The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 9

You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay."

Every one will admit that the poet himself speaks here, at least, from the words "I'll give my jewels" to the words "Would not this ill do well?" But the melancholy mood, the pathetic acceptance of the inevitable, the tender poetic embroidery now suit the King who is fashioned in the poet's likeness.

The next moment Richard revolts once more against his fate:

"Base court, where kings grow base, To come at traitors' calls, and do them grace."

And when Bolingbroke kneels to him he plays upon words, as Gaunt did a little earlier in the play misery making sport to mock itself. He says:

"Up, cousin, up; your heart is up, I know, Thus high at least, although your knee be low"--

and then he abandons himself to do "what force will have us do."

The Queen's wretchedness is next used to heighten our sympathy with Richard, and immediately afterwards we have that curious scene between the gardener and his servant which is merely youthful Shakespeare, for such a gardener and such a servant never yet existed. The scene [Footnote: Coleridge gives this scene as an instance of Shakespeare's "wonderful judgement"; the introduction of the gardener, he says, "realizes the thing," and, indeed, the introduction of a gardener would have this tendency, but not the introduction of this pompous, priggish philosopher togged out in old Adam's likeness. Here is the way this gardener criticises the King:

"All superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughs may live; Had he done so, himself had borne the crown, Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down."]

shows the extravagance of Shakespeare's love of hierarchy, and shows also that his power of realizing character is as yet but slight. The abdication follows, when Richard in exquisite speech after speech unpacks his heavy heart. To the very last his irresolution comes to show as often as his melancholy. Bolingbroke is sharply practical: "Are you contented to resign the crown?"

Richard answers:

"Ay, no; no, ay;--for I must nothing be; Therefore, no, no, for I resign to thee."

When he is asked to confess his sins in public, he moves us all to pity:

"Must I do so? and must I ravel out My weaved up follies? Gentle Northumberland, If thy offences were upon record, Would it not shame thee, in so fair a troop, To read a lecture of them?"

His eyes are too full of tears to read his own faults, and sympathy brings tears to our eyes also. Richard calls for a gla.s.s wherein to see his sins, and we are reminded of Hamlet, who advises the players to hold the mirror up to nature. He jests with his grief, too, in quick-witted retort, as Hamlet jests:

"Rich. Say that again.

The shadow of my sorrow? Ha! let's see:-- 'Tis very true, my grief lies all within; And these external manners of lament Are merely shadows to the unseen grief, That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul."

Hamlet touches the self-same note:

"'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, - - - - - - - - - - But I have that within which pa.s.seth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe."

In the fifth act, the scene between the Queen and Richard is used simply to move our pity. She says he is "most beauteous," but all too mild, and he answers her:

"I am sworn brother, sweet, To grim necessity; and he and I Will keep a league till death."

He bids her take,

"As from my death-bed, my last living leave,"

and for her consolation he turns again to the telling of romantic melancholy stories:

"In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fire With good old folks; and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages long ago betid: And, ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief, Tell thou the lamentable fall of me, And send the hearers weeping to their beds, For why; the senseless brands will sympathize The heavy accent of thy moving tongue."

I cannot copy this pa.s.sage without drawing attention to the haunting music of the third line.

The scene in which York betrays his son to Bolingbroke and prays the king not to pardon but "cut off" the offending member, is merely a proof, if proof were wanted, of Shakespeare's admiration of kingship and loyalty, which in youth, at least, often led him to silliest extravagance.

The dungeon scene and Richard's monologue in it are as characteristic of Shakespeare as the similar scene in "Cymbeline" and the soliloquy of Posthumus:

"_K. Rich_., I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world: And for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out, My brain I'll prove the female to my soul My soul the father; and these two beget A generation of still breeding thoughts, And these same thoughts people this little world, In humours like the people of this world, For no thought is contented...."

Here we have the philosopher playing with his own thoughts; but soon the Hamlet-melancholy comes to tune the meditation to sadness, and Shakespeare speaks to us directly:

"Thus play I in one person many people, And none contented: sometimes am I king; Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar, And so I am: then crushing penury Persuades me I was better when a king; Then am I king'd again; and by and by Think, that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke, And straight am nothing; but whate'er I be, Nor I nor any man that but man is With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased With being nothing."

Later, one hears Kent's lament for Lear in Richard's words:

"How these vain weak nails May tear a pa.s.sage through the flinty ribs Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls."

To Richard music is "sweet music," as it is to all the characters that are _merely_ Shakespeare's masks, and the scene in which Hamlet asks Guildenstern to "play upon the pipe" is prefigured for us in Richard's self-reproach:

"And here have I the daintiness of ear, To check time broke in a disordered string; But for the concord of my state and time, Had not an ear to hear my true time broke."

In the last three lines of this monologue which I am now about to quote, I can hear Shakespeare speaking as plainly as he spoke in Arthur's appeals; the feminine longing for love is the unmistakable note:

"Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!

For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world."

And at the last, by killing the servant who a.s.saults him, this Richard shows that he has the "something desperate" in him of which Hamlet boasted.

The murderer's praise that this irresolute-weak and loving Richard is "as full of valour as of royal blood" is nothing more than an excellent instance of Shakespeare's self-illusion. He comes nearer the fact in "Measure for Measure," where the Duke, his other self, is shown to be "an unhurtful opposite" too gentle-kind to remember an injury or punish the offender, and he rings the bell at truth's centre when, in "Julius Caesar," his mask Brutus admits that he

"... carries anger as the flint bears fire Who much enforced shows a hasty spark And straight is cold again."

If a hasty blow were proof of valour then Walter Scott's Eachin in "The Fair Maid of Perth" would be called brave. But courage to be worth the name must be founded on stubborn resolution, and all Shakespeare's incarnations, and in especial this Richard, are as unstable as water.

The whole play is summed up in York's pathetic description of Richard's entrance into London:

"No man cried, G.o.d save him; No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home: But dust was thrown upon his sacred head; Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off-- His face still combating with tears and smiles, The badges of his grief and patience-- That had not G.o.d, for some strong purpose, steel'd The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted, And barbarism itself have pitied him."

This pa.s.sage it seems to me both in manner and matter is as truly characteristic of Shakespeare as any that can be found in all his works: his loving pity for the fallen, his pa.s.sionate sympathy with "gentle sorrow" were never more perfectly expressed.

Pity, indeed, is the note of the tragedy, as it was in the Arthur-scenes in "King John," but the knowledge of Shakespeare derived from "King John" is greatly widened by the study of "King Richard II." In the Arthur of "King John" we found Shakespeare's exquisite pity for weakness, his sympathy with suffering, and, more than all, his girlish-tender love and desire of love. In "Richard II.," the weakness Shakespeare pities is not physical weakness, but mental irresolution and incapacity for action, and these Hamlet-weaknesses are accompanied by a habit of philosophic thought, and are enlivened by a nimble wit and great lyrical power. In Arthur Shakespeare is bent on revealing his qualities of heart, and in "Richard II." his qualities of mind, and that these two are but parts of the same nature is proved by the fact that Arthur shows great quickness of apprehension and felicity of speech, while Richard once or twice at least displays a tenderness of heart and longing for love worthy of Arthur.

It appears then that Shakespeare's nature even in hot, reckless youth was most feminine and affectionate, and that even when dealing with histories and men of action he preferred to picture irresolution and weakness rather than strength, and felt more sympathy with failure than with success.

CHAPTER V. SHAKESPEARE'S MEN OF ACTION (_continued_).

HOT-SPUR, HENRY V., RICHARD III.

The conclusions we have already reached, will be borne out and strengthened in unexpected ways by the study of Hotspur--Shakespeare's master picture of the man of action. The setting sun of chivalry falling on certain figures threw gigantic shadows across Shakespeare's path, and of these figures no one deserved immortality better than Harry Percy.

Though he is not introduced in "The Famous Victories of Henry V.," the old play which gave Shakespeare his roistering Prince and the first faint hint of Falstaff, Harry Percy lived in story and in oral tradition. His nickname itself is sufficient evidence of the impression he had made on the popular fancy. And both Prince Henry when mocking him, and his wife when praising him, bear witness to what were, no doubt, the accepted peculiarities of his character. Hotspur lived in the memory of men, we may be sure, with thick, hasty speech, and hot, impatient temper, and it is easy, I think, even at this late date, to distinguish Shakespeare's touches on the traditional portrait. It is for the reader to say whether Shakespeare blurred the picture, or bettered it.