The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 46

But it is a fair and n.o.ble specimen, it is a highly-qualified, 'ill.u.s.trious instance,' of this instinctive heroic virtue, he has seized on here, and made ready now for his experiment; and even when he brings him in, reeking from the fresh battlefield, with the blood undried on his brow, rejoicing in his harvest, even amid the horrors of the conquered town, this Poet, with his own ineffable and matchless grace of moderation, will have us pause and listen while _his_ Coriola.n.u.s, ere he will take food or wine in _his_ Corioli, gives orders that the Volscian who was kind to him personally--the poor man at whose house he lay--shall be saved, when he is so weary with slaying Volscians that 'his very memory is tired,' and he cannot speak his poor friend's name.

He tracks this conqueror home again, and he watches him more sharply than ever--this man, whose new name is borrowed from his taken town.

CORIOLa.n.u.s of CORIOLI. _Marcius_, plain _Caius Marcius_, now no more.

He will think it treason--even in the conquered city he will resent it--if any presume to call him by that petty name henceforth, or forget for a breathing s.p.a.ce to include in his ident.i.ty the town--the town, that in its sacked and plundered streets, and dying cries--that, with that 'painting' which he took from it so lavishly, though he scorned the soldiers who took 'spoons'--has clothed him with his purple honours: those honours which this Poet will not let him wear any longer, tracked in the misty outline of the past, or in the misty complexity of the una.n.a.lysed conceptions of the vulgar, the fatal unscientific _opinion_ of the many-headed many; that old coat of arms, which the man of science will trace now anew (and not here only) with his new historic pencil, which he will fill now anew--not here only--which he will fill on another page also, 'approaching his particular more near'--with all its fresh, recent historic detail, with all its hideous, barbaric detail.

He is jealous,--this new Poet of his kind,--he is jealous of this love that makes such work in Volscian homes, in Volscian mother's sons, under this name, 'that men sanctify, and turn up the white of the eyes to.' He flings out suspicions on the way home, that it is even _narrower_ than it claims to be: he is in the city before it; he contrives to jet a jar into the sound of the trumpets that announce its triumphant entry; he has thrown over all the glory of its entering pageant, the suspicion that it is base and mercenary, that it is base and _avaricious_, though it puts nothing in its pocket, but takes its hire on its brows.

_Menenius_. Brings a victory in his pocket.

_Volumnia_. On's brows Menenius.

He surprises the mother counting up the cicatrices. He arrests the cavalcade on its way to the Capitol, and bids us note, in those private whispers of family confidence, how the Camp and the Capitol stand in this hero's chart, put down on the road to 'our own house.'

Nay, he will bring out the haughty chieftain in person, and show him on his stage, standing in his 'wolfish gown,' showing the scars that _he should hide_, and asking, like a mendicant, for his hire. And though he does it proudly enough, and as if he did not care for this return, though he sets down his own services, and expects the people to set them down, to a disinterested love for his _country_, it is to this Poet's purpose to show that he was mistaken as to that. It is to his purpose to show that these two so different things which he finds confounded under one name and notion in the popular understanding here, and, what is worst of all, in the practical understanding of the populace, are two, and not one. That the mark of the primal differences, the original differences, the difference of things, the simplicity of nature herself divides them, makes two of them, two,--not one. He has caught one of those rude, vulgar notions here, which he speaks of elsewhere so often, those notions which make such mischief in the human life, and he is severely separating it--he is separating the martial virtue--from the true heroism, 'with the mind, that divine fire.' He is separating this kind of heroism from that cover under which it insinuates itself into governments, with which it makes its most bewildering claim to the popular approbation.

He is bound to show that the true love of the common-weal, that principle which recognises and embraces the weal of others as its own, that principle which enters into and const.i.tutes each man's own n.o.blest life, is a thing of another growth and essence, a thing which needs a different culture from any that the Roman Volumnia could give it, a culture which unalytic, barbaric ages--wanting in all the scientific arts--could not give it.

He will show, in a conspicuous instance, what that kind of patriotism amounts to, in the man who aspires to 'the helm o' the State,' while there is yet no state within himself, while the mere instincts of the lower nature have, in their turn, the sway and sovereignty in him. He will show what that patriotism amounts to in one so schooled, when the hire it asks so disdainfully is withheld. And he will bring out this point too, as he brings out all the rest, in that large, scenic, theatric, illuminated lettering, which this popular design requires, and which his myth furnishes him, ready to his hand. He will have his 'transient hieroglyphics,' his _tableaux vivants_, his 'dumb-shows' to aid him here also, because this, too, is for the spectators--this, too, is for the audience whose eyes are more learned than their ears.

It is a natural hero, one who achieves his greatness, and not one who is merely born great, whom the Poet deals with here. 'He has that in his face which men love--_authority_.' 'As waves before a vessel under sail, so men obey him and fall below his stern.' The Romans have stripped off his wings and turned him out of the city gates, but the heroic instinct of greatness and generalship is not thus defeated. He carries with him that which will collect new armies, and make him their victorious leader. Availing himself of the pride and hostility of nations, he is sure of a captaincy. His occupation is not gone so long as the unscientific ages last. The principle of his heroism and n.o.bility has only been developed in new force by this opposition. He will have a new degree; he will purchase a new patent of it; he will _forge_ himself a new and _better_ name, for 'the patricians are called _good_ citizens.' He will forget Corioli; _Coriola.n.u.s_ now no more, he will conquer _Rome_, and incorporate that henceforth in his name. He will make himself great, not by the grandeur of a true citizenship and membership of the larger whole, in his private subjection to it,--not by emerging from his particular into the self that comprehends the whole; he will make himself great by subduing the whole to his particular, the greater to the less, the whole to the part. He will triumph over the Common-weal, and bind his brow with a new garland. That is his magnanimity. He will take it from without, if they will not let him have it within. He will turn against that country, which he loved so dearly, that same edge which the Volscian hearts have felt so long. 'There's some among you have _beheld_ me fighting,' he says. 'Come, _try upon yourselves_ what you have _seen me_?' He is only that same narrow, petty, pitiful private man he always was, in the city, and in the field, at the head of the Roman legions, and in the legislator's chair, when, to right his single wrong, or because the people would not let him have _all_ from them, he comes upon the stage at last with Volscian steel, and sits down, Captain of the Volscian armies, at Rome's gates.

'This morning,' says Menenius, after the reprieve, 'this morning for ten thousand of your throats, I'd not have given a doit.' But this is only the same 'good citizen' we saw in the first scene, who longed to make a quarry of _thousands of the quartered slaves_, as high as he could p.r.i.c.k his lance! That was 'the alt.i.tude of his virtue' _then_.

It is the same citizenship with its conditions altered.

So well and thoroughly has the philosopher done his work throughout--so completely has he filled the Roman story with his 'richer and bolder meanings,' that when the old, familiar scene, which makes the denouement of the Roman myth, comes out at last in the representation, it comes as the crowning point of this Poet's own invention. It is but the felicitous artistic consummation of the piece, when this hero, in his conflicting pa.s.sions and instincts, gives at last, to one private affection and impulse, the State he would have sacrificed to another; when he gives to his boy's prattling inanities, to his wife's silence, to the moisture in her eyes, to a shade less on her cheek, to the loss of a line there, to his mother's scolding eloquence, and her imperious commands, the great city of the G.o.ds, the city he would have offered up, with all its sanct.i.ties, with all its household shrines and solemn temples, as one reeking, smoking holocaust, to his wounded honour. That is the principle of the citizenship that was 'accounted GOOD' when this play began, when this play was written.

'He was a kind of nothing, _t.i.tleless_,-- Till he had forged himself _a name_ i' the fire _Of burning Rome_.'

That is his modest answer to the military friend who entreats him to spare the city.

'Though soft-conscienced men may be content to say _it was for his country_, he did it to please his mother, and to be partly proud.'

Surely that starving citizen who found himself at the beginning of this play, 'as lean as a rake' with this hero's legislation, and in danger of more fatal evils, was not so very wide of the truth, after all, in his surmise as to the principles of _the heroic statesmanship_ and _warfare_, when he ventured thus early on that suggestion. The State banished him, as an enemy, and he came back with a Volscian army to make good that verdict. But his sword without was not more cruel than his law had been within. It was not starving only that he had voted for. '_Let them hang_,' ay--(_ay_) 'and BURN TOO,' was 'the disposition' they had 'thwarted',--measuring 'the quarry of _the quartered slaves_,' which it _would_ make, 'would the n.o.bility but lay aside their ruth.' That was the disposition, that was the ignorance, the blind, brutish, demon ignorance, that 'in good time' they had thwarted. They had ruled it out and banished it from their city on pain of death, forever; they had turned it out in its single impotence, and it came back '_armed_;' for this was one of rude nature's monarchs, and outstretched heroes.

Yet is he conquered and defeated. The enemy which has made war without so long, which has put Corioli and Rome in such confusion, has its warfare within also, and it is there that the hero is beaten and slain. For there is no state or fixed sovereignty in his soul. Both sides of the city rise at once; there is a fearful battle, and the red-eyed Mars is dethroned. The end which he has pursued at such a cost is within his reach at last; but he cannot grasp it. The city lies there before him, and his dragon wings encircle it; there is steel enough in the claws and teeth now, but he cannot take it. For there is no law and no justice of the peace, and no general within to put down the conflict of changeful, _warring selfs_, to suppress the mutiny of mutually opposing, mutually _annihilating_ selfish dictates.

In vain he seeks to make his will immutable; for the single pa.s.sion has its hour, this 'would-do' changes. With the impression the pa.s.sion changes, and the purpose that is _pa.s.sionate_ must alter with it, unless pure obstinacy remain in its place, and fulfil the annulled dictate. For _such_ purpose, one person of the scientific drama tells us--one who had had some dramatic experience in it,--

'is but _the slave to memory_, Of violent birth, and poor validity, Which now, like fruit unripe, stick on the tree, But fall unshaken when they mellow be.

What to ourselves _in pa.s.sion_ we propose, _The pa.s.sion ending doth the purpose lose_.'

That is Hamlet's verbal account of it, when he undertakes to reduce his philosophy to rhyme, and gets the player to insert some sixteen of his lines quietly into the court performance: that is his _verbal_ account of it; but _his_ action, too, speaks louder and more eloquently than his words.

The principle of ident.i.ty and the true self is wanting in this so-called _self_-ishness. For the true principle of self is the peace principle, the principle of _state_ within and without.

'_To thine own self be true, And it must follow as_ the night the day, _Thou canst not then be false to any man_'

That is the doctrine, the scientific doctrine. But it is not the pa.s.sionate, but thoughtful Hamlet, shrinking from blood, with his resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of _conscientious_ thought; it is not the humane, conscience-fettered Hamlet, but the man who aspires to make his single humours the law of the universal world, in whom the poet will show now this want of state and sovereignty.

He steels himself against Cominius; he steels himself against Menenius. 'He sits in gold,' Cominius reports, '_his eye red_ as 'twould burn Rome'--a small flambeau the poet thinks for so large a city. 'He no more remembers his mother than an eight year old horse,'

is the poor old Menenius querulous account of him, when with a cracked heart he returns and reports how the conditions of a man are altered in him: but while he is making that already-quoted report of this superhuman growth and a.s.sumption of a divine authority and honour in the Military Chieftain, the Poet is quietly starting a little piece of philosophical machinery that will shake out that imperial pageant, and show the slave that is hidden under it, for it is no _man_ at all, but, in very deed, a slave, as Hamlet calls it, '_pa.s.sion's slave_,'

'a pipe for fortune's finger _to sound what stop she please_.' For that _state_,--that command--depends on that which '_changes_,'-- fortuities, impressions, nay, it has the principle of revolution within it. It is its nature to change. The single pa.s.sion cannot engross the large, many-pa.s.sioned, complex nature, so rich and various in motivity, so large and comprehensive in its surveys--the single pa.s.sion seeks in vain to subdue it to its single end. That reigning pa.s.sion must give way when it is spent, or sooner if its master come.

You cannot make it look to-day as it looked yesterday; you cannot make it look when its rival affection enters as it looked when it reigned alone. An hour ago, the hue of resolution on its cheek glowed immortal red. It was strong enough to defy G.o.d and all his creatures; it would annul all worlds but that one which it was G.o.d of.

This is the speech of it on the lips of the actor who comes in to interpret to us _the thinker's_ inaction, the thinker's irresolution, for 'it is _conscience_ that makes cowards of us all.' Here is a man who is resolute enough. _His will_ is not 'puzzled.' _His_ thoughts, _his_ scruples will not divide and destroy his purpose. _Here_ is THE UNITY which precedes ACTION. This man is going to be revenged for his father. 'What would you undertake to do?' 'To cut his throat i' the church.'

'To h.e.l.l allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.

Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit.

I _dare_ d.a.m.nation. To this point I stand That both the worlds _I_ give to negligence, Let come what comes, _only_ I'll be revenged Most thoroughly for _my_ father.' [_Only_.]

That is your pa.s.sionate speech, your speech of fire. That was what the principle of vindictiveness said when it was _you_, when it mastered you, and called _itself_ by your name. Ay, it has many names, and many lips; but it is always _one_. That was what it said an hour ago; and now it is shrunk away you know not where, you cannot rally it, and you are there confounded, self-abandoned, self-annulled, a forgery, belying the ident.i.ty which your visible form--which your _human_ form, was made to promise,--a slave,--a pipe for _fortune's_ finger. This is the kind of action which is criticised in the scientific drama, and 'rejected'; and the conclusion after these reviews and rejections, 'after every species of rejection,'--the _affirmation_ is, that there is but one principle that is _human_, and that is GOOD yesterday, to-day, and for ever; and whose is true to that is true, in the human form, to the self which was, and will be. He cannot then be false to his yesterday, or tomorrow; he cannot then be false to himself; he cannot then be false to any man; for that is the self that is one in us all--that is the self of _reason_ and conscience, not pa.s.sion.

But as for this affection that is tried here now, that the diagram of this scene exhibits so tangibly, 'as it were, to the eye,'--this poor and private pa.s.sion, that sits here, with its imperial crown on its head, in the place of G.o.d, but lacking His 'mercy,'--this pa.s.sion of the petty man, that has made itself so hugely visible with its monstrous outstretching, that lies stretched out and glittering on these hills, with its dragon coils unwound, with its deadly fangs--those little fangs, that crush our private hearts, and torture and rend our daily lives--exposed in this great solar microscope, striking the _common-weal_,--as for this petty, usurping pa.s.sion, there is a spectacle approaching that will undo it.

Out of that great city there comes a little group of forms, which yesterday this hero 'could not stay to pick out of that pile which had offended him,' that was his word,--which yesterday he would have burnt in it without a scruple. Towards the great Volscian army that beleaguers Rome it comes--towards the pavilion where the Volscian captain sits in gold, with his wings outspread, it shapes its course.

To other eyes, it is but a group of Roman ladies, two or three, clad in mourning, with their attendants, and a prattling child with them; but, with the first glance at it from afar, the great chieftain trembles, and begins to clasp his armour. He could think of them and doom them, in his over-mastering pa.s.sion of revenge, with its heroic infinity of mastery triumphant in him,--he could _think_ of them and doom them; but the impressions of _the senses_ are more vivid, and the pa.s.sions wait on them. As that group draws nearer, one sees, by the light of this Poet's painting, a fair young matron, with subdued mien and modest graces, and an elder one, leading a wilful boy, with a 'confirmed countenance,' pattering by her side; just such a group as one might see anywhere in the lordly streets of Palatinus,--much such a one as one might find anywhere under those thousand-doomed plebeian roofs.

But to this usurping 'private,' to this man of pa.s.sion and affection, and not reason--this man of private and particular motives only, and blind partial aims, it is more potent than Rome and all her claims; it outweighs Rome and all her weal--'it is worth of senators and patricians a city full, of tribunes and plebeians a sea and land full'--it outweighs all the Volscians, and their trust in him.

His reasons of state begin to falter, and change their aspects, as that little party draws nearer; and he finds himself within its magnetic sphere.

For this is the pattern-man, for the man of mere impression and instinct. He is full of feeling within his sphere, though it is a sphere which does not embrace plebeians,--which crushes Volscians with clarions, and drums, and trumpets, and poets' voices to utter its exultations. Within that private sphere, his sensibilities are exquisite and poetic in their depth and delicacy. He is not wanting in the finer impulses, in the n.o.bler affections of the particular and private nature. He is not a base, brutal man. Even in his martial conquests, he will not take 'leaden spoons.' His soul is with a divine ambition fired to have _all_. It is instinct, but it is the instinct of the human; it is 'conservation with _advancement_' that he is blindly pursuing, for this is a generous nature. He knows the heights that reason lends to instinct in the human kind, and the infinities that affection borrows from it.

And the Poet himself has large and gentle views of 'this particular,'

scientific views of it, scientific recognitions of its laws, such as no philosophic school was ever before able to p.r.o.nounce. Even here, on this sad and tragic ground of a subdued and debased common-weal, he will not cramp its utterance--he will give it leave to speak, in all its tenderness and beauty, in its own sweet native dialect, all its poetic wildness, its mad verities, its sober impossibilities, even at the moment in which he asks in statesmanship for the rational motive, undrenched in humours and affections--for the motive of the weal that is common, and not for the motive of that which is private and exclusive.

In vain the hero struggles with his yielding pa.s.sion, and seeks to retain it. In vain he struggles with a sentiment which he himself describes as 'a gosling's instinct,' and seeks to subdue it. In vain he rallies his pride, and says, 'Let it be _virtuous_ to be _obstinate_'; and determines to stand 'as if a man were author of himself, and knew no other kin.' His mother kneels. It is but a frail, aged woman kneeling to the victorious chieftain of the Volscian hosts; but to him it is 'as if _Olympus_ to _a mole-hill_ stooped in supplication.' His boy looks at him with an eye in which great Nature speaks, and says, 'Deny not'; he sees the tears in the dove's eyes of the beloved, he hears her dewy voice; we hear it, too, through the Poet's art, in the words she speaks; and he forgets his part. We reach the 'grub' once more. The dragon wings of armies melt from him. He is his young boy's father--he is his fair young wife's beloved.

'O a kiss, long _as_ my exile, sweet _as_ my revenge.'

There's no decision yet. The scales are even now. But there is another there, waiting to be saluted, and he himself is but a boy--his own mother's boy again, at her feet. It is she that schools and lessons him; it is she that conquers him. It _was_ 'her boy,' after all--it was her boy still, that was 'coming home.'

Well might Menenius say--

'_This Volumnia_ is worth of consuls, senators, patricians, A city full; of tribunes _such as you_, A sea and land full.'

But let us take the philosophic report of this experiment as we find it; for on the carefullest study, when once it is put in its connections, when once we 'have heard the argument,' we shall not find anything in it to spare. But we must not forget that this is still 'the election,' the ignorant election of the common-weal which is under criticism, and though this election has been revoked in the play already, and this is a banished man we are trying here, there was a play in progress when this play was played, in which that revocation was yet to come off; and this Poet was anxious that the subject should be considered first from the most comprehensive grounds, so that _the principle of 'the election_' need never again be called in question, so that the revolution should end in the state, and not in the principle of revolution.

'My wife comes foremost; then the honoured mould Wherein this trunk was framed, and in her hand The grand-child to her blood. But, out, _affection_!

All bond and privilege of nature, break!

_Let it be virtuous to be obstinate_.-- What is that curtsey worth? or those doves' eyes, Which can _make G.o.ds forsworn_?

['He speaks of the people as if he were a G.o.d to punish, and not a man of infirmity.']

'I melt, _and am not_ Of STRONGER EARTH than others.--My mother bows; As if Olympus to a molehill should In supplication nod: and my young boy Hath an aspect of intercession, which Great Nature cries, 'Deny not!'--Let the Volsces Plough Rome, and harrow Italy; I'll never Be such a GOSLING to obey INSTINCT; but stand, As if a MAN were author of himself, And knew no other kin.

These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.

_Vir_.

The sorrow that delivers us thus changed, Makes you think so.

[The objects are altered, not the eyes. We are changed. But it is with sorrow. She bids him note that alteration, and puts upon it the blame of his loss of love. But that is just the kind of battery he is not provided for. His resolution wavers. That unrelenting warrior, that fierce revengeful man is gone already, and forgot to leave his part--the words he was to speak are wanting.]