The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 24

_Lear_. Why?

_Fool_. Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.

_Lear_. ... Be my horses ready?

_Fool_. Thy a.s.ses are gone about 'em. The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven, is a pretty reason.

_Lear_. Because they are not eight?

_Fool_. Yes, indeed: Thou wouldest make a good--fool.

He cannot tell how an _oyster_ makes his sh.e.l.l, but the nose has not stood in the middle of _his_ face for nothing. There has been some prying on either side of it, apparently; and he has pried to such good purpose, that some of the prime secrets of the new philosophy appear to have turned up in his researches. 'To take it again _perforce_,'

mutters the king. 'If thou wert my fool, Nuncle, I'd have thee beaten _for being_ OLD _before thy time_.' [This is a wit 'of the self-same colour' with that one who discovered that the times from which the world's practical wisdom was inherited, were the times when the world was young. 'They told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there!'] 'I'd have thee beaten for being old before thy time.'--'_How's_ that?'--'Thou shouldst _not_ have been OLD _before thou hadst been_ WISE.'

And it is in the Second Act that poor Kent, in his misfortunes, furnishes occasion for another avowal on the part of this same learned critic, of a preference for a practical philosophy, though borrowed from the lower species. He comes upon the object of his criticism as he sits in the stocks, because he could not adopt the style of his time with sufficient earnestness, though he does make an attempt 'to go out of his dialect,' but was not more happy in it than some other men of his politics were, in the Poet's time.

'Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity, _Under the allowance of your grand aspect, Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire On flickering Phebus' front--_

_Cornwall_. 'What mean'st by this?'

_Kent_. 'To go out of my dialect, _which you discommend so much_.

[Halting in his blank verse for the explanation]:--It is from that seat, to which the plainness of this man, with the official dignities of his time, has conducted him, that he puts the inquiry to that keen observer, whose observations in natural history have just been quoted,--

_Kent_. How chances that the _king comes with so small a train_?

_Fool_. An thou had'st been set in the stocks for that question, _thou, had'st well deserved it_.

_Kent_. Why, fool?

_Fool_. We'll set thee _to school to an ant_, to teach thee there is no labouring in the winter. All that follow their noses are _led by their eyes_, but--BLIND MEN.

_Kent_. Where learned'st thou _that_, fool?

_Fool_. Not in the stocks, _fool_.

[Not from being punished with the sequent effect; not in consequence of an improvidence, that an _ant_ might have taught me to avoid.]

'I have no _way_, and _therefore_ want no eyes,' says another duke, who is also the victim of that '_absolute_' authority which is abroad in this play. 'I stumbled when I _saw_,' and this is _his prayer_.

Let the superfluous and l.u.s.t-dieted man That slaves your ordinance; that will not SEE Because he doth not FEEL, _feel_ your power quickly.

'Thou seest how this world goes,' says the outcast king, meeting this poor outcast duke, just after his eyes had been taken out of his head, by the persons then occupying the chief offices in the state. 'Thou seest how this world goes.' 'I SEE it FEELINGLY,' is the duke's reply.

_Lear_. What! art _mad_? A man may _see_ how this world goes with _no_ eyes. Look with thine _ears_.

And his account of how it goes is--as we shall see--one that requires to be looked at with _ears_, for it contains, what one calls elsewhere in this play,--_ear-kissing_ arguments.--'Get thee _gla.s.s_ eyes,' he says, in conclusion, 'and like a scurvy _politician_ pretend to SEE, the things thou dost not.' And that was not the kind of politician, and that was not the kind of political eye-sight, to which this statesman, and seer, proposed to leave the times, that his legacy should fall on, whatever he might be compelled to tolerate in his own.

'Upon _the crown_ o' the cliff. What _thing_ was that Which parted from you?'

'_A poor unfortunate beggar_.' [Softly.]

'_As I stood here_ BELOW, methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses.

Horns welked and waved, like the enridged _sea_.'

'Now, Sir, what are you?' says the poor outcast duke to his true son, when in disguise he offers to attend him. 'A most poor man,' is the reply, 'made _lame_ by fortune's blows; who, by the ART of KNOWN AND FEELING SORROWS, am _pregnant_ to _good_ PITY. Give me your hand, _I'll_ lead you to some BIDING. Bear _free_ and _patient thoughts_,'

is his whisper to him.

Surely this is a poet that has got an inkling, in some way, of the new idea of an _experimental philosophy_,--of a combination of the human faculties of sense and reason in some organum; one, too, whose eye pa.s.ses lightly over the architectonic gifts of _univalves_ and _bivalves_, and _entomological_ developments of skill and forethought, intent on that great chrysalis, which has never been able to publish yet its Creator's glory. Here is a naturalist who would not think it enough to combine reason with experiment, in wind, and rain, and fire, and thunder, who would not think it enough to bring all the unpublished virtues of the earth, to the relief of the bodily human maladies. It is the Poet, who says elsewhere, 'Can'st thou not minister to a _mind_ diseased? No? Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.' It is the poet who says, 'Nor wind, rain, fire, thunder, are my daughters.' '_Nothing_ could have brought him to such a lowness in nature, but his un-_kind_ daughters.' It is the naturalist who says, 'Then let Regan's heart be anatomized, and see what _it_ is that breeds about it. Is there any cause in NATURE that makes these hard hearts?'

In short, this play is from the hand of one who thinks that the human affairs are of a kind to require scientific investigation, scientific foresight and conduct. He is much of Lear's opinion on many points, and evidently judges that there would be no harm in getting a philosopher enrolled among the king's hundred. Not a logician, not a metaphysician, according to the common acceptance of these terms; not merely a natural philosopher, in the low and limited sense of that term, in which we use it; but a man of science--one who is able, by some method or other, to ascend to the actual principles of things, and so to base his remedies for the social evils, on the forms which are _forms_, which have efficacy in nature as _such_, instead of basing them on certain chimeras, or so-called logical conclusions of the human mind--conclusions which the logic of nature contradicts-- conclusions to which the universal consent of _things_ is wanting.

_Nature_, in the sense in which _Edmund_ uses that term, is _not_ this poet's _G.o.ddess_, or his LAW; though he regards 'the plague of CUSTOM'

and 'the curiosity of nations,' and all their fantastic and arbitrary sway in human affairs, with an eye quite as critical--though he looks at 'that old Antic, the law,' as he expresses it elsewhere, with an eye quite as severe, on the world's behalf, as that which Edmund turns on it, on his own; he is very far from contending for the freedom of that savage, selfish, unreclaimed, spontaneous nature,--that lawless nature, to which the natural son of Gloster claims 'his services are due.' The poet teaches that the true and successful Social Art is, and must be scientific. That it must be based on the science of nature in general, and on the science of human nature in particular, on a science that recognizes the double _nature_ in man, that takes in, its heights as well as its depths, and its depths as well as its heights, that sounds it 'from its lowest note to the top of its key;' but it is one thing to quarrel with the unscientific, _imperfect_ social arts, and it is another to prefer nature in man _without_ arts. The picture of 'the Unaccommodated Man,' which forms so prominent a part of the representation here,--'the _thing itself_,' stripped of its social lendings, or setting at nought the social restraints, is not by any means an attractive one, as this philosopher does it for us. The scientific artist is no better pleased, than the king is with this kind of '_nature_.' It is the imperfection of the civilization which still generates, or leaves unchecked these savage evils, that he exposes.

But it is impossible, that the true social arts should be smelt out, or stumbled on, by accident, or arrived at by any kind of empirical groping; just as impossible as it is, on the other hand, that 'the wisdom of nature,' by throwing itself on its own internal resources, and reasoning it '_thus and thus_,' without taking into account the actual forces, should be able to invent them. Those forces which enter into all the plot of our human life, unworthy of philosophic note as they had seemed hitherto, those terrific, unmeasured strengths, against which the human kind are continually dashing themselves in their blind experiments,--those engines on which the human heart is racked, 'and stretched out so long,'--those rocky structures on which its choicest treasures are so wildly wrecked, these natural forces,--no matter what artificial combinations of them may have been accomplished,--'the causes _in nature_,' of the phenomena of human life, appeared to this philosopher a very fitting subject for philosophy, and one quite too important in its relation to human well-being and the Arts that promote it, to be left to mere blundering experiment; quite too subtle to be reached by any kind of empirical groping, quite too subtle to be entangled with the conclusions of the _philosophy_ which he found in vogue in his time, whose social efficacies and gifts in exorcisms, he has taken leave to connect in some way, with the appearance of Tom o' Bedlam in his history; a philosophy which had built up its system in defiant scorn of the nature of things; as if 'by reasoning it _thus_ and _thus_,' without any respect to the actual conditions, it could undertake to bridle the might of nature, and put a hook in the nose of her oppositions.

It did not seem to this philosopher well, that men who have eyes--eyes that are great nature's gift to them,--her gift to them in chief,--eyes that were meant to see with, should go on in this groping, star-gazing, fatally-stumbling fashion any longer.

_Lear_. [To the Bedlamite.] I do not like the fashion of your garments. _You will say that they are--Persian:--but_ let them be ALTERED.

CHAPTER V.

THE STATESMAN'S NOTE-BOOK--AND THE PLAY.

_Brutus._ How I have thought of this, and of _these times_, I shall recount _hereafter_.

_Hamlet_. The Play's the thing.

_Brutus_. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

_Casca_. I can as well _be hanged_ as tell _the manner_ of it.

_Posthumus_. 'Shall's have _a Play of this_.--

The fact that the design of this play, whatever it may be, is one deep enough to go down to that place in the social system which Tom o'

Bedlam was then peacefully occupying,--thinking of anything else in the world but a social revolution on his behalf--to bring him up for observation; and that it is high enough to go up to that apex of the social structure on which the crown was then fastened, to fetch down the impersonated state itself, for an examination not less curious and critical; the fact, too, that it was subtle enough to penetrate the retirement of the domestic life, and bring out its innermost pa.s.sages for scientific criticism;--the fact that the relation of the Parent to the Child, and that of the Child to the Parent, the relation of Husband and Wife, and Sister and Brother, and Master and Servant, of Peasant and Lord, nay, the transient relation of Guest and Host, have each their place and part here, and the question of their duty marked not less clearly, than that prominent relation of the King and his Subjects;--the fact that these relations come in from the first, along with the political, and demand a hearing, and divide throughout the stage with them; the fact of the mere range of this social criticism, as it appears on the surface of the play, in these so prominent points,--is enough to show already, that it is a _Radical_ of no ordinary kind, who is at work behind this drop-scene.

It was evident, at a glance, that this so extensive bill of grievances was not one which any immediate or violent political revolution, or any social reformation which was then in contemplation, would be able to meet; and that very circ.u.mstance gave to the whole essay its profoundly quiet, conservative air. It pa.s.sed only for one of those common outcries on the ills of human life, which men in general are expected, or permitted to make, according to their several abilities; one of those 'Alacks!'--'why does he so'? which, by relieving the mind of the complainant, tend to keep things quiet on the whole. This Poet, whoever he was, was making rather more ado about it than usual, apparently: but Poets are useful for that very purpose; they express other men's emotions for them, in a higher key than they could manage it themselves.

It was the breadth then,--the philosophic comprehension of this great philosophic design, which made it possible for the Poet to introduce into it, and exhibit in it, so glaringly, those evils of his time that were crying out to Heaven then, for redress, and could not wait for philosophic revolutions and reformations.

Tom o' Bedlam, strictly speaking, does appear, indeed, to have been one of those Elizabethan inst.i.tutions which were modified or annulled, in the course of the political changes that so soon followed this exhibition of his case. 'Tom' himself, in his own proper person, appears to have been left--by accident or otherwise--on the other side of the Revolutionary gulf. 'I remember,' says Aubrey, '_before the civil wars_, Tom o' Bedlams went about begging,' etc.--but one cannot help remarking that a very numerous family connection of the collateral branches of his house--bearing, on the whole, a sufficiently striking family resemblance to this ill.u.s.trious subject of the Poet's pencil,--appear to have got safely over all the political and social gulfs that intervene between our time and that.

And, as to some of those other social evils which are exhibited here in their ideal proportions, they are not, perhaps, so entirely among the former things which have pa.s.sed away with our reformations, that we should have to go to Aubrey's note book to find out what the Poet means. As to some of these, at least, it will not be necessary to hunt up an antiquary, who can remember whether any such thing ever was really in existence here, '_before the civil wars_.' And, notwithstanding all our advancements in Natural Science, and in the Arts which attend these advancements; notwithstanding the strong recommendations of the inventors of this Science,--Regan's heart, and that which breeds about it, appear, by a singular oversight, to have escaped, hitherto, any truly scientific inquiry; and the arts for improving it do not appear, after all, to have been very materially advanced since the time when this order was issued.

But notwithstanding that the subject of this piece appears to be so general,--notwithstanding the fact, that the social evils which are here represented include, apparently, the universal human conditions, and include evils which are still understood to be inherent in the nature of man, and, irreclaimable, or not, at least a subject for Art,--and notwithstanding the fact that this exhibition professes to borrow all its local hues and exaggerations from the barbaric times of the Ancient Britons--it is not very difficult to perceive that it does, in fact, involve a local exhibition of a different kind; and that, under the cover of that great revolution in the human estate, which the philosophic mind was then meditating,--_so broad_, that none could perceive its _project_,--another revolution,--that revolution which was then so near at hand, was clearly outlined; and that this revolution, too, is, after all, one towards which this Poet appears to '_incline_,' in a manner which would not have seemed, perhaps, altogether consistent with his position and a.s.sumptions elsewhere, if these could have been produced here against him; and in a manner, perhaps, somewhat more decided than the general philosophic tone, and the spirit of those large and peaceful designs to which he was chiefly devoted, might have led us to antic.i.p.ate. This Play was evidently written at a time when the conviction that the state of things which it represents could not endure much longer, had taken deep hold of the Poet's mind; at a time when those evils had attained a height so unendurable--when that evil which lay at the heart of the commonweal, poisoning all the social relations with its infection, had grown so fearful, that it might well seem, even to the scientific mind, to require the fierce '_drug_' of the political revolution,--so fearful as to make, even to such a mind, the rude surgery of the civil wars at last welcome.

For, indeed, it cannot be denied that the state of things which this Play represents, is that with which the author's own experience was conversant; and that all the terrible tragic satire of it, points--not to that age in the history of Britain in which the Druids were still responsible for the national culture,--not to that time when the Celtic Triads, clothed with the sanct.i.ties of an unknown past, still made the standard works and authorities in learning, beyond which there was no going,--not to the time when the national morality was still mystically produced at Stonehenge, in those national colleges, from whose mysterious rites the awful sanct.i.ties of the oak and the mistletoe drove back in confusion the sacrilegious inquirer,--not to that time, but to the _Elizabethan_.