The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 35

_Vol_. I pry'thee now, my son, Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand, And thus far having stretched it (_here_ be with them), Thy _knee bussing the stones_, for in such business _Action_ is eloquence, and the _eyes_ of _the ignorant_ More _learned_ than the _ears_--waving thy head, Which often thus, correcting thy stout heart, Now humble as the ripest mulberry That will not hold the handling: or say to them: Thou art _their_ soldier, and _being bred in broils_, Hast not the soft way, which thou dost confess _Were fit for thee to use_, as _they to claim_, In asking _their good_ loves; but thou wilt frame Thyself _forsooth hereafter theirs_, so far As thou hast power and person.

Pry'thee now _Go and be ruled: although I know_ thou hadst rather Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf Than flatter him in a bower. Here is Cominius.

[_Enter Cominius_.]

_Com. I have been i' the market-place_, and, sir, _'tis fit_ You make STRONG PARTY, _or_ defend yourself By CALMNESS, or by ABSENCE. ALL's in anger.

_Men. Only fair speech.

I think 'twill serve, if he Can thereto frame his spirit_.

_Vol_. He must, and will.

Pry'thee now _say_ you will _and go about it_.

_Cor_. Must I go show them my unbarbed sconce? _Must I_ With _my base tongue, give to my n.o.ble heart A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do't: Yet were there but this single plot to lose, This mould of Marcius_, they, to dust should grind it, And throw it against the wind;--to the market-place; You have put me now to such a part, which never _I_ shall discharge _to the life_.

_Com_. Come, come, we'll prompt you.

_Vol_. I pry'thee now, sweet son, as thou hast said, _My_ praises made thee first a soldier [--_Volumnia_--], so To have my praise for this, _perform a part Than hast not done before_.

_Cor_. Well, I must do't.

_Away my disposition_, and possess me Some harlot's spirit! _My throat_ of _war_ be turned, Which quired with my _drum_ into a pipe!

Small as an eunuch's or the virgin voice That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of _knaves_ Tent in my cheeks; and school-boy's tears take up The gla.s.ses of my sight! A beggar's tongue Make _motion through my lips_; and my _arm'd knees Who bowed but in my stirrup, bend like his_ That _hath received an alms_. I will not do't, Lest I _surcease_ to _honor mine own truth_, And _by my body's action teach my mind_ A most _inherent baseness_.

_Vol_. At thy choice, then; To beg of thee, it is my more dishonor Than thou of them. Come _all to ruin_; let _Thy mother_ rather _feel thy pride_, than fear Thy dangerous stoutness, for _I_ mock at death With as big a heart as thou. Do as thou list.

Thy _valiantness was mine_, thou suck'dst it from me, But _owe thy pride thyself_.

_Cor_. Pray be content.

_Mother_ I _am going to the market place_, Chide me no more. I'll _mountebank their loves_, Cog their hearts from them, _and come back beloved_ _Of all the trades in Rome_.--[That he will--] Look I am going.

Commend me to my wife. I'll return Consul [--That he will--]

Or never trust to what my tongue can do, _I' the way of flattery further_.

_Vol. Do your will. [Exit_.]

_Com_. Away, the tribunes do attend you: _arm yourself_ To answer _mildly_; for they are prepared With accusations as I hear more strong Than are upon you yet.

_Cor_. _The word is mildly_: Pray you let us go, Let them accuse me by _invention_, I Will answer in mine honor.

_Men_. _Ay, but mildly_.

_Cor_. Well, mildly be it then, mildly.

[_The Forum. Enter Coriola.n.u.s and his party_.]

_Tribune_. Well, here he comes.

_Men_. _Calmly_, I do beseech you.

_Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece Will bear the knave by the volume_.

The honoured G.o.ds Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of _justice_ Supplied with WORTHY MEN; _plant_ LOVE among us.

_Throng_ OUR LARGE TEMPLES _with the shows_ of PEACE, _And_ NOT _our_ STREETS _with_ WAR.

_Sen_. AMEN! AMEN!

_Men_. A n.o.bLE wish.

Thus far the Poet: but the mask through which he speaks is wanted for other purposes, for these occasional auto-biographical glimpses are but the side play of the great historical exhibition which is in progress here, and are introduced in entire subordination to its requisitions.

It is, indeed, an old story into which all this Elizabethan history is crowded. That mimic scene in which the great historic instances in the science of human nature and human life were brought out with such scientific accuracy, and with such matchless artistic power and splendour, was, in fact, what the Poet himself, who ought to know, tells us it is; with so much emphasis,--not merely the mirror of nature in general, but the daguerreotype of the then yet living age, the plate which was able to give to the very _body_ of it, its _form and pressure_. That is what it was. And what is more, it was the only Mirror, the only Spectator, the only Times, in which the times could get reflected and deliberated on then, with any degree of freedom and vivacity. And yet there were minds here in England then, as acute, as reflective, as able to lead the popular mind as those that compose our leaders and reviews today. There was a mind here then, reflecting not 'ages past' only, but one that had taken its knowledge of the past from the present, that found 'in all men's lives,' a history figuring the nature of the times deceased; prophetic also: and this was the mind of the one who writes 'spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues.'

They had to take old stories,--these sly, ambitious aspirants to power, who were not disposed to give up their natural right to dictate, for the lack of an organ, or because they found the proper insignia of their office usurped: it was necessary that they should take old stories, or invent new ones, 'to make those slights upon the banks of Thames, that so did take' not 'Eliza and our James' only, but that people of whom 'Eliza and our James' were only 'the outstretched shadows,' 'the monster,' of whose 'noise' these sovereigns, as the author of this play took it, were 'but the horn.'

They had to take old stories of one kind and another, as they happened to find them, and vamp them up to suit their purposes; stories, old or new, they did not much care which.

Old and memorable ones, so memorable that the world herself with her great faculty of oblivion, could not forget them, but carried them in her mind from age to age,--stories so memorable that all men knew them by heart,--so the author could find one to his purpose,--were best for some things,--for many things; but for others new ones must be invented; and certainly there would be no difficulty as to that, for lack of gifts at least, in the mind whence these old ones were coming out so freshly, in the gloss of their new-coined immortality.

It is, indeed, an old story that we have here, a story of that ancient Rome, whose 'just, free and flourishing state,' the author of this new science of policy confesses himself,--under his _universal_ name,--so childishly enamoured of, that he interests himself in it to a degree of pa.s.sion, though he 'neither loves it in its _birth_ or its _decline_,'--[under its kings or its emperors.]--It is a story of _Republican_ Rome, and the difference, the radical difference, between the civil magistracy which represented the Roman people, and that unconst.i.tutional popular power which the popular tyranny creates, is by no means omitted in the exposition. That difference, indeed, is that which makes the representation possible; it is brought out and insisted on, '_they_ choose their officers;' it is a difference which is made much of, for it contains one of the radical points in the poetic intention.

But without going into the argument, the large and comprehensive argument, of this most rich and grave and splendid composition, crowded from the first line of it to the last, with the results of a political learning which has no match in letters, which had none then, which has none now; no, or the world would be in another case than it is, for it is a political learning which has its roots in the new philosophy, it is grounded in the philosophy of the nature of things, it is radical as the _Prima Philosophia_,--without attempting to exhaust the meaning of a work embodying through all its unsurpa.s.sed vigor and vivacity of poetic representation, the new philosophic statesman's ripest lore, the patient fruits of 'observation strange,'--without going into his argument of the whole, the reader who merely wishes to see for himself, at a glance, in a word, as a matter of curiosity merely; whether the view here given of the political sagacity and prescience of the Elizabethan Man of Letters, is in the least chargeable with exaggeration, has only to look at the context of that revolutionary speech and proposal, that revolutionary burst of eloquence which has been here claimed as a proper historical issue of the age of Elizabeth. He will not have to read very far to satisfy himself as to that. It will be necessary, indeed, for that purpose, that he should have eyes in his head, eyes not purely idiotic, but with the ordinary amount of human speculation in them, and, moreover, it will be necessary that he should use them,--as eyes are ordinarily used in such cases,--nothing more. But unfortunately this is just the kind of scrutiny which n.o.body has been able to bestow on this work hitherto, on account of those historical obstructions with which, at the time it was written, it was found necessary to guard such discussions, discussions running into such delicate questions in a manner so essentially incomparably free.

For, in fact, there is no plainer piece of English extant, when one comes to look at it. All that has been claimed in the Historical part of this work, [not published in this volume] may be found here without any research, on the mere surface of the dialogue. Looking at it never so obliquely, with never so small a fraction of an eye, one cannot help seeing it.

The reader who would possess himself of the utmost meaning of these pa.s.sages, one who would comprehend their farthest reaches, must indeed be content to wait until he can carry with him into all the parts that knowledge of the authors general intention in this work, which only a most thorough and careful study of it will yield.

It is, indeed, a work in which the whole question of government is seized at its source--one in which the whole difficulty of it is grappled with unflinching courage and veracity. It is a work in which that question of cla.s.ses in the state, which lies on the surface of it, is treated in a general, and not exclusive manner; or, where the treatment is narrowed and pointed, as it is throughout in the running commentary, it is narrowed and pointed to the question of the then yet living age, and to those momentous developments of it which, 'in their weak beginnings,' the philosophic eye had detected, and not to a state of things which had to cease before the first Punic war could be begun.

The question of _cla.s.ses_, and their respective claims in governments, is indeed incidentally treated here, but in this author's own distinctive manner, which is one that is sure to take out, always--even in his lightest, most sportive handling--the heart of his subject, so as to leave little else but gleanings to the author who follows in that track hereafter.

For this is one of those unsurpa.s.sably daring productions of the Elizabethan Muse, which, after long experiment, encouraged by that protracted immunity from suspicion, and stimulated by the hurrying on of the great crisis, it threw out at last in the face and eyes of tyranny, Things which are but intimated in the earlier plays-- political allusions, which are brought out there amid crackling volleys of conceits, under cover of a battery of quips and jests-- political doctrines, which lie there wrapped in thickest involutions of philosophic subtleties, are all unlocked and open here on the surface: he that runs may take them if he will.

CHAPTER II.

CRITICISM OF THE MARTIAL GOVERNMENT.

'Would you proceed _especially_ against _Caius_ MARCIUS?'

'Against him FIRST: He's a _very dog_ to THE COMMONALTY.'

In this exhibition of the social orders to which human society instinctively tends, and that so-called _state_ into which human combinations in barbaric ages rudely settles, the _principle_ of the combination--the principle of gradation, and subjection, and permanence--is called in question, and exposed as a purely instinctive principle, as, in fact, only a principle of revolution disguised; and a higher one, the distinctively human element, the principle of KIND, is now, for the first time, demanded on scientific grounds, as the essential principle of any permanent human combination--as the natural principle, the only one which the science of nature can recognise as a principle of STATE.

It is the PEACE principle which this great scientific war-hater and captain of the ages of peace is in search of, with his new _organum_; though he is philosopher enough to know that, in diseased states, wars are nature's own rude remedies, her barbarous surgery, for evils yet more unendurable. He has found himself chosen a justice of the peace--the world's peace; and it is the principle of permanence, of law and subjection--in a word, it is the principle of _state_, as opposed to revolution and dissolution--which he is judging of in behalf of his kind. And he makes a business of it. He goes about in his own fashion. He gets up this great war-piece on purpose to find it.

He has got a state on his stage, which is ceasing to be a _state_ at the moment in which he shows it to us; a state which has the war principle--the principle of conquest within no longer working in it insidiously as government, but developed as war; for it has just overstepped the endurable point in its mastery. It is a revolution that is coming off when the curtain rises. For the government has been gnawing the Roman common-weal at home, with those same teeth it ravened the Volscians with abroad, till it has reached the vitals at last, and the common-weal has betaken itself to the Volscian's weapons:--the people have risen. They are all out when the play begins on an armed hunt for their rat-like, gnawing, corn-consuming rulers.

They are determined to 'kill them,' and have 'corn at their own price.' 'If the _wars_ eat us not, _they_ will,' is the word; 'and there's all THE LOVE _they_ bear us.' '_Rome_ and _her rats_ are at the point of battle,' cries the Poet. The _one_ side _shall have bale_, is his prophecy. 'Without _good nature_,' he says elsewhere, using the term _good_ in its scientific sense, '_men_ are only a n.o.bLER kind of VERMIN'; and he makes a most unsparing application of this principle in his criticisms. Many a splendid historical figure is made to show its teeth, and rat-like mien and propensities, through all the splendour of its disguises, merely by the application of his simple philosophical tests. For the question, as he puts it, is the question between animal instinct, between mere appet.i.te, and reason; and the question incidentally arises in the course of the exhibition, whether the common-weal, when it comes to anything like common-sense, is going to stand being gnawed in this way, for the benefit of any individual, or clique, or party.

For the ground on which the cla.s.ses or estates, and their respective claims to the government, are tried here, is the ground of the _common_-weal; and the question as to the fitness of any existing cla.s.s in the state for an exclusive, unlimited control of the welfare of the whole, is more than suggested. That which stops short of the weal of the whole for its end, is that which is under criticism here; and whether it exist in 'the one,' or 'the few,' or 'the many,'--and these are the terms that are employed here,--whether it exist in the civil magistracy, sustained by a popular submission, or in the power of the victorious military chief, at the head of his still extant and resistless armament, it is necessarily rejected as a principle of sovereignty and permanence, in this purely scientific view of the human conditions of it. It is a question which this author handles with a thorough impartiality, in all his political treatises, let them come in what name and form they will, with more or less clearness, indeed, as the circ.u.mstances seem to dictate.