Characteristics of Women Part 9

Ignominy in ransom, and free pardon, Are of two houses: lawful mercy is Nothing akin to foul redemption.

ANGELO.

You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant; And rather proved the sliding of your brother A merriment than a vice.

ISABELLA.

O pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out, To have what we'd have, we speak not what we mean: I something do excuse the thing I hate, For his 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 villain 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 all!

O Isabel! will you not lend a knee?

Isabella, thus urged, breaks silence and appeals to the Duke, not with supplication, or persuasion, but with grave argument, and a kind of dignified humility and conscious power, which are finely characteristic of the individual woman.

Most bounteous Sir, Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd, As if my brother liv'd; I partly think A due sincerity govern'd his deeds Till he did look on me; since it is so Let him not die. My brother had but justice, In that he did the thing for which he died.

For Angelo, His art did not o'ertake his bad intent, That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects.

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 s.e.x, 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 weakness she acknowledges.

ANGELO.

Nay, women are frail too.

ISABELLA.

Ay, as the gla.s.ses where they view themselves; 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 interest 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 natural. It is the strong under-current of pa.s.sion 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 recluse, which, by the very force of contrast, powerfully impress the imagination. As we see in real life that where, from some external or habitual cause, a strong control is exercised over naturally quick feelings and an impetuous temper, they display themselves with a proportionate vehemence when that restraint is removed; so the very violence with which her pa.s.sions burst forth, when opposed or under the influence of strong excitement, is admirably characteristic.

Thus in her exclamation, when she first allows 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 finds that the "outward tainted deputy," has deceived her--

O I will to him, and pluck out his eyes!

Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel!

Injurious world! most d.a.m.ned Angelo!

She places at first a strong and high-souled confidence in her brother's fort.i.tude 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 he twenty heads to tender down, On twenty b.l.o.o.d.y 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 bitterness, and her indignation a force of expression almost fearful; and both are carried to an extreme, which is perfectly in character:

O faithless coward! O 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 save thee.

The whole of this scene with Claudio is inexpressibly grand in the poetry and the sentiment; and the entire play abounds in those pa.s.sages 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 immortal freshness and vigor, and a perpetual charm.

The story of Measure for Measure is a tradition of great antiquity, of which there are several versions, narrative and dramatic. A contemptible tragedy, the _Promos and Ca.s.sandra_ 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 conception and execution, all his own. The commentators 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, pa.s.s over her without a word. One critic, a lady-critic too, whose name I will be so merciful as to suppress, treats Isabella as a coa.r.s.e vixen. Hazlitt, 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 greatly enamoured of her rigid chast.i.ty, nor can feel much confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good at another's expense." What shall we answer to such criticism? Upon what ground can we read the play from beginning to end, and doubt the angel-purity of Isabella, or contemplate her possible lapse from virtue? Such gratuitous mistrust is here a sin 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 sums up her character as "amiable, pious, sensible, resolute, determined, and eloquent:" but his remarks are rather superficial.

Schlegel's observations are also brief and general, 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 observes very beautifully, "that the t.i.tle Measure for 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."[12] Of all the characters, Isabella alone has our sympathy. 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 "by-paths and indirect crooked ways," to conduct us to the natural and foreseen catastrophe, which the Duke's presence throughout renders inevitable. This Duke seems to have a predilection for bringing about justice by a most unjustifiable succession of falsehoods and counterplots. He really deserves Lucio's satirical designation, who somewhere styles him "The Fantastical Duke of Dark Corners." But Isabella is ever consistent in her pure and upright 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.[13]

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 n.o.ble creature in her natural sphere: for though Isabella, as d.u.c.h.ess 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 scene--

Spirits are not finely touched, But to fine issues: nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But like a thrifty G.o.ddess she determines, Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use.[14]

This profound and beautiful sentiment is ill.u.s.trated 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 such 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 purpose; as St. Theresa's intellect, enthusiasm, tenderness, restless activity, and burning eloquence, governed by one overpowering sentiment of devotion, 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 struggle against the trammels imposed, feels its necessity.

ISABELLA.

And have you nuns no further privileges?

FRANCISCA.

Are not these large enough?

ISABELLA.