Characters of Shakespeare's Plays Part 8

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL is one of the most pleasing of our author's comedies. The interest is, however, more of a serious than of a comic nature. The character of Helen is one of great sweetness and delicacy. She is placed in circ.u.mstances of the most critical kind, and has to court her husband both as a virgin and a wife: yet the most scrupulous nicety of female modesty is not once violated. There is not one thought or action that ought to bring a blush into her cheeks, or that for a moment lessens her in our esteem. Perhaps the romantic attachment of a beautiful and virtuous girl to one placed above her hopes by the circ.u.mstances of birth and fortune, was never so exquisitely expressed as in the reflections which she utters when young Roussillon leaves his mother's house, under whose protection she has been brought up with him, to repair to the French king's court.

Helena. Oh, were that all--I think not on my father, And these great tears grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him. What was he like? I have forgot him. My imagination Carries no favour in it, but Bertram's. I am undone, there is no living, none, If Bertram be away. It were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it; he is so above me: In his bright radiance and collateral light Must I be comforted, not in his sphere. Th' ambition in my love thus plagues itself; The hind that would be mated by the lion, Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, tho' a plague, To see him every hour, to sit and draw His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls In our heart's table: heart too capable Of every line and trick of his sweet favour. But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy Must sanctify his relics.

The interest excited by this beautiful picture of a kind and innocent heart is kept up afterwards by her resolution to follow him to France, the success of her experiment in restoring the king's health, her demanding Bertram in marriage as a recompense, his leaving her in disdain, her interview with him afterwards disguised as Diana, a young lady whom he importunes with his secret addresses, and their final reconciliation when the consequences of her stratagem and the proofs of her love are fully made known. The persevering grat.i.tude of the French king to his benefactress, who cures him of a languishing distemper by a prescription hereditary in her family, the indulgent kindness of the Countess, whose pride of birth yields, almost without struggle, to her affection for Helen, the honesty and uprightness of the good old lord Lafeu, make very interesting parts of the picture. The wilful stubbornness and youthful petulance of Bertram are also very admirably described. The comic part of the play turns on the folly, boasting, and cowardice of Parolles, a parasite and hanger-on of Bertram's, the detection of whose false pretensions to bravery and honour forms a very amusing episode. He is first found out by the old lord Lafeu, who says, 'The soul of this man is in his clothes'; and it is proved afterwards that his heart is in his tongue, and that both are false and hollow. The adventure of'the bringing off of his drum' has become proverbial as a satire on all ridiculous and bl.u.s.tering undertakings which the person never means to perform: nor can anything be more severe than what one of the bystanders remarks upon what Parolles says of himself, 'Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?' Yet Parolles himself gives the best solution of the difficulty afterwards when he is thankful to escape with his life and the loss of character; for, so that he can live on, he is by no means squeamish about the loss of pretensions, to which he had sense enough to know he had no real claims, and which he had a.s.sumed only as a means to live.

Parolles. Yet I am thankful; if my heart were great, 'Twould burst at this. Captain I'll be no more, But I will eat and drink, and sleep as soft As captain shall. Simply the thing I am Shall make me live; who knows himself a braggart, Let him fear this; for it shall come to pa.s.s, That every braggart shall be found an a.s.s. Rust sword, cool blushes, and Parolles live Safest in shame; being fooi'd, by fool'ry thrive; There's place and means for every man alive. I'll after them.

The story of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, and of several others of Shakespeare's plays, is taken from Boccaccio. The poet has dramatized the original novel with great skill and comic spirit, and has preserved all the beauty of character and sentiment without improving upon it, which was impossible. There is indeed in Boccaccio's serious pieces a truth, a pathos, and an exquisite refinement of sentiment, which is hardly to be met with in any other prose writer whatever. Justice has not been done him by the world. He has in general pa.s.sed for a mere narrator of lascivious tales or idle jests. This character probably originated in his obnoxious attacks on the monks, and has been kept up by the grossness of mankind, who revenged their own want of refinement on Boccaccio, and only saw in his writings what suited the coa.r.s.eness of their own tastes. But the truth is, that he has carried sentiment of every kind to its very highest purity and perfection. By sentiment we would here understand the habitual workings of some one powerful feeling, where the heart reposes almost entirely upon itself, without the violent excitement of opposing duties or, untoward circ.u.mstances. In this way, nothing ever came up to the story of Frederigo Alberigi and his Falcon. The perseverance in attachment, the spirit of gallantry and generosity displayed in it, has no parallel in the history of heroical sacrifices. The feeling is so unconscious too, and involuntary, is brought out in such small, unlooked-for, and unostentatious circ.u.mstances, as to show it to have been woven into the very nature and soul of the author. The story of Isabella is scarcely less fine and is more affecting in the circ.u.mstances and in the catastrophe. Dryden has done justice to the impa.s.sioned eloquence of the Tancred and Sigismunda; but has not given an adequate idea of the wild preternatural interest of the story of Honoria. Cimon and Iphigene is by no means one of the best, notwithstanding the popularity of the subject. The proof of unalterable affection given in the story of Jeronymo, and the simple touches of nature and picturesque beauty in the story of the two holiday lovers, who were poisoned by tasting of a leaf in the garden at Florence, are perfect masterpieces. The epithet of Divine was well bestowed on this great painter of the human heart. The invention implied in his different tales is immense: but we are not to infer that it is all his own. He probably availed himself of all the common traditions which were floating in his time, and which he was the first to appropriate. Homer appears the most original of all authors--probably for no other reason than that we can trace the plagiarism no further. Boccaccio has furnished subjects to numberless writers since his time, both dramatic and narrative. The story of Griselda is borrowed from his DECAMERON by Chaucer; as is the KNIGHT'S TALE (Palamon and Arcite) from his poem of the THESEID.

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

If we were to part with any of the author's comedies, it should be this. Yet we should be loth to part with Don Adriano de Armado, that mighty potentate of nonsense, or his page, that handful of wit; with Nathaniel the curate, or Holofernes the schoolmaster, and their dispute after dinner on 'the golden cadences of poesy'; with Costard the clown, or Dull the constable. Biron is too accomplished a character to be lost to the world, and yet he could not appear without his fellow courtiers and the king: and if we were to leave out the ladies, the gentlemen would have no mistresses. So that we believe we may let the whole play stand as it is, and we shall hardly venture to 'set a mark of reprobation on it'. Still we have some objections to the style, which we think savours more of the pedantic spirit of Shakespeare's time than of his own genius; more of controversial divinity, and the logic of Peter Lombard, than of the inspiration of the Muse. It transports us quite as much to the manners of the court, and the quirks of courts of law, as to the scenes of nature or the fairyland of his own imagination. Shakespeare has set himself to imitate the tone of polite conversation then prevailing among the fair, the witty, and the learned, and he has imitated it but too faithfully. It is as if the hand of t.i.tian had been employed to give grace to the curls of a full-bottomed periwig, or Raphael had attempted to give expression to the tapestry figures in the House of Lords. Shakespeare has put an excellent description of this fashionable jargon into the mouth of the critical Holofernes 'as too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it'; and nothing can be more marked than the difference when he breaks loose from the trammels he had imposed on himself, 'as light as bird from brake', and speaks in his own person. We think, for instance, that in the following soliloquy the poet has fairly got the start of Queen Elizabeth and her maids of honour; Biron. O! and I forsooth in love, I that have been love's whip; A very beadle to an amorous sigh: A critic; nay, a night-watch constable, A domineering pedant o'er the boy, Than whom no mortal more magnificent. This whimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, This signior Junio, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms, Th' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans: Liege of all loiterers and malcontents, Dread prince of plackets. king of codpieces, Sole imperator, and great general Of trotting parators (O my little heart!) And I to be a corporal of his field, And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop! What? I love! I sue! I seek a wife! A woman, that is like a German clock, Still a repairing; ever out of frame; And never going aright, being a watch, And being watch'd, that it may still go right? Nay, to be perjur'd, which is worst of all: And among three to love the worst of all, A whitely wanton with a velvet brow, With two pitch b.a.l.l.s stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and by heav'n, one that will do the deed, Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard; And I to sigh for her! to watch for her! To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague That Cupid will impose for my neglect Of his almighty dreadful little might. Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan: Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

The character of Biron drawn by Rosaline and that which Biron gives of Boyet are equally happy. The observations on the use and abuse of study, and on the power of beauty to quicken the understanding as well as the senses, are excellent. The scene which has the greatest dramatic effect is that in which Biron, the king, Longaville, and Dumain, successively detect each other and are detected in their breach of their vow and in their profession of attachment to their several mistresses, in which they suppose themselves to be overheard by no one. The reconciliation between these lovers and their sweethearts is also very good, and the penance which Rosaline imposes on Biron, before he can expect to gain her consent to marry him, full of propriety and beauty.

Rosaline. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron, Before I saw you: and the world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of comparisons, and wounding flouts; Which you on all estates will execute, That lie within the mercy of your wit. To weed this wormwood from your faithful brain; And therewithal to win me, if you please, (Without the which I am not to be won) You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, T' enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be: it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Rosaline. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools; A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it; never in the tongue Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, And I will have you, and that fault withal; But, if they will not, throw away that spirit, And I shall find you empty of that fault, Right joyful of your reformation.

Biron. A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall, I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.

The famous cuckoo-song closes the play; but we shall add no more criticisms: 'the words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo'.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

This admirable comedy used to be frequently acted till of late years. Mr. Garrick's Bened.i.c.k was one of his most celebrated characters; and Mrs. Jordan, we have understood, played Beatrice very delightfully. The serious part is still the most prominent here, as in other instances that we have noticed. Hero is the princ.i.p.al figure in the piece, and leaves an indelible impression on the mind by her beauty, her tenderness, and the hard trial of her love. The pa.s.sage in which Claudio first makes a confession of his affection towards her conveys as pleasing an image of the entrance of love into a youthful bosom as can well be imagined.

Oh, my lord, When you went onward with this ended action, I look'd upon her with a soldier's eye, That lik'd, but had a rougher task in hand Than to drive liking to the name of love; But now I am return'd, and that war-thoughts Have left their places vacant; in their rooms Come thronging soft and delicate desires, All prompting me how fair young Hero is, Saying, I lik'd her ere I went to wars.

In the scene at the altar, when Claudio, urged on by the villain Don John, brings the charge of incontinence against her, and as it were divorces her in the very marriage-ceremony, her appeals to her own conscious innocence and honour are made with the most affecting simplicity.

Claudio. No, Leonato, I never tempted her with word too large, But, as a brother to his sister, show'd Bashful sincerity, and comely love.

Hero. And seem'd I ever otherwise to you?

Claudio. Out on thy seeming, I will write against it: You seem to me as Dian in her orb, As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown; But you are more intemperate in your blood Than Veilus, or those pamper'd animals That rage in savage sensuality.

Hero. Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wide?

Leonato. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?

John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.

Bened.i.c.k. This looks not like a nuptial.

Hero. True! O G.o.d!

The justification of Hero in the end, and her restoration to the confidence and arms of her lover, is brought about by one of those temporary consignments to the grave of which Shakespeare seems to have been fond. He has perhaps explained the theory of this predilection in the following lines: Friar. She dying, as it must be so maintain'd, Upon the instant that she was accus'd, Shall be lamented, pity'd, and excus'd, Of every hearer: for it so falls out, That what we have we prize not to the worth, While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost, Why then we rack the value; then we find The virtue, that possession would not show us Whilst it was ours.--So will it fare with Claudio; When he shall hear she dy'd upon his words, The idea of her love shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination; And every lovely organ of her life Shall come apparel'd in more precious habit, More moving, delicate, and full of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soul, Than when she liv'd indeed.

The princ.i.p.al comic characters in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Bened.i.c.k and Beatrice, are both essences in their kind. His character as a woman-hater is admirably supported, and his conversion to matrimony is no less happily effected by the pretended story of Beatrice's love for him. It is hard to say which of the two scenes is the best, that of the trick which is thus practised on Bened.i.c.k, or that in which Beatrice is prevailed on to take pity on him by overhearing her cousin and her maid declare (which they do on purpose) that he is dying of love for her. There is something delightfully picturesque in the manner in which Beatrice is described as coming to hear the plot which is contrived against herself: For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs Close by the ground, to hear our conference.

In consequence of what she hears (not a word of which s true) she exclaims when these good-natured informants are gone: What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true? Stand I condemn'd for pride and scorn so much? Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride adieu! No glory lives behind the back of such. And, Bened.i.c.k, love on, I will requite thee; Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand; If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee To bind our loves up in an holy band: For others say thou dost deserve; and I Believe it better than reportingly.

And Bened.i.c.k, on his part, is equally sincere in his repentance with equal reason, after he has heard the grey-beard, Leonato, and his friend, 'Monsieur Love', discourse of the desperate state of his supposed inamorata.

This can be no trick; the conference was sadly borne.--They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady; it seems her affections have the full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censur'd: they say, I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her; they say too, that she will rather die than give any sign of affection.--I did never think to marry; I must not seem proud:--happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending. They say, the lady is fair; 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness: and vir-tuous;--'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise--but for loving me;--by my troth it is no addition to her wit;--nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her.--I may chance to have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have rail'd so long against marriage: but doth not the appet.i.te alter? A man loves the meat in his youth, that he cannot endure in his age.--Shall quips, and sentences, and these paper bullets of the brain, awe a man from the career of his humour? No: the world must be peopled. When I said, I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were marry'd.--Here comes Beatrice; by this day, she's a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her.

The beauty of all this arises from the characters of the persons so entrapped. Bened.i.c.k is a professed and staunch enemy to marriage, and gives very plausible reasons for the faith that is in him. And as to Beatrice, she persecutes him all day with her jests (so that he could hardly think of being troubled with them at night), she not only turns him but all other things into jest, and is proof against everything serious.

Hero. Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes, Misprising what they look on; and her wit Values itself so highly, that to her All matter else seems weak: she cannot love, Nor take no shape nor project of affection, She is so self-endeared.

Ursula. Sure, I think so; And therefore, certainly, it were not good She knew his love, lest she make sport at it.

Hero. Why, you speak truth: I never yet saw man, How wise, how n.o.ble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She'd swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, nature, drawing of an antick, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut: If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

These were happy materials for Shakespeare to work on, and he has made a happy use of them. Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity.

Dogberry and Verges in this play are inimitable specimens of quaint blundering and misprisions of meaning; and are a standing record of that formal gravity of pretension and total want of common understanding, which Shakespeare no doubt copied from real life, and which in the course of two hundred years appear to have ascended from the lowest to the highest offices in the state.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

Shakespeare has here converted the forest of Arden into another Arcadia, where they 'fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world'. It is the most ideal of any of this author's plays. It is a pastoral drama in which the interest arises more out of the sentiments and characters than out of the actions or situations. It is not what is done, but what is said, that claims our attention. Nursed in solitude, 'under the shade of melancholy boughs', the imagination grows soft and delicate, and the wit runs riot in idleness, like a spoiled child that is never sent to school. Caprice is and fancy reign and revel here, and stern necessity is banished to the court. The mild sentiments of humanity are strengthened with thought and leisure; the echo of the cares and noise of the world strikes upon the ear of those 'who have felt them knowingly', softened by time and distance. 'They hear the tumult, and are still.' The very air of the place seems to breathe a spirit of philosophical poetry; to stir the thoughts, to touch the heart with pity, as the drowsy forest rustles to the sighing gale. Never was there such beautiful moralizing, equally free from pedantry or petulance.

And this their life, exempt from public haunts, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Jaques is the only purely contemplative character in Shakespeare. He thinks, and does nothing. His whole occupation is to amuse his mind, and he is totally regardless of his body and his fortunes. He is the prince of philosophical idlers; his only pa.s.sion is thought; he sets no value upon anything but as it serves as food for reflection. He can 'suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs'; the motley fool, 'who morals on the time', is the greatest prize he meets with in the forest. He resents Orlando's pa.s.sion for Rosalind as some disparagement of his own pa.s.sion for abstract truth; and leaves the Duke, as soon as he is restored to his sovereignty, to seek his brother out, who has quitted it, and turned hermit.

--Out of these convert.i.tes There is much matter to be heard and learnt.

Within the sequestered and romantic glades of the Forest of Arden, they find leisure to be good and wise, or to play the fool and fall in love. Rosalind's character is made up of sportive gaiety and natural tenderness: her tongue runs the faster to conceal the pressure at her heart. She talks herself out of breath, only to get deeper in love. The coquetry with which she plays with her lover in the double character which she has to support is managed with the nicest address. How Full of voluble, laughing grace is all her conversation with Orlando: --In heedless mazes running With wanton haste and giddy cunning.

How full of real fondness and pretended cruelty is her answer to him when he promises to love her 'For ever and a day'!

Say a day without the ever: no, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives: I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary c.o.c.k-pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more newfangled than an ape; more giddy in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to sleep.

Orlando. But will my Rosalind do so?

Rosalind. By my life she will do as I do.

The silent and retired character of Celia is a necessary relief to the provoking loquacity of Rosalind, nor can anything be better conceived or more beautifully described than the mutual affection between the two cousins: --We still have slept together, Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together, And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans, Still we went coupled and inseparable.

The unrequited love of Silvius for Phebe shows the perversity of this pa.s.sion in the commonest scenes of life, and the rubs and stops which nature throws in its way, where fortune has placed none. Touchstone is not in love, but he will have a mistress as a subject for the exercise of his grotesque humour, and to show his contempt for the pa.s.sion, by his indifference about the person. He is a rare fellow. He is a mixture of the ancient cynic philosopher with the modern buffoon, and turns folly into wit, and wit into folly, just as the fit takes him. His courtship of Audrey not only throws a degree of ridicule on the state of wedlock itself, but he is equally an enemy to the prejudices of opinion in other respects. The lofty tone of enthusiasm, which the Duke and his companions in exile spread over the stillness and solitude of a country life, receives a pleasant shock from Touchstone's sceptical determination of the question.

Corin. And how like you this shepherd's life, Mr. Touchstone?

Clown. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, took you, it fits my humour; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach.

Zimmennan's celebrated work on Solitude discovers only half the sense of this pa.s.sage.

There is hardly any of Shakespeare's plays that contains a greater number of pa.s.sages that have been quoted in books of extracts, or a greater number of phrases that have become in a manner proverbial. If we were to give all the striking pa.s.sages, we should give half the play. We will only recall a few of the most delightful to the reader's recollection. Such are the meeting between Orlando and Adam, the exquisite appeal of Orlando to the humanity of the Duke and his company to supply him with food for the old man, and their answer, the Duke's description of a country life, and the account of Jaques moralizing on the wounded deer, his meeting with Touchstone in the forest, his apology for his own melancholy and his satirical vein, and the well-known speech on the stages of human life, the old song of 'Blow, blow, thou winter's wind', Rosalind's description of the marks of a lover and of the progress of time with different persons, the picture of the snake wreathed round Oliver's neck while the lioness watches her sleeping prey, and Touchstone's lecture to the shepherd, his defence of cuckolds, and panegyric on the virtues of 'an If.--All of these are familiar to the reader: there is one pa.s.sage of equal delicacy and beauty which may have escaped him, and with it we shall close our account of As You Like it. It is Phebe's description of Ganimed at the end of the third act.

Think not I love him, tho' I ask for him; Tis but a peevish boy, yet he talks well;-- But what care I for words! yet words do well, When he that speaks them pleases those that hear; It is a pretty youth; not very pretty; But sure he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him; He'll make a proper man; the best thing in him Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue Did make offence, his eye did heal it up: He is not very tall, yet for his years he's tall; His leg is but so so, and yet'tis well; There was a pretty redness in his lip, A little riper, and more l.u.s.ty red Than that mix'd in his cheek; 'twas just the difference Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. There be some women, Silvius, had they mark'd him In parcels as I did, would have gone near To fall in love with him: but for my part I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet I have more cause to hate him than to love him; For what had he to do to chide at me?

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is almost the only one of Shakespeare's comedies that has a regular plot, and downright moral. It is full of bustle, animation, and rapidity of action. It shows admirably how self-will is only to be got the better of by stronger will, and how one degree of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out by another still greater. Petruchio is a madman in his senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his tricks and impostures. He acts his a.s.sumed character to the life, with the most fantastical extravagance, with complete presence of mind, with untired animal spirits, and without a particle of ill humour from beginning to end.--The situation of poor Katherine, worn out by his incessant persecutions, becomes at last almost as pitiable as it is ludicrous, and it is difficult to say which to admire most, the unaccountableness of his actions, or the unalterableness of his resolutions. It is a character which most husbands ought to study, unless perhaps the very audacity of Petruchio's attempt might alarm them more than his success would encourage them. What a sound must the following speech carry to some married ears!

Think you a little din can daunt my ears? Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds, Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field? And heav'n's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang? And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, That gives not half so great a blow to hear, As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?

Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade more than 'some dozen followers' to be of this heretical way of thinking. He unfolds his scheme for the Taming of the Shrew, on a principle of contradiction, thus: I'll woo her with some spirit when she comes. Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain She sings as sweetly as a nightingale; Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear As morning roses newly wash'd with dew; Say she be mute, and will not speak a word, Then I'll commend her volubility, And say she uttereth piercing eloquence: If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks, As tho' she bid me stay by her a week; If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day, When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.

He accordingly gains her consent to the match, by telling her father that he has got it; disappoints her by not returning at the time he has promised to wed her, and when he returns, creates no small consternation by the oddity of his dress and equipage. This however is nothing to the astonishment excited by his madbrained behaviour at the marriage. Here is the account of it by an eye-witness: Gremio. Tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him; I'll tell you. Sir Lucentio; when the priest Should ask if Katherine should be his wife? Ay, by gogs woons, quoth he; and swore so loud, That, all amaz'd, the priest let fall the book; And as he stooped again to take it up, This mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff, That down fell priest and book, and book and priest. Now take them up, quoth he, if any list.

Tronio. What said the wench when he rose up again?

Gremio. Trembled and shook; for why, he stamp'd and swore, As if the vicar meant to cozen him. But after many ceremonies done, He calls for wine; a health, quoth he; as if He'd been aboard carousing with his mates After a storm; quaft off the muscadel, And threw the sops all in the s.e.xton's face; Having no other cause but that his beard Grew thin and hungerly, and seem'd to ask His sops as he was drinking. This done, he took The bride about the neck, and kiss'd her lips With such a clamorous smack, that at their parting All the church echoed; and I seeing this, Came thence for very shame; and after me, I know, the rout is coming;-- Such a mad marriage never was before.

The most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the character of Petruchio throughout, is the studied approximation to the intractable character of real madness, his apparent insensibility to all external considerations, and utter indifference to everything but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self- will. There is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes any impression but his own purposes, and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want common-sense. With him a thing's being plain and reasonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Everything flies before his will, like a conjurer's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects she sees, at a word's speaking. Such are his insisting that it is the moon and not the sun which they see, &c. This extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene where, on their return to her father's, they meet old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately addresses as a young lady: Petruchio. Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away? Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman? Such war of white and red within her cheeks; What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, As those two eyes become that heav'nly face? Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee: Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake.

Hortensio. He'll make the man mad to make a woman of him.

Katherine. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, Whither away, or where is thy abode? Happy the parents of so fair a child; Happier the man whom favourable stars Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow.

Petruchio. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad: This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is.

Katherine. Pardon, old father, my mistaken eyes That have been so bedazed with the sun That everything I look on seemeth green. Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.

The whole is carried on with equal spirit, as if the poet's comic Muse had wings of fire. It is strange how one man could be so many things; but so it is. The concluding scene, in which trial is made of the obedience of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio), is a very happy one.--In some parts of this play there is a little too much about music-masters and masters of philosophy. They were things of greater rarity in those days than they are now. Nothing, however, can be better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the prosecution of his studies: The mathematics, and the metaphysics, Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you: No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta'en: In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

We have heard the Honey-Moon called 'an elegant Katherine and Petruchio'. We suspect we do not understand this word ELEGANT in the sense that many people do. But in our sense of the word, we should call Lucentio's description of his mistress elegant: Tranio. I saw her coral lips to move, And with her breath she did perfume the air: Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.

When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his encouragement, 'I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir'--there is nothing elegant in this, and yet we hardly know which of the two pa.s.sages is the best.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is a play within a play. It is supposed to be a play acted for the benefit of Sly the tinker, who is made to believe himself a lord, when he wakes after a drunken brawl. The character of Sly and the remarks with which he accompanies the play are as good as the play itself. His answer when he is asked how he likes it, 'Indifferent well; 'tis a good piece of work, would 'twere done,' is in good keeping, as if he were thinking of his Sat.u.r.day night's job. Sly does not change his tastes with his new situation, but in the midst of splendour and luxury still calls out l.u.s.tily and repeatedly 'for a pot o' the smallest ale'. He is very slow in giving up his personal ident.i.ty in his sudden advancement. 'I am Christophero Sly, call not me honour nor lordship. I ne'er drank sack in my life: and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef; ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet, nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.--What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christophero Sly, old Sly's son of Burtonheath, by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by trans.m.u.tation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen- pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying'st knave in Christendom.'

This is honest. 'The Slies are no rogues', as he says of himself. We have a great predilection for this representative of the family; and what makes us like him the better is, that we take him to be of kin (not many degrees removed) to Sancho Panza.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

This is a play as full of genius as it is of wisdom. Yet there is an original sin in the nature of the subject, which prevents us from taking a cordial interest in it. The height of moral argument' which the author has maintained in the intervals of pa.s.sion or blended with the more powerful impulses of nature, is hardly surpa.s.sed in any of his plays. But there is in general a want of pa.s.sion; the affections are at a stand; our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions. The only pa.s.sion which influences the story is that of Angelo; and yet he seems to have a much greater pa.s.sion for hypocrisy than for his mistress. Neither are we greatly enamoured of Isabella's rigid chast.i.ty, though she could not act otherwise than she did. We do not feel the same confidence in the virtue that is sublimely good' at another's expense, as if it had been out to some less disinterested trial. As to the Duke, who makes a very imposing and mysterious stage-character, he is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state; more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the feelings and apprehensions of others. Claudio is the only person who feels naturally; and yet he is placed in circ.u.mstances of distress which almost preclude the wish for his deliverance. Mariana is also in love with Angelo, whom we hate. In this respect, there may be said to be a general system of cross-purposes between the feelings of the different characters and the sympathy of the reader or the audience. This principle of repugnance seems to have reached its height in the character of Master Barnardine, who not only sets at defiance the opinions of others, but has even thrown off all self-regard,--'one that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, and to come.' He is a fine ant.i.thesis to the morality and the hypocrisy of the other characters of the play. Barnardine is Caliban transported from Prospero's wizard island to the forests of Bohemia or the prisons of Vienna. He is the creature of bad habits as Caliban is of gross instincts. He has, however, a strong notion of the natural fitness of things, according to his own sensations--'He has been drinking hard all night, and he will not be hanged that day'--and Shakespeare has let him off at last. We do not understand why the philosophical German critic, Schlegel, should be so severe on those pleasant persons, Lucio, Pompey, and Master Froth, as to call them 'wretches'. They appear all mighty comfortable in their occupations, and determined to pursue them, 'as the flesh and fortune should serve'. A very good exposure of the want of self-knowledge and contempt for others, which is so common in the world, is put into the mouth of Abhorson, the jailer, when the Provost proposes to a.s.sociate Pompey with him in his office--'A bawd, sir? Fie upon him, he will discredit our mystery.' And the same answer would serve in nine instances out of ten to the same kind of remark, 'Go to, sir, you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale.' Shakespeare was in one sense the least moral of all writers; for morality (commonly so called) is made up of antipathies; and his talent consisted in sympathy with human nature, in all its shapes, degrees, depressions, and elevations. The object of the pedantic moralist is to find out the bad in everything: his was to show that 'there is some soul of goodness in things evil'. Even Master Barnardine is not left to the mercy of what others think of him; but when he comes in, speaks for himself, and pleads his own cause, as well as if counsel had been a.s.signed him. In one sense, Shakespeare was no moralist at all: in another, he was the greatest of all moralists. He was a moralist in the same sense in which nature is one. He taught what he had learnt from her. He showed the greatest knowledge of humanity with the greatest fellow-feeling for it.

One of the most dramatic pa.s.sages in the present play is the interview between Claudio and his sister, when she comes to inform him of the conditions on which Angelo will spare his life.

Claudio. Let me know the point.

Isabella.--O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, Lest thou a feverous life should'st entertain, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honour. Dar'st thou die? 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.

Claudio. Why give you me this shame? Think you I can a resolution fetch From flowery tenderness; if I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms.

Isabella. There spake my brother! there my father's grave Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die: Thou art too n.o.ble to conserve a life In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy-- Whose settled visage and deliberate word Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew As faulcon doth the fowl--is yet a devil.

Claudio. The princely Angelo?

Isabella. Oh,'tis the cunning livery of h.e.l.l, The d.a.m.ned'st body to invest and cover In princely guards! Dost thou think, Claudio, If I would yield him my virginity, Thou might'st be freed?

Claudio. Oh, heavens! it cannot be.

Isabella. Yes, he would give it thee, for this rank offence, So to offend him still: this night's the time That I should do what I abhor to name, Or else thou dy'st to-morrow.

Claudio. Thou shalt not do't.

Isabella. Oh, were it but my life, I'd throw it down for your deliverance As frankly as a pin.

Claudio. Thanks, dear Isabel.