The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 27

"Tis well you offer it behind her back, The wish would make else an unquiet house."

The blunder is monstrous; not only is the friend prepared to sacrifice all he possesses, including his wife, to save his benefactor, but the friend's friend is content to sacrifice his wife too for the same object. Shakespeare then in early manhood was accustomed to put friendship before love; we must find some explanation of what seems to us so unnatural an att.i.tude.

In the last scene of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," which is due to a later revision, the sonnet-case is emphasized. And at this time Shakespeare has suffered Herbert's betrayal. As soon as the false friend Proteus says he is sorry and asks forgiveness, Valentine, another impersonation of Shakespeare, replies:

"Then I am paid; And once again I do receive thee honest: Who by repentance is not satisfied, Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas'd; By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased; And that my love may appear plain and free, All that was mine in Silvia I give thee."

This incarnation of Shakespeare speaks of repentance in Shakespeare's most characteristic fashion, and then coolly surrenders the woman he loves to his friend without a moment's hesitation, and without even considering whether the woman would be satisfied with the transfer. The words admit of no misconstruction; they stand four-square, not to be shaken by any ingenuity of reason, and Shakespeare supplies us with further corroboration of them.

"Coriola.n.u.s" was written fully ten years after "The Merchant of Venice,"

and long after the revision of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." And yet Shakespeare's att.i.tude at forty-three is, in regard to this matter, just what it was at thirty-three. When Aufidius finds Coriola.n.u.s in his house, and learns that he has been banished from Rome and is now prepared to turn his army against his countrymen, he welcomes him as "more a friend than e'er an enemy," and this is the way he takes to show his joy:

"Know thou first, I loved the maid I married: never man Sigh'd truer breath; but that I see thee here, Thou n.o.ble thing! more dances my rapt heart Than when I first my wedded mistress saw Bestride my threshold."

Here's the same att.i.tude; the same extravagance; the same insistence on the fact that the man loves the maid and yet has more delight in the friend. What does it mean? When we first find it in "The Merchant of Venice" it must give the reader pause; in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"

it surprises us; in the sonnets, accompanied as it is by every flattering expression of tender affection for the friend, it brings us to question; but its repet.i.tion in "Coriola.n.u.s" must a.s.sure us that it is a mere pose. Aufidius was not such a friend of Coriola.n.u.s that we can take his protestation seriously. The argument is evidently a stock argument to Shakespeare: a part of the ordinary furniture of his mind: it is like a fashionable dress of the period--the wearer does not notice its peculiarity.

The truth is, Shakespeare found in the literature of his time, and in the minds of his contemporaries, a fantastically high appreciation of friendship, coupled with a corresponding disdain for love as we moderns understand it. In "Wit's Commonwealth," published in 1598, we find: "The love of men to women is a thing common and of course, but the friendship of man to man, infinite and immortal." Pa.s.sionate devotion to friendship is a sort of mark of the Renaissance, and the words "love" and "lover"

in Elizabethan English were commonly used for "friend" and "friendship."

Moreover, one must not forget that Lyly, whose euphuistic speech affected Shakespeare for years, had handled this same incident in his "Campaspe," where Alexander gives up his love to his rival, Apelles.

Shakespeare, not to be outdone in any loyalty, sets forth the same fantastical devotion in the sonnets and plays. He does this, partly because the spirit of the time infected him, partly out of sincere admiration for Herbert, but oftener, I imagine, out of self-interest. It is pose, flunkeyism and the hope of benefits to come and not pa.s.sion that inspired the first series of sonnets.

Whoever reads the scene carefully in "Much Ado About Nothing," cannot avoid seeing that Shakespeare at his best not only does not minimize his friend's offence, but condemns it absolutely:

"The transgression is in the stealer."

And in the sonnets, too, in spite of himself, the same true feeling pierces through the sn.o.bbish and affected excuses.

"Ay me! but yet them might'st my seat forbear, And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even there Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth, Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee, Thine, by thy beauty being false to me."

Shakespeare was a sycophant, a flunkey if you will, but nothing worse.

Further arguments suggest themselves. Shakespeare lived, as it were, in a gla.s.s house with a score of curious eyes watching everything he did and with as many ears p.r.i.c.ked for every word he said; but this foul accusation was never even suggested by any of his rivals. In especial Ben Jonson was always girding at Shakespeare, now satirically, now good-humouredly. Is it not manifest that if any such sin had ever been attributed to him, Ben Jonson would have given the suspicion utterance?

There is a pa.s.sage in his "Bartholomew Fair" which I feel sure is meant as a skit upon the relations we find in the Sonnets. In Act V, scene iii, there is a puppet-show setting forth "the ancient modern history of Hero and Leander, otherwise called the Touchstone of true Love, with as true a trial of Friendship between Damon and Pythias, two faithful friends o' the Bankside." Hero is a "wench o' the Bankside," and Leander swims across the Thames to her. Damon and Pythias meet at her lodgings, and abuse each other violently, only to finish as perfect good friends.

"_Damon_. Wh.o.r.e-master in thy face; Thou hast lain with her thyself, I'll prove it in this place.

_Leatherhead_. They are wh.o.r.e-masters both, sir, that's a plain case.

_Pythias_. Thou lie like a rogue.

_Leatherhead_. Do I lie like a rogue?

_Pythias_. A pimp and a scab.

_Leatherhead_. A pimp and a scab!

I say, between you you have both but one drab.

_Pythias and Damon_. Come, now we'll go together to breakfast to Hero.

_Leatherhead_. Thus, gentles, you perceive without any denial 'Twixt Damon and Pythias here friendship's true trial."

Rare Ben Jonson would have been delighted to set forth the viler charge if it had ever been whispered.

Then again, it seems to me certain that if Shakespeare had been the sort of man his accusers say he was, he would have betrayed himself in his plays. Consider merely the fact that young boys then played the girls'

parts on the stage. Surely if Shakespeare had had any leaning that way, we should have found again and again ambiguous or suggestive expressions given to some of these boys when aping girls; but not one. The temptation was there; the provocation was there, incessant and prolonged for twenty-five years, and yet, to my knowledge, Shakespeare has never used one word that malice could misconstrue. Yet he loved suggestive and lewd speech.

Luckily, however, there is stronger proof of Shakespeare's innocence than even his condemnation of his false friend, proof so strong, that if all the arguments for his guilt were tenfold stronger than they are, this proof would outweigh them all and bring them to nought. Nor should it be supposed, because I have only mentioned the chief arguments for and against, that I do not know all those that can be urged on either side. I have confined myself to the chief ones simply because by merely stating them, their utter weakness must be admitted by every one who can read Shakespeare, by every one who understands his impulsive sensitiveness, and the facility with which affectionate expressions came to his lips. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that while the sonnets were being written he was in rivalry with Chapman for this very patron's favour, and this rivalry alone would explain a good deal of the fervour, or, should I say, the affected fervour he put into the first series of sonnets; but now for the decisive and convincing argument for Shakespeare's innocence.

Let us first ask ourselves how it is that real pa.s.sion betrays itself and proves its force. Surely it is by its continuance; by its effect upon the life later. I have a.s.sumed, or inferred, as my readers may decide, that Shakespeare's liking for Herbert was chiefly sn.o.bbish, and was deepened by the selfish hope that he would find in him a patron even more powerful and more liberally disposed than Lord Southampton. He probably felt that young Herbert owed him a great deal for his companionship and poetical advice; for Herbert was by way of being a poet himself. If my view is correct, after Shakespeare lost Lord Herbert's affection, we should expect to hear him talking of man's forgetfulness and ingrat.i.tude, and that is just what Lord Herbert left in him, bitterness and contempt. Never one word in all his works to show that the loss of this youth's affection touched him more nearly. As we have seen, he cannot keep the incident out of his plays. Again and again he drags it in; but in none of these dramas is there any lingering kindness towards the betrayer. And as soon as the incident was past and done with, as soon as the three or four years' companionship with Lord Herbert was at an end, not one word more do we catch expressive of affection. Again and again Shakespeare rails at man's ingrat.i.tude, but nothing more. Think of it. Pembroke, under James, came to great power; was, indeed, made Lord Chamberlain, and set above all the players, so that he could have advanced Shakespeare as he pleased with a word: with a word could have made him Master of the Revels, or given him a higher post. He did not help him in any way. He gave books every Christmas to Ben Jonson, but we hear of no gift to Shakespeare, though evidently from the dedication to him of the first folio, he remained on terms of careless acquaintance with Shakespeare. Ingrat.i.tude is what Shakespeare found in Lord Pembroke; ingrat.i.tude is what he complains of in him. What a different effect the loss of Mary Fitton had upon Shakespeare. Just consider what the plays teach us when the sonnet-story is finished. The youth vanishes; no reader can find a trace of him, or even an allusion to him. But the woman comes to be the centre, as we shall see, of tragedy after tragedy. She flames through Shakespeare's life, a fiery symbol, till at length she inspires perhaps his greatest drama, "Antony and Cleopatra," filling it with the disgrace of him who is "a strumpet's fool," the shame of him who has become "the bellows and the fan to cool a harlot's l.u.s.t."

The pa.s.sion for Mary Fitton was the pa.s.sion of Shakespeare's whole life.

The adoration of her, and the insane desire of her, can be seen in every play he wrote from 1597 to 1608. After he lost her, he went back to her; but the wound of her frailty cankered and took on proud flesh in him, and tortured him to nervous breakdown and to madness. When at length he won to peace, after ten years, it was the peace of exhaustion. His love for his "gipsy-wanton" burned him out, as one is burnt to ashes at the stake, and his pa.s.sion only ended with his life.

There is no room for doubt in my mind, no faintest suspicion. Hallam and Heine, and all the cry of critics, are mistaken in this matter.

Shakespeare admired Lord Herbert's youth and boldness and beauty, hoped great things from his favour and patronage; but after the betrayal, he judged him inexorably as a mean traitor, "a stealer" who had betrayed "a twofold trust"; and later, cursed him for his ingrat.i.tude, and went about with wild thoughts of b.l.o.o.d.y revenge, as we shall soon see in "Hamlet" and "Oth.e.l.lo," and then dropped him into oblivion without a pang.

It is bad enough to know that Shakespeare, the sweetest spirit and finest mind in all literature, should have degraded himself to pretend such an affection for the profligate Herbert as has given occasion for misconstruction. It is bad enough, I say, to know that Shakespeare could play flunkey to this extent; but after all, that is the worst that can be urged against him, and it is so much better than men have been led to believe that there may be a certain relief in the knowledge.

CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST-FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: BRUTUS

The play of "Julius Caesar" was written about 1600 or 1601. As "Twelfth Night" was the last of the golden comedies, so "Julius Caesar" is the first of the great tragedies, and bears melancholy witness to us that the poet's young-eyed confidence in life and joy in living are dying, if not dead. "Julius Caesar" is the first outcome of disillusion. Before it was written Shakespeare had been deceived by his mistress, betrayed by his friend; his eyes had been opened to the fraud and falsehood of life; but, like one who has just been operated on for cataract, he still sees realities as through a mist, dimly. He meets the shock of traitorous betrayal as we should have expected Valentine or Antonio or Orsino to meet it--with pitying forgiveness. Suffering, instead of steeling his heart and drying up his sympathies, as it does with most men, softened him, induced him to give himself wholly to that "angel, Pity." He will not believe that his bitter experience is universal; in spite of Herbert's betrayal, he still has the courage to declare his belief in the existence of the ideal. At the very last his defeated Brutus cries:

"My heart doth joy that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me."

The pathos of this attempt still to believe in man and man's truth is over the whole play. But the belief was fated to disappear. No man who lives in the world can boast of loyalty as Brutus did; even Jesus had a Judas among the Twelve. But when Shakespeare wrote "Julius Caesar" he still tried to believe, and this gives the play an important place in his life's story.

Before I begin to consider the character of Brutus I should like to draw attention to three pa.s.sages which place Brutus between the melancholy Jaques of "As You Like It," whose melancholy is merely temperamental, and the almost despairing Hamlet. Jaques says:

"Invest me in my motley; give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine."

This is the view of early manhood which does not doubt its power to cure all the evils which afflict mortality. Then comes the later, more hopeless view, to which Brutus gives expression:

"Till then, my n.o.ble friend, chew upon this; Brutus had rather be a villager Than to repute himself a son of Rome Under these hard conditions as this time Is like to lay upon us."

And later still, and still more bitter, Hamlet's:

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

But Shakespeare is a meliorist even in Hamlet, and believes that the ailments of man can all be set right.

The likenesses between Brutus and Hamlet are so marked that even the commentators have noticed them. Professor Dowden exaggerates the similarities. "Both (dramas)," he writes, "are tragedies of thought rather than of pa.s.sion; both present in their chief characters the spectacle of n.o.ble natures which fail through some weakness or deficiency rather than through crime; upon Brutus as upon Hamlet a burden is laid which he is not able to bear; neither Brutus nor Hamlet is fitted for action, yet both are called to act in dangerous and difficult affairs." Much of this is Professor Dowden's view and not Shakespeare's. When Shakespeare wrote "Julius Caesar" he had not reached that stage in self-understanding when he became conscious that he was a man of thought rather than of action, and that the two ideals tend to exclude each other. In the contest at Philippi Brutus and his wing win the day; it is the defeat of Ca.s.sius which brings about the ruin; Shakespeare evidently intended to depict Brutus as well "fitted for action."

Some critics find it disconcerting that Shakespeare identified himself with Brutus, who failed, rather than with Caesar, who succeeded. But even before he himself came to grief in his love and trust, Shakespeare had always treated the failures with peculiar sympathy. He preferred Arthur to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and King Henry VI. to Richard III., and Richard II. to proud Bolingbroke. And after his agony of disillusion, all his heroes are failures for years and years: Brutus, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, Troilus, Antony, and Timon--all fail as he himself had failed.