Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 35

_Leon._ It shall be better, I will give none, madam," &c.

The meaning is:-"It shall be a better way, first;-as it is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish."

"The Laws Of Candy."

Act i. Speech of Melitus:-

"Whose insolence and never yet match'd pride Can by no character be well express'd, But in her only name, the proud Erota."

Colman's note.

The poet intended no allusion to the word "Erota" itself; but says that her very name, "the proud Erota," became a character and adage;-as we say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an "Erota," expressed female pride and insolence of beauty.

_Ib._ Speech of Antinous:-

"Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd From _successary_, but purchas'd with my blood."

The poet doubtless wrote "successry," which, though not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.

"The Little French Lawyer."

Act i. sc. 1. Dinant's speech:-

"Are you become a patron too? 'Tis a new one, No more on't," &c.

Seward reads:-

"Are you become a patron too? _How long_ _Have you been conning this speech?_ 'Tis a new one," &c.

If conjectural emendation like this be allowed, we might venture to read:-

"Are you become a patron _to a new tune_?"

or,-

"Are you become a patron? 'Tis a new _tune_."

_Ib._-

"_Din._ Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call'd one?

_Cler._ Words are but words.

_Din._ Nor wouldst thou take a blow?"

Seward's note.

O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and the actor is to explain it. "Words are but words," is the last struggle of affected morality.

"Valentinian."

Act i. sc. 3.-

It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish-so reptile-are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet, remember, he was a bishop's son, and the duty to G.o.d was the supposed basis.

Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;-property, subordination, and inter-community;-these are the fundamentals of society.

I mean here, religion negatively taken,-so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to G.o.d, what would be, in that person, a lie;-such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,-were it for this only, that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be ent.i.tled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now, it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not negative rights;-for every pretended negative would be in effect a positive;-as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse.

All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as _a_ to A, is a mean to A, or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as _b_ to A, is a mean to B, or property.

Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:-

"Chimney-pieces!" &c.

The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,-that is, if the same in all the prior editions,-irremediable but by bold conjecture. "_Till_ my tackle," should be, I think, "_While_," &c.

Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chast.i.ty as a material thing,-not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humourists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo who has had a basin of cow-broth thrown over him;-for this, though a debasing superst.i.tion, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chast.i.ty as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing by handling an ox's eye. In _The Queen of Corinth_, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakespeare's. So, for instance, _The Maid in the Mill_:-a woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the _minutiae_ of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been.

It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on rapes,-how many on incestuous pa.s.sions, and how many on mere lunacies.

Then their virtuous women are either crazy superst.i.tions of a mere bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their imaginations and wishes, or, as in this _Maid in the Mill_, both at the same time. In the men, the love is merely l.u.s.t in one direction,-exclusive preference of one object. The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant's character, with the subst.i.tution of "I" for "he,"" and the omission of the prefatory "he acts as if he thought" so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite are disgust at the aeciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compa.s.sion if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you can really like (even though you should have erased from your mind all the filth which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in _The Island Princess_ for instance),-scarcely one whom you can love. How different this from Shakespeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking affection even for his Barnardines;-whose very Iagos and Richards are awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered fearful rather than hateful;-and even the exceptions, as Goneril and Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in being left utter monsters, _nulla virtute redemptae_, and in being kept out of sight as much as possible,-they being, indeed, only means for the excitement and deepening of n.o.blest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakespeare's grossness-that which is really so, independently of the increase in modern times of vicious a.s.sociations with things indifferent (for there is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would exist in Paradise)-at the worst, how diverse in kind is it from Beaumont and Fletcher's! In Shakespeare it is the mere generalities of s.e.x, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and fancy drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F.

"Rollo."

This, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;-but, as in all his other imitations of Shakespeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his original.

Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible. Hence the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he meant for the terrible, is either hateful, t? ?s?t??, or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third act is probably the grandest working of pa.s.sion in all B. and F.'s dramas;-but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, in this n.o.ble scene, renders the after scene (in imitation of one of the least Shakespearian of all Shakespeare's works, if it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne) in which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakespeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.

Act i. sc. 1.-

"_Gis._ He is indeed the perfect character Of a good man, and so his actions speak him."

This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,-all conspired to enslave the realm. Ma.s.singer's plays breathe the opposite spirit; Shakespeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the Spanish dramatists-Calderon, in particular,-had some influence in this respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays.