Shakespearean Tragedy Part 17

Few of Shakespeare's minor characters are more distinct than Emilia, and towards few do our feelings change so much within the course of a play.

Till close to the end she frequently sets one's teeth on edge; and at the end one is ready to worship her. She nowhere shows any sign of having a bad heart; but she is common, sometimes vulgar, in minor matters far from scrupulous, blunt in perception and feeling, and quite dest.i.tute of imagination. She let Iago take the handkerchief though she knew how much its loss would distress Desdemona; and she said nothing about it though she saw that Oth.e.l.lo was jealous. We rightly resent her unkindness in permitting the theft, but--it is an important point--we are apt to misconstrue her subsequent silence, because we know that Oth.e.l.lo's jealousy was intimately connected with the loss of the handkerchief. Emilia, however, certainly failed to perceive this; for otherwise, when Oth.e.l.lo's anger showed itself violently and she was really distressed for her mistress, she could not have failed to think of the handkerchief, and would, I believe, undoubtedly have told the truth about it. But, in fact, she never thought of it, although she guessed that Oth.e.l.lo was being deceived by some scoundrel. Even after Desdemona's death, nay, even when she knew that Iago had brought it about, she still did not remember the handkerchief; and when Oth.e.l.lo at last mentions, as a proof of his wife's guilt, that he had seen the handkerchief in Ca.s.sio's hand, the truth falls on Emilia like a thunder-bolt. 'O G.o.d!' she bursts out, 'O heavenly G.o.d!'[121] Her stupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothing worse.

But along with it goes a certain coa.r.s.eness of nature. The contrast between Emilia and Desdemona in their conversation about the infidelity of wives (IV. iii.) is too famous to need a word,--unless it be a word of warning against critics who take her light talk too seriously. But the contrast in the preceding scene is hardly less remarkable. Oth.e.l.lo, affecting to treat Emilia as the keeper of a brothel, sends her away, bidding her shut the door behind her; and then he proceeds to torture himself as well as Desdemona by accusations of adultery. But, as a critic has pointed out, Emilia listens at the door, for we find, as soon as Oth.e.l.lo is gone and Iago has been summoned, that she knows what Oth.e.l.lo has said to Desdemona. And what could better ill.u.s.trate those defects of hers which make one wince, than her repeating again and again in Desdemona's presence the word Desdemona could not repeat; than her talking before Desdemona of Iago's suspicions regarding Oth.e.l.lo and herself; than her speaking to Desdemona of husbands who strike their wives; than the expression of her honest indignation in the words,

Has she forsook so many n.o.ble matches, Her father and her country and her friends, To be called wh.o.r.e?

If one were capable of laughing or even of smiling when this point in the play is reached, the difference between Desdemona's anguish at the loss of Oth.e.l.lo's love, and Emilia's recollection of the n.o.ble matches she might have secured, would be irresistibly ludicrous.

And yet how all this, and all her defects, vanish into nothingness when we see her face to face with that which she can understand and feel!

From the moment of her appearance after the murder to the moment of her death she is transfigured; and yet she remains perfectly true to herself, and we would not have her one atom less herself. She is the only person who utters for us the violent common emotions which we feel, together with those more tragic emotions which she does not comprehend.

She has done this once already, to our great comfort. When she suggests that some villain has poisoned Oth.e.l.lo's mind, and Iago answers,

Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible;

and Desdemona answers,

If any such there be, Heaven pardon him;

Emilia's retort,

A halter pardon him, and h.e.l.l gnaw his bones,

says what we long to say, and helps us. And who has not felt in the last scene how her glorious carelessness of her own life, and her outbursts against Oth.e.l.lo--even that most characteristic one,

She was too fond of her most filthy bargain--

lift the overwhelming weight of calamity that oppresses us, and bring us an extraordinary lightening of the heart? Terror and pity are here too much to bear; we long to be allowed to feel also indignation, if not rage; and Emilia lets us feel them and gives them words. She brings us too the relief of joy and admiration,--a joy that is not lessened by her death. Why should she live? If she lived for ever she never could soar a higher pitch, and nothing in her life became her like the losing it.[122]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 107: It has been held, for example, that Oth.e.l.lo treated Iago abominably in preferring Ca.s.sio to him; that he _did_ seduce Emilia; that he and Desdemona were too familiar before marriage; and that in any case his fate was a moral judgment on his sins, and Iago a righteous, if sharp, instrument of Providence.]

[Footnote 108: See III. iii. 201, V. i. 89 f. The statements are his own, but he has no particular reason for lying. One reason of his disgust at Ca.s.sio's appointment was that Ca.s.sio was a Florentine (I. i.

20). When Ca.s.sio says (III. i. 42) 'I never knew a Florentine more kind and honest,' of course he means, not that Iago is a Florentine, but that he could not be kinder and honester if he were one.]

[Footnote 109: I am here merely recording a general impression. There is no specific evidence, unless we take Ca.s.sio's language in his drink (II.

ii. 105 f.) to imply that Iago was not a 'man of quality' like himself.

I do not know if it has been observed that Iago uses more nautical phrases and metaphors than is at all usual with Shakespeare's characters. This might naturally be explained by his roving military life, but it is curious that almost all the examples occur in the earlier scenes (see _e.g._ I. i. 30, 153, 157; I. ii. 17, 50; I. iii.

343; II. iii. 65), so that the use of these phrases and metaphors may not be characteristic of Iago but symptomatic of a particular state of Shakespeare's mind.]

[Footnote 110: See further Note P.]

[Footnote 111: But it by no means follows that we are to believe his statement that there was a report abroad about an intrigue between his wife and Oth.e.l.lo (I. iii. 393), or his statement (which may be divined from IV. ii. 145) that someone had spoken to him on the subject.]

[Footnote 112: See, for instance, Aaron in _t.i.tus Andronicus_, II. iii.; Richard in _3 Henry VI._, III. ii. and V. vi., and in _Richard III._, I.

i. (twice), I. ii.; Edmund in _King Lear_, I. ii. (twice), III. iii. and v., V. i.]

[Footnote 113: See, further, Note Q.]

[Footnote 114: On the meaning which this phrase had for its author, Coleridge, see note on p. 228.][Transcriber's note: Reference is to Footnote 115.]

[Footnote 115: Coleridge's view is not materially different, though less complete. When he speaks of 'the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity,' he does not mean by the last two words that 'disinterested love of evil' or 'love of evil for evil's sake' of which I spoke just now, and which other critics attribute to Iago. He means really that Iago's malignity does not spring from the causes to which Iago himself refers it, nor from any 'motive' in the sense of an idea present to consciousness. But unfortunately his phrase suggests the theory which has been criticised above. On the question whether there is such a thing as this supposed pure malignity, the reader may refer to a discussion between Professor Bain and F.H. Bradley in _Mind_, vol. viii.]

[Footnote 116: _I.e._ terrifying.]

[Footnote 117: Cf. note at end of lecture.][Transcriber's note: Refers to Footnote 122.]

[Footnote 118: It was suggested to me by a Glasgow student.]

[Footnote 119: A curious proof of Iago's inability to hold by his creed that absolute egoism is the only proper att.i.tude, and that loyalty and affection are mere stupidity or want of spirit, may be found in his one moment of real pa.s.sion, where he rushes at Emilia with the cry, 'Villainous wh.o.r.e!' (V. ii. 229). There is more than fury in his cry, there is indignation. She has been false to him, she has betrayed him.

Well, but why should she not, if his creed is true? And what a melancholy exhibition of human inconsistency it is that he should use as terms of reproach words which, according to him, should be quite neutral, if not complimentary!]

[Footnote 120: Ca.s.sio's invective against drink may be compared with Hamlet's expressions of disgust at his uncle's drunkenness. Possibly the subject may for some reason have been prominent in Shakespeare's mind about this time.]

[Footnote 121: So the Quarto, and certainly rightly, though modern editors reprint the feeble alteration of the Folio, due to fear of the Censor, 'O heaven! O heavenly Powers!']

[Footnote 122: The feelings evoked by Emilia are one of the causes which mitigate the excess of tragic pain at the conclusion. Others are the downfall of Iago, and the fact, already alluded to, that both Desdemona and Oth.e.l.lo show themselves at their n.o.blest just before death.]

LECTURE VII

KING LEAR

_King Lear_ has again and again been described as Shakespeare's greatest work, the best of his plays, the tragedy in which he exhibits most fully his mult.i.tudinous powers; and if we were doomed to lose all his dramas except one, probably the majority of those who know and appreciate him best would p.r.o.nounce for keeping _King Lear_.

Yet this tragedy is certainly the least popular of the famous four. The 'general reader' reads it less often than the others, and, though he acknowledges its greatness, he will sometimes speak of it with a certain distaste. It is also the least often presented on the stage, and the least successful there. And when we look back on its history we find a curious fact. Some twenty years after the Restoration, Nahum Tate altered _King Lear_ for the stage, giving it a happy ending, and putting Edgar in the place of the King of France as Cordelia's lover. From that time Shakespeare's tragedy in its original form was never seen on the stage for a century and a half. Betterton acted Tate's version; Garrick acted it and Dr. Johnson approved it. Kemble acted it, Kean acted it. In 1823 Kean, 'stimulated by Hazlitt's remonstrances and Charles Lamb's essays,' restored the original tragic ending. At last, in 1838, Macready returned to Shakespeare's text throughout.

What is the meaning of these opposite sets of facts? Are the lovers of Shakespeare wholly in the right; and is the general reader and play-goer, were even Tate and Dr. Johnson, altogether in the wrong? I venture to doubt it. When I read _King Lear_ two impressions are left on my mind, which seem to answer roughly to the two sets of facts. _King Lear_ seems to me Shakespeare's greatest achievement, but it seems to me _not_ his best play. And I find that I tend to consider it from two rather different points of view. When I regard it strictly as a drama, it appears to me, though in certain parts overwhelming, decidedly inferior as a whole to _Hamlet_, _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _Macbeth_. When I am feeling that it is greater than any of these, and the fullest revelation of Shakespeare's power, I find I am not regarding it simply as a drama, but am grouping it in my mind with works like the _Prometheus Vinctus_ and the _Divine Comedy_, and even with the greatest symphonies of Beethoven and the statues in the Medici Chapel.

This two-fold character of the play is to some extent ill.u.s.trated by the affinities and the probable chronological position of _King Lear_. It is allied with two tragedies, _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _Timon of Athens_; and these two tragedies are utterly unlike.[123] _Oth.e.l.lo_ was probably composed about 1604, and _King Lear_ about 1605; and though there is a somewhat marked change in style and versification, there are obvious resemblances between the two. The most important have been touched on already: these are the most painful and the most pathetic of the four tragedies, those in which evil appears in its coldest and most inhuman forms, and those which exclude the supernatural from the action. But there is also in _King Lear_ a good deal which sounds like an echo of _Oth.e.l.lo_,--a fact which should not surprise us, since there are other instances where the matter of a play seems to go on working in Shakespeare's mind and re-appears, generally in a weaker form, in his next play. So, in _King Lear_, the conception of Edmund is not so fresh as that of Goneril.

Goneril has no predecessor; but Edmund, though of course essentially distinguished from Iago, often reminds us of him, and the soliloquy, 'This is the excellent foppery of the world,' is in the very tone of Iago's discourse on the sovereignty of the will. The gulling of Gloster, again, recalls the gulling of Oth.e.l.lo. Even Edmund's idea (not carried out) of making his father witness, without over-hearing, his conversation with Edgar, reproduces the idea of the pa.s.sage where Oth.e.l.lo watches Iago and Ca.s.sio talking about Bianca; and the conclusion of the temptation, where Gloster says to Edmund:

and of my land, Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means To make thee capable,

reminds us of Oth.e.l.lo's last words in the scene of temptation, 'Now art thou my lieutenant.' This list might be extended; and the appearance of certain unusual words and phrases in both the plays increases the likelihood that the composition of the one followed at no great distance on that of the other.[124]

When we turn from _Oth.e.l.lo_ to _Timon of Athens_ we find a play of quite another kind. _Oth.e.l.lo_ is dramatically the most perfect of the tragedies. _Timon_, on the contrary, is weak, ill-constructed and confused; and, though care might have made it clear, no mere care could make it really dramatic. Yet it is undoubtedly Shakespearean in part, probably in great part; and it immediately reminds us of _King Lear_.

Both plays deal with the tragic effects of ingrat.i.tude. In both the victim is exceptionally unsuspicious, soft-hearted and vehement. In both he is completely overwhelmed, pa.s.sing through fury to madness in the one case, to suicide in the other. Famous pa.s.sages in both plays are curses.

The misanthropy of Timon pours itself out in a torrent of maledictions on the whole race of man; and these at once recall, alike by their form and their substance, the most powerful speeches uttered by Lear in his madness. In both plays occur repeated comparisons between man and the beasts; the idea that 'the strain of man's bred out into baboon,' wolf, tiger, fox; the idea that this b.e.s.t.i.a.l degradation will end in a furious struggle of all with all, in which the race will perish. The 'pessimistic' strain in _Timon_ suggests to many readers, even more imperatively than _King Lear_, the notion that Shakespeare was giving vent to some personal feeling, whether present or past; for the signs of his hand appear most unmistakably when the hero begins to pour the vials of his wrath upon mankind. _Timon_, lastly, in some of the unquestionably Shakespearean parts, bears (as it appears to me) so strong a resemblance to _King Lear_ in style and in versification that it is hard to understand how competent judges can suppose that it belongs to a time at all near that of the final romances, or even that it was written so late as the last Roman plays. It is more likely to have been composed immediately after _King Lear_ and before _Macbeth_.[125]

Drawing these comparisons together, we may say that, while as a work of art and in tragic power _King Lear_ is infinitely nearer to _Oth.e.l.lo_ than to _Timon_, in its spirit and substance its affinity with _Timon_ is a good deal the stronger. And, returning to the point from which these comparisons began, I would now add that there is in _King Lear_ a reflection or antic.i.p.ation, however faint, of the structural weakness of _Timon_. This weakness in _King Lear_ is not due, however, to anything intrinsically undramatic in the story, but to characteristics which were necessary to an effect not wholly dramatic. The stage is the test of strictly dramatic quality, and _King Lear_ is too huge for the stage. Of course, I am not denying that it is a great stage-play. It has scenes immensely effective in the theatre; three of them--the two between Lear and Goneril and between Lear, Goneril and Regan, and the ineffably beautiful scene in the Fourth Act between Lear and Cordelia--lose in the theatre very little of the spell they have for imagination; and the gradual interweaving of the two plots is almost as masterly as in _Much Ado_. But (not to speak of defects due to mere carelessness) that which makes the _peculiar_ greatness of King Lear,--the immense scope of the work; the ma.s.s and variety of intense experience which it contains; the interpenetration of sublime imagination, piercing pathos, and humour almost as moving as the pathos; the vastness of the convulsion both of nature and of human pa.s.sion; the vagueness of the scene where the action takes place, and of the movements of the figures which cross this scene; the strange atmosphere, cold and dark, which strikes on us as we enter this scene, enfolding these figures and magnifying their dim outlines like a winter mist; the half-realised suggestions of vast universal powers working in the world of individual fates and pa.s.sions,--all this interferes with dramatic clearness even when the play is read, and in the theatre not only refuses to reveal itself fully through the senses but seems to be almost in contradiction with their reports. This is not so with the other great tragedies. No doubt, as Lamb declared, theatrical representation gives only a part of what we imagine when we read them; but there is no _conflict_ between the representation and the imagination, because these tragedies are, in essentials, perfectly dramatic. But _King Lear_, as a whole, is imperfectly dramatic, and there is something in its very essence which is at war with the senses, and demands a purely imaginative realisation. It is therefore Shakespeare's greatest work, but it is not what Hazlitt called it, the best of his plays; and its comparative unpopularity is due, not merely to the extreme painfulness of the catastrophe, but in part to its dramatic defects, and in part to a failure in many readers to catch the peculiar effects to which I have referred,--a failure which is natural because the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to a rarer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination. For this reason, too, even the best attempts at exposition of _King Lear_ are disappointing; they remind us of attempts to reduce to prose the impalpable spirit of the _Tempest_.

I propose to develop some of these ideas by considering, first, the dramatic defects of the play, and then some of the causes of its extraordinary imaginative effect.