB of opinion, that this scene " is abort anj Mhr part of Shakspeare's tragedies, and perhaps above an/ KATHKRINE OF ARRAGON 458 We must suppose a long interval to have elapsed Katherine's interview with the two cardinals. Wolsey was disgraced, and poor Anna Bullen at the height of her short-lived prosperity. It was Wdsey's fate to be detested by both queens. In the pursuance of his own selfish and ambitious de- signs, he had treated both with perfidy ; and one was the remote, the other the immediate, cause of his ruin.* The ruffian king, of whom one hates to think, icene of any other poet, tender and pathetic ; without gods, or furies, or poisons, or precipices; without the help of romantic circumstances ; without improbable sallies of poetical lamenta- tion, and without any throes of tumultuous misery." I have already observed, that in judging of Shakspeare's char- acters as of persons we meet in real life, we are swayed uncon- sciously by our own habits and feelings, and our preference gov- erned, more or less, by our individual prejudices or sympathies. Thus, Dr. Johnson, who kma not a word to bestow on Imogen, and who has treated poor Juliet as if she had been in truth " the very beadle to an amorous sigh," does full justice to the char- acter of Katherine, because the logical turn of his mind, hia vigorous intellect, and his austere integrity, enabled him to ap- preciate its peculiar beauties : and, accordingly, we find that he gives it, not only unqualified, but almost exclusive admiration : he goes so far as to assert, that in this play the genius of Shak- ipeare comes in and goes out with Katherine. * It will be remembered, that in early youth Anna Bullen waa betrothed to Lord Henry Percy, who was passionately in love with her. Wolsey, to serve the king's purposes, broke off this match, and forced Percy into an unwilling marriage with Lady Mary Talbot. " The stout Earl of Northumberland," who ar- rested Wolsey at York, was this very Percy he was chosen for hi* mission by the interference of Anna Bullen a piece of vengeance truly feminine in its mixture of sentiment and spite* til ness; and every way characteristic of the Individual woman. 28 434 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. was bent on forcing Katherine to concede her rights, and illegitimize her daughter, in favor of the offspring of Anna Bullen : she steadily refused, was declared contumacious, and the sentence of divorce pronounced in 1533. Such of her attendants as persisted in paying her the honors due to a queen were driven from her household; those who con- sented to serve her as princess-dowager, she refused to admit into her presence; so that she remained unattended, except by a few women, and her gen- tleman usher, Griffith. During the last eighteen months of her life, she resided at Kimbolton. Her nephew, Charles V., had offered her an asylum and princely treatment; but Katherine, broken in heart, and declining in health, was unwilling to drag the spectacle of her misery and degradation into a strange country : she pined in her loneliness, deprived of her daughter, receiving no consolation from the pope, and no redress from the emperor. Wounded pride, wronged affection, and a canker- ing jealousy of the woman preferred to her, (which though it never broke out into unseemly words, ie enumerated as one of the causes of her death,) at length wore out a feeble frame. " Thus," says the chronicle, " Queen Katherine fell into her last sick- ness; and though the king sent to comfort her through Chapuys, the emperor's ambassador, she jrrew worse and worse ; and finding death now coming, she caused a maid attending on her t4 writ'* to the king to this effect : KATHERINR OF ARRAGON. 435 " My most dear Lord, King, and Husband ; " The hour of my death now approaching, I can- not choose but, out of the 'ove I bear you, advise YOU of your soul's health, which you ought to pre- "er before all considerations of the world or flesh whatsoever ; for which yet you have cast me into Diany calamities, and yourself into many troubles : but I forgive you all, and pray God to do so like- wise ; for the rest, I commend unto you Mary our daughter, beseeching you to be a good father to her, as I have heretofore desired. I must intreat you also to respect my maids, and give them in marriage, which is not much, they being but three, and all my other servants a year's pay besides their due, lest otherwise they be unprovided for : lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. Farewell ! " * 'She also wrote another letter to the ambassador, desiring that he would remind the king of her dying request, and urge him to do her this last right. What the historian relates, Shakspeare realizes. On the wonderful beauty of Katherine's closing scene we need not dwell ; for that requires no il- lustration. In transferring the sentiments of her letter to her lips, Shakspeare has given them added grace, and pathos, and tenderness, without injuring ,heir truth and simplicity : the feelings, and almost * The king is said to have wept on reading this letter, and bet body being interred at Peterbro', in the monastery, for honor of ker memory it was preserved at the dissolution, and erected intt bishop's sen. Herbert'* Jift of Henry '''III. 436 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. the manner of expression, arc Katherine's owa The severe justice with which she draws the character of Wolsey is extremely characteristic I the benign candor with which she listens to the praise of him " whom living she most hated," is not less so. How beautiful her religious enthusiasm ! the slumber which visits her pillow, as she listens to that sad music she called her knell ; her awaken- ing from the vision of celestial joy to find herself till on earth Spirits of peace ! where are ye ? are ye gone, And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye ? how unspeakably beautiful 1 And to consummate all in one final touch of truth and nature, we see that consciousness of her own worth and integrity which had sustained her through all her trials of heart, and that pride of station for which she had contended through long years, which had become more dear by opposition, and by the perseverance with which she had asserted it, remaining the last Itrong feeling upon her mind, to the very last hour if existence. When I am dead, good wench, Let me be used with honor: strew me over With maiden flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste wife to my grave ; embalm me, Then lay me forth: although unqueen'J, yot lik* A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me . can no more. LADY MACBETH. 437 In the epilogue to this play,* it is recommended To the merciful construction of good women, For such a one we show'd them : Uluding to the character of Queen Katherine. Shakspeare has, in fact, placed before us a queen and a heroine, who in the first place, and above all, is a good woman ; and I repeat, that in doing so, and in trusting for all his effect to truth and virtue, he has given a sublime proof of his genius and his wisdom ; for which, among many other obligations, we women remain his debtors. LADY MACBETH. I DOUBT whether the epithet historical can prop- erly apply to the character of Lady Macbeth ; for though tht subject, of the play be taken from history, we never think of her with any refei ence to histor- ical associations, as we do with regard to Con- stance, Yolumnia, Katherine of Arragon, and othera, I remember reading some critique, in which Lady Macbetn was styled the " Scottish queen ; " and methought the title, as applied to hei sounded like a vulgarism. It appears that the real wife of Mac- beth, die who lives onlv ii? the obscure record of * Written, (as the CODE crrcatow supposed 4 Agnes of Douglas a sort of Lady Macbeth in her wmj. LADY MACBETH. 44> two slight allusions. The only justice that has ye\ been done to her is by Hazlitt, in the " Characters of Shakspeare's Plays." Nothing can be finer than his remarks as far as they go, but his plan did not allow him sufficient space to work out his own con ception of the character, with the minuteness it requires. All that he says is just in sentiment, and most eloquent in the expression ; but in leaving Borne of the finest points altogether untouched, he has also left us in doubt whether he even felt or perceived them ; and this masterly criticism stops short of the whole truth it is a little superficial, and a little too harsh. In the mind of Lady Macbeth, ambition is rep- resented as the ruling motive, an intense over- mastering passion, which is gratified at the expense of every just and generous principle, and every feminine feeling. In the pursuit of her object, she cruel, treacherous, and daring. She is doubly, trebly dyed in guilt and blood ; for the murder she instigates is rendered more frightful by disloyalty and ingratitude, and by the violation of all the most sacred claims of kindred and hospitality. When her husband's more kindly nature shrinks from the perpetration of the deed of horror, she, like an evil genius, whispers him on to his damna- tion. The full measure of her wickedness is never 4isguised, the magnitude and atrocity of her crime is never extenuated, forgotten, or forgiven, iii the vhole course of the play. Our judgment is not bewildered, nor our moral feeling insulted, by the 144 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. entimental jumble of great crimes and dazzling virtues, after the fashion of the Gernuin school and of some admirable writers of our own time. Lady Macbeth's amazing power of intellect, her inexorable determination of purpose, her super- human strength of nerve, render her as fearful in herself as her deeds are hateful ; yet she is not a mere monster of depravity, with whom we have nothing in common, nor a meteor whose destroying path we watch in ignorant affright and amaze. She is a terrible impersonation of evil passions and mighty powers, never so far removed from our own nature as to be cast beyond the pale of our sympa- thies ; for the woman herself remains a woman to the last still linked with her sex and with hu- manity. This impression is produced partly by the essen- tial truth in the conception of the character, and partly by the manner in which it is evolved ; by a combination of minute and delicate touches, in some instances by speech, in others by silence : at one time by what is revealed, at another by what we are left to infer. As in real life, we perceive distinctions in character we cannot always explain, and receive impressions for which we cannot always account, without going back to the beainning of an acquaintance, and recalling many ana trilling cir- cumstances looks, and tones, and words : thus, to txplain that hold which Lady Macbeth, in the rnidi* f all her atrocities, still ke.eps upon our feelings, it necessary to trace minutely the action of UM LADY MACBETH. 445 play, as far as he is concerned in it, from its very commencement to its close. We must bear in mind, that the first idea of mur- dering Duncan is not suggested by Lady Macbeth to her husband : it springs within his mind, and is revealed to us, before his first interview with his wife, before she is introduced or even alluded to. This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill ; cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor If good, why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature ? It will be said, that the same " horrid sugges- tion " pre%ents itself spontaneously to her, on the reception of his letter ; or rather, that the letter itself acts upon her mind as the prophecy of the Weird Sisters on the mind of her husband, kind- ling the latent passion for empire into a quench- less flame. We are prepared to see the train of evil, first lighted by hellish agency, extend itself to her through the medium of her husband ; but we are spared the more revolting idea that it originated with her. The guilt is thus more equally divided than we should suppose, when we hear people pity- ing "the noble rature of Macbeth," bewildered %ud goaded on to crime, solely or chiefly by the in ingatior of his wife. (46 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. It is true that she afterwards appears the mom active agent of the two ; but it is less through her preeminence in wickedness than through her supe- riority of intellect. The eloquence the fierce, fervid eloquence with which she bears down the v elenting and reluctant spirit of her husband, the dexterous sophistry with which she wards off his objections, her artful and affected doubts of hU courage the sarcastic manner in which she leta fall the word coward a word which no man can endure from another, still less from a woman, and least of all from a woman he loves and the bold address with which she removes all obstacles, si- lences all arguments, overpowers all scruples, and marshals the way before him, absolutely make us shrink before the commanding intellect of the woman, with a terror in which interest and admi- ration are strangely mingled. LADY MACBETH. He has almost supp'd: why have you left tho chamber 1 MACBETH. Hath he ask'd for me? LADY MACBETH. Know you not, he has? MACBETH. We will proceed no further in this business He hath honored me of late, and I have bought ftolden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloM, frt oast aside so soon. MACBETH. 441 LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk, Waerein you dress'd yourseif '? hath it slept And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely ? From this time, Bach I account thy love. Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valor, As thou art in desire ? Would' st thou have that Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem; Letting I dare not wait upon I would, Like the poor cat i' the adage ? MACBETH. Pr'ythee, peac I dare do all that may become a man ; Who dares do more, is none. LADY MACBETH. What beast was it then, That made you break this enterprisa to me ? When you durst do it, then you were a man ; And, to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man. Nor time, nor place, Did then adhere, and yet you would make both; They have made themselves, and that their fitness now Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it were smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from l.is boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, Lad I so sworn, as yoa Bare done to this. MACBETH. If we should fail. 448 HISTOKICAL CHARACTERS. LADY MACBETH. We fail.* But screw your courage to the sticking-place. And we'll not fall. Again, in the murdering scene, the obdurate in- flexibility of purpose with which she drives on Macbeth to the execution of their project, and her masculine indifference to blood and death, would inspire unmitigated disgust and horror, but for the involuntary consciousness that it is produced rather by the exertion of a strong power over herself, than by absolute depravity of disposition and feroc- ity of temper. This impression of her character is brought home at once to our very hearts with the most profound knowledge of the springs of nature within us, the most subtle mastery over their various operations, and a feeling of dramatic effect not less wonderful. The very passages in which Lady Macbeth displays the most savage and re- lentless determination, are so worded as to fill the mind with the idea of sex, and place the woman * In her impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Bldduns adopted successively three different into nations in giving the woids we fail. At first a quick contemptuous interrogation " we fail?" Afterwards with the note of admiration we fail and an accent of indignant astonishment, laying the principal emphasis on the word we we fail ! Lastly, she fixed on what I tin convinced is the true reading we&il. with the simple period, modulating her voice to a deep, low, resolute tone, which settled the issue at once as though she had said, " if we Ml, why then re fail, and all is over.'' This is consistent with the dark fatalism f the character and tl e sense of the line following, and UM ftct was sublime, almoa: awful LADY MACBETH. 449 before us in all her dearest attributes, at once soften- ing and refining the horror, and rendering it more intense. Thus, when she reproaches her husband for his weakness From this time, Such I account thy lovel Come to my woman's breasto, And take my milk for gall, ye murdering ministers, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, &c. I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis To love the babe that milks me, &c. And lastly, in the moment of extremest horror tomes that unexpected touch of feeling, so startling, f et so wonderfully true to nature Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it I Thus in one of Weber's or Beethoven's grand gymphonies, some unexpected soft minor chord or passage will steal on the ear, heard amid the magni- ficent crash of harmony, making the blood pause, and filling the eye with unbidden tears. It is particularly observable, that in Lady Mao beth's concentrated, strong-nerved ambition, the ruling passion of her mind, there is yet a touch of womanhood : she is ambitious less for herself than MACBETH. Bat wherefore could not I pronounce, arcwTr I had most need of blessing, and amen Stuck in my throat. LADY MACBETH. These deeds must not be thought After these ways : so, it will make us mad. MACBETH. Methought I heard a voice cry, " Sleep no more," &c. &c. LADY MACBETH. What do you mean? who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things. Go, get some water, &o. &o. Afterwards, in act Hi., she is represented as mutter- ing to herself, Nought's had, all's spent, When our desire is got without content; yet immediately addresses her moody and cou icience-stricken husband How now, my lord? why do you keep alone, Of sorriest fancies your companions making? Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died With them they think on ? Things without remedy, Should be without regard ; what's done, is done. But she is nowhere represented as urging him on to new crimes so far from it that when Macbeth 154 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. darkly taints his purposed assassination of Banquet nn.l she inquires his meaning, he replies, Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till tkou approve the deed. The same may be said of the destruction of Mao- dufTs family. Every one must perceive how our detestation of the woman had been Increased, if he had been placed before us as suggesting and abetting those additional cruelties into which Mac- beth is hurried by his mental cowardice. If my feeling of Lady Macbeth's character be just to the conception of the poet, then she is one who could steel herself to the commission of a crime from necessity and expediency, and be dar- ingly wicked for a great end, but not likely to per- petrate gratuitous murders from any vague or selfish fears. I do not mean to say that the perfect confidence existing between herself and Macbeth could possibly leave her in ignorance of his actions or designs : that heart-broken and shuddering allu- sion to the murder of Lady MacduiF (in the sleep- ing scene) proves the contrary : The thane of Fife had a wife ; where is she now ? But she is nowhere brought before us in immediate v.onuection with these horrors, and we are spared any flagrant proof of her participation in them. This may not strike us at first, but most undoubt tdly has an effect on the general bearing of th character, considered as a whole. LADY MACBETH. 45> Anofher more obvious and pervading source of interest arises from that bond of entire affectioi and confidence which, through the whole of this dreadful tissue of crime and its consequences, unites Macbeth and his wife ; claiming from us an invol- untary respect and sympathy, and shedding a soft- ening influence over the whole tragedy. Macbeth leans upon her strength, trusts in her fidelity, and throws himself on her tenderness. full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife I She sustains him, calms him, soothes him Come on; Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks; Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night. The endearing epithets, the terms of fondness in which he addresses her, and the tone of respect she invariably maintains towards him, even when most exasperated by his vacillation of mind and his brain-sick terrors, have, by the very force of con- trast, a powerful effect on the fancy. By these tender redeeming touches we are im- pressed with a feeling that Lady Macbeth's influ- ence over the affections of her husband, as a wife and a woman, is at least equal to her power over him as a superior mind. Another thing has always gtrj:fc me. During the supper scene, in which Macbeth is haunted by the spectre of the murdered tianquo, and his reason appears unsettled by the tremity of his horror and dismay, her indignant 156 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. rebuke, her low whispered remonstrance, the sai* castic emphasis with which she combats his rick fancies, and endeavors to recall him to himself have an intenseness, a severity, a bitterness, which makes the blood creep. LADY MACBETH. Are you a man? AY, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appall the devil. LADY MACBETH. proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear: This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starto (Impostors to true fear) would ^ell become A woman's story, at a winter's fir>, Authoriz'd by her grandam! Shame itself ! Why do you make such faces ? When ail's don* You look but on a stool. What! quite unmann'd in foDy? Yet when the guests are dismissed, and the/ art left alone, she says no more, and not a syllable of *eproach or scorn escapes her : a few words in sub- missive reply to his questions, and an entreaty tc seek repose, are all she permits herself to utte* There is a touch of pathos and of tenderness in thi rilence which has always affected me beyond ex- pression : it is one of the most masterly and moil eautifm traits of character in the whole play. LADY MACBETH, 457 Lastly, it is clear that in a mind constituted like that of Lady Macbeth, and not utterly depraved Mid hardened by the habit of crime, conscience nvist wake some time or other, and bring with it remorse closed by despair, and despair by death. This great moral retribution was to be displayed to us but how ? Lady Macbeth is not a woman to rtart at shadows ; she mocks at air-drawn daggers ; she sees no imagined spectres rise from the tomb to appall or accuse her.* The towering bravery of Her mind disdains the visionary terrors which haunt her weaker husband. We know, or rather we feel, that she who could give a voice to the most direful intent, and call on the spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to " unsex her," and " stop up all access and passage of remorse" to that remorse would have given nor tongue nor scund ; and that rather than have uttered a complaint, she would have held her breath and died. To have given her a confi- dant, though in the partner of her guilt, would have been a degrading resource, and have disap- pointed and enfeebled all our previous impressions of her character ; yet justice is to be done, and we lire to be made acquainted with that which the woman herself would have suffered a thousand deaths of torture rather than have betrayed. In * Mrs. Siddong, I believe, had an idea that Lady Macbeth be- held the spectre of Banquo in the supper scene, and that hit Wif-eontrol and presence of mind enabled her to surmount Hnr Consciousness of the ghastlr presence. This would be superlin- ftan, and I do not see that eitker the character or the text beat Kit this supposition (58 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. Iho sleeping scene we Lave a glimpse into tn depths of that inward bell: the seared brain and broken heart are laid bare before us in the help- lessness of slumber. By a judgment the most sub lime ever imagined, yet the most unforced, natural, and inevitable, the sleep of her who murdered sleep is no longer repose, but a condensation of resistless horrors which the prostrate intellect and powerless will can neither baffle nor repel. We shudder and are satisfied ; yet our human sympa- thies are again touched : we rather sigh over the ruin than exult in it ; and after watching her through this wonderful scene with a sort of fascina- tion, we dismiss the unconscious, helpless, despair- Btricken murderess, with a feeling which Lady Macbeth, in her waking strength, with all her awe-commanding powers about her, could never have excited. It is here especially we perceive that sweetness of nature which in Shakspeare went hand in hand with his astonishing powers. He never confoundi that line of demarcation which eternally separates good from evil, yet he never places evil before us without exciting in some way a consciousness of the opposite good which shall balance and relieve it I do deny that he has represented in Lady Mac- beth a woman " naturally cruel" * " invariably usoage" f or endued with " pure demoniac firm- tea." J If ever there could have existed a womai * f. omberland. f Professor RiohkrcUon. J Foster i Kmji LADY MACBETH. 45S to whom such phrases could apply a woman with- out touch of modesty, pity or fear, Shakspeaix knew that a thing so monstrous was unfit for all the purposes, of poetry. If Lady Macbeth had been naturally cruel, she needed not so solemnly to have abjured all pity, and called on the spirits that wait on mortal thoughts to unsex her; nor would she have been loved to excess by a man of Macbeth's character ; for it is the sense of intellectual energy and strength of will overpowering her feminine nature, which draws from him that brutst of intense admiration Bring forth men children only, For thy undaunted metal should compose Nothing but males. If she had been invariably savage, her love would not have comforted and sustained her husband in his despair, nor would her uplifted dagger have been arrested by a dear and venerable image ris- ing between her soul and its fell purpose. If en- dued with pure demoniac firmness, her woman'f nature would not, by the reaction, have been so horribly avenged, she would not have died of remorse and despair. ***** "We cannot but observe that through the whole of the dialogue appropriated to Lady Macbeth, there u something very peculiar and characteristic in the nr-n of expression: her compliments, when she is playing the hostess or the queen, are elaborately tegant and verbose : but, when in earnest, aba 180 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. speaks in short energetic sentences sometime* abrupt, but always full of meaning ; her thought! are rapid and clear, her expressions forcible, and the imagery like sudden flashes of lightning : all the foregoing extracts exhibit this, but I wiP venture one more, as an immediate illustration. MACBETH. My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night. LADY MACBETH. And when goes hence i MACBETH. To-morrow, as he purposes. LADY MACBETH. never Shafl in that morrow see ! Thy ft , my thane, is as a book, where men Mav read strange matters ; to beguile the time, >x>k like the time ; bear welcome in your eye Yonr tongue, your hand; look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it. What would not the firmness, the self-command, the enthusiasm, the intellect, the ardent affection! tf this woman have performed, if properly directed ? but the object being unworthy of the effort, the end is disappointment, despair, and death. The power of religion could alone have con- trolled such a mind ; but it is the misery of a very proud, strong, and gifted spirit, without sense o. religion, that instead of looking upward to find JLADY MACBKTH. 481 jopenor, looks round and sees all thingu as subject to itself. Lady Macbeth is placed in a dark, igno- rant, iron j^;e ; her powerful intellect is slightly ringed with its credulity and superstition, but she has no religious feeling to restrain the force of wilL She is a stern fatalist in principle and action " what is dpne, is done," and would be dons over again under the same circumstances ; her remorse is without repentance, or any reference to an of- fended Deity ; it arises from the pang of a wounded conscience, the recoil of the violated feelings of nature : it is the horror of the past, not the terror of the future ; the torture of self-condemnation, not the fear of judgment ; it is strong as her soul, deep as her guilt, fatal as her resolve, and terrible as her crime. If it should be objected to this view of Lady Macbeth's character, that it engages our sympathies in behalf of a perverted being and that to leave her so strong a power upon our feelings in the midst of such supreme wickedness, involves a moral wrong, I can only reply in the words of Dr. Chan- ning, that " in this and the like cases our interest fastens on what is not evil in the character that there is something kindling and ennobling in the consciousness, however awakened, of the energy which resides in mind ; and many a virtuous man has borrowed new strength from the force, con- itancy, and dauntless courage of evil agents." * * See Dr. Channing's remarks on Satan, in his eswty " Oa tk* B*racter and Writings of Milton." Worlu, p 181. IB HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. This is true ; and might he not have added, thai many a powerful and gifted spirit has learnt humil- ity and self-government, from beholding how far the energy which resides in mind may be degraded and perverted ? * * * * In general, when a woman is introduced into a tragedy to be the presiding genius of evil in herself, or the cause of evil to others, she is either too feebly or too darkly portrayed ; either crime is heaped on crime, and horror on horror, till our sympathy is lost in incredulity, or the stimulus is sought in unnatural or impossible situations, or in situations that ought to be impossible, (as in the Myrrha or the Cenci,) or the character is enfeebled by a mixture of degrading propensities and sexual weakness, as in Vittoria Corombona. But Lady Macbeth, though so supremely wicked, and so con- sistently feminine, is still kept aloof from all base alloy. When Shakspeare created a female char- acter purely detestable, he made her an accessary, never a principal. Thus Regan and Goneril are two powerful sketches of selfishness, cruelty, and ingratitude ; we abhor them whenever we see of think of them, but we think very little about them xcept as necessary to the action of the drama, Hiey are to cause the madness of Lear, and to caE forth the filial devotion of Cordelia, and their de- pravity is forgotten in its effects. A comparison oas been made between Lady Macbeth and the Greek Clytemnestra in the Agamemnon of Eschj* LADY MACBETH. 468 lua. ThxS Clytemnestra of Sophocles is something more in Shakspeare's spirit, for she is something less impudently atrocious ; but, considered as a woman and an individual, would any one compare this shameless adulteress, cruel murderess, and unnatural mother, with Lady Macbeth ? Lady Macbeth herself would certainly shrink from tha approximation.* The Electra of Sophocles comes nearer to Lady Macbeth as a poetical conception, with this strong distinction, that she commands more respect and esteem, and less sympathy. The murder in which she participates is ordained by the oracle is an act of justice, and therefore less a murder than a sacrifice. Electra is drawn with magnificent simplicity and intensity of feeling and purpose, but there is a want of light, and shade, and relief. Thus the scene in which Orestes stabs his mother within her chamber, and she is heard pleading for * The vision of Clytemnestra the night before she is murdered, In which she dreams that she has given birth to a dragon, and that, in laying it to her bosom, it draws blood instead of milk, has been greatly admired ; but I suppose that those who most admire it would not place it in comparison with Lady Macbeth'* sleeping scene. Lady Ashton, in the Bride of Lammermoor, if ft domestic Lady Macbeth; but the development being in the narrative, not the dramatic form, it follows hence that we hav* ft masterly portrait, not a complete individual : and the relief of poetry and sympathy being wanting, the detestation she inspire* t* so unmixed as to be almost intolerable: consequently th tharacter, considered in relation to the other personages of tb* ftorr, to perfect; but abstractedly, It Is imperfect; a lasso rellm -nrrf a itatu*. 164 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. mercy, while Electra stands forward listening ex ultingly to her mother's cries, and urging hei brother to strike again, " another blow 1 another ! " &c. is terribly fine, but the horror is too shocking, too physical if I may use such an expression : it will not surely bear a comparison with the murdering scene in Macbeth, where the exhibition of various passions the irresolution of Macbeth, the bold de- termination of his wife, the deep suspense, the rage of the elements without, the horrid stillness within, and the secret feeling of that infernal agency which is ever present to the fancy, even when not visible on the scene throw a rich coloring of poetry over the whole, which does not take from " the present horror of the time," and yet relieves it Shak- speare's blackest shadows are like those of Rem- brandt : so intense, that the gloom which brooded over Egypt in her day of wrath was pale io com- parison yet so transparent that we seem to see the light of heaven through their depth. In the whole compass of dramatic poetry, there is but one female character which can be placed near that of Lady Macbeth ; the MEDEA. Not the vulgar, voluble fury of the Latin tragedy,* nor the Medea in a hoop petticoat of Corneille, but the genuine Greek Medea the Medea of Euripides, f * Attributed to Seneca. > A comparison has already been made in an article In thi Reflector." It will be seen on a reference to that very masterlj MAJ, that I differ from the author in hia conception of 1*4} VacbeUVt character. LADY MACBKTH. 465 is something in the Medea which seizet irresistibly on the imagination. Her passionate devotion to Jason, for whom she had left her parent! and country to whom she had given all, and Would have drawn the spirit from her breast Had he but asked it, sighing forth her soul Into his bosom;* the wrongs and insults which drive her to despera- tion the horrid refinement of cruelty with which she plans and executes her revenge upon her faithless husband the gush of fondness with which she weeps over her children, whom in the next moment she devotes to destruction in a paroxysm of insane fury, carry the terror and pathos of tragic situation to their extreme height But if we may be allowed to judge through the medium of a trans- lation, there is a certain hardness in the manner of treating the character, which in some degree de- teats the effect Medea talks too much : her human feelings and superhuman power are not sufficiently blended. Taking into consideration the different impulses which actuate Medea and Lady Macbeth, as love, jealousy, and revenge on the one side, and ambition on the other, we expect to find more of female nature in the first than in the last : and yet *he contrary is the fact : at least, my own impression as far as a woman may judge of a woman, is, that Although the passions of Medea are more feminine, * Appollonitus Rhodiuis. Vide Elton's Specimens of the ClM* Poet*. 80 466 HISTORICAL CHARACTERS. the character Is less so ; we seem to require moit feeling in her fierceness, more passion in her frenzy ; something less of poetical abstraction, less art, fewer words : her delirious vengeance we might forgive, but her calmness and subtlety are rather revolting. These two admirable characters, placed in contrast to each other, afford a fine illustration of Schlegel's distinction between the ancient or Greek drama, which he compares to sculpture, and the modern or romantic drama, which he compares to painting. The gothic grandeur, the rich chiaro- scuro, and deep-toned colors of Lady Macbeth, stand thus opposed to the classical elegance and mythological splendor, the delicate yet inflexible outline of the Medea. If I might be permitted to carry this illustration still further, I would add, that there exists the same distinction between the Lady Macbeth and the Medea, as between the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci and the Medusa of the Greek gems and bas reliefs. In the painting, the horror of the subject is at once exalted and softened by the most vivid coloring, and the most magical con- trast of light and shade. We gaze until, from the murky depths of the background, the serpent hair eems to stir and glitter as if instinct with life, and the head itself, in all its ghastliness and brightness, ppears to rise from the canvass with the glare >f reality. In the Medusa of sculpture, how di ferent is the effect on the imagination ! We have here the snakes convolving round the winged and LADY MACBETH. 467 graceful head: the brows contracted with horror and pain ; but every feature is chiselled into the most regular and faultless perfection ; and amid the gorgon terrors, there rests a marbly, fixed, super- natural grace, which, without reminding us for a moment of common life or nature, stands before na ft presence, a power, and an enchantment 1 2 / University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Lot Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.