The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 31

The feminine tenderness in Shakespeare comes to perfect expression in the next lines; no woman has a more enduring affection:

"_Iago_. She's the worse for all this.

_Oth_. O! a thousand, a thousand times. And, then of so gentle a condition!

_Iago_. Ay, too gentle.

_Oth_. Nay, that's certain:--but yet the pity of it, Iago!--O, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!"

The tenderness shrills to such exquisite poignancy that it becomes a universal cry, the soul's lament for traitorism: "The pity of it, Iago!

O, Iago, the pity of it!" Oth.e.l.lo's jealous pa.s.sion is at its height in the scene with Desdemona when he gives his accusations precise words, and flings money to Emilia as the guilty confidante. And yet even here, where he delights to soil his love, his tenderness reaches its most pa.s.sionate expression:

"O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet, That the sense aches at thee--would thou hadst ne'er been born!"

As soon as jealousy reaches its end, and pa.s.ses into revenge, Shakespeare tries to get back into Oth.e.l.lo the captain again. Oth.e.l.lo's first speech in the bedchamber is clear enough in all conscience, but it has been so mangled by unintelligent actors such as Salvini that it cries for explanation. Every one will remember how Salvini and others playing this part stole into the room like murderers, and then bellowed so that they would have waked the dead. And when the foolish mummers were criticised for thus misreading the character, they answered boldly that Oth.e.l.lo was a Moor, that his pa.s.sion was Southern, and I know not what besides. It is clear that Shakespeare's Oth.e.l.lo enters the room quietly as a justicer with a duty to perform: he keeps his resolution to the sticking-point by thinking of the offence; he says solemnly:

"It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul--"

and, Englishman-like, finds a moral reason for his intended action:

"Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men."

But the reason fades and the resolution wavers in the pa.s.sion for her "body and beauty," and the tenderness of the lover comes to hearing again:

"[_Kissing her_."] O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword!--one more, one more.-- Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after.--One more, and this the last.

So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep, But they are cruel tears; this sorrow's heavenly; It strikes where it doth love.--She wakes."

So gentle a murderer was never seen save Macbeth, and the "heavenly sorrow" that strikes where it doth love is one of the best examples in literature of the Englishman's capacity for hypocritical self-deception.

The subsequent dialogue shows us in Oth.e.l.lo the short, plain phrases of immitigable resolution; in this scene Shakespeare comes nearer to realizing strength than anywhere else in all his work. But even here his nature shows itself; Oth.e.l.lo has to be misled by Desdemona's weeping, which he takes to be sorrow for Ca.s.sio's death, before he can pa.s.s to action, and as soon as the murder is accomplished, he regrets:

"O, insupportable! O heavy hour!"

His frank avowal, however, is excellently characteristic of the soldier Oth.e.l.lo:

"'Twas I that killed her."

A moment later there is a perfect poetic expression of his love:

"Nay, had she been true If Heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I'd not have sold her for it."

Then comes a revelation of sensuality and physical fastidiousness so peculiar that by itself it proves much of what I have said of Shakespeare:

"_Oth. ... Ay 'twas he that told me first; An honest man he is, and hates the slime That sticks on filthy deeds."

For a breathing-s.p.a.ce now before he is convinced of his fatal error, Oth.e.l.lo speaks as the soldier, but in spite of the fact that he has fulfilled his revenge, and should be at his sincerest, we have no word of profound self-revealing. But as soon as he realizes his mistake, his regret becomes as pa.s.sionate as a woman's and magical in expression:

"Cold, cold, my girl!

Even like thy chast.i.ty."

Another proof that Shakespeare discards the captain, Oth.e.l.lo, in order to give utterance to his own jealousy and love, is to be found in the similarity between this speech of Oth.e.l.lo and the corresponding speech of Posthumus in "Cymbeline." As soon as Posthumus is convinced of his mistake, he calls Iachimo "Italian fiend" and himself "most credulous fool," "egregious murderer," and so forth. He asks for "some upright justicer" to punish him as he deserves with "cord or knife or poison,"

nay, he will have "torturers ingenious." He then praises Imogen as "the temple of virtue," and again shouts curses at himself and finally calls upon his love:

"O Imogen!

My queen, my life, my wife! O Imogen, Imogen, Imogen!"

Oth.e.l.lo behaves in precisely the same manner; he calls Iago that "demi-devil," and himself "an honourable murderer"; and Iago calls him a "credulous fool." Oth.e.l.lo, too, cries for punishment; instead of "torturers ingenious," he will have "devils" to "whip" him, and "roast him in sulphur." He praises Desdemona as chaste, "ill-starred wench,"

"my girl," and so forth; then curses himself l.u.s.tily and ends his lament with the words:

"O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon! dead! O!"

The same changes in mood, the same words even--the likeness is so close that it can only be explained as I have explained it; from beginning to end of "Cymbeline" Posthumus is Shakespeare, and as soon as jealousy, pity, remorse, or any tender emotion seizes Oth.e.l.lo he becomes Shakespeare too, and speaks with Shakespeare's voice.

From here on, it is all good work if not great work to Oth.e.l.lo's last speech, which merits particular consideration. He begins as the captain, but soon pa.s.ses into the poet; and then towards the end talks again in quick measure as the man of action. I quote the whole speech, [Footnote: This speech is curiously like the long speech of Richard II. which I have already noticed; at the beginning Shakespeare speaks as a king for a few lines, then naturally as a poet, and at the end pulls himself up and tries to resume the character.] putting into italics the phrases in which the poet betrays himself:

"_Oth_. Soft you; a word or two, before you go.

I have done the State some service, and they know it; No more of that.--_I pray you_ in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice; then must you speak _Of one that loved not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum._ Set you down this; And say, besides, that in Aleppo once, When a malignant and a turban'd Turk Beat a Venetian, and traduced the State, I took by the throat the circ.u.mcized dog And smote him--thus."

All the memorable words here are the words of the gentle poet revealing his own nature ingenuously. The relief given by tears is exquisitely expressed, but the relief itself is a feminine experience; men usually find that tears humiliate them, and take refuge from their scalding shame in anger. The deathless phrases of the poet's grief must be contrasted with the braggart mouthings of the captain at the end in order to realize how impossible it was for Shakespeare to depict a man of deeds.

In the first two acts Shakespeare has tried to present Oth.e.l.lo with some sincerity and truth to the dramatic fiction. But as soon as jealousy touches Oth.e.l.lo, he becomes the transparent vessel of Shakespeare's own emotion, and is filled with it as with his heart's blood. All the magical phrases in the play are phrases of jealousy, pa.s.sion, and pity.

The character of the captain in Oth.e.l.lo is never deeply realized. It is a brave sketch, but, after all, only the merest sketch when compared with Hamlet or Macbeth. We know what they thought of life and death, and of all things in the world and over it; but what do we know of Oth.e.l.lo's thoughts upon the deepest matters that concern man? Did he believe even in his stories to Desdemona?--in the men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders? in his magic handkerchief? in what Iago calls his "fantastical lies"? This, I submit, is another important indication that Shakespeare drew Oth.e.l.lo, the captain, from the outside; the jealous, tender heart of him is Shakespeare's, but take that away and we scarcely know more of him than the colour of his skin. What interests us in Oth.e.l.lo is not his strength, but his weakness, Shakespeare's weakness--his pa.s.sion and pity, his torture, rage, jealousy and remorse, the successive stages of his soul's Calvary!

CHAPTER IX. DRAMAS OF l.u.s.t: PART I. _Troilus and Cressida_

"He probed from h.e.l.l to h.e.l.l Of human pa.s.sions, but of love deflowered His wisdom was not...."

--_Meredith's Sonnet on Shakespeare_.

With "Hamlet" and his dreams of an impossible revenge Shakespeare got rid of some of the perilous stuff which his friend's traitorism had bred in him. In "Oth.e.l.lo" he gave deathless expression to the madness of his jealous rage and so cleared his soul, to some extent, of that poisonous infection. But pa.s.sion in Shakespeare survived hatred of the betrayer and jealousy of him; he had quickly finished with Herbert; but Mary Fitton lived still for him and tempted him perpetually--the l.u.s.t of the flesh, the desire of the eye, insatiable, cruel as the grave. He will now portray his mistress for us dramatically--unveil her very soul, show the gipsy-wanton as she is. He who has always painted in high lights is now going to paint French fashion, in blackest shadows, for with the years his pa.s.sion and his bitterness have grown in intensity. Mary Fitton is now "false Cressid." Pandarus says of her in the first scene of the first act:

"An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's--well, go to--there were no more comparison between the women."

Mary Fitton's hair, we know, was raven-black, but the evidence connecting Shakespeare's mistress with "false Cressid" is stronger, as we shall see, than any particular line or expression.

"Troilus and Cressida" is a wretched, invertebrate play without even a main current of interest. Of course there are fine phrases in it, as in most of the productions of Shakespeare's maturity; but the characterization is worse than careless, and at first one wonders why Shakespeare wrote the tedious, foolish stuff except to get rid of his own bitterness in the railing of Thersites, and in the depicting of Cressida's shameless wantonness. It is impossible to doubt that "false Cressid" was meant for Mary Fitton. The moment she appears the play begins to live; personal bitterness turns her portrait into a caricature; every fault is exaggerated and lashed with rage; it is not so much a drama as a scene where Shakespeare insults his mistress.

Let us look at this phase of his pa.s.sion in perspective. Almost as soon as he became acquainted with Miss Fitton, about Christmas 1597, Shakespeare wrote of her as a wanton; yet so long as she gave herself to him he appears to have been able to take refuge in his tenderness and endure her strayings. But pa.s.sion in him grew with what it fed on, and after she faulted with Lord Herbert, we find him in a sonnet threatening her that his "pity-wanting pain" may induce him to write of her as she was. No doubt her pride and scornful strength revolted under this treatment and she drew away from him. Tortured by desire he would then praise her with some astonishing phrases; call her "the heart's blood of beauty, love's invisible soul," and after some hesitation she would yield again. No sooner was the "ruined love" rebuilt than she would offend again, and again he would curse and threaten, and so the wretched, half-miserable, half-ecstatic life of pa.s.sion stormed along, one moment in Heaven, the next in h.e.l.l.

All the while Shakespeare was longing, or thought he was longing for truth and constancy, and at length he gave form and name to his desire for winnowed purity of love and perfect constancy, and this consoling but impalpable ideal he called Ophelia, Desdemona, Cordelia. But again and again Miss Fitton reconquered him and at length his acc.u.mulated bitterness compelled him to depict his mistress realistically. Cressida is his first attempt, the first dramatic portrait of the mistress who got into Shakespeare's blood and infected the current of his being, and the portrait is spoiled by the poet's hatred and contempt just as the whole drama is spoiled by a pa.s.sion of bitterness that is surely the sign of intense personal suffering. Cressida is depicted as a vile wanton, a drab by nature; but it is no part even of this conception to make her soulless and devilish. On the contrary, an artist of Shakespeare's imaginative sympathy loves to put in high relief the grain of good in things evil and the taint of evil in things good that give humanity its curious complexity. Shakespeare observed this rule of dramatic presentation more consistently than any of his predecessors or contemporaries--more consistently, more finely far than Homer or Sophocles, whose heroes had only such faults as their creators thought virtues; why then did he forget nature so far as to picture "false Cressida" without a redeeming quality? He first shows her coquetting with Troilus, and her coquetry even is unattractive, shallow, and obvious; then she gives herself to Troilus out of pa.s.sionate desire; but Shakespeare omits to tell us why she takes up with Diomedes immediately afterwards. We are to understand merely that she is what Ulysses calls a "s.l.u.ttish spoil of opportunity," and "daughter of the game." But as pa.s.sionate desire is not of necessity faithless we are distressed and puzzled by her soulless wantonness. And when she goes on to present Diomedes with the scarf that Troilus gave her, we revolt; the woman is too full of blood to be so entirely heartless. Here is the scene embittered by the fact that Troilus witnesses Cressida's betrayal:

"_Diomedes._ I had your heart before, this follows it.

_Troilus._ [_Aside._] I did swear patience.

_Cressida._ You shall not have it, Diomed, faith you shall not; I'll give you something else.

_Diomedes._ I will have this: whose was it?