The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 34

['THE TIMES, in many cases, give great light to true _interpretations_,' says the other, speaking of books, and the method of reading them; but this one applies that suggestion particularly to _lives_.]

'And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a hair To extol what it hath done.'

The spirit of the Elizabethan heroism is indeed here, and under the cover of this old Roman story; and under cover of those so marked differences in the positions which suffice to detain the unstudious eye, through the medium of that which is common under those differences, the history of the Elizabethan heroism is here also. The spirit of it is here, not in that subtler nature only--that yet, perhaps, subtler, calmer, stronger nature, in which 'blood and judgment were so well co-mingled'--so well, in such new degree and proportion, that their balance made a new force, a new generative force, in history--not in that one only, the one in whom this new historic form is visible and palpable already, but in the haughtier and more unbending historic _att.i.tude_, at least, of his great 'co-mate and brother in exile.' It is here in the form of the great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with all his strategy, involved in a single-handed contest with the state and its whole physical strength, in his contest with that personal power in whose single arm, in whose miserable finger-joints, the state and all its force then lay. Under that old, threadbare, martial cloak,--under the safe disguise of martial tyranny in 'the few,'--whenever the business of the play requires it, whenever 'his cue comes,' _he_ is there. Under that old, rusty Roman helmet, his smothered speech, his 'speech of fire,' his pa.s.sionate speech, 'forbid so long,' drops thick and fast, drops unquenched at last, and glows for ever. It is the headless Banquo--'the blood-boltered Banquo'--that stalks through that shadowy background all unharmed; _his Fleance_ lives, and in him 'Nature's copy _is_ eterne.'

His house of kings, with gold-bound brows, and sceptres in their hands, with _two-fold_ b.a.l.l.s and sceptres in their hands--are here filling the stage, and claiming it to the crack of doom; and now he 'smiles,' he _smiles_ upon his baffled foe, 'and points at them for HIS.'

The whole difficulty of this great Elizabethan position, and the moral of it, is most carefully and elaborately exhibited here. No plea at the bar was ever more finely and eloquently laboured. It was for the bar of 'foreign nations and future ages' that this defence was prepared: the speaker who speaks so 'pressly,' is the lawyer; and there is nothing left unsaid at last. But it is not exhibited in words merely. It is acted. It is brought out dramatically. It is presented to the eye as well as to the ear. The impossibility of any other mode of proceeding under those conditions is not demonstrated in this instance by a diagram, drawn on a piece of paper, and handed about among the jury; it is not an exact drawing of the street, and the house, and the corner where the difficulty occurred, with the number of yards and feet put down in ink or pencil marks; it is something much more lively and tangible than that which we have here, under pardon of this old Roman myth.

For the story, as to this element of it, is indeed not new. The story of the struggle of the few with the many, of the one with the many, of the one with 'the many-headed,' is indeed an old one. Back into the days of demi-G.o.ds and G.o.ds it takes us. It is the story of the celestial t.i.tan, with his benefactions for men, and force and strength, with art to aid them--reluctant art--compelled to serve their ends, enringing his limbs, and driving hard the stakes. Here, indeed, in the Fable, in the proper hero of it, it is the struggle of the 'partliness' of pride and selfish ambition, lifting itself up in the place of G.o.d, and arraying itself against the common-_weal_, as well as the common-will; but the physical relation of the one to the many, the position of the individual who differs from his time on radical questions, the relative strength of the parties to this war, and the weapons and the mode of warfare inevitably prescribed to the minority under such conditions--all this is carefully brought out from the speciality of this instance, and presented in its most general form; and the application of the result to the position of the man who contends _for_ the common-weal, against the selfish will, and pa.s.sion, and narrowness, and short-sightedness of the mult.i.tude, is distinctly made.

Yes, the Elizabethan part is here; that all-unappreciated and odious part, which the great men of the Elizabethan time found forced upon them; that most odious part of all, which, the greatest of his time found forced upon _him_ as the condition of his greatness. It is here already, negatively defined, in this pa.s.sionate defiance, which rings out at last in the Roman street, when the hero's pride bursts through his resolve, when he breaks down at last in his studied part, and all considerations of policy, all regard to that which was dearer to him than 'his _single mould_,' is given to the winds in the tempest of his wrath, and he stands at bay, and confronts _alone_ 'the beast with many heads.'

It is thus that he measures the man he contends with, the antagonist who is but 'the horn and noise of the monster':--

'Thou injurious TRIBUNE!

Within thine eyes sat _twenty thousand_ deaths, In thy hands clenched _as many millions_, in Thy lying tongue _both numbers_, I would say, Thou liest, unto thee, with voice as free As I do pray the G.o.ds.'

But there was a heroism of a finer strain than that at work in England then, imitating the graces of the G.o.ds to better purpose; a heroism which must fight a harder field than that, which must fight its own great battles through alone, without acclamations, without spectators; which must come off victorious, and never count its 'cicatrices,' or claim 'the war's garland.'

If we would know the secret of those struggles, those hard conflicts that were going on here then, in whose results all the future ages of mankind were concerned, we must penetrate with this Poet the secret of the Roman patrician's house; we must listen, through that thin poetic barrier, to the great chief himself, the chief of the unborn age of a new civilization--the leader, and hero, and conqueror of the ages of Peace--as he enters and paces his own hall, with the angry fire in his eyes, and utters there the words for which there is no utterance without--as he listens there anew to the argument of that for which he lives, and seeks to reconcile himself anew to that baseness which his time demands of him.

We must seek, here, not the part of him only who endured long and much, but was, at last, provoked into a premature boldness, and involved in a fatal collision with the state, but that of him who endured to the end, who played his life-long part without self-betrayal. We must seek, here, not the part of the great martial chieftain only, but the part of that heroic chief and leader of men and ages, who discovered, in the sixteenth century, when the chivalry of the sword was still exalting its standard of honour as supreme, when the law of the sword was still the world's law, that brute instinct was not the true valour, that there was a better part of it than instinct, though he knows and confesses,--though he is the first to discover, that instinct is a great matter. We must seek, here, _the words_, the very words of that part which we shall find _acted_ elsewhere,--the part of the chief who was determined, for his part, 'to live and fight another day,' who was not willing to spend _him_self in such conflicts as those in which he saw his most ill.u.s.trious contemporaries perish at his side, on his right hand and on his left, in the reign of the Tudor, and in the reign of the Stuart. And he has not been at all sparing of his hints on this subject over his own name, for those who have leisure to take them.

'The moral of this fable is,' he says, commenting in a certain place, on the wisdom of _the Ancients_, 'that men should not be confident of themselves, and imagine that a discovery of their excellences will always render them acceptable. _For this can only succeed_ according to _the nature_ and _manners_ of the person they _court or_ solicit, who, if he be a man not of the same gifts and endowments, but altogether of a haughty and insolent behaviour--(_here_ represented by _the person of Juno_)--_they must entirely drop the character_ that carries the least show of worth or gracefulness; if they proceed upon _any other_ footing it is _downright folly. Nor_ is it sufficient to _act_ the deformity of _obsequiousness_, unless they _really change themselves_, and _become_ abject and contemptible _in their persons_.'

This was a time when abject and contemptible _persons_ could do what others could not do. Large enterprises, new developments of art and science, the most radical social innovations, were undertaken and managed, and very successfully, too, in that age, by persons of that description, though not without frequent glances on their part, at that little, apparently somewhat contradictory circ.u.mstance, in their history.

But the fables in which the wisdom of the Moderns, and the secrets of _their_ sages are lodged, are the fables we are unlocking here. Let us listen to these 'secrets of policy' for ourselves, and not take them on trust any longer.

_A room in Coriola.n.u.s's house_.

[_Enter Coriola.n.u.s and Patricians_.]

_Cor_. Let them _pull all about mine ears_, present me _Death on the wheel_, or at wild horses' heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still _Be thus to them_.

[Under certain conditions that is heroism, no doubt.]

_First Patrician. You do the n.o.bler_.

[For the question is of n.o.bILITY.]

_Cor_. I muse my mother Does not approve me further.

I talk of _you_. [_To Volumnia_.]

Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me _False to my nature_? Rather say _I play The man I am_.

_Vol_. O sir, sir, sir, I _would have had you put your power well on Before you had worn it out_.

Lesser had been The thwarting of your dispositions, if You had _not show'd them how you were disposed, Ere they lacked power to cross you_.

[_Enter Menenius and Senators_.]

_Men_. Come, come, you have been too rough Something too rough; You must return, and mend it.

_1 Sen_. _There's no remedy, Unless_, by _not_ so doing, _our good city Cleave in the midst and perish_.

_Vol_. Pray be counselled: _I_ have a _heart_ as little apt as yours But yet _a brain_ [hear] that leads my use of anger To better _vantage_.

_Men_. Well said, _n.o.ble_ woman; _Before he should thus stoop to the_ herd, but that The VIOLENT PIT O' THE TIME, _craves it as_ PHYSIC For the WHOLE STATE, _I_ would put _mine_ armour on, Which I can scarcely bear.

[It is the diseased common-weal whose case this Doctor is undertaking. _That_ is our subject.]

_Cor_. What must I do?

_Men_. Return to the Tribunes.

_Cor_. Well, What then? what then?

_Men_. Repent what you have spoke.

_Cor_. For them? I _can not do it to the G.o.ds_: Must I then do't to _them_?

_Vol_. You are too _absolute_; _Though_ therein you can never be _too n.o.ble But when extremities speak_. I have heard you say, HONOR _and_ POLICY [hear] like unsevered friends _I' the war_ do grow together: _Grant that_, and tell me.

In peace, what _each_ of them by the other loses That they combine not there?

_Cor_. Tush; tush!

_Men_. _A good demand_.

_Vol_. If _it be honor_, in your wars, to seem The same you are not, (which FOR YOUR BEST ENDS _You adopt your policy_), how is it _less_, or _worse_ That it shall hold companionship in peace With honor, as in war; _since that to both It stands in like request_?

_Cor_. Why _force you this_? [Truly.]

_Vol_. _Because_ that _now_, IT LIES ON YOU to speak _To the people, not_ by _your own instruction_, Nor by the _matter which your heart prompts you_ to, But with such words that are but rated _in_ _Your tongue_ though but b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and syllables _Of no_ allowance, to _your bosom's truth_.

Now this no more dishonors you at all, Than to take in _a town_ with _gentle words_, Which else would put you to your fortune, and THE HAZARD of MUCH BLOOD.--[Hear.]

I would dissemble _with my nature_, where _My fortune and my friends at stake_ required _I should do so in honor_. _I am_ in this; Your wife, your son, these senators, the n.o.bles, And you will rather show our _general lowts_ How you can frown, than spend a _fawn_ upon them.

For the _inheritance_ of their loves, and _safe-guard_ Of _what that want might ruin_ [hear]

n.o.bLE lady!

_Come go with us_. Speak fair: you may salve so,

[It is the diseased common-weal we talk of still.]

You may salve so,

Not what is dangerous present, _but_ the _loss_ Of what is past.

[That was this Doctor's method, who was a Doctor of Laws as well as Medicine, and very skilful in medicines 'palliative'

as well as 'alterative.']