The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 25

That instinctive groping and stumbling in all human affairs, that pursuit of human ends without any science of the natures to be superinduced, and without any science of the natures that were to be subjected,--those eyes of moonshine speculation, those gla.s.s eyes with which the scurvy politician affects to see the things he does not--those thousand noses that serve for eyes, and horns welked and waved like the enridged sea, and all the wild misery of that unlearned fortuitous human living, that waits to be scourged with the sequent effect, and knows not how to ascend to the cause--colossally exaggerated as it seems here--heightened everywhere, as if the Poet had put forth his whole power, and strained his imagination, and availed himself of his utmost poetic license, to give it, through all its details, its last conceivable hue of violence, its pure ideal shape, is, after all, but a copy an historical sketch. The ignorance, the stupidity, 'the _blindness_,' that this author paints, was his own 'Time's plague'; 'the madness' that 'led it,' was the madness of which he was himself a mute and manacled spectator.

By some singular oversight or caprice of tyranny, or on account of some fastidious scruple of the imagination perhaps, it does _not_ appear, indeed, to have been the fashion, either in the reigns of the Tudors or the Stuarts, to pluck out the living human eye as Gloster's eyes were plucked out; and that of itself would have furnished a reason why this poor duke should have been compelled to submit to that particular operation, instead of presenting himself to have his ears cut off in a sober, decent, civilized, Christian manner; or to have them grubbed out, if it happened that the operation had been once performed already; or to have his hand cut off, or his head, with his eyes in it; or to be roasted alive some noon-day in the public square, eyes and all, as many an honest gentleman was expected to present himself in those times, without making any particular demur or fuss about it. _These_ were operations that Englishmen of every rank and profession, soldiers, scholars, poets, philosophers, lawyers, physicians, and grave and reverend divines, were called on to undergo in those times, and for that identical offence of which the Duke of Gloster stood convicted, opposition to the will of a lawless usurping tyranny,--to its merest caprice of vanity or humour, perhaps,--or on grounds slighter still, on bare suspicion of a disposition to oppose it.

But then that, of course, was a thing of _custom_; so much so, that the victims themselves often took it in good part, and submitted to it as a divine inst.i.tution, part of a sacred legacy, handed down to them, as it was understood, from their more enlightened ancestors.

Now, if the Poet, in pursuance of his more general philosophic intention, which involved a moving representation of the helplessness of the Social Monad--that bodily as well as moral susceptibility and fragility, which leaves him open to all kinds of personal injury, not from the elements and from animals of other species merely or chiefly, but chiefly from his own kind,--if the Poet, in the course of this exhibition, had caused poor Gloster to be held down in his chair on the stage, for the purpose of having his _ears_ pared off, what kind of sensation could he hope to produce with that on the sensibility of an audience, who might have understood without a commentator an allusion to 'the tribulation of Tower Hill'--spectators accustomed to witness performances so much more thrilling, and on a stage where the Play was in earnest. And as to that second operation before referred to, which might have answered the poetic purpose, perhaps; who knows whether that may not have been a refinement in civilization peculiar to the reign of that amiable and handsome Christian Prince, who was still a minor when this Play was first brought out at Whitehall? for it was in _his_ reign that that memorable instance of it occurred, which the subsequent events connected with it chanced to make so notorious. It was a learned and very conscientious lawyer, in the reign of Charles the First, whose criticism upon some of the fashionable amus.e.m.e.nts of the day, which certain members of the royal family were known to be fond of, occasioned the suggestion of this mode of satisfying the outraged Majesty of the State, when the prying eye of Government discovered, or thought it did, remains enough of those previously-condemned appendages on this author's person, to furnish material for a second operation. 'Methinks Mr. Prynne _hath_ ears!' does not, after all, sound so very different from--'going to pluck out Gloster's _other_ eye,' as that the governments under which these two speeches are reported, need to be distinguished, on that account only, by any such essential difference as that which is supposed to exist between the human and _divine_. Both these operations appear, indeed to the unprejudiced human mind, to savour somewhat of the diabolical--or of the Dark Ages, rather, and of the Prince of Darkness. And, indeed, that '_fiend_' which haunts the Play--which the monster, with his moonshine eyes, appeared to have a vague idea of--seems to have been as busy here, in this department, as he was in bringing about poor Tom's distresses.

But in that steady persevering exhibition of the liabilities of individual human nature, the COMMON liabilities which throw it upon the COMMON, the distinctive law of humanity for its WEAL--in that continuous picture of the suffering and ignominy, and mutilation to which it is liable, moral and intellectual, as well as physical, where that law of humanity is not yet scientifically developed and scientifically sustained--the Poet does not always go quite so far to find his details. It is not from the Celtic Regan's time that he brings out those ancient implements of state authority into which the feet of the poor Duke of Kent, travelling on the king's errands, are ignominiously thrust; while the Poet, under cover of the Fool's jests, shows prettily their relation to the human dignity.

But then it is a Duke on whom this indignity is practised; for it is to be remarked, in pa.s.sing, that though this Poet is evidently bent on making his exhibition a thorough one, though he is determined not to leave out anything of importance in his diagrams, he does not appear inclined to soil his fingers by meddling with the lower orders, or to countenance any innovation in his art in that respect. Whenever he has occasion to introduce persons of this cla.s.s into his pieces, they come in and go out, and perform their part in his scene, very much as they do elsewhere in his time. Even when his Players come in, they do not speak many words on their own behalf. They stand civilly, and answer questions, and take their orders, and fulfil them. That is all that is looked for at their hands. For this is not a Poet who has ever given any one occasion in his own time, to distinguish him as the Poet of the People. It is always from the highest social point of observation that he takes those views of the lower ranks, which he has occasion to introduce into his Plays, from the mobs of 'greasy citizens' to the details of the sheep-shearing feast; and even in Eastcheap he keeps it still.

There never was a more aristocratic poet apparently, and though the very basest form of outcast misery 'that ever penury in contempt of man brought near to beast,' though the basest and most ign.o.ble and pitiful human liabilities, are every where included in his plan; he will have nothing but the rich blood of dukes and kings to take him through with it--he will have nothing lower and less ill.u.s.trious than these to play his parts for him.

It is a king to whom 'the _Farm House_,' where _both_ fire and food are waiting, becomes a royal luxury on his return from the _Hovel's_ door, brought in chattering out of the tempest, in that pitiful stage of human want, which had made him ready to share with Tom o' Bedlam, nay, with the _swine_, their rude comforts. 'Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow. Your _hovel_:--come bring us to your _hovel_.'

It is a king who gets an ague in the storm, who finds the tyranny of the night too rough for nature to endure; it is a king on whose desolate outcast head, dest.i.tution and social wrongs acc.u.mulate their results, till his wits begin to turn, till his mind is shattered, and he comes on to the stage at last, a poor bedlamite.

Nay, 'Tom' himself, is a duke's son, we are told; though that circ.u.mstance does not hinder him from giving, with much frankness and scientific accuracy, the particulars of those personal pursuits, and tastes, and habits, incidental to that particular station in life to which it has pleased Providence to call _him_.

And so by means of that poetic order, which is the Providence of this piece, and that design which 'tunes the harmony of it,' it is a duke on whom that low correction, 'such as basest and most contemned wretches are punished with,' is exhibited, in spite of his indignant protest.

_Kent_. Call not your stocks for me. _I_ serve the king, On _whose employment_ I was sent to you.

You shall do small _respect_, show too bold malice Against the _grace_ and _person_ of my master, Stocking his messenger.

_Cornwall_. Fetch forth the stocks.

As I have life and honour, there shall he sit till noon.'

_Regan_. Till noon,--till night my lord, and all night too.

[In vain the prudent and loyal Gloster remonstrates]

--The king must take it ill That _he_, so slightly valued in his messenger, Should have him thus restrained.

_Cornwall_. I'll answer that.

_Regan_. Put in his legs.

But then it must be confessed that the poet was not without some kind of precedent for this bold dramatic proceeding. He had, indeed, by means of the culture and diligent use of that gift of forethought, with which nature had so largely endowed him, been enabled thus far to keep his own person free from any such tangible enc.u.mbrance, though the '_lameness_' with which fortune had afflicted him personally, is always his personal grievance; but he had seen in his own time, ancient men and reverend,--men who claimed to be the ministers of heaven, and travelling on its errands, arrested, and subjected to this ludicrous indignity: he had seen this open stop, this palpable, corporeal, unfigurative arrest put upon the activity of scholars and thinkers in his time, conscientious men, between whose master and the state, there was a growing quarrel then, a quarrel that these proceedings were not likely to pacify. From noon till night, they, too, had sat thus, and all night too, they had endured that shameful lodging.

'When a man is _over_ l.u.s.ty at legs,' says the Fool, who arrives in time to put in an observation or two on this topic, and who seems disposed to look at it from a critical point of view, concluding with the practical improvement of the subject, already quoted--'When a man is over l.u.s.ty at legs'--(when his will, or his higher intelligence, perhaps, is allowed to govern them too freely,) 'he wears wooden nether stocks,' or 'cruel garters,' as he calls them again, by way of bestowing on this inst.i.tution of his ancestors as much variety of poetic imagery as the subject will admit of. '_Horses_ are tied by the head, _dogs_ and _bears_ by the neck, _monkeys_ by the loins, and _men_ by the legs'; and having ransacked his memory to such good purpose, and produced such a pile of learned precedents, he appears disposed to rest the case with these; for it is a part of the play to get man into his place in the scale of nature, and to draw the line between him and the brutes, if there be any such thing possible; and the Fool seems to be particularly inclined to a.s.sist the author in this process, though when we last heard of him he was, indeed, proposing to send the princ.i.p.al man of his time 'to school to an ant,'

to improve his sagacity; intimating, also, that another department of natural science, even conchology itself, might furnish him with some rather more prudent and fortunate suggestions than those which his own brain had appeared to generate; and it is to be remarked, that in his views on this point, as on some others of importance, he has the happiness to agree remarkably with that ill.u.s.trious yoke-fellow of his in philosophy, who was just then turning his attention to the 'practic part of life' and _its_ 'theoric,' and who indulges himself in some satires on this point not any less severe, though his pleasantries are somewhat more covert. But the philosopher on this occasion, having produced such a variety of precedents from natural history, appears to be satisfied with the propriety and justice of the proceeding, inasmuch as beasts and men seem to be treated with impartial consideration in it; and though a certain distinction of form appears to obtain according to the species, the main fact is throughout identical.

'Then comes the time,' he says, in winding up that knotted skein of prophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for 'he lives before his time,' as he takes that opportunity to tell us--

'Then comes the time, who lives to see't, That _going shall be used with feet_.'

Yes, it is a duke who is put in the stocks; it is a duke's son plays the bedlamite; it is a king who finds the hovel's shelter 'precious'; and it is a queen--it is a king's wife, and a daughter of kings--who is hanged; nay more, it is Cordelia--it is Cordelia, and none other, whom this inexorable Poet, primed with mischief, bent on outrage, determined to turn out the heart of his time, and show, in the selectest form, the inmost lining of its lurking humanities--it is Cordelia whom he will hang--And we forgive him still, and bear with him in all these a.s.saults on our taste--in all these thick-coming blows on our outraged sensibilities; we forgive him when at last the poetic design flashes on us,--when we come to understand the providence of this piece, at least,--when we come to see at last that there is a meaning in it _all_, a meaning deep to justify even this procedure.

'We are not the _first_ who, with _the best_ meaning, have _incurred the worst_,' says the captive queen herself; nor was she the last of that good company, as the Poet himself might have testified;--

Upon such sacrifices the G.o.ds themselves _throw incense_.

We forgive the Poet here, as we forgive him in all these other pitiful and revolting exhibitions, because we know that he who would undertake the time's cure--he who would undertake the relief of the human estate in any age, must probe its evil--must reach, no matter what it costs, its deadliest _hollow_.

And in that age, there was no voice which could afford to lack 'the courtier's glib and oily art.' 'Hanging was the word' then, for the qualities of which this princess was the impersonation, or almost the impersonation, so predominant were they in her poetic const.i.tution.

There was no voice, gentle and low enough, to speak outright such truth as hers; and 'banishment' and 'the stocks' would have been only too mild a remedy for 'the plainness' to which Kent declares, even to the teeth of majesty, 'honour's bound, when majesty stoops to folly.'

The kind, considerate Gloster, with all his loyalty to the powers which are able to show the divine right of possession, and with all his disposition to conform to the times, is greatly distressed and perplexed with the outrages which are perpetrated, as it were, under his own immediate sanction and authority. He has a hard struggle to reconcile his duty as the subject of a state which he is not prepared to overthrow, with his humane impulses and designs. He goes pattering about for a time, remonstrating, and apologizing, and trying 'to smooth down,' and 'hush up,' and mollify, and keep peace between the offending parties. He stands between the blunt, straightforward manliness of the honest Kent on the one hand, and the sycophantic servility and self-abnegation, which knows no will but the master's, as represented by the Steward, on the other.

'I am sorry for thee,' he says to Kent, after having sought in vain to prevent this outrage from being perpetrated in his own court--

'I am sorry for thee, friend: _tis the duke's pleasure, Whose disposition all the world well knows, Will not be rubbed or stopped_'--

as he found to his cost, poor man, when he came to have his own eyes gouged out by it. He 'saw it _feelingly_' then, as he remarked himself.

'I'll entreat for thee,' he continues, in his conversation with the disguised duke in the stocks. 'The duke's to blame in this. '_Twill be ill taken_.'

And when the king, on his arrival, kept waiting in the court, in his agony of indignation and grief, is told that Regan and Cornwall are 'sick,' 'they are weary,' 'they have travelled hard to-night,'

denounces these subterfuges, and bids Gloster fetch him a better answer, this is the worthy man's reply to him--

'My dear lord, You know the fiery quality of the duke, How unremovable and fixed he is In his own course.'

But Lear, who has never had any but a subjective acquaintance hitherto with reasons of that kind, does not appear able to understand them from this point of view--

_Lear_. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!

_Fiery_?--what _quality_? Why Gloster, Gloster, I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.

_Gloster_. Well, my good lord, I have informed them so.

_Lear_. Informed them? Dost thou understand me?

_Gloster_. Ay, my good lord.

But though Gloster is not yet ready to break with tyranny, it is not difficult to see which way he secretly inclines; and though he still manages his impulses cautiously, and contrives to succour the oppressed king by stealth, his courage rises with the emergency, and grows bold with provocation. For he is himself one of the finer and finest proofs of the times which the Poet represents; one, however, which he keeps back a little, for the study of those who look at his work most carefully. This man stands here in the general, indeed, as the representative of a cla.s.s of men who do not belong exclusively to this particular time--men who do not stand ready, as Kent and his cla.s.s do, to fly in the face of tyranny at the first provocation; they are not the kind of men who 'make mouths,' as Hamlet says, 'at the invisible event;'--they are the kind who know beforehand that to break with the powers that are, single-handed, is to sit on the stage and have your eyes gouged out, or to undergo some process of mutilation and disfigurement, not the less painful and oppressive, by this Poet's own showing, because it does not happen, perhaps, to be a physical one, and not the less calculated, on that account, to impair one's usefulness to one's species, it may be.

But besides that more general bearing of the representation, the part and disposition of Gloster afford us from time to time, glimpses of persons and things which connect the representation more directly with the particular point here noted. Men who found themselves compelled to occupy a not less equivocal _position_ in the state, look through it a little now and then; and here, as in other parts of the play, it only wants the right key to bring out suppressed historical pa.s.sages, and a finer history generally, than the chronicles of the times were able to take up.

'Alack, alack, Edmund,' says Gloster to his natural son, making _him_ the confidant of his n.o.bler nature, putting what was then the perilous secret of his humanity, into the dangerous keeping of the base-born one--for this is the Poet's own interpretation of his plot; though Lear is allowed to intimate on his behalf, that the loves and relations which are recognised and good in courts of justice, are not always secured by that sanction from similar misfortune; that they are not secured by that from those penalties which great Nature herself awards in those courts in which her inst.i.tutes are vindicated.

'Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not THIS UNNATURAL DEALING! When I desired _their leave that I might pity him_, they took from me _the use of mine own house_, and charged me on pain of their perpetual displeasure, _neither to speak_ of him, _entreat for him, nor in any way to sustain him_.'

_Edmund_. Most _savage and unnatural_.

_Gloster_. Go to, say you nothing.

[And say you nothing, my contemporary reader, if you perceive that this is one of those pa.s.sages I have spoken of elsewhere, which carries with it another application besides that which I put it to].

'There is division between the dukes--and a worse matter than that: I have received a letter this night,--'tis dangerous to be spoken;--I have _locked_ the letter in my _closet: these injuries the king now bears_, will be revenged _at home_' [softly--say you nothing].