The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 33

And how could he better neutralise the effect of these patriotic speeches, and prove his loyalty in the face of them, than to show as he does, most vigorously and effectively, that these patriots themselves, so rebellious to tyranny, so opposed to the one-man power in others, so determined to die, rather than submit to the imposition of the humours of any man, instead of law and justice,--were themselves but men, and were as full of will and humours, and as ready to tyrannise with them, too, upon occasion, as Caesar himself; and were no more fit to be trusted with absolute power than he was, nor, in fact, half so fit.

Caesar does, indeed, send word to the senate--'_The cause is in_ MY WILL, _I will not come_; (_That_ is enough,' he says, '_to satisfy the senate_.') And while the conspirators are exchanging glances, and the daggers are stealing from their sheaths, he offers the strength of his decree, the immutability 'of his absolute shall,' to the suppliant for his brother's pardon.

But then Portia gives us to understand, that she, too, has her private troubles;--that even that excellent man, Brutus, is not without his moods in his domestic administrations,--for on one occasion, when he treats her to 'ungentle looks,' and 'stamps his foot,' and angrily gesticulates her out of his presence, she makes good her retreat, thinking 'it was but the effect of humour, which,' she says, 'sometime hath his hour with every man'; and, good and patriotic as Brutus truly is, Ca.s.sius perceives, upon experiment, that after all _he_ too is but a man, and, with a particular and private nature, as well as a larger one 'which is the worthier,' and not una.s.sailable through that 'single I myself': he, too, may be 'thawed from the true quality with that which melteth fools,'--with words that flatter 'his particular.' In his conference with him, Ca.s.sius addresses himself skilfully to this weakness;--he poises the name of Caesar with that of Brutus, and, at the last, he clinches his patriotic appeal, with an appeal to his personal sentiment, of baffled, mortified emulation; for those writings, thrown in at his window, purporting to come from several citizens, 'all tended to the great opinion that Rome held of _his_ name;' and, alas! the Poet will not tell us that this did not unconsciously wake, in that pure mind, the feather's-weight that was perhaps needed to turn the scale.

And the very children know, by heart, what a time there was between these two men afterwards, these men that had 'struck the foremost man of all the world,' and had congratulated themselves that it was not murder, and that they were not villains, because it was for justice.

Precious disclosures we have in this scene. It is this very Ca.s.sius, this patriot, who had as lief _not_ BE as submit to injustice; who brings his avaricious humour, 'his itching palm,' into the state, and 'sells and marts his offices for gold, to undeservers.' Brutus does indeed come down upon him with a most unlimited burst of patriotic indignation, which looks, at first, like a mere frenzy of honest disgust at wrong in the abstract, in spite of the partiality of friendship; but, when Ca.s.sius charges him, afterwards, with exaggerating his friend's infirmities, he says, frankly, 'I did not, _till you practised them on_ ME.' And we find, as the dialogue proceeds, that it is indeed a personal matter with him: Ca.s.sius has refused him gold to pay his legions with.

And see, now, what kind of taunt it is, that Brutus throws in this same patriot's face after it had been proclaimed, by his order, through the streets of Rome, that Tyranny 'is dead': after Ca.s.sius had shouted through his own lungs.

'Some to the common pulpits, and cry out LIBERTY, FREEDOM, ENFRANCHIs.e.m.e.nT.' (_Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt_?)

It would have been strange, indeed, if in so general and philosophical a view of the question, that sacred, domestic inst.i.tution, which, through all this sublime frenzy for equal rights, maintained itself so peacefully under the patriot's roof, had escaped without a touch.

Brutus says:--

'Hear me, for I will speak.

Must I give way and room to your rash choler?

Shall I be frighted _when a madman stares_?'

'Look when I stare, see how the subject quakes.'

This sounds, already, as if Tyranny were not quite dead.

'_Ca.s.sius_. O ye G.o.ds, ye G.o.ds, must I endure all this!

_Brutus_. All this? ay more: Fret till your proud heart break; _Go, show_ YOUR SLAVES _how choleric you are_, And bid YOUR BONDMEN tremble. Must _I_ budge?

Must _I_ observe _you_? Must _I stand_ and _crouch Under your testy humour_? By the G.o.ds, You shall digest the venom of your spleen Though it do split you.'

So it was a mistake, then, it seems; and, notwithstanding that shout of triumph, and that b.l.o.o.d.y flourishing of knives, Tyranny _was not_ dead.

But one cannot help thinking that that shout must have sounded rather strangely in an English theatre just then, and that it was a somewhat delicate experiment to give Brutus his pulpit on the stage, to harangue the people from. But the author knew what he was doing. That cold, stilted harangue, that logical chopping on the side of freedom, was not going to set fire to any one's blood; and was not there Mark Antony that plain, blunt man, coming directly after Brutus,--'with his eyes as red as fire with weeping,' with 'the mantle,' of the military hero, the popular favourite, _in his hand_, with his glowing oratory, with his sweet words, and his skilful appeal to the pa.s.sions of the people, under his plain, blunt professions,--to wipe out every trace of Brutus's _reasons_, and lead them whither he would; and would not the moral of it all be, that with such A PEOPLE,--with such a power as that, behind the state, there was no use in killing Caesars--that Tyranny could not die.

'I fear there will a worse one come in his place.'

But this is Rome in her decline, that the artist touches here so boldly. But what now, if old Rome herself,--plebeian Rome, in the deadliest onset of her struggle against tyranny, Rome lashed into fury and conscious strength, rising from under the hard heel of her oppressors; what if Rome, in the act of creating her Tribunes; or, if Rome, with her Tribunes at her head, wresting from her oppressors a const.i.tutional establishment of popular rights,--what if this could be exhibited, by permission; what bounds as to the freedom of the discussion would it be possible to establish afterwards? There had been no National Latin Tragedy, Frederic Schlegel suggests,--because no Latin Dramatist could venture to do this very thing; but of course Caesar or Coriola.n.u.s on the Tiber was one thing, and Caesar or Coriola.n.u.s on the Thames was another; and an English author might be allowed, then, to say of the one, with impunity, what it would certainly have cost him his good right hand, or his ears, or his head, to say of the other,--what it did cost the Founder of this school in philosophy his head, to be suspected of saying of the other.

Nevertheless, the great question between an arbitrary and a const.i.tutional government, the principle of a government which vests the whole power of the state in the uncontrolled will of a single individual member of it; the whole history and philosophy of a military government, from its origin in the heroic ages,--from the crowning of the military hero on the battle field in the moment of victory, to the final consummation of its conquest of the liberty of the subject, could be as clearly set forth under the one form as the other; not without some startling specialities in the filling up, too, with a tone in the details now and then, to say the least, not exclusively antique, for this was a mode of treating cla.s.sical subjects in that age, too common to attract attention.

And thus, whole plays could be written out and out, on this very subject. Take, for instance, but these two, Coriola.n.u.s and Julius Caesar,--plays in which, by a skilful distribution of the argument and the action, with a skilful interchange of parts now and then,--the boldest pa.s.sages being put alternately into the mouths of the Tribunes and Patricians,--that great question, which was so soon to become the outspoken question of the nation and the age, could already be discussed in all its vexed and complicated relations, in all its aspects and bearings, as deliberately as it could be to-day; exactly as it was, in fact, discussed not long afterwards in swarms of English pamphlets, in harangues from English pulpits, in English parliaments and on English battle-fields,--exactly as it was discussed when that 'lofty Roman scene' came 'to be acted over' here, with the cold-blooded prosaic formalities of an English judicature.

CORIOLa.n.u.s

THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULSHIP;

OR,

THE SCIENTIFIC CURE OF THE COMMON-WEAL PROPOUNDED.

'Well, march we on To give obedience where 'tis truly owed: Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal, And _with him_, pour we in our country's purge _Each drop of us_.

Or so much as it needs To dew the sovereign Flower, _and drown the weeds_'--_Macbeth_.

'Have you heard the argument?'

CHAPTER I.

THE ELIZABETHAN HEROISM.

'Mildly is the word.'

'In a better hour, Let what _is meet_ be said it must be _meet_, And throw their power in the dust.'

It is the Military Chieftain of ancient Rome who p.r.o.nounces here the words in which the argument of the Elizabethan revolutionist is so tersely comprehended.

It is the representative of an heroic aristocracy, not one of ancient privilege merely, not one armed with parchments only, claiming descent from heroes; but the yet living leaders of the rabble people to military conquest, and the only leaders who are understood to be able to marshal from their ranks an effective force for military defence.

But this is not all. The scope of the poetic design requires here, under the sheath which this dramatic exhibition of an ancient aristocracy offers it, the impersonation of another and more sovereign difference in men; and this poet has ends to serve, to which a mere historical accuracy in the reproduction of this ancient struggle of state-factions, in an extinct European common-wealth, is of little consequence; though he is not wanting in that either, or indifferent to it, when occasion serves.

From the _speeches_ inserted here and there, we find that this is at the same time an aristocracy of learning which is put upon the stage here, that it is an aristocracy of statesmanship and civil ability, that it is composed of the select men of the state, and not its elect only; that it is the true and natural head of the healthful body politic, and not 'the horn of the monster' only. This is the aristocracy which appears to be in session in the background of this piece at least, and we are not without some occasional glimpses of their proceedings, and this is the element of the poetic combination which comes out in the _dialogue_, whenever the necessary question of the play requires it.

For it is the collision between the civil interests and the interests which the unlearned heroic ages enthrone, that is coming off here. It is the collision between the government which uneducated ma.s.ses of men create and confirm, and recreate in any age, and the government which the enlightened man 'in a better hour' demands, which the common sense and sentiment of man, as distinguished from the brute, demands, whether in the one, or the few, or the many.--This is the struggle which is getting into form and order here,--here _first_. These are the parties to it, and in the reign of the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts, they must be content to fight it out on any stage which their time can afford to lease to them for that performance, without being over scrupulous as to the names of the actors, or the historical correctness of the costumes, and other particulars; not minding a little shuffling in the parts, now and then, if it suits their poet's convenience, who has no conscience at all on such points, and who is of the opinion that this is the very stage which an action of such gravity ought to be exhibited on, in the first place; and that a very careful and critical rehearsal of it here, ought to precede the performance elsewhere; though a contrary opinion was not then without its advocates.

It is as the mouth-piece of this intellectual faction in the state, while it is as yet an _aristocracy_, contending with the physical force of it, struggling for the mastery of it with its numerical majority; it is the Man in the state, the new MAN struggling with the chief which a popular ignorance has endowed with dominion over him; it is the HERO who contends for the majesty of reason and the kingdom of the mind, it is the new speaker, the new, and now at last, commanding speaker for that law, which was old when this myth was named, which was not of yesterday when Antigone quoted it, who speaks now from this Roman's lips, these words of doom,--the reflection on the 'times deceased,' the prophecy of 'things not yet come to life,' the word of new ages.

'In A REBELLION, When what's not MEET, but what must be, was law, THEN WERE THEY CHOSEN: in a better hour Let what _is meet_ be said it must be _meet_, And throw their power in the dust.'

_Not_ in the old, sombre, Etruscan streets of ancient Rome, _not_ where the _Roman_ market-place, joined the Capitoline hill and began to ascend it, crossed the road from Palatinus thither, and began to obstruct it, not in the courts and colonnades of the primeval hill of palaces, were the terms of this proposal found. And not from the old logician's chair, was the sweep of their comprehension made; not in any ancient school of rhetoric or logic were they cast and locked in that conjunction. It was another kind of weapon that the old _Roman_ Jove had to take in hand, when amid the din of the Roman forum, _he_ awoke at last from his bronze and marble, to his empirical struggle, his unlearned, experimental struggle with the wolf and her nursling, with his own baptized, red-robed, usurping Mars. It was not with any such subtlety as this, that the struggle of state forces which, under one name or another, sooner or later, in the European states is sure to come, had hitherto been conducted.

And not from the lips of the haughty patrician chief, rising from the dust of ages at the spell of genius, to encounter his old plebeian vanquishers, and fight his long-lost battles o'er again, at a showman's bidding, for a showman's greed--to be stung anew into patrician scorn--to repeat those rattling volleys of the old martial Latin wrath, 'in states unborn' and 'accents then unknown,' for an hour's idle entertainment, for 'a six-pen'orth or shilling's worth' of gaping amus.e.m.e.nt to a playhouse throng, not--NOT from any such source came that utterance.

It came from the council-table of a sovereignty that was plotting here in secret then the empire that the sun shall not set on; whose beginning only, we have seen. It came from the secret chamber of a new union and society of men,--a union based on a new and, for the first time, scientific acquaintance with the nature that is in men, with the sovereignty that is in all men. It was the Poet of this society who put those words together--the Poet who has heard all its _pros_ and _cons_, who reports them all, and gives to them all their exact weight in the new balance of his decisions.

Among other things, it was understood in this a.s.sociation, that the power, which was at that time supreme in England, was in fact, though not in name, a _popular_ power,--a power, at least, sustained only by the popular will, though men had not, indeed, as yet, begun to perceive that momentous circ.u.mstance,--a power which, being 'but the horn and noise o' the monster,' was able to oppose its '_absolute shall_' to the embodied wisdom of the state,--not to its ancient immemorial government only, but to 'its _chartered_ liberties in the body of the weal,' and 'to a graver bench than ever frowned in Greece'; and the Poet has put on his record of debates on those 'questions of gravity,' that were agitating then this secret Chamber of Peers, a distinct demand on the part of this ancient leadership,--the leadership of 'the honoured number,' the honourable and right honourable few, that this ma.s.s of ignorance, and stupidity, and blind custom, and incapacity for rule,--this combination of mere instinctive force, which the physical majority in unlearned times const.i.tutes, which supplies, in its want, and ignorance, and pa.s.sivity, and in its pa.s.sionate admiration of heroism and love of leadership, the ready material of tyranny, shall be annihilated, and cease to have any leadership or voice in the state; and this demand is put by the Poet into the mouth of one who cannot see from his point of observation--with his ineffable contempt for the people--what the Poet sees from his, that the demand, as he puts it, is simply 'the impossible.' For this is a question in the mixed mathematics, and 'the _greater part_ carries it.'

That instinctive, unintelligent force in the state--that blind volcanic force--which foolish states dare to keep pent up within them, is that which the philosopher's eye is intent on also; he, too, has marked this as the primary source of mischief,--he, too, is at war with it,--he, too, would annihilate it; but he has his own mode of warfare for it; he thinks it must be done with Apollo's own darts, if it be done when 'tis done, and not with the military chieftain's weapon.

This work is one in which the question of heroism and n.o.bility is scientifically treated, and in the most rigid manner, 'by line and level,' and through that representative form in which the historical pretence of it is tried,--through that scientific negation, with its merely instinctive, vulgar, unlearned ambition--with its monstrous 'outstretching' on the one hand, and its dwarfish limitations on the other,--through all that finely drawn, historic picture of that which claims the human subjection, the clear scientific lines of the true ideal type are visible,--the outline of the true n.o.bility and government is visible,--towering above that detected insufficiency, into the perfection of the _human_ form,--into the heaven of the true divineness,--into the chair of the perpetual dictatorship,--into the consulship whose year revolves not, whose year is _the state_.

Neither is this true affirmation here in the form of a scientific abstraction merely. It is not here in the general merely. 'The Instance,' the particular impersonation of n.o.bility and heroism, which this play exhibits, is, indeed, the false heroism and n.o.bility. It is the hitherto uncriticised, and, therefore, uncorrected, popular affirmation on this subject which is embodied here, and this turns out to be, as usual, the clearest scientific negative that could be invented. But in the design, and in all the labour of this piece,--in the steadfast purpose that is always working out that definition, with its so exquisite, but thankless, unowned, unrecognised toil, graving it and pointing it with its pen of diamond in the rock for ever, approving itself 'to the Workmaster' only,--in this incessant design,--in this veiled, mysterious authorship,--an historical approximation to the true type of magnanimity and heroism is always present. But there is more in it than this.

It is the old popular notion of heroism which fills the foreground; but the Elizabethan heroism is always lurking behind it, watching its moment, ready to seize it; and under that cover, it contrives to advance and p.r.o.nounce many words, which, in its own name and form, it could not then have been so prosperously delivered of. Under the disguise of that historical impersonation--under the mask of that old Roman hero, other, quite other, heroic forms--historic forms--not _less_ ill.u.s.trious, not less memorable, from time to time steal in; and ere we know it, the suppressed Elizabethan men are on the stage, and the Theatre is, indeed, the Globe; and it is shaking and flashing with the iron heel and the thunder of their leadership; and the thrones of oppression are downfalling; and the ages that seemed 'far off,' the ages that were nigh, are there--are there as they are _here_.

The historical position of the men who could entertain the views which this Play embodies, in the age in which it was written--the whole position of the men in whom this idea of n.o.bility and government was already struggling to become historical--flashes out from that obscure back-ground into the most vivid historical representation, when once the light--'the great light' which 'the times give to _true_ interpretations'--has been brought to bear upon it. And it does so happen, that _that_ is the light which we are particularly directed to hold up to this particular play, and, what is more, to this particular point in it. 'So _our_ virtues,' says the old Volscian captain, Tullus Aufidius, lamenting the limitations of his historical position, and apologizing for the figure he makes in history--

'So _our virtues_ Lie in the interpretation of THE TIMES.'