The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 5

Again, when Pompey is arrested, he pa.s.ses from the individual to the general, exclaiming:

"That we were all as some would seem to be, Free from our faults, as from faults seeming free."

Then follows the interesting talk with Lucio, who awakens the slightly pompous Duke to natural life with his contempt. When Lucio tells the Duke, who is disguised as a friar, that he (the Duke) was a notorious loose-liver--"he had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service"--the Duke merely denies the soft impeachment; but when Lucio tells him that the Duke is not wise, but "a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow," the Duke bursts out, "either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking: ... Let him but be testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier," which recalls Hamlet's "Friends, scholars, and soldiers," and Ophelia's praise of Hamlet as "courtier, soldier, scholar." Lucio goes off, and the Duke "moralizes" the incident in Hamlet's very accent:

"No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure 'scape; backwounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?"

Hamlet says to Ophelia:

"Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not escape calumny."

And Laertes says that "virtue itself" cannot escape calumny.

The reflection is manifestly Shakespeare's own, and here the form, too, is characteristic. It may be as well to recall now that Shakespeare himself was calumniated in his lifetime; the fact is admitted in Sonnet 36, where he fears his "guilt" will "shame" his friend.

In his talk with Escalus the Duke's speech becomes almost obscure from excessive condensation of thought--a habit which grew upon Shakespeare.

Escalus asks:

"What news abroad in the world?"

The Duke answers:

"None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request. ... There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure, but security enough to make fellowships accursed."

Escalus then tells us of the Duke's temperament in words which would fit Hamlet perfectly; for, curiously enough, they furnish us with the best description of Shakespeare's melancholy:

"Rather rejoicing to see another merry, than merry at anything which professed to make him rejoice."

And, lastly, the curious rhymed soliloquy of Vincentio which closes this third act, must be compared with the epilogue to "The Tempest":

"He who the sword of Heaven will bear Should be as holy as severe; Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand and virtue go;"

- - - - - - - - - - "Shame to him whose cruel striking Kills for faults of his own liking!

Twice treble shame on Angelo, To weed my vice and let his grow!"

In the fifth act the Duke, freed from making plots and plans, speaks without constraint and reveals his nature ingenuously. He uses words to Angelo that recall the sonnets:

"O, your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it, To lock it in the wards of covered bosom, When it deserves, with characters of bra.s.s, A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion."[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Sonnet 122 with its "full character'd" and "razed oblivion."]

Again, the Duke argues in gentle Shakespeare's fashion for Angelo and against Isabella:

"If he had so offended, He would have weighed thy brother by himself And not have cut him off."

It seems impossible for Shakespeare to believe that the sinner can punish sin. It reminds one of the sacred "he that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone." The detections and forgivings of the last act follow.

It will be admitted, I think, on all hands that Duke Vincentio speaks throughout the play with Shakespeare's voice. From the point of view of literary art his character is very far from being as complex or as deeply realized as that of Hamlet or Macbeth, or even as that of Romeo or of Jaques, and yet one other trait besides that of sceptical brooding is so over-accentuated that it can never be forgotten. In the last scene the Duke orders Barnardine to the block and the next moment respites him; he condemns

"An Angelo for Claudio; death for death,"

then pardons Angelo, and at once begins to chat with him in kindly intimacy; he a.s.serts that he cannot forgive Lucio, Lucio who has traduced him, shall be whipped and hanged, and in the same breath he remits the heavy penalty. Truly he is "an unhurtful opposite" [Footnote: The critics are at variance over this ending, and, indeed, over the whole play. Coleridge says that "our feelings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo's escape"; for "cruelty with l.u.s.t and d.a.m.nable baseness cannot be forgiven." Mr. Swinburne, too, regrets the miscarriage of justice; the play to him is a tragedy, and should end tragically with the punishment of the "autotype of the huge national vice of England." Perhaps, however, Puritan hypocrisy was not so widespread or so powerful in the time of Shakespeare as it is nowadays; perhaps, too, Shakespeare was not so good a hater as Mr. Swinburne, nor so strenuous a moralist as Coleridge was, at least in theory. In any case it is evident that Shakespeare found it harder to forgive Lucio, who had hurt his vanity, than Angelo, who pushed l.u.s.t to outrage and murder, which strange, yet characteristic, fact I leave to the mercy of future commentators. Mr. Sidney Lee regards "Measure for Measure" as "one of Shakespeare's greatest plays." Coleridge, however, thought it "a hateful work"; it is also a poor work, badly constructed, and for the most part carelessly written. In essence it is a mere tract against Puritanism, and in form a sort of Arabian Nights' Entertainment in which the hero plays the part of Haroun-al-Raschid.] whose anger has no stead-fastness; but the gentle forgivingness of disposition that is so marked in Vincentio is a trait we found emphasized in Romeo, and again in Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, one of the most permanent characteristics of Shakespeare. From the beginning to the end of the play, Duke Vincentio is weakly-kind in act and swayed by fitful impulses; his a.s.sumed austerity of conduct is the thin varnish of vanity that will not take on such soft material. The Hamlet weakness is so exaggerated in him, and so unmotived, that I am inclined to think Shakespeare was even more irresolute and indisposed to action than Hamlet himself.

In the character of Posthumus, the hero of "Cymbeline," Shakespeare has painted himself with extraordinary care; has, in fact, given us as deliberate and almost as complete a picture of himself as he did in Hamlet. Unluckily his hand had grown weaker in the ten years' interval, and he gave such loose rein to his idealizing habit that the portrait is neither so veracious nor so lifelike. The explanation of all this will be given later; it is enough for the moment to state that as Posthumus is perhaps the completest portrait of him that we have after his mental shipwreck, we must note the traits of it carefully, and see what manner of man Shakespeare took himself to be towards the end of his career.

It is difficult to understand how the commentators have been able to read "Cymbeline" without seeing the likeness between Posthumus and Hamlet. The wager which is the theme of the play may have hindered them a little, but as they found it easy to excuse its coa.r.s.eness by attributing lewdness to the time, there seems to have been no reason for not recognizing Posthumus. Posthumus is simply a staider Hamlet considerably idealized. I am not at all sure that the subject of the play was void of offence in the time of Elizabeth; all finer spirits must even then have found it puerile and coa.r.s.e. What would Spenser have said about it? Shakespeare used the wager because of the opportunities it gave him of painting himself and an ideal woman. His view of it is just indicated; Iachimo says:

"I make my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation: and, to bar your offence herein too, I durst attempt it against any lady in the world." But in spite of the fact that Iachimo makes his insult general, Posthumus warns him that:

"If she remain unseduced ... for your ill opinion, and the a.s.sault you have made to her chast.i.ty, you shall answer me with your sword."

From this it appears that the bet was distasteful to Posthumus; it is not so offenceful to him as it should have been according to our modern temper; but this shortcoming, an unconscious shortcoming, is the only fault which Shakespeare will allow in his hero. In the first scene of the first act Posthumus is praised as men never praise the absent without a personal motive; the First Gentleman says of him:

"I do not think So fair an outward and such stuff within Endows a man but he."

The Second Gentleman replies:

"You speak him far;"

and the First Gentleman continues:

"I do extend him, sir, within himself; Crush him together, rather than unfold His measure duly."

And as if this were not enough, this gentleman-eulogist goes on to tell us that Posthumus has sucked in "all the learnings" of his time "as we do air," and further:

"He lived in court-- Which rare it is to do--most praised, most loved; A sample to the young'st, to the more mature A gla.s.s that feated them; and to the graver A child that guided dotards."

This gross praise is ridiculously unnatural, and outrages our knowledge of life; men are much more apt to criticize than to praise the absent; but it shows a prepossession on Shakespeare's part in favour of Posthumus which can only be explained by the fact that in Posthumus he was depicting himself. Every word is significant to us, for Shakespeare evidently tells us here what he thought about himself, or rather what he wished to think, towards the end of his life. It is impossible to believe that he was "most praised, most loved"; men do not love or praise their superiors in looks, or intellect.

The first words which Posthumus in this same scene addresses to Imogen, show the gentle Shakespeare nature:

"O lady, weep no more, lest I give cause To be suspected of more tenderness Than doth become a man."

And when Imogen gives him the ring and tells him to wear it till he woos another wife, he talks to her exactly as Romeo would have talked:

"How! how! another?-- You gentle G.o.ds, give me but this I have, And sear up my embracements from a next With bonds of death! [_Putting on the ring_.]

Remain, remain thou here While sense can keep it on."

And he concludes as self-depreciating Hamlet would have concluded:

"And sweetest, fairest, As I my poor self did exchange for you, To your so infinite loss, so in our trifles I still win of you; for my sake wear this: It is a manacle of love; I'll place it Upon this fairest prisoner.

[Putting a bracelet on her arm.]"

In his fight with Cloten he is depicted as a rare swordsman of wonderful magnanimity. Pisanio says:

"My master rather played than fought, And had no help of anger."

I call this gentle kindness which Posthumus displays, the birthmark of Shakespeare; he had "no help of anger." As the play goes on we find Shakespeare's other peculiarities, or Hamlet's. Iachimo represents Posthumus as "merry," "gamesome," "the Briton reveller"; but curiously enough Imogen answers as Ophelia might have answered about Hamlet: