Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 24

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts, that nature Gives way to in repose."

The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another's guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual nature.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing-now that the first reality commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes terror, the most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously every thing, however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now rushes in upon him in her own veritable person:-

"Methought I heard a voice cry-Sleep no more!

I could not say Amen, When they did say, G.o.d bless us!"

And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of feeling.

_Ib._ sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand, perhaps with Shakespeare's consent; and that finding it take, he with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated the words-

"I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire."

Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakespeare.

Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth's mode of working on the murderers in this place with Schiller's mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and Macdonald in _Wallenstein_.-(Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly out of season. Shakespeare never introduces it, but when it may react on the tragedy by harmonious contrast.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Macbeth's speech:-

"But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly."

Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging still deeper in guilt and ruin.

_Ib._ Macbeth's speech:-

"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed."

This is Macbeth's sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his wife's opposite state.

_Ib._ sc. 4.-

"_Macb._ It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret'st man of blood."

The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort, no additional security.

He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, therefore, himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to superst.i.tion, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and super-human agencies.

Act iv. sc. 1.-

"_Len._ 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word Macduff is fled to England.

_Macb._ Fled to England!"

The acme of the avenging conscience.

_Ib._ sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as a.s.sociated with the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep tragedy of their a.s.sa.s.sination. Shakespeare's fondness for children is everywhere shown;-in Prince Arthur, in _King John_; in the sweet scene in the _Winter's Tale_ between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest Evans's examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that Shakespeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the most hateful atrocity-that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror-I, omitting _t.i.tus Andronicus_, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in _Lear_, answer boldly in the name of Shakespeare, not guilty.

_Ib._ sc. 3. Malcolm's speech:-

... "Better Macbeth, Than such an one to reign."

The moral is-the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the soul-sickening sense of insecurity.

_Ib._ How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with the whole play! It rends, not dissolves, the heart. "The tune of it goes manly." Thus is Shakespeare always master of himself and of his subject,-a genuine Proteus:-we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most distinct, most accurate,-only more splendid, more glorified. This is correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your sympathy and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral impression without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be frustrated, and the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being innocently-shall I say, deluded?-or rather, drawn away from ourselves to the music of n.o.blest thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not only in the public theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and round the light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so pleasure-fraught!

Alas for Macbeth! now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard them as symbols of goodness:-

"Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

"Winter's Tale."

Although, on the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its t.i.tle, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years' voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example:-

" 'Nor shall he ever recover an heir, if he have a wife before that recovery.' "

The idea of this delightful drama is a genuine jealousy of disposition, and it should be immediately followed by the perusal of _Oth.e.l.lo_, which is the direct contrast of it in every particular. For jealousy is a vice of the mind, a culpable tendency of the temper, having certain well-known and well-defined effects and concomitants, all of which are visible in Leontes, and, I boldly say, not one of which marks its presence in Oth.e.l.lo;-such as, first, an excitability by the most inadequate causes, and an eagerness to s.n.a.t.c.h at proofs; secondly, a grossness of conception, and a disposition to degrade the object of the pa.s.sion by sensual fancies and images; thirdly, a sense of shame of his own feelings exhibited in a solitary moodiness of humour, and yet from the violence of the pa.s.sion forced to utter itself, and therefore catching occasions to ease the mind by ambiguities, equivoques, by talking to those who cannot, and who are known not to be able to, understand what is said to them,-in short, by soliloquy in the form of dialogue, and hence a confused, broken, and fragmentary, manner; fourthly, a dread of vulgar ridicule, as distinct from a high sense of honour, or a mistaken sense of duty; and lastly, and immediately, consequent on this, a spirit of selfish vindictiveness.

Act i. sc. 1, 2.-

Observe the easy style of chitchat between Camillo and Archidamus as contrasted with the elevated diction on the introduction of the kings and Hermione in the second scene: and how admirably Polixenes' obstinate refusal to Leontes to stay,-

"There is no tongue that moves; none, none i' the world So soon as yours, could win me;"-

prepares for the effect produced by his afterwards yielding to Hermione;-which is, nevertheless, perfectly natural from mere courtesy of s.e.x, and the exhaustion of the will by former efforts of denial, and well calculated to set in nascent action the jealousy of Leontes. This, when once excited, is unconsciously increased by Hermione,-

... "Yet, good deed, Leontes, I love thee not a jar o' the clock behind What lady she her lord;"-

accompanied, as a good actress ought to represent it, by an expression and recoil of apprehension that she had gone too far.

"At my request, he would not:"-

The first working of the jealous fit;-

"Too hot, too hot:"-

The morbid tendency of Leontes to lay hold of the merest trifles, and his grossness immediately afterwards,-

"Paddling palms and pinching fingers;"-

followed by his strange loss of self-control in his dialogue with the little boy.