Shakespeare Part 5

When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.

XI.

WHAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain. What women!

Isabella--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect truth.

Juliet--within whose heart pa.s.sion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose.

Cordelia--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.

Hermione--"tender as infancy and grace"--who bore with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.

Desdemona--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid lips.

Perdita--A violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Junos eyes--"The sweetest low-born la.s.s that ever ran on the green sward." And Helena--who said:

"I know I love in vain, strive against hope-- Yet in this captious and intenable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still, Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more."

Miranda--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun.

And Cordelia, whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless Imogen, who cried:

"What is it to be false?"

And here is the description of the perfect woman:

"To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; To keep her constancy in plight and youth-- Outliving beauty's outward with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decays."

Shakespeare done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the world.

For my part. I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and _Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart, and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old _Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_, the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_, without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient _Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a d.a.m.ned soul in h.e.l.l. And the poor _Fool_, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was immortal." And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man: "I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content."

And mingling in this motley throng, _Lear_, within whose brain a tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a life was given back to memory--and then by madness thrown to storm and night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the sh.o.r.es.

And _Oth.e.l.lo_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.

And _Hamlet_--thought-entangted--hesitating between two worlds.

And _Macbeth_--strange mingling of cruelty and conscience, reaping the sure harvest of successful crime--"Curses not loud but deep--mouth-honor,--breath."

And _Brutus_, falling on his sword that Caesar might be still.

And _Romeo_, dreaming of the white wonder of Juliet's hand. And _Ferdinand_, the patient log-man for Miranda's sake. And _Florizel_, who, "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide," would not be faithless to the low-born la.s.s. And _Constance_, weeping for her son, while grief "stuffs out his vacant garments with his form."

And in the midst of tragedies and tears, of love and laughter and crime, we hear the voice of the good friar, who declares that in every human heart, as in the smallest flower, there are encamped the opposed hosts of good and evil--and our philosophy is interrupted by the garrulous old nurse, whose talk is as busily useless as the babble of a stream that hurries by a ruined mill.

From every side the characters crowd upon us--the men and women born of Shakespeare's brain. They utter with a thousand voices the thoughts of the "myriad-minded" man, and impress themselves upon us as deeply and vividly as though they really lived with us.

Shakespeare alone has delineated love in every possible phase--has ascended to the very top, and actually reached heights that no other has imagined. I do not believe the human mind will ever produce or be in a position to appreciate, a greater love-play than "Romeo and Juliet." It is a symphony in which all music seems to blend. The heart bursts into blossom, and he who reads feels the swooning intoxication of a divine perfume.

In the alembic of Shakespeare's brain the baser metals were turned to gold--pa.s.sions became virtues--weeds became exotics, from some diviner land--and common mortals made of ordinary clay outranked the Olympian G.o.ds. In his brain there was the touch of chaos that suggests the infinite--that belongs to genius. Talent is measured and mathematical--dominated by prudence and the thought of use. Genius is tropical. The creative instinct runs riot, delights in extravagance and waste, and overwhelms the mental beggars of the world with uncounted gold and unnumbered gems.

Some things are immortal: The plays of Shakespeare, the marbles of the Greeks, and the music of Wagner.

XII.

Shakespeare was the greatest of philosophers.

He knew the conditions of success--of happiness--the relations _that men, sustain_ to each other, and the duties of all. He knew the tides and currents of the heart--the cliffs and caverns of the brain. He knew the weakness of the will, the sophistry of desire--and "That pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision."

He knew that the soul lives in an invisible world--that flesh is but a mask, and that "There is no art to find the mind's construction In the face."

He knew that courage should be the servant of judgment, and that

"When valor preys on reason it eats the sword It fights with."

He knew that man is never "master of the event, that he is to some extent the sport or prey of the blind forces of the world, and that

"In the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men."

Feeling that the past is unchangeable, and that that which must happen is as much beyond control as though it had happened, he says:

"Let determined things to destiny Hold unbewailed their way."

Shakespeare was great enough to know that every human being prefers happiness to misery, and that crimes are but mistakes. Looking in pity upon the human race, upon the pain and poverty, the crimes and cruelties, the limping travelers on the th.o.r.n.y paths, he was great and good enough to say:

"There is no darkness but ignorance."

In all the philosophies there is no greater line. This great truth fills the heart with pity.

He knew that place and power do not give happiness--that the crowned are subject as the lowest to fate and chance.

"Within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps death his Court, and there the antic sits Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a brief and little scene To monarchize by fear and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit-- As if this flesh that walls about our life Were bra.s.s impregnable; and humored thus, Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall--and farewell king!"

So, too, he knew that gold could not bring joy--that death and misfortune come alike to rich and poor, because:

"If thou art rich thou art poor; For like an a.s.s whose back with ingots bows Thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee."

In some of his philosophy there was a kind of scorn--a hidden meaning that could not in his day and time have safely been expressed. You will remember that Laertes was about to kill the king, and this king was the murderer of his own brother, and sat upon the throne by reason of his crime--and in the mouth of such a king Shakespeare puts these words:

"There's such divinity doth hedge a king."