Shakespeare and the Modern Stage Part 10

Eo scilicet formosius id esse magnificentiusque fatebimur quo in maiore praestabitur potestate (I., xix., 1):--

But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to G.o.d himself.

(_M. of V._, IV., i., 193-5.)

Quod si di placabiles et aequi delicta potentium non statim fulminibus persequuntur, quanto aequius est hominem hominibus praepositum miti animo exercere imperium? (I., vii., 2):--

And earthly power doth then show likest G.o.d's When mercy seasons justice.

(_M. of V._, IV., i., 196-7.)

Quid autem? Non proximum eis (dis) loc.u.m tenet is qui se ex deorum natura gerit beneficus et largus et in melius potens? (I., xix., 9):--

Consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation.

(_M. of V._, IV., i., 198-200.)

Cogitato ... quanta solitudo et vast.i.tas futura sit si nihil relinquitur nisi quod iudex severus absolverit (I., vi., 1).

This remarkable series of parallelisms does not affect the argument in the text that Shakespeare, who reiterated Portia's pleas and phraseology in Isabella's speeches, had a personal faith in the declared sentiment. Whether the parallelism is to be explained as conscious borrowing or accidental coincidence is an open question.]

Here are Isabella's words in _Measure for Measure_ (II., ii., 59 _seq._):--

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.

How would you be If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are?

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

Mercy is the predominating or crowning virtue that Shakespeare demands in rulers. But the Shakespearean code is innocent of any taint of sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to eschew self-glorification or self-indulgence. It is the _virtues_ of the holders of office, not their office itself, which alone in the end ent.i.tles them to consideration. Advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances give no man claim to respect. A man is alone worthy of regard by reason of his personal character. Honour comes from his own acts, neither from his "foregoers," _i.e._, ancestors, nor from his rank in society. "Good alone is good without a name." This is not the view of the world, which values lying trophies, rank, or wealth. The world is thereby the sufferer.[30]

[Footnote 30:

From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer's deed: Where great additions swell's, and virtue none, It is a dropsied honour: good alone Is good without a name; vileness is so: The property by what it is should go, Not by the t.i.tle; ... that is honour's scorn, Which challenges itself as honour's born, And is not like the sire: honours thrive When rather from our acts we them derive Than our foregoers: the mere word's a slave, Debauch'd on every tomb; on every grave A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb Where dust and d.a.m.n'd oblivion is the tomb Of honour'd bones indeed.

(_All's Well_, II., iii., 130 _seq._)]

The world honours a judge; but if the judge be indebted to his office and not to his character for the respect that is paid him, he may deserve no more honour than the criminal in the dock, whom he sentences to punishment. "A man may see how this world goes with no eyes," says King Lear to the blind Gloucester. "Look with thine ears; see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear; change places, and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority; a dog's obeyed in office." "The great image of authority" is often a brazen idol.

Hereditary rulers form no inconsiderable section of Shakespeare's _dramatis personae_. In _Macbeth_ (IV., iii., 92-4) he specifically defined "the king-becoming graces":--

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fort.i.tude.

But the dramatist's main energies are devoted to exposure of the hollowness of this counsel of perfection. Temptations to vice beset rulers of men to a degree that is unknown to their subjects. To avarice rulers are especially p.r.o.ne. Stanchless avarice constantly converts kings of ordinary clay into monsters. How often they forge

Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, Destroying them for wealth.

(_Macbeth_, IV., iii., 83-4.)

Intemperance in all things--in business and pleasure--is a standing menace of monarchs.

Boundless intemperance In Nature is a tyranny: it hath been Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne And fail of many kings.

(_Macbeth_, IV., iii., 66-9.)

A leader of men, if he be capable of salvation, must "delight no less in truth than life." Yet "truth," for the most part, is banished from the conventional environment of royalty.

Repeatedly does Shakespeare bring into dazzling relief the irony which governs the being of kings. Want of logic and defiance of ethical principle underlie their pride in magnificent ceremonial and pageantry. The ironic contrast between the pretensions of a king and the actual limits of human destiny is a text which Shakespeare repeatedly clothes in golden language.

It is to be admitted that nearly all the kings in Shakespeare's gallery frankly acknowledge the make-believe and unreality which dogs regal pomp and ceremony. In self-communion they acknowledge the ruler's difficulty in finding truth in their traditional scope of life. In a great outburst on the night before Agincourt, Henry V.--the only king whom Shakespeare seems thoroughly to admire--openly describes the inevitable confusion between fact and fiction which infects the conditions of royalty. Anxiety and unhappiness are so entwined with ceremonial display as to deprive the king of the reliefs and recreations which freely lie at the disposal of ordinary men.

What infinite heart's-ease Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!

And what have kings that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony?

And what art thou, thou idol ceremony?

What kind of G.o.d art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

What are thy rents? what are thy comings-in?

O ceremony, show me but thy worth!

What is thy soul of adoration?

Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?

Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd Than they in fearing.

What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!

Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out With t.i.tles blown from adulation?

Will it give place to flexure and low bending?

Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream That play'st so subtly with a king's repose: I am a king that find thee; and I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl, The farced t.i.tle running 'fore the king, The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp That beats upon the high sh.o.r.e of this world,-- No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony, Not all these, laid in bed majestical, Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave Who, with a body fill'd and vacant mind Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread.

(_Henry V._, IV., i., 253-287.)

Barely distinguishable is the sentiment which finds expression in the pathetic speech of Henry V.'s father when he vainly seeks that sleep which thousands of his poorest subjects enjoy. The sleepless king points to the irony of reclining on the kingly couch beneath canopies of costly state when sleep refuses to weigh his eyelids down or steep his senses in forgetfulness. The king is credited with control of every comfort; but he is denied by nature comforts which she places freely at command of the humblest. So again does Richard II.

soliloquize on the vain pride which imbues the king, while death all the time grins at his pomp and keeps his own court within the hollow crown that rounds the prince's mortal temples. Yet again, to identical effect is Henry VI.'s sorrowful question:--

Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade, To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich-embroidered canopy To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?

(III. _Henry VI._, II., v., 42-5.)

To this text Shakespeare constantly recurs, and he bestows on it all his fertile resources of ill.u.s.tration. The reiterated exposition by Shakespeare of the hollowness of kingly ceremony is a notable feature of his political sentiment The dramatist's independent a.n.a.lysis of the quiddity of kingship is, indeed, alike in manner and matter, a startling contribution to sixteenth century speculation. In manner it is worthy of Shakespeare's genius at its highest. In matter it is for its day revolutionary rationalism. It defies a popular doctrine, held almost universally by Shakespeare's contemporary fellow-countrymen, that royalty is divine and under G.o.d's special protection, that the gorgeous ceremony of the throne reflects a heavenly attribute, and that the king is the pampered favourite of heaven.

Bacon defined a king with slender qualifications, as "a mortal G.o.d on earth unto whom the living G.o.d has lent his own name." Shakespeare was well acquainted with this accepted doctrine. He often gives dramatic definition of it. He declines to admit its soundness. Wherever he quotes it, he adds an ironical comment, which was calculated to perturb the orthodox royalist. Having argued that the day-labourer or the shepherd is far happier than a king, he logically refuses to admit that the monarch is protected by G.o.d from any of the ills of mortality. Richard II. may a.s.sert that "the hand of G.o.d alone, and no hand of blood or bone" can rob him of the sacred handle of his sceptre. But the catastrophe of the play demonstrates that that theft is entirely within human scope. The king is barbarously murdered. In _Hamlet_ the graceless usurping uncle declares that "such divinity doth hedge a king," that treason cannot endanger his life. But the speaker is run through the body very soon after the brag escapes his lips.

Shakespeare is no comfortable theorist, no respecter of orthodox doctrine, no smooth-tongued approver of fashionable dogma. His acute intellect cuts away all the cobwebs, all the illusions, all the delusions, of formulae. His untutored insight goes down to the root of things; his king is not Philosopher Bacon's "mortal G.o.d on earth"; his king is "but a man as I am," doomed to drag out a large part of his existence in the galling chains of "tradition, form and ceremonious duty," of unreality and self-deception.

Shakespeare's intuitive power of seeing things as they are, affects his att.i.tude to all social conventions. Not merely royal rulers of men are in a false position, ethically and logically. "Beware of appearances," is Shakespeare's repeated warning to men and women of all ranks in the political or social hierarchy. "Put not your trust in ornament, be it of gold or of silver." In the spheres of law and religion, the dramatist warns against pretence, against shows of virtue, honesty, or courage which have no solid backing.

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament.

In law what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion What d.a.m.ned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?

There is no vice so simple but a.s.sumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts: How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk.

(_Merchant of Venice_, III., ii., 74-86.)