ON TEN PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
ON TEN 
 PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 BY 
 
 STOPFOKD A. BROOKE 
 
 I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
■H>t - 
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 1. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 
 
 1 
 
 II. ROMEO AND JULIET . 
 
 . 35 
 
 III. RICHARD II. . 
 
 . 71 
 
 IV. RICHARD III. 
 
 . 100 
 
 V. MERCHANT OF VENICE 
 
 . 127 
 
 VI. AS YOU LIKE IT 
 
 . 155 
 
 VII. MACBETH .... 
 
 . 180 
 
 VIII. CORIOLANUS .... 
 
 , 221 
 
 IX. WINTER'S TALE 
 
 . 253 
 
 X. THE TEMPEST 
 
 , 284 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream belongs, probably, to the 
 winter of 1595, and was made, it has been said, to cele- 
 brate a marriage. This may well be so ; it has a bridal 
 atmosphere. Though the affairs of love are fantastically 
 tangled in it and their music jangled, even in fairyland, 
 yet in the end the tangle is resolved, and the marriage- 
 bells are tuneful. 
 
 It is a comedy of love. About four years before, in 
 1591, Shakespeare had written a tragedy of love in Romeo 
 and Juliet. To begin this book with the earlier play 
 would have been more historical, but not wiser. Romeo 
 and Juliet is the kind of love-tragedy a young man writes 
 in order to dramatise his pleasure with some imagined 
 sorrow. Shakespeare did not write it out of any personal 
 gloom or any deep knowledge of the trouble of the world. 
 It was written to try his eager and happy hand at tragedy; 
 and a youthful exuberance frequently emerges through 
 its sorrows. Few things are more different than the 
 tragic spirit in Romeo and Juliet, which was in the story 
 but not in Shakespeare, and the tragic spirit in Lear and 
 Othello, which was in himself and then embodied in the 
 tragedies. The real Shakespeare at this time was full to \ 
 the brim with the joyous spirit of youth. And Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream represents the actual temper of 
 his soul far more truly than Romeo and Juliet. I have 
 therefore chosen to begin with it. 
 
 Delight in life; pleasure in himself, and in mankind; 
 
 A 
 
2 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 sympathy with brightness more than with sorrow; an 
 enkindling happiness ; were, in spite of his tragedies, the 
 very root of Shakespeare. Having power and love and a 
 sound mind, he could, naturally, play with human life; 
 nor did his power to do this prevent his sympathy with 
 its pain, or dim the clear eyes with which he saw its 
 miseries. On the contrary, he owed to the deep-seated 
 joyf ulness in him the sanity of his judgment of life, the 
 unbiassed justice with which he weighed its good and evil 
 in the balance, the clear sight he had of physical and 
 moral evil. It is the cheerful poet who sees the gloom 
 most lucidly, most wisely. 
 
 When grimness or sulks at life get down to the 
 centre of a man, they disease his judgment, weaken his 
 intelligence, dim his sight, disenable his feeling; and, if 
 he be an artist, enfeeble his grip of his subject, disperse 
 his concentration, deprive him of that creative apartness 
 from his materials which enables him to use them as he 
 pleases for the making of a new thing. He loses, that 
 is, the divine command of his genius, not only over the 
 comedy of life, but also over its tragedy. Deeply as 
 Shakespeare felt the woe, wickedness, and weakness of 
 humanity, he was still their master. If he was in them, 
 he was also beyond them, and in this twofold relation to 
 them lay his artistic mastery of tragedy. It was the 
 same with Sophocles, and it is this which makes him 
 greater than Euripides. This power to stand outside as 
 well as inside of human sorrow belonged to Shakespeare, 
 because at the deepest root of him was, I repeat, delight 
 in life ; even rapture — the word is not too strong — with the 
 playfulness of its spring and the fulness of its summer. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Bream is Shakespeare at lyric play 
 with human life ; and also with the beautiful life of the 
 natural world. As such, it represents the constant, even 
 the dominant, spirit of Shakespeare's nature more truly 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 3 
 
 than his tragedies. These were written at a time when his 
 natural gaiety was overwhelmed either by personal trouble, 
 or by a transient cynicism, or by the pressure of some deep 
 conviction of the sorrow and sins of the world. He saw, 
 he even touched, it seems, in that hot and eager world, 
 the darkest depths of grief and crime, of weakness, 
 dishonour, of tyrannic passions, and deadly mistake. 
 None have seen them more profoundly, but even in their 
 blackest gloom he created a certain brightness. Comedy, 
 sometimes kindly, sometimes bitter, even cynical, glides 
 in amidst the tragedy; he can still disport himself a 
 little. As the years brought him comfort, he passed out 
 of the darkness into clear light. His ineradicable pleasure 
 in humanity, the sweetness and delight of it, survived its 
 woes and terrors; and the latest plays abide in the clear 
 atmosphere and lovely colour of a gentle, bright, and 
 peaceful sunset. They have their still philosophy, their 
 wise even solemn experience, their melodious forgiving- 
 ness, their mystic touch on life and death — grave and 
 dignified elements which his passage through the 
 tragedies of mankind had left in his soul. But that 
 passage through the valley of the shadow of death had 
 not destroyed but confirmed his bright sanity, his sweet 
 sympathy with the love and ardour of youth, and his 
 happiness as he looked round on the world. He had be- 
 come quiet, but his quietude was gay and tender. He still 
 retained the power to play graciously with human life. He 
 still loved Nature and played with her. Ariel, the lively 
 spirit of the air, is as charming as Oberon and Titania. 
 the spirits of the moonlit earth. Caliban is as good an 
 image of the dark coarseness of Nature as Puck is of its 
 mockery of us. The natural description in Winters Tale 
 is even more imaginatively felt than that in the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream. The love of Miranda is more 
 delicate than that of Juliet; the loving of Florizel and 
 
4 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Perdita is as impassioned, though rarely so outspoken, as 
 that of Romeo and Juliet, nor is the love of Rosalind 
 and Orlando more simple, happy, and chivalrous. And 
 the playfulness of his latest work is not less, though it is 
 different. There is even a delightful roguishness, full of 
 odd wisdom, in a character like Autolycus, which is better 
 and nearer to humanity than the mirth of the clowns in 
 the earlier plays with whom we might compare him. 
 
 Thus, the central brightness, the sportive happiness at 
 the root of Shakespeare's character and art lasted when 
 he had emerged from tragedy. Therefore, though Romeo 
 and Juliet preceded the Dream, I have begun with the 
 Dream. It belongs to the earliest, to the most enduring 
 element in the soul of Shakespeare. 
 
 Certain elements of the play harmonise with the time at 
 which it was written, a time in which the poetic properties 
 and interests of the past were recovered for the imagi- 
 nation, in which new poetic materials were discovered. 
 England, after a long drought, had again felt the freshness 
 of the dew of Romance, and heard the soft falling of its 
 rain. The imagination of the people, re-awakened, urged 
 them into the passionate life of discovery, of adventure, of 
 intellectual pursuit of the unknown. And in Spenser's 
 hands, and here in Shakespeare, all the living creatures 
 of the woodland and the waters in whom Romance had 
 delighted, returned to enliven Nature and to take their 
 kindly interest in humanity. The Nature-spirit in 
 French, Anglo-Norman, and Celtic romance rose again; 
 and Shakespeare, born into it and rejoicing in it, made 
 a new world for its new form. Among remnants of 
 romantic tales like Huon of Bordeaux, and among the 
 folk- traditions of the people, he found the dry bones of 
 Titania, Oberon, and Robin Goodfellow, and breathed into 
 their nostrils the breath of life. It was a great thing to 
 
 perfect the form of the rediscovered fairyland; and he 
 
 V 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 5 
 
 did it with such mastery that the fairies have never died. 
 Even modern science, with all its own wonders, has not 
 driven them out of the field, nor does it wish to banish 
 them. It has evolved a science out of them, and not 
 spoilt them. Yet, living as he made them, Shakespeare, 
 with his luminous sanity, makes them creatures of a 
 dream. 
 
 Along with this revival of romance, there was the 
 recovery of the classics. This was the work of the 
 Renaissance, in the English youth of which great move- 
 ment Shakespeare was born. Its energy, repressed by 
 the bigotry of the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, broke 
 into a rapid and fertilising stream when Elizabeth was 
 well seated on x the throne. It was not long before Greece 
 and Rome wielded over intellectual and imaginative life 
 as great, perhaps even a greater dominion than romance ; 
 and men like Shakespeare, who were not scholars, enjoyed 
 the stimulation of the classic writers and of the history of 
 the great doings and men of the past in the host of trans- 
 lations which lay on every bookstall. Among these was 
 Plutarch's Lives, and the first of them is the life of Theseus. 
 It crept into Shakespeare's imagination, and one of its 
 incidents supplied him with the framework of this play. 
 The subject fell in thus with one of the literary fashions 
 of the day, so fashionable that even the working classes 
 in the towns were interested in classical stories. They 
 saw them in a hundred pageants, and it is quite Eliza- 
 bethan that weavers, joiners, bellows-makers and the rest, 
 should choose the story of Pyramus and Thisbe for their 
 rude representation. 
 
 Moreover, the classical movement at this time was not 
 altogether apart from the romantic. The legendary in 
 the life of Theseus slipt easily into the world of romance 
 and into the stories of fairyland. A kind of amal- 
 gamation took place, such as had happened before in 
 
6 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the romantic cycles of Troy and Alexander. There is 
 the strangest mingling in Midsummer Night's Dream, of 
 Greece and Faerie, of the survivals of romance and the 
 impulses of the Renaissance. The mediseval fairies meet 
 to celebrate and bless the marriage of Theseus and 
 Hippolyta. It is hinted that Oberon was the lover of 
 Hippolyta, and that Titania, herself in love with Theseus, 
 was jealous of his amours with Mgle, Antiope, and 
 Ariadne. History has no chronology, and time scarcely 
 seems to exist in this imaginative world. Even the new 
 names of the shepherds and shepherdesses in the Eliza- 
 bethan pastoral are introduced. Oberon takes the shape 
 of Corin, and verses love to amorous Phyllida. Such a 
 lively mixture is the play. 
 
 These literary tendencies of the day — the classical, the 
 romantic, the pastoral — are used by Shakespeare exactly 
 as a young poet of genius, without scholarship, would 
 use them. But the Euphuist element, so conspicuous in 
 Love's Labour 's Lost, is scarcely here. Shakespeare had all 
 but got rid of it, and we meet it no more in his work. 
 
 Another element in the play is also new, at least in 
 form. Mixed up with the heroic personages and the 
 fairies, with the classical and the romantic, are the ' rude 
 mechanic patches/ whose doings form a piece of real life. 
 Shakespeare has got down to the working men of the 
 lanes and courts of Elizabethan London. It is true they 
 are supposed to be Athenians, but they were drawn from 
 the life. And, indeed, I suspect they were not far from a 
 true picture of the Athenian working man, so curiously 
 does Shakespeare's piercing genius enable him to repre- 
 sent not the particular but the universal characteristics 
 of any class of men with whom he deals. None of those 
 who meet in Quince's house say anything which might 
 not have been said by an Athenian as well as by an 
 Elizabethan working man at a time when, literature being 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DEEAM 7 
 
 the vogue, fragments of culture would filter down to the 
 uneducated classes and be travestied by them. These 
 poor folk are vitally interested in their play. They are 
 inventive of means, properties, and suggestive pageantry. 
 They believe in all they do. And they never step out of 
 their own atmosphere. This is a piece of realism, and it 
 opened an old vein in English literature in a new way../ 
 It is said that Shakespeare did not care for the common *"~ 
 folk. He did not think them fit to govern, but he had a 
 true sympathy for them, an affectionate intimacy with 
 their manners, their humour, and their views of life. And 
 his new realism of the poor has never ceased to be a living 
 element in English literature. It began with Langland 
 and Chaucer. It died away. It rose again in Shake- 
 speare and the dramatists. Ever since then it has ebbed 
 and flowed, and to-day it is stronger than ever in fiction 
 and in poetry. 
 
 Another element in the play was purely of Shakespeare's 
 time, and of his own youth. It was the prominence of 
 love. The age was the age of love-poetry. Even the 
 imaginative prose was concerned with love as its chief 
 subject. But the poets were immersed in it. They made 
 books of sonnets on this passion, and were then called 
 amourists. Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Watson, 
 and many others echoed one another in this form of 
 literature. Moreover, in the resurrection of national joy 
 and honour, in the new confidence England had in 
 herself, she was young again, and of course she sang of 
 love. It is the subject of youth. And Shakespeare, him- 
 self young, and having the buoyant joy of genius in its 
 exercise, turned to love as the prominent element in his 
 dramas when they became quite original ; and Love's 
 Labour 's Lost, the Tivo Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and 
 Juliet, even the Merchant of Venice (though that play 
 is of a larger dramatic scope), show with what variety 
 
8 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in his earlier period he treated the affairs of love. Nor 
 did he cease to treat them even when the history of 
 his country claimed his interest, or when tragedy laid 
 her grave hand upon his shoulder. As to the latest plays, 
 they are full of the tender loveliness of youthful and 
 married love. 
 \ This play, written for a marriage, is, naturally, con- 
 cerned with love. Theseus and Hippolyta image the 
 sober love of middle age, with here and there a touch 
 of passion. They have no difficulties, no trouble. The 
 tragedies of love, except those arising from jealousy, 
 belong, for the most part, to youth and the beginnings of 
 old age. f In middle age the great outside interests of the 
 world modify into quiet that tyrannic passion. [ Theseus 
 turns at once from Hippolyta to the business of the state. 
 Hippolyta can philosophise with ease on the vagaries of 
 love. And both, not caring for the loneliness with one 
 another which youthful love desires, are delighted with 
 the pleasures of the chase. They rise early in the morn- 
 ing to follow the hounds. Their talk is not of love, but 
 of bygone hunting, of their dogs, their breed, their 
 musical cry. 
 
 With the young lovers it is different. Love, as he is in 
 Spenser's mask of Cupid, is a cruel, capricious god to 
 them. Even Puck disapproves of his conduct — 
 
 Cupid is a knavish lad, 
 
 Thus to make poor females mad. 
 
 Lysander loves Hermia, and Demetrius Helena. But 
 Demetrius forsakes Helena for Hermia, and hence are 
 born jealousies, furies, quarrels, dissolutions of friendship, 
 death or a convent to Hermia. Under love's cruel driving, 
 Helena betrays Lysander and Hermia to Demetrius, 
 and is a traitor to honour. Under it the friendship of 
 Helena and Hermia is dissolved, and Demetrius and 
 Lysander seek each the other's death. Love sets them 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 9 
 
 into madness and confusion. Then with a sudden turn, 
 in the midst of the dream-night, Shakespeare turns to 
 laugh at the folly of youthful love. He makes it de- 
 pend on the juice of an herb, as if it were only a chance, 
 as if it lay only in the eye. Lysander hates the woman 
 he loved, Demetrius loves the woman he hated. Helena 
 and Hcrmia are driven wild with pain. Titania herself 
 is a victim, and falls in love with Bottom crowned with 
 an ass's head. All is mockery of Love as the maddener, 
 the god of unreason. Only Elizabeth escapes, 'the fair 
 vestal throned by the West.' She is 'fancy free,' and 
 this isolation of her makes the compliment Shakespeare 
 paid her almost as exquisite as the poetry in which it 
 is made. Finally, the play, the rude mechanics' play, is 
 a love-tragedy as deep as that of Borneo and Juliet. 
 But it is turned into laughter, and makes the sorrows 
 of love the tragical mirth of an hour. The note of all 
 this treatment of the subject of love is struck in the 
 first act by Lysander's phrase 
 
 The course of true love never did run smooth, 
 
 then by Lysander's statements of the crosses of love, then 
 by Hermia's answers, and then by the soliloquy of Helena 
 at the end of the first scene. Nothing can be more 
 characteristic of the time, of its literary life, of the mastery 
 of love as a subject, of Shakespeare's sportive youthful- 
 ness, than this hither and thither of love in various 
 fantasies. ' Nowadays,' says Bottom, ' reason and love 
 keep little company together.' 
 
 Then there is the scenery. We have no descriptive 
 hints as to what Shakespeare expected the audience 
 to see in Athens with the ' intellectual eye.' It is quite 
 different with regard to the wood where the fairies are. 
 This is not deliberately described, but by scattered 
 touches, in the midst of the dramatic interest, Shakespeare 
 
10 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 suggests its landscape, and we, for ourselves, create it. 
 That is his way of natural description ; it is the way of 
 genius. We have walked through this wood again and 
 again, and know many of its recesses. We even know 
 its outskirts, for we have companied with Theseus and 
 Hippolyta when they came to its edge to hunt in the 
 morning. There lies the western valley enlivened with 
 the Spartan hounds and foresters, and there climbs the 
 mountain-top which overlooks the valley and the wood, 
 lit with the ' yellow gold ' of the morning which Oberon 
 ' oft made sport with.' The wood is full of flowers ; faint 
 primrose beds, cowslips, oxlips, wild thyme, musk-roses, 
 eglantine, honeysuckle; of hawthorn-brakes and briers, 
 barky elms, great oak-trees, dewy glades, wild under- 
 growth ; and the moon shines brightly over it. The to- 
 and-fro of the wandering lovers, of the roving fairies 
 brings us, time after time, into, we imagine, every dell 
 and clearing of it. 
 
 This was the landscape, and there was not a groundling 
 in the pit who did not see it more clearly than we see it 
 in the elaborate decoration of our stage. We are held 
 down to the scene-painter's sight of it, and that limits our 
 self-creativeness. But every one in Shakespeare's theatre 
 made from the poet's suggestions his own wood out of his 
 own memories of the country. In such a wood Shake- 
 speare may often have wandered on the outskirts of the 
 London of his day, but he saw it through eyes which 
 had looked with the delight of a youth on the woods 
 round Stratford; and Charlecote's memories enter into 
 this wood near Athens, and into the forest of As You 
 Like It. 
 
 It is easy from this play to see how keen was his enjoy- 
 ment of Nature, and with what an observant eye he 
 watched her doings. Nor was his eye less keen for the 
 animal life in the wood. The squirrels racing up the trees, 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 11 
 
 the ox stretching his neck to the yoke, the crows fatted 
 with the murrion flock, the snake with enamelled skin, 
 the rere-mice with leathern wing, the owl that wonders 
 at the quaint spirits of the fairies, the hedgehogs, spiders, 
 beetles, 
 
 The ousel-cock, so black of hue, 
 
 With orange-tawny bill, 
 
 The throstle with his note so true, 
 
 The wren with little quill ; 
 
 The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 
 
 The plain-song cuckoo gray, 
 
 the lark so tunable to the shepherd's ear, the wild geese 
 
 the creeping fowler eyes, the russet-pated choughs, who, 
 
 Eising and cawing at the gun's report, 
 Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky ; 
 
 the red-hipped humble-bee, the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 
 
 the painted butterflies, 1 are seen as clearly as Browning 
 
 saw them, and with the same eye for their colour. To the 
 
 poetic observer of beasts and birds, colour is their first 
 
 distinction. Then he sees the other marks which isolate 
 
 them from one another, and then the points in which 
 
 each species is excellent. Shakespeare's eye, trained in 
 
 the country, knew the fine points of animals as clearly as 
 
 he knew those of men and women. In Venus and Adonis 
 
 every point of excellence in a horse is mentioned. The 
 
 description of the hare, ' poor Wat, far off upon a hill,' who 
 
 Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, 
 
 is as true and vigorous ; but neither of these is finer than 
 
 that of the dogs in this play — 
 
 My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
 So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
 With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
 Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; 
 Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
 Each under each. 
 
 It is like a picture by Velasquez. 
 
 1 All these descriptive phrases are taken from the play, and so are the 
 flowers and trees mentioned above. 
 
12 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The form of the play is simple. The first act and 
 the last are of the waking day, of real life. In the 
 midst is the night, and the fanciful life of a dream. 
 And added to this vivid contrast is the episode of the 
 comic tragedy of Pyramus, which, in a certain sense, 
 combines the real and the imaginative life — for the 
 working men of Athens are lifted above their daily toil 
 into an ideal world by their rude aspiration to art- 
 creation. Their play knits by its object, which is to do 
 honour to Theseus' marriage, the last act to the first. 
 Finally the marriage of all the lovers is accomplished, and 
 the fairies bless the marriage-bed in lovely poetry. 
 
 Theseus and Hippolyta are children of the day, of 
 clear reason, and practical life. Hippolyta is the sensible 
 woman of high rank, with all the natural freedom of a 
 great lady, living and thinking in the open air. Fond of 
 the chase, she remembers with pleasure how the skies, the 
 fountains, seemed all one mutual cry when she bayed the 
 bear with Hercules and Cadmus, — an Amazon as well as 
 a great lady. She is interested in the story of the night. 
 It is ' strange and admirable,' and ' grows to something of 
 great constancy.' But she reasons on it clearly. Pier 
 curiosity does not carry away her good sense. Theseus 
 and she discuss the events of the dream, and the several 
 views of the man and the woman are admirably dis- 
 tinguished. She has little patience with folly and ignor- 
 ance, and is greatly bored with Pyramus and Thisbe. 
 ' This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard,' she says, with 
 her plain intelligence. Theseus sees more deeply. ' The 
 best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are 
 no worse, if imagination amend them.' But Hippolyta 
 answers quickly. ' It must be your imagination then, 
 and not theirs.' Not for a moment is this Queen asleep, 
 or fanciful, or in a dream. Yet, though a warrior Queen, 
 she does not want a woman's gentleness — 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 13 
 
 I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged, 
 And duty in his service perishing. 
 
 When she hears Bottom mourning over Thisbe, her 
 sympathy is awakened, even though the stuff is silly. 
 ' Eeshrew my heart/ she cries, 'but I pity the man.' 
 
 Theseus is as plainly a King in the daylight. He is in 
 love, but his love has no fantasy. Night, he believes, is 
 the fairies' time, but he spends it in love or in sleep. He 
 turns in a moment from Hippolyta to the business of 
 government, more important to him than love. His deep 
 respect for Athenian law and precedent, his moderation 
 and firmness in judgment, his support, even though he 
 pities Hermia, of paternal authority, all mark the man of 
 the world and the statesman ; the lucid reasoner, who has 
 never been in the land of dreams. He does not believe 
 the story of the Night. These matters do not belong to 
 cool reason, but to the seething brains of lovers or mad- 
 men. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 
 
 Are of imagination all compact. 
 
 Yet, in that famous passage, he can describe the poet and 
 his work better than most, so clear is his sight of things. 
 He sees imagination's work in the acting of the poor 
 mechanics, and therefore sympathises with them, as is fit 
 for a ruler of men. Nor could Shakespeare's noblest men 
 speak with more of a royal nature than Theseus does 
 when he reasons on the homage offered to kings. Hip- 
 polyta has objected to the play being heard. It is not 
 kind to these poor folk, for they can do nothing in this 
 way, to hear them. ' The kinder we,' says Theseus, 
 
 to give them thanks for nothing. 
 Our sport shall he to take what they mistake ; 
 And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect 
 Takes it in might, not merit. 
 Where I have come, great clerks have purposed 
 To greet me with premeditated welcomes ; 
 
14 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, 
 
 Make periods in the midst of sentences, 
 
 Throttle their practis'd accent in their fears, 
 
 And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off, 
 
 Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet, 
 
 Out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome ; 
 
 And in the modesty of fearful duty 
 
 I read as much as from the rattling tongue 
 
 Of saucy and audacious eloquence. 
 
 Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity 
 
 In least speak most, to my capacity. 
 
 This is the good manners of a gentleman. It is as wise 
 in experience as it is courteous in feeling, clear in reason- 
 ing. To the last — and not least when he tells the players, 
 'Never excuse, let your epilogue alone' — he is of the 
 bright-eyed morning; no king of shadows like Oberon, 
 never in a dream. 
 
 Nor are the minor characters in the first act less of 
 daylight reality. Egeus, a hateful father, is a plain-spoken 
 tyrant. Hermia, when she lays her case before Theseus, 
 is very different from Hermia in the dream. Her modest 
 good sense, seated in her faithfulness, does not say much 
 before the King, but what she says is steadfast and clear. 
 Theseus says, 'Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.' 'So 
 is Lysander,' she replies. 'In himself he is,' answers 
 Theseus, 
 
 But, in this kind, wanting your father's voice, 
 The other must be held the worthier. 
 Her. I would my father look'd but with my eyes. 
 
 She is admirable in all the rest of the scene : reverent 
 to Theseus, even to her father, but fixed as fate in her 
 fidelity to her lover, wide awake to the events, and of a 
 keen intelligence. 
 
 The same luminous daylight shines over the second 
 scene, in Quince's house, where the mechanics order their 
 play. These two scenes in the court and the cottage, so 
 close to real life, Shakespeare took pains to make unlike 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 15 
 
 a dream. It is only when the lovers are left alone that 
 imagination enters, and the talk becomes poetry. Then 
 love's high fantastic possesses all they say like a spirit. 
 Hermia tells Lysander that she will meet him in the 
 wood : a simple statement, but this is how she words it — 
 
 My good Lysander ! 
 I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow, 
 By his best arrow with the golden head, 
 By the simplicity of Venus' doves, 
 By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, 
 And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen, 
 When the false Troyan under sail was seen, 
 By all the vows that ever men hath broke, — 
 In number more than ever women spoke — 
 In that same place thou hast appointed me, 
 To-morrow truly will I meet with thee. 
 
 This is the way love and youth heighten — ' To be sure 
 I'll come' — into poetry. It is followed by that fanciful 
 game with words between Lysander and Hermia concern- 
 ing the troubles of love. Some have called it unnatural. 
 On the contrary, this tossing to and fro of fancies in play 
 is quite natural to lovers when they are young. Then, 
 since the love of natural beauty is akin to human love, 
 the lovers lift into poetry all they say about Nature. For 
 them PhGebe beholds 
 
 Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, 
 Becking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, — 
 
 For them the primrose beds are faint where Hermia and 
 Helena were wont to lie. 
 
 In this uplifting air of love they are no more of the 
 noonday, but of the twilight, half-way to the moonlight 
 of the midsummer night, on the skirts of the dream. 
 Shakespeare was a master of gradation. The dream-note 
 of the next three acts is thus struck, yet it only sounds 
 dimly, like a far-off bell. As yet, the fancy of the lovers 
 has none of the unreason of a dream. Their speech is 
 
16 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 clear, their minds awake. But the atmosphere they 
 breathe is one that easily changes into dream. 
 
 They sleep, and another day goes by. Then comes the 
 Night, the magical midsummer Night, and with it the 
 fairy world. The lovers seek the wood, and so do 
 the crew of mechanics to rehearse their play. And they 
 pass into the dream. The daylight has gone ; the moon- 
 light rules. Indeed, the moon is the sky-mistress of the 
 play. She is not only the Queen of the Midsummer 
 Night ; she is the goddess of the marriage-bed of Theseus 
 and Hippolyta, whose first speeches dwell on her. The 
 lovers talk of her beauty. Oberon and Titania live in 
 her light and breathe its air. Pyramus and Thisbe 
 meet in moonshine. The fairies bless Theseus' bed in 
 her brightness. All the sentiment of moonlight in a 
 million lovers' hearts pervades the play. 
 
 Shakespeare has, with easy power, brought into these 
 three acts the mystery, the fantasy, the dimness, and 
 the unreason of dreamland. Titania and Oberon resemble 
 the stately, graceful creations of our imagination when 
 we are asleep. The fairies who attend the Queen are 
 like those unfinished, childish fancies, begun and broken 
 off, which we see in dreams. Puck is the representative 
 of the grotesque, unmoral, unhuman creations (for fancy, 
 without will, has no conscience, no humanity) which so 
 strangely go and come in dreams. Then, the changes 
 of scene, the appearance • and disappearance of the 
 personages, cross and recross one another with the be- 
 wildering rapidity of a dream. We are even borne 
 away in a moment to vast distances, for dreams have 
 no geography, and the fairies move as swift as thought 
 through space. Oberon comes from the furthest steep 
 of India. Titania sits with her friend in the spiced 
 Indian air, watching the ships go by. The quarrel is 
 about an Indian boy. The introduction of India (a 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 17 
 
 country on which the English then spent a world of 
 fancies) adds its own mystery to the dream-atmosphere 
 in which the reader moves. 
 
 Then, too, there is in the wood the confusion, disorder, 
 and unreason of a dream. The lovers fall in and out of 
 love with one another for no cause in the world but the 
 mistakes of a mad spirit, who is himself the plaguing 
 grotesque of a dream. And time and periods of thought 
 are also huddled into confusion. Theseus and Elizabeth 
 are living together; romance and the classic world jostle 
 one another. Hippolyta has been Oberon's mistress; 
 Titania the cause why Theseus betrayed Ariadne. 
 
 We may add to this the wild grotesquerie often charac- 
 teristic of dreams. The ass's head placed on Bottom's 
 thick skull; the elemental Queen embracing the clown; 
 the contrast between the lovely delicacy of Titania's 
 language and the clownish wit of Bottom ; the way in 
 which he employs the dainty fairies; his own unthinking 
 acceptance of the new world into which he has come — 
 the most fantastic of Shakespeare's dream-imaginings — 
 are all of a fine grotesque. Puck is its image; that ' lob 
 of spirits.' He tells of his practical jokes with humanity, 
 of his good nature when it is his humour. He does no 
 fatal mischief, but he is quite out of sympathy with the 
 sorrows of mankind. The jangling of the lovers amuses 
 him, though it wins the pity of Oberon, the higher spirit. 
 It is he who, in the grotesque of the dream, places the 
 ass's head on Bottom and hurries the coarse mechanic 
 into the fine-spun life of fairyland. The dream reaches 
 its height when the Queen of Dreamland herself is set 
 dreaming. Even dreams dream that they dream; and 
 Titania cries — 
 
 My Oberon ! what visions have I seen ! 
 Methought I was enaniour'd of an ass. 
 
 As to the lovers in the dream, it is a mad business. 
 
 B 
 
18 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The men change their sweethearts without asking them- 
 selves why they change. It is different with the women. 
 So far as love is concerned, they are steadfast throughout 
 to what they were outside the magic wood, and I believe 
 that Shakespeare meant to make that difference. He had 
 , the strongest belief, as a dramatic artist, in the con- 
 stancy of women. He has only drawn one inconstant 
 woman in all his plays. Here the affections of Helena 
 and Hermia for their lovers are quite uninfluenced by the 
 magic of the wood, nor do they understand change in 
 love. Helena, even when Demetrius begins to love her, 
 thinks he is mocking her. She cannot comprehend his 
 alteration, even though it is what she most desires. 
 Then, Hermia cannot conceive that Lysander should cease 
 to love her — 
 
 I '11 believe as soon 
 This whole earth may be bor'd, and that the moon 
 May through the centre creep, and so displease 
 Her brother's noontide with the Antipodes. 
 
 A splendid audacious hyperbole ! Even when Lysander 
 calls her ' Ethiop,' i cat,' ' burr,' ' tawny Tartar,' she does 
 not believe him. The dream atmosphere has no power 
 over the love of the women, but it masters that of the 
 , men. Reason or unreason — in Shakespeare — are equally 
 powerless to affect a woman's love. 
 
 In other matters, in this realm of dream where 
 neither will nor reason reigns, where natural humanity is 
 let loose unchecked by social custom or duty, the women 
 do change as well as the men. Helena's wooing of 
 Demetrius becomes more impassioned, less womanly. 
 Maiden reserve all but perishes. Hermia's educated 
 quietude and modesty of tone vanish away. Her natural 
 fierceness, which has been subdued to courtesy, breaks 
 out in this dreamland. ' Out, dog ! out, cur ! ' she cries 
 to Demetrius, and Demetrius fears her fierce vein and 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 19 
 
 ceases to follow her. The men have lost all courtesy, gone 
 back to uncivilised nature. Their language is unbridled, 
 such as we use in dreams when the will is undirected 
 by conscience or good manners. All this comes to a 
 height at the end of the third act. The old and loving 
 friendship of Helena and Hermia is shattered. Helena 
 recalls it only to deny it. Hermia, not as yet convinced 
 that Lysander loves Helena, is amazed at the heat of 
 Helena. But when she is convinced, when Lysander tells 
 her he hates her and loves Helena, the latent fierceness 
 of her nature, fanned into fury by her love, breaks out 
 against Helena — 
 
 O me ! you juggler ! you canker-blossom ! 
 
 You thief of love ! What ! have you come by night 
 
 And stol'n my love's heart from him ? 
 
 Mockery follows after mockery, jealousy after jealousy; 
 they attack one another like two women in the market. 
 Then Lysander and Demetrius, stung into wrath by the 
 atmosphere the fierceness of the women has made them 
 breathe, fly also at one another's throats. It is all of the 
 unreason of a dream. The men and women are not them- 
 selves. Their extraordinary rudeness or shrewishness does 
 not belong to their waking characters. 1 
 
 I may say, in passing, that the whole act is an excellent 
 piece of stage-management. Reading it, it seems con- 
 
 1 That is, to their characters as formed and modified by education and 
 social habits. I cannot say whether Shakespeare intended to say that 
 in the atmosphere of the dream they lost those habits and reverted 
 to their natural uncultured characters ; but if, as is probable, he did 
 not mean that, he writes as if he did — at least, so far as regards the 
 women, who have more need to conceal themselves than men. When 
 Helena and Hermia meet at last in the wood, and jealousy takes a hand 
 in the game, both of them are quite different from their aspect in the 
 first act. Hermia is no longer grave, dignified, moderate in speech. She 
 has gone back to herself as she was at school — a hot-tempered, bold, 
 quick-handed shrew, who terrifies Helena, and who cries, ' Let me 
 come to her.' And Helena, who had already been a traitor, now becomes 
 her natural cowardly self. When they wake, they revert again to their 
 educated selves. 
 
20 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 fused. I used to think it could not be staged. But when 
 I saw it, I recognised that it was written by a master of 
 stage-craft. There is not an entrance or exit in this be- 
 wildering running in and out of personages which is not 
 accounted for, led up to and arranged for easy repre- 
 sentation. And Bacon was about as capable of doing 
 this as he would have been of smoking a pipe in the face 
 of James the First. 
 
 Oberon and Titania, Puck and the fairies, have nothing 
 of this unreason in their world or their life. They are in 
 their own atmosphere ; the men and women are not. And 
 the creation by Shakespeare of this fairy region with its 
 indwellers, which, while we are in it, seems wholly reason- 
 able and real, is one of his creative triumphs. Its isola- 
 tion from humanity is complete. Human nature touches 
 us now and then in Oberon's sympathy with the lovers, 
 in Titania's love of Theseus, in their meeting to bless the 
 marriage-bed; but these touches only make us realise 
 more fully that their life and thoughts are separate from 
 ours, and, therefore, that when men and women get into 
 the fairy realm, they are all astray. To create this im- 
 pression was Shakespeare's desire, and it is wonderfully 
 done. 
 
 The fairies have no conscience, no morality, and no 
 constancy in love. They do what they like without a 
 thought of anything being forbid. They are pure children 
 of Nature, nay, they are Nature herself; embodiments of 
 her forms, of flowers and animals ; and the loftier fairies — 
 Oberon and Titania — of her elemental powers. These 
 are the spirits in matter, its thoughts perhaps ; and they 
 have the swiftness of thought. Puck can ' put a girdle 
 round about the earth in forty minutes.' This is a long 
 time, but then Puck did not possess full fairy powers, or 
 elemental powers. Ariel, on the contrary, comes with a 
 thought. Oberon can come from India to Athens in a 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 21 
 
 flash. Being invisible, they have the swiftness which is 
 linked in tradition to invisibility, and which science allots 
 to the invisible forces of nature. Shakespeare derived 
 this part of his conception from old tradition, Arthurian 
 or Irish, but he developed it by the metaphysic which, 
 deep in his nature, was yet always suffused with poetic 
 imagination. 
 
 The fairy realm Shakespeare created was quite different 
 from any that had preceded it — a new creation in the 
 world of imagination. His way of building it gave it con- 
 sistency, poetry, beauty, and conscious life. He shaped its 
 work, its pleasures, its manners, its poetic mode of speech, 
 its love-affairs, its court, its ritual, and its unmorality. 
 All the fairydom of the next three centuries derives from 
 it. But its image has now degenerated. What our poetry 
 and our child's books give us of fairyland has neither the 
 dignity nor the lovely speech nor the reality of Shake- 
 speare's dream. As there was nothing like it before him, 
 so there has been nothing so good after him. 
 
 Yet, new-shaped as it was, it was made out of existing 
 materials ; partly out of the Arthurian stories, out of the 
 fairies of the lake and the wood who loved, like Titania, 
 mortal heroes, and who could wear the same stature and 
 shape as those they loved ; and partly out of the English 
 folk-traditions, often rude and unpoetic, concerning elves 
 and dwarfs and a host of little people, who helped or 
 hindered the agriculturist and who were honoured by a 
 blunt, primeval ritual which took different forms among 
 different peoples. Robin Goodfellow, whom Shakespeare 
 developed into Puck, belongs to this folk-tradition, and 
 he has attained in the play a higher life and powers. 
 
 These rustic traditions were the only kind of fairy belief 
 which had a popular existence in England when Shake- 
 speare wrote. The Elf-land of Romance was far behind 
 his time. Even Chaucer, writing two hundred years 
 
22 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 before him, relegates the faerie of England back to 
 Arthur's time — 
 
 In the olde daies of the King Arthoure, 
 Of which that Bretons speken grete honoure, 
 Al was this land fulfild of fayerye ; 
 The elf-queen with hyr jolly companye 
 Danced ful oft in many a greene mede. 
 
 Those days had passed away for Chaucer, to his regret. 
 In Malory's book they were, however, revived for Shake- 
 speare. It is probable also that he had read Huon de 
 Bordeaux. He took then the fairydom of Arthurian 
 story, which from Celtic had become romantic, and he 
 took also the elf-folklore which still lives in rustic Eng- 
 land, and made out of both these sources a fairyland of 
 his own. Curious survivals from them appear in single 
 lines, in long passages, and in certain qualities which jut 
 forth, as it were, in Oberon, Titania, and Puck. 
 
 1. The description of Puck and his tricks (all belonging 
 to the life of the farm), both by himself and by the fairy 
 who talks with Puck at the beginning of the second act, 
 is a remnant of the rude folklore of the elves of England. 
 It does not belong to the Arthurian sources. But when 
 Puck is developed by Shakespeare into the swift servant 
 of Oberon, he is, though he retains his elvish mischief, 
 lifted on to the romantic plane. He is a spirit between 
 both the traditions — un esprit panache. 1 
 
 2. Oberon and Titania are linked to the elemental forces 
 of nature. Their lives, their very temper, are echoed in 
 the doings of the sun and moon, of the seasons, of the 
 weather. When these two are in harmony, all is well 
 
 1 I believe Puck to be a remnant, unknowingly wrought up by 
 Shakespeare, of the tradition of the infant carried off by the fairies 
 who, living with them, gains many of their powers, but is always 
 tricksy, half human, half fairy, and a servant to the fairy Queen or 
 King. But Puck also refers back to the agricultural tradition. All his 
 tricks are done to the farm-dwellers ; he knows the native proverbs, 
 and they are those of English country life (Act HI. Sc. ii.). 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 23 
 
 with field and furrow, with agricultural humanity. When 
 they quarrel, all goes wrong. That noble piece of poetry 
 in which Titania traces the ruined year to her quarrel 
 with Oberon proves this by its conclusion — 
 
 And this same progeny of evil comes 
 From our debate, from our dissension ; 
 We are their parents and original. 
 
 This conception has no source that I am aware of in the 
 Arthurian romances. It harks back to an earlier world, 
 to those gods and goddesses of the ancient Teutonic and 
 Celtic mythology who were the deities of agriculture, to 
 whom the farmer prayed, who made the weather accord- 
 ing to their pleasure or their anger with their worshippers; 
 and who, when Christianity destroyed their rule, con- 
 tinued as the ' fairy host ' in Ireland under forms of high 
 imagination ; and in England as the elves and dwarfs and 
 tricksy sprites, like Robin Goodfellow, under forms made 
 by rustic and unpoetic superstition. Yet, in whatever 
 shape we find them, they have to do, in one part or 
 another of their life, with the work of the field and the 
 farm, with the natural forces which promote or injure 
 agriculture. 
 
 The poetry of that ancient life was, no one can tell 
 how, seized on and restored by our Magician in Oberon 
 and Titania, who have the qualities of divine nature- 
 beings, but on a lower level than they were before 
 Christianity. They are invisible ; they come and go as 
 swiftly as thought. They still command the elements. 
 They bless or ban the doings of the tillers of the ground, 
 help or injure them. And it is characteristic of their 
 origin that they consecrate the marriage-bed of Theseus 
 with the dew of the field. 
 
 3. Oberon and Titania have a sympathy with, and give 
 protection to, heroic personages, both male and female. 
 They give more than protection ; they give love. 
 
24 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Titania's relations to Theseus, and Oberon's to Hippolyta, 
 are one of the survivals I have mentioned. These love- 
 affairs between the immortal and the mortal go back 
 for their origin not only to the Arthurian cycle of 
 romance, but further still, to the Irish mythic stories, 
 to Cuchullainn, Oisin, and the rest. The relations be- 
 tween men and the fairies had, in the Arthur tales and 
 the heroic Irish legends, the same unmorality which pre- 
 vails in the lives of Shakespeare's Oberon and Titania. 
 He did not invent it ; he derived it. 
 
 4. In connection with this, it is plain that Oberon and 
 Titania could, like the romantic fairies and the Irish 
 goddesses, assume the shape and stature of mortal men 
 and women. Some say that Shakespeare's fairies are ex- 
 ceedingly small. And many of Titania's attendants are. 
 They creep, for example, into acorn cups, and hang the 
 dewdrops on the cowslip's ear. But the higher creatures, 
 like the King and Queen, can be, we must infer, as tall, 
 when they pleased, as the men and women they were in 
 love with. Even Puck can assume any shape he pleases, 
 and we may be sure that when Oberon played as Corin 
 with amorous Phyllida, and when Titania sat with her 
 Indian ' votaress of my order ' all the day to watch the 
 ships go by, they were more than an inch in height. 
 Even Mustard, Pease-Blossom, and the rest, when they 
 talked with Bottom, could not have been, for the moment, 
 exceedingly small. This power of changing shape, and of 
 being small and great at pleasure, is shared in by Ariel. 1 
 
 These and other elements were Shakespeare's materials. 
 The combination of them into the lovely form of a new 
 world of Faerie was the magical work of his genius. 
 Moreover, he placed these rough jewels of thought in 
 
 1 Those who wish to read more on these matters would do well to get 
 Mr. Alfred Nutt's admirable little book on the Fairy Mythology of 
 Shakespeare,, to which I am much indebted, 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 25 
 
 the loveliest setting possible — in poetry not one word of 
 which is out of harmony with the fairy atmosphere he has 
 created. He is never more gracious, more consistent in 
 poetry than on the lips of Oberon. 
 
 When Oberon brings into his talk 'Cupid all-armed,' 
 whom only he could see, and the mermaid on the 
 dolphin's back whose music drew the stars from the sky, 
 we feel no jar of unbelief, we understand that his common 
 speech is poetry. Nor does Titania fail in this. Her talk 
 has the same exquisiteness ; as if the flowers themselves 
 were speaking. What they say is not the highest poetry, 
 not of the depths of passion or thought. That great 
 matter belongs to man. But it is of a light, airy loveli- 
 ness, like the feelings and images which drift in and out 
 of a happy child. And this is Shakespeare's underived 
 creation. On the lips of Oberon and Titania, it is 
 chiefly concerned with beautiful things in nature, with 
 flowers and birds and wild fruits of the wood, with the 
 sea and the mountains, the moonlight and the morning. 
 The little fairies, their attendants, belong also to what 
 is gracious and gentle in the woods. They take care of 
 the flowers, adorn them with the pearls of the dew, are 
 the enemies of all gloomy and ugly things, drive them 
 from Titania's bed, and sing to her as she sleeps. They 
 are the spirits which dwell in beautiful things, such 
 spirits as Shelley placed in the crystalline spheres that 
 the sun drew upwards from the stream. This invention 
 is also of Shakespeare alone. 
 
 Again, he made their life to belong to the moon. It is 
 only in her light that they waken to dance and sing and 
 rejoice. It is only at night that they are happy, and able 
 for their pretty works. This also is Shakespeare's device. 
 But Oberon and Titania are free, or nearly free, from this 
 limitation. When they assume a mortal shape, they share 
 in the day. This, however, is but seldom. Their nature is 
 
26 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 to 'follow darkness like a dream.' They are in the shadow 
 world. Yet even there the King has power to play with 
 the outskirts of the dawn. 
 
 I with the morning's love have oft made sport ; 
 And, like a forester, the groves may tread, 
 Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, 
 Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, 
 Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. 
 
 All this is of Shakespeare's own imagination. And it is, 
 I repeat, a wonder of imaginative power that, through- 
 out this fairyland, he should keep his elfin atmosphere 
 quite untouched by humanity. 
 
 Two more things may be said. First, Oberon and 
 Titania are quite the King and Queen. Shakespeare had 
 a full respect for dignities, and his great people always 
 speak with dignity and good manners. It is not different 
 in the fairy world. Tennyson's treatment of Oberon and 
 Titania would have jarred Shakespeare to the bone, 
 and is sufficient to prove how much the Shakespearean 
 ideal of Elf-land has degenerated. There is no rude 
 scolding in the quarrel of the King and Queen, nothing 
 undignified. Even when Titania is in love with Bottom, 
 she never loses her greatness or her grace in speech. 
 
 T am a spirit of no common rate ; 
 
 The summer still doth tend upon my state. 
 
 Oberon does not get his way with her by violence or 
 by authority, but by superior knowledge. He and she 
 are equal in rank and honour. And when he sees her, 
 by his trick, enamoured of an ass, he is sorry for her. 
 He has upbraided her ; she — her pride forgotten through 
 his magic — has answered him with patience and given 
 up the cause of their quarrel. Pity awakens in him ; 
 he releases her with loving words — 
 
 Now, my Titania ; wake you, my sweet Queen, 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 27 
 
 and Titania instantly gives back his love ; 
 
 My Oberon, what visions have I seen ! 
 
 This is all in the high courtly strain. 
 
 Secondly, in this shadow world, one human thing per- 
 sists. It is the difference of sex. Oberon is altogether 
 the man, Titania the woman. It is this element in them 
 which gives them their sympathy with us, with the lovers, 
 with the marriage of Theseus. And it is vividly present 
 in all their words and ways. This sex-difference was vital 
 in Shakespeare's work. No man ever said or did anything 
 womanly in the plays ; no woman in them ever spoke or 
 acted like a man. When Rosalind, Portia, Imogen assume 
 the man, there is a subtle, conscious difference in all they 
 say from that which a man would say, which keeps them 
 woman ; a more delicate style in phrase and thought and 
 play, an atmosphere of charm. To give this impression 
 when boys acted the parts must have been difficult, but 
 great genius rejoices in difficulty, or does not see it. The 
 modern tendency towards the effacement of sex-difference 
 never appears in Shakespeare. That the difference is 
 always present is at the root of half the power he has 
 over humanity. And here, even in the world of dream, 
 it is as prominent in Titania and Oberon as it is in 
 Beatrice and Benedick, in Desdemona and Othello, in 
 every man and woman in the plays. 
 
 Of all the fantastic events of the dream not one is so 
 fantastic as the introduction into it of Bottom, the rude 
 mechanical, with an ass's head; and of his love-affair 
 with Titania. Titania is still Titania, even when she is 
 enamoured of this monster. Her speech is always poetry, 
 her flower-like life is still mingled with the flowers. She 
 lives in her love without a thought of human morality ; 
 and when it is over, she instantly forgets it as if it had 
 
28 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 never been; makes no excuse for it, and takes up her life 
 with Oberon immediately. This is quite in character 
 with the unmorality of the Nature-Fays of the Arthurian 
 Romance, and of the Irish goddesses. Her unconscious- 
 ness, under the spell, of her folly is charming, yet pitiful ; 
 and she has even the melancholy and the absorption of 
 human love. Oberon paints her as wandering alone in 
 the wood seeking for flowers to deck her love, and as 
 forgetting everything else. Her attendant fairies never 
 question her will, nor seem surprised at her vagary — and 
 that too is most fantastically fantastic. Yet, audacious 
 as it is, Shakespeare has made it seem almost natural. 
 
 Bottom takes it all quite naturally. In a moment he has 
 been swept into the fairy world, and is loved by its Queen. 
 He does not think he is in a dream till he gets out of it. 
 The humorous vanity of the man not only supports 
 him, but enables him to throw himself eagerly into the 
 situation. He talks to the fairies as if he were one of them- 
 selves, and uses their service according to their names. 
 So he would have talked to Quince and Snug, Flute and 
 Starveling. In the dream he keeps his previous vanity ; 
 he has always been the king of his little world; he is 
 still the same king in fairyland. But it is a pleasant 
 vanity, and is founded on a real superiority. All his 
 fellows own his greatness. No one objects when he says 
 he can act Hercules if necessary, or take the part of 
 Thisbe ; and when he is lost, the play is given up. He 
 has the activity of pure vanity, does all he believes he can 
 do, and in every difficulty sets to work at once. When he 
 recovers from the dream, he puts it aside in a moment for 
 action. His fellows want to know where he has been. 
 But he will not tell them now. 
 
 Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is that the Duke hath 
 dined. G-et your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new 
 ribbons to your pumps ; meet presently at the palace ; every man look 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 29 
 
 over his part ; for the short and long is, our play is preferred. . . . No 
 more words : away ! go ; away. 
 
 Even in the presence of the Duke his pushing nature 
 makes him at ease. He is so fond of explaining everything 
 to the lower intellects of the court, of setting every one 
 right, that he interrupts the play for that purpose. He 
 corrects Theseus and puts Demetrius down. Quite proud, 
 at the end, of the success of his play, he offers Theseus 
 an Epilogue or a Bergomask ! Yet he has the artist's 
 belief in what he does, and great pleasure in it. There- 
 fore, absurd as he is, Theseus and Hippolyta are quite 
 moved by his acting — 
 
 The. This passion and the death of a dear friend, would go near to 
 
 make a man look sad. 
 Hip. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man. 
 
 When his fellows fly from him, after his ' translation,' 
 
 this same self-confidence sets him at ease with himself, 
 
 and he begins to sing that they may hear he is not afraid. 
 
 He is equally at ease in fairyland. Yet, he never seems 
 
 to realise Titania. Had he for a moment confessed love 
 
 to her, he would have lowered her in our eyes. We might 
 
 have thought real what was due to magic. Nor does he 
 
 believe it when he wakes. The dream, lingering with 
 
 him for a moment, amazes him, and confuses his tongue. 
 
 Methought I was — there is no man can tell what. The eye of man 
 hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to 
 taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. 
 
 Then he becomes fully awake. 
 
 I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream ; it shall be 
 called Bottom's Dream, because it has no bottom. 
 
 He is back almost at once in his plain, honest life. 
 
 It is different with the lovers. They are naturally at 
 home in the world of imagination. Their dream has been 
 so vivid that for a long time it seems reality — that well- 
 known result of dreaming. Theseus tells them all is right 
 
30 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 with them. They have begun to realise this, yet dream- 
 land lingers with them. There is a world of meaning in 
 their words. 
 
 Dem. These things seem small and undistinguishable, 
 Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. 
 
 Her. Methinks I see these things with parted eye 
 When everything seems double. 
 
 Hel. So methinks : 
 
 And I have found Demetrius, like a jewel, 
 Mine own, and not mine own. 
 
 Dem. Are you sure 
 
 That we are awake ? It seems to me 
 That yet we sleep, we dream. Do you not think 
 The Duke was here, and bid us follow him ? 
 
 Her. Yea, and my father ? 
 
 Hel. And Hippolyta. 
 
 Dem. Why, then, we are awake. 
 
 The Dream is over. Hippolyta half believes it. Theseus 
 puts it down to imagination. But the lovers know it has 
 brought the dreams of their lives into reality. 
 
 Shakespeare himself does not disdain his Dream, nor 
 think it only fancy. A creator loves the world he makes, 
 and would assert its reality. And, indeed, while a great 
 part of the events of the time when Shakespeare lived 
 has perished from memory as unsubstantial, this creation 
 of his has taken to itself immortal substance. The fairy- 
 land he made lives still, not only in the play, but in its 
 children — in a thousand books and poems, in pictures and 
 in music. Nor did Shakespeare write as if he thought 
 his dream altogether a dream. He has made it do actual 
 work, as if it were not all compact of shadow. It is 
 dreamland that has made the lovers finally happy, got 
 round the laws of Athens, put the tyrannic and greedy 
 father in the wrong, settled Theseus into the promoter of 
 true love, reversed the cruel tricks of Cupid all-armed, and 
 made every one at ease. Oberon, the King of shadows, 
 has done it. 
 
 And I am not sure that in the whole drift of the play 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 31 
 
 there is not a half-ironical suggestion of Shakespeare's, a 
 transient imagination of his youth — that this life of ours 
 is but a vision, out of which we are to wake at last ; out 
 of the disturbed, inconsequent, confused, grotesque con- 
 dition of which we may pass into the ordered reality. If 
 so, he would hint in this early play what momentarily 
 engaged his thought when he said with Prospero — 
 
 AVe are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 The lovers rejoice that they have awaked from a dream 
 into reality ; but they do not know, as Shiva would have 
 said, that it was but a dream within a dream, and that 
 they are still asleep. 
 
 The fine poetry of this play is of a twofold character. It 
 might be divided, without being too fantastical, into 
 poetry of the daylight and of the moonlight. There is a 
 delicate spirit, a shimmer of fancy and elfin thought, 
 without any human feeling, in the music and the charm 
 of the poetry Shakespeare puts into the speech of the 
 fairies which seems made of the silver of moonlight 
 and to bring with it the shadows of moonlight. The 
 Indian mythology tells that moonstones in the rays of 
 the moon distil a nectar, with the scent of camphor, which 
 is composed of the substance of the moon and is the 
 essence of its light. Such a moonstone is the fairy poetry 
 of this play. It drops nectar. 
 
 Mingled with it, there is another spirit, less delicate, less 
 fantastical, nearer to our thought — the spirit of the wood- 
 land, of the life in trees and flowers and the wild fruits 
 of the earth, and of their beautiful indwellers. There 
 is a weightier note in this, a touch as it were of humanity, 
 which gives some substance to the moonlight spirit in the 
 verse. In both, however, the ripple and melody of the 
 
32 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 poetry are like the ripple and melody of nature, the move- 
 ment of the waves of the moon's light, the rustling of the 
 night-wind in the trees and grass. It is not fantastical 
 to believe that Shakespeare felt this harmony of his 
 fairy -poetry with the moonlight and the woodland. 
 Only once in this play does the fairy-poetry lose these 
 notes. It is when Titania describes the country desolated 
 by rain and storm, — the result of her quarrel with Oberon. 
 She does not care much for the miseries of men, but she 
 thinks of them, and this thought of hers gives substance 
 to the poetry of her description. A closer humanity 
 belongs to the delightful verse of Puck and Oberon and 
 Titania when, with their train, they fill the house of 
 Theseus and bless the marriage-bed. A domestic charm 
 lives from line to line, and goes with the fairy tribe from 
 one shadowy room to another. 
 
 Through the house give glimmering light 
 By the dead and drowsy fire ; 
 
 Quite otherwise is the poetry of the daylight, of the 
 men and women who are not in the dream. It has weight 
 of thought and feeling, and is full of the matter of human 
 life. The first dialogue of Theseus and Hippolyta is 
 marked by an imaginative passion which elsewhere does 
 not appear in their words. It gathers round the moon, 
 and the spirit of the moon has touched it. The rest of 
 the beautiful things they say beautifully is full of that 
 fresh good sense and that morning brightness which, as 
 in Milton, so in Shakespeare, have so much to do with 
 noble poetry. The speech of Theseus concerning the wel- 
 come given to kings by simple folk, his famous picture of 
 the antique fables poets, lovers, and madmen make, are 
 touched with that grave matter of thought and human 
 experience without which poetry is an empty shell, full 
 only of sweet sound. As to the rival description by 
 
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 33 
 
 Theseus and Hippolyta, when in the dawn from the 
 mountain-top they watch the hunt, the very breath of 
 the fresh morning sings and cheers in every word 
 of it. 
 
 The lovers too have their own poetry. A different 
 note fills it, the note of youthful, inexperienced love, in 
 its joy and its trouble, full of fast-changing fancies, 
 none of them deep or penetrating. Even in the mad- 
 nesses of the dream their thoughts live only on the 
 surface of things. Passion's touch on the four lovers is 
 slight, claps them on their shoulder, but does not close 
 round their heart. Nature, who, when love is profound, 
 disappears from the lover's eyes, is used by these lovers 
 to illustrate and enhance their love. Helena, being un- 
 happy, is she in whose mouth Shakespeare places the 
 finest love-poetry. Her sorrow adds substance to her 
 fancy. It is she who cries in words which sing themselves 
 
 happy fair ! 
 Your eyes are lode-stars ! and your tongue's sweet air 
 More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, 
 When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. 
 
 It is she who describes the school-days' friendship, the 
 childhood innocence of herself and Hermia, in a passage 
 which, in spite of its elaborate beauty, has always seemed 
 to me a little out of tune with the confusion and the 
 wildness of the Dream in which she is then involved. 
 It brings us too much into reality. But this impertinent 
 reproach to Shakespeare is perhaps undeserved. Helena 
 is far the most tormented of the four lovers, and the 
 height of her misery would, in Shakespeare's mind, 
 lift her above the magic of the dream into her natural 
 self. 
 
 Poetry moves then through three separate worlds in 
 this play, and moves in all with ease. But its wonders of 
 creation are most unique, most of an unknown, unex- 
 c 
 
34 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 perienced beauty, in the world where Oberon bids Puck 
 remember how once in the moonlight he 
 
 sat upon a promontory 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 To hear the sea-maid's music. 
 
 All the magic into which Keats once entered is in the 
 words and in their melody. 
 
II 
 
 EOMEO AND JULIET 
 
 Goethe, when Director of the Theatre at Weimar, put 
 Romeo and Juliet upon the stage. He omitted nearly 
 the whole of the first act, and made the play begin 
 with the mask and dance at the house of Capulet — 
 that is, he left out the quarrel in the street, initiated by 
 the servants; the intervention of the Prince between 
 the two great houses at feud ; the love-pains of Romeo 
 for Rosaline and the sketch of his character contained 
 in them, before he is made a man ; the sketch of Juliet 
 before Love had made her woman, which, given by her 
 mother and the Nurse, is also touched in by Juliet her- 
 self; the representation of the young bloods of Verona, 
 overflowing with youthful sap and wit, in which Romeo, 
 Mercutio, and Benvolio are contrasted and isolated into 
 individual characters. 
 
 To leave out all this preparation, these studies for the 
 full picture, this slow growth of the tragic storm before 
 the Event suddenly arises which contains, inevitably, the 
 conclusion, is to understand neither Shakespeare nor 
 dramatic art. Over this long preparation broods the 
 long-suffering Justice who punishes quarrels which injure 
 the state ; and Shakespeare meant us to understand this. 
 How he meant it I shall afterwards try to explain. It is 
 enough to say now that he suggests it in the Prologue, 
 where he states the' ground, the fatal working, and the 
 conclusion of this his earliest tragedy. 
 
 In the first four scenes, so long and careful is his 
 
36 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 preparation, all the elements of a coming doom are con- 
 tained and shaped — the ancient feud, deepening in 
 hatred from generation to generation, the fiery Youth-in- 
 arms of whom Tybalt is the concentration; the intense 
 desire of loving in Romeo, which thinks it has found its 
 true goal in Rosaline but has not, and which, therefore, 
 leaps into it when it is found in Juliet ; the innocence of 
 Juliet whom Love has never touched, but who is all 
 trembling for his coming ; the statesman's anger of the 
 Prince with the quarrel of the houses ; and finally, the 
 boredom of the people, whose quiet is disturbed, with 
 the continual interruption of their business by the 
 rioters — 
 
 Clubs, bills, and partizans ! Strike ! beat them down ! 
 Down with the Capulets, down with the Montagues ! 
 
 a cry which seems to ring through the whole play. It is 
 impossible this should continue. Justice will settle it, or 
 the common judgment of mankind will clear the way. 
 
 The quarrel of the houses is the cause of the tragedy, 
 and Shakespeare develops it immediately. It begins with 
 the servants in the street ; it swells into a roar when the 
 masters join in, when Tybalt adds to it his violent fury, 
 when the citizens push in — till we see the whole street in 
 multitudinous turmoil, and the old men as hot as the 
 young ; 
 
 Cap. My sword, I say ! Old Montague is come, 
 
 And flourishes his blade in spite of me. 
 Mon. Thou villain Capulet ! Hold me not, let me go. 
 
 Then, when the Prince enters, his stern blame of both 
 parties fixes into clear form the main theme of the play. 
 He collects together, in his indignant reproaches, the 
 evils of the feud and the certainty of its punishment. 
 We are again forced to feel that the over-ruling Justice 
 which develops states will intervene. 
 
 This scene is an admirable piece of history. It brings 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 37 
 
 before us in a moment the hot passion of a mediaeval town 
 where the nobles are at feud. A servant bites his thumb 
 at the servant of another house, and in five minutes the 
 streets are streaming with blood. It was much the same 
 in Italy when Shakespeare wrote ; nor was such disturb- 
 ance impossible in London, though Elizabeth had welded 
 the nobles together into a common patriotism in which 
 individual quarrels were reduced. In Edinburgh, where 
 the clan system was stronger, the streets leaped in an 
 instant into strife. It is worth while to read, as a parallel 
 to this scene in Shakespeare, the vivid sketch Scott gives 
 in The Abbot of the Canongate rushing instantly into 
 crowded rage when the chiefs and retainers of the Seton 
 meet with those of the Leslies on the crown of the 
 causeway. 
 
 With what intensity of life both these descriptions 
 by Scott and Shakespeare are infused ! The giving of life 
 was their pre-eminent power. Other dramatists had 
 worked the story before Shakespeare, but the men and 
 women were lifeless dolls. He took the crude, common- 
 place material, placed its elements in the Crucible of his 
 genius, and when the mixture boiled above the fire of 
 his passion a host of living creatures, each distinct, 
 loving, fighting, talking, in joy and sorrow, poured 
 forth, brimming over with thought, passion, and action, 
 and mingled together to weave the tragic story. It 
 was much to animate the chief personages of the tale, 
 Romeo and Juliet, till they are for ever young, for ever 
 loving; it was more perhaps, for it was of a greater 
 difficulty, to animate with a quick-eyed life and character 
 the minor personages of the play. The Nurse and 
 Mercutio are nothing in the original tale. Here they 
 become living representatives each of a separate class. 
 As vivid and as distinctive a life is given to the rest, down 
 to the very servants. None resembles the other. All 
 
38 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 have their own ways, their own character, their own 
 results. ' Let there be life,' said Shakespeare, and there 
 is life. 
 
 And the life in them all is the life of youth, even in 
 the old men. Old Capulet is as hot-headed as Tybalt, 
 so is old Montague. The Nurse lives over her youth in 
 luscious memory. The Friar has a gentle sympathy with 
 young love, tastes with a gusto his youth in the love of 
 Romeo and Juliet. The young men flash into merri- 
 ment and wit and fighting with equal joy and fire. 
 Even Benvolio's quiet is kindled into flame at a touch. 
 Mercutio overflows with the sap of youth. There is not 
 a leaf on the tree of his life which is not thrilling with it. 
 The first fancy of Romeo for Rosaline, even though it is 
 not a deep but a superficial love because it is not 
 returned, is full of the solitudes, the fantasies, the self- 
 brooding and thinking, the imaginative dreams of youth 
 in love with love, of the pranks a lover's intellect plays 
 with words in order to illustrate his love — rather than 
 with Rosaline. Juliet is a child with a will, but subdued 
 to her mother's hand, till the fated hour comes. Amid 
 all this turmoil of youth, it is pleasant to touch her un- 
 conscious childhood. It soon departs, and then she is 
 the incarnation of first love, knowing in one supreme 
 moment all that love commands. 
 
 When the hour comes to Romeo and her, the swift 
 ' precipitancy ' of youthful ardour seizes them, and never 
 lets them go. The sight of one another across the room is 
 enough. The same night Romeo climbs the orchard wall, 
 speaks with Juliet, and plans their marriage. The next 
 morning they are married. The morning after they part 
 for ever. It is cruel, but even Justice herself seems to 
 have all the impetuosity of youth, and only allows her 
 victims one night of love. Shakespeare has shaken off 
 all the delays of the original story. In it, weeks pass 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 39 
 
 before the lovers meet. But here, youth scorns delay; 
 ' O, let us hence ; ' says Romeo, ' I stand on sudden haste.' 
 Juliet is not less wild with youth's impetuous passion. 
 She will have her marriage in a moment — 
 
 The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse ; 
 
 In half an hour she promis'd to return. 
 
 Perchance she cannot meet him : that 's not so. 
 
 O ! she is lame : lore's heralds should be thoughts, 
 
 Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams, 
 
 Driving back shadows over lowering hills : 
 
 Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw Love, 
 
 And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings. 
 
 Now is the sun upon the highmost hill 
 
 Of this day's journey, and from nine to twelve 
 
 Is three long hours, yet she is not come. 
 
 Had she affections, and warm youthful blood, 
 
 She 'd be as swift in motion as a ball ; 
 
 My words would bandy her to my sweet love, 
 
 And his to me : 
 
 But old folks, many feign as they were dead ; 
 
 Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead. 
 
 God ! she comes. honey nurse ! what news 1 
 
 Hast thou met with him ? Send thy man away. 
 
 ' Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,' she cries when 
 she waits for Romeo. The ardour of her youth and love 
 is living in the words. 
 
 When they threaten to marry her to Paris, she will die 
 on the moment, as when Romeo hears of her death he 
 resolves to die instantly. Death is a slight thing to youth 
 when the wine of life is drawn ; and the lovers welcome 
 its peace. The Friar, being old, is cautious. ' Too quick 
 is youthful blood.' ' Wisely and slow,' he cries, ' they 
 stumble who run fast.' ' These violent delights have 
 violent ends.' ' Love moderately, long love doth so.' 
 Even Juliet herself, for once, in the midst of her hurrying 
 passion, pauses a moment The black wing of Destiny 
 seems to touch her coldly — 
 
 I have no joy of this contract to-night : 
 It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden ; 
 
40 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 
 Ere one can say, it lightens. 1 
 
 The play races, drawn by the steeds of youth. It even 
 seems, I have said, as if Justice herself were in a hurry to 
 accomplish her ends. There is an impression on the 
 reader that she is driving with hastening lash all the 
 characters on to the catastrophe. 
 
 In contrast with this speed, there is, at the beginning 
 of the play, the slow dreaming of Romeo over his love 
 for Rosaline. Had he been truly in love he had long 
 since brought his love to a point. He is rapid enough 
 when he is vitally touched; but now he is as quiet as 
 a dove, brooding, cooing to himself, taking no action. 
 Benvolio scoffs at him for this, lectures him, sketches him 
 wandering through the grove of sycamore, flying from his 
 friends into the covert of the wood. His father sketches 
 him shut up all day with the windows closed against the 
 sun; secret and close, 'his own affections' counsellor.' 
 He loves his own phantom of love, not Rosaline; sick 
 of himself, not sick of love; enthralled within his own 
 personality, though, to himself, he seems to have lost it ; 
 
 Tut, I have lost myself ; I am not here ; 
 This is not Romeo, he 's some other where. 
 
 He amuses himself, as no true lover does, with intellectual, 
 not passionate, fancies concerning love. He paints it 
 in euphuistic tricks of words — it is 'heavy lightness, 
 serious vanity, feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, 
 sick health ! Still- waking sleep, that is not what it is ! ' 
 This is dreaming of love, not loving, and the proof is 
 he does not care for anything. The true lover cares for 
 
 1 Compare Lysander's illustration in Midsummer Night's Dream — 
 
 Brief as the lightning in the oollied night 
 That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, 
 And ere a man hath power to say, ' Behold ! ' 
 The jaws of darkness do devour it up. 
 So quick bright things come to confusion. 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 41 
 
 everything. The only thing which interests Romeo now 
 is himself, himself whom he pities, caresses, nurses, whose 
 misery is his sweetness. 
 
 Not a trace, not a shred of this is left, when the true 
 thing dawns, then blazes like the noonday sun; and 
 the contrast, vividly conceived, splendidly executed, was 
 meant by the artist. This supreme love comes like a 
 divine revelation, shaking his estate of man to its centre, 
 destroying the dreamer, establishing the man of action, 
 replacing the fanciful by the actual man. He feels it 
 before it comes; the deep shadow its brightness throws 
 falls upon him ; he hears in it the wild call of Destiny ; 
 it is one of Shakespeare's mystic passages. Before he 
 enters Capulet's house, just before he sees Juliet, he 
 stays in the street and names his fear. 
 
 I fear, too early ; for my mind misgives 
 Some consequence yet hanging in the stars 
 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
 With this night's revels, and expire the term 
 Of a despised life closed in my breast 
 By some vile forfeit of untimely death. 
 But he, that hath the steerage of my course 
 Direct my sail ! On, lusty gentlemen. 
 
 This is the dreadful gate by which he enters the 
 paradise of love. Shakespeare never lets us forget the 
 doom which overhangs the play. 
 
 Along with this contrast between the delays of fanciful 
 and the swiftness of real love, there is also the contrast 
 of the unthinking gaiety, the wild youth of Tybalt and 
 Romeo's companions, with the dark fates which follow 
 the star-crossed love of Romeo and Juliet. It is their 
 love which slays Mercutio first, then Tybalt, and then 
 the County Paris; which turns Benvolio's joyousness 
 into sorrow, and strips old Capulet of all his youth-in- 
 age. But before we trace their fates, it were well to touch 
 
42 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the characters of these youths whose brightness throws 
 into relief the early glooms of Romeo. 
 
 Benvolio is his elose friend ; of a steady, still character, 
 equally ready to win his friend out of his useless life by 
 gentle reproof, and to quiet down the riots in the street ; 
 the type of the temperate man who lives long, and who 
 is of use at all periods of history. The sketch Mercutio 
 makes of him as one who is ready to quarrel for anything 
 is plainly a mocking of his quiet and reconciling temper. 
 He has no genius, little fancy, and is cut out for a states- 
 man. Nor is he specially Italian. I am sure Shakespeare 
 met this type among the young men of the court of 
 Elizabeth, men who would grow into statesmen like 
 Cecil. 
 
 Opposed to him in character, but his friend, is Mercutio ; 
 wit's scintillating star, thrilling with life to his finger- 
 tips, not caring for women save as the toys of an hour, 
 ready to tackle, on the instant, any woman, young or old ; 
 brave, audacious, going swiftly to his point, keeping no 
 thought within him but flinging it at once into speech ; 
 ' he will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in 
 a month ' ; quick in choler, ready to attempt the moon 
 and pull the sun down, loose of speech, mocking old 
 and young out of the racing of his blood — the gay ruffler 
 of Italy, such as Shakespeare often met in London, such 
 as many of the Italian novels enclose and paint. 
 
 But he is more than that. He has wit. "Whatever he 
 touches he finds ten remote analogies for it; his way- 
 ward thinking plays with every unimportant matter, as 
 a cat with a mouse, till the matter seem important. Nor 
 is his wit unmanly, like that of the dainty courtiers of 
 the day who conned their quips and cranks out of books, 
 and whose most absurd type is Osric in Hamlet. It is, 
 on the contrary, all his own, the fresh coinage of his brain. 
 It is kindly too ; while he mocks at Romeo's love he does 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 43 
 
 not despise him. Those he despises are the fools and 
 
 the blusterers, like Tybalt — 
 
 The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes, these new 
 tuners of accents ! . . . these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these 
 pardonnez mois, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot 
 sit at ease on the old bench. 
 
 Mercutio scorns these water-flies. He has added the 
 sturdy sense of the Englishman to the rippling gaiety 
 of the Italian. More than wit belongs to him. There is 
 a touch of genius in his soul, and a single grain of that 
 rarity makes its possessor loveable. Even in the midst of 
 Romeo's new passion he loves Mercutio. Benvolio weeps 
 for him — 
 
 That gallant spirit hath aspir'd the clouds. 
 Romeo avenges him, swept away by grief to forget for 
 an instant his love of Juliet. 
 
 With this touch of genius is imagination, or rather 
 
 fancy almost becoming imagination. Of that uncommon 
 
 web of gossamer the well-known description of Queen 
 
 Mab is an enchanting example. It is not quite of 
 
 imagination all compact. It flits with amazing grace 
 
 and lightness over the surface of the thing described; 
 
 it does not penetrate it. As poetry, it is of the same 
 
 quality and kind, but not so beautiful, as the speech of 
 
 Oberon and Titania; delightful, graceful, delicate, but 
 
 not of any depth either of thought or passion ; that is to 
 
 say, it is exactly right as it is, and where it is. But his 
 
 next speech slips into the earnestness and the beauty of 
 
 imagination ; now into it, now into fancy only — on the 
 
 borderland of these two powers — 
 
 True, I talk of dreams, 
 Which are the children of an idle brain, 
 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy ; 
 Which is as thin of substance as the air, 
 And more inconstant than the wind, who woos 
 Even now the frozen bosom of the north, 
 And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, 
 Turning his face to the dew-dropping south. 
 
44 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 It is said that Mercutio was too brilliant for Shake- 
 speare to support at the same level throughout the whole 
 play ; and that, had he not been slain, Shakespeare would 
 have had otherwise to get rid of him. It would be 
 hard to agree with that. Shakespeare's wit always 
 answers his call through the whole range of his plays. 
 It ebbs and flows, but when it ebbs it is because he has 
 felt that it should not be too brilliant, not because he 
 was not able to make it brilliant. He carried Falstaff 
 through three long plays, and Falstaff is wittier than 
 Mercutio. Moreover, the wit of Mercutio is that of the 
 time at which he lived, mostly play with words and with 
 far-fetched analogies; and every Oxford and Cambridge 
 scholar, and every courtier, and every literary man 
 exercised himself in it. In some it was richly, in 
 others poorly phrased, but it was common; and when- 
 ever it is a habit in society it becomes as easy to 
 produce wit of word-play as it is difficult to produce 
 when it is not the habit. It is tiresome talk to us; it 
 seemed brilliant then. These puns, fantastic turns of 
 phrase, and fancy-pictures, are to us what they were 
 to Romeo — 'talk of nothing.' Yet Romeo himself in- 
 dulged in them before he loved Juliet. His Euphuism 
 then suited his fancy -love for Rosaline; but when the 
 very fire of the god arrived it burned up all this play 
 with words. It has been blamed by critics, and Shake- 
 speare's art, on account of it, called in question. He 
 did not keep it long. When his genius grew out of 
 sketching the particular in man to drawing carefully 
 the universal, he left it by; but when he was a young 
 artist, it was quite natural to represent the common 
 talk of the day, and those who listened to it caught 
 up every point with pleasure. In Mercutio, it grew 
 out of the very nature of the man. Even when he 
 comes to die — and his death is touched with a master- 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 45 
 
 hand — lie does not lose his wit. He still plays with 
 words ; 
 
 No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door ; but 'tis 
 enough, 'twill serve ; ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a 
 grave man. 
 
 In vain, in vain ! The pathetic weakness of death grows 
 on him ; his wit dies in bitter regret for lost joy, in anger 
 with fate. Yet that mounting spirit is brave to the last ; 
 
 Help me into some house, Benvolio, 
 Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses ! 
 They have made worms' meat of me. I have it, 
 And soundly too : — your houses ! 
 
 See how Shakespeare brings home on the lips of the 
 first victim of Justice, working retribution for the guilt 
 of the feud, the main motive of the tragedy. 
 
 Tybalt — to continue this sketch of the minor characters 
 — is not, though his ill- temper makes him seem so, a 
 swashbuckler, or a bully. He is the quick-offended duel- 
 list of the day, one of those whom the French court called 
 the raffines ; hot to challenge a smile, a motion of the 
 hand, but a gentleman quite fit to rank with Benvolio and 
 Mercutio. Like the rest, he is as ready to die as to live. 
 Unlike Benvolio, who is good-temper personified ; unlike 
 Romeo, who is quiet by nature; unlike Mercutio, who is 
 good-humoured, but touchy on the point of honour; 
 Tybalt is of a natural bad temper, quarrelsome, liable to 
 fits of fury. When Capulet, who is as hot as he, bids him 
 lay by his rage at Romeo's appearance in his house, and 
 forces peace upon him, his body trembles ; 
 
 Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting 
 Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. 
 
 ' A king of cats,' Mercutio calls him. He slays Mercutio. 
 Romeo, lashed into wrath, slays him. He is the second 
 victim of the event; the second step by which Justice 
 marches through blood to her fixed purpose. His death, 
 
 • 
 
46 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 more than Mercutio's, hurries up the catastrophe. Owing 
 
 to it, Romeo is banished, and Juliet left alone. Owing 
 
 to it, Capulet forces the County Paris on Juliet. Owing 
 
 to that, Juliet takes the drug and is thought by Romeo 
 
 to have died, and Romeo resolves on death. 
 
 Another minor character is the Nurse. Those who have 
 
 seen Mrs. Stirling, when she was old, in that character, 
 
 have seen it perfectly realised. It is an original drawing 
 
 after nature ; all the characteristics of the type are keenly 
 
 observed, generalised, and then embodied in one woman. 
 
 The old retainer of a great house, the confidante of her 
 
 mistress, and of her master's wild life, she takes the 
 
 liberties with them both — the impertinences of an old 
 
 servant — which her knowledge of their life licenses her to 
 
 take ; she advises and reproves them. She is in the inner 
 
 circle of the house, and has her own man to attend on 
 
 her. The licence of the day has not left her untouched. 
 
 She has lost her virgin honour at the age of twelve, and 
 
 her life has been unrestrained No morality has been left 
 
 in her, she is quite without a conscience. Her only 
 
 morality is in her determination to marry Juliet — it 
 
 doesn't matter to whom — and the bigamy she advises at 
 
 the last is quite naturally advised by this naughty old 
 
 woman. Her only religion is a pleasurable excitement 
 
 when she listens to Friar Laurence rebuking Romeo in a 
 
 long speech like a sermon ; 
 
 Lord ! I could have stay'd here all the night 
 To hear good counsel : 0, what learning is ! 
 
 Her life is now made up of garrulous recollections. Like 
 old folk she repeats her stories over and over again, and 
 she loves in them a piece of impropriety to utter over a 
 gossip's bowl. Like Mrs. Gamp, whenever she is worried 
 she calls for a dram. The ruffling Mercutio gives her, 
 pleases rather than offends her ; and her appeal to Peter 
 to protect her is of an excellent humour. To make herself 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 47 
 
 of importance she plays with Juliet's anxiety to know if 
 Romeo will come to be married to her; and worse still, 
 she allows Juliet to think that Romeo is slain, not 
 Tybalt ; anything to swell her dignity. For this she even 
 torments the only one she loves on earth. To keep up 
 Juliet's anxiety, which, in its reflection, enhances her im- 
 portance, she deviates from the point incessantly — 
 
 Jul. What says he of our marriage ? What of that ? 
 
 Nuese. Lord ! how my head aches ; what a head have I ! 
 
 It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. 
 
 My back o' t' other side ; ! my back, my back ! 
 
 Jul. I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet nurso, tell me, what says my love ? 
 Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, 
 
 and a kind, and a handsome, and I warrant a virtuous,— 
 Where is your mother ? ' 
 
 And all the time Juliet is simmering with impatient 
 
 passion. 
 
 She has nursed Juliet — they are of one blood, therefore 
 
 she loves her — and she tells the story of it inimitably ; 
 
 with the nearest and most happy phrases. Falstaffwas 
 
 never better in broad humour. She has brought up 
 
 Juliet — a more foolish companion for a young girl could 
 
 scarcely be conceived — but Juliet emerges from her 
 
 governance as pure as crystal. When Juliet is lifted 
 
 into womanhood by her love, and gains thereby moral 
 
 power and spiritual passion, she sees the conscienceless 
 
 character of this old woman ; and when her nurse advises 
 
 her to marry Paris now that Romeo is banished, she 
 
 flings the old wretch out of her heart 
 
 Ancient damnation ! most wicked fiend ! 
 Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. 
 
 Yet the old woman is quite endurable. Proper persons 
 cannot approve of her, but it would be difficult for them 
 to be angry with her. She is too human for that. Her 
 garrulity has its charm, and so has her self-sufficiency. 
 
48 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Her immorality is natural and primeval, and, when it is 
 heartless, is more the result of the society in which she 
 has lived than of her original nature. She has good- 
 humour, devotion to her house, physical fondness for her 
 nursling, and a great respect for the Church. 
 
 She is the last of the minor characters, except the 
 Friar, whom I omit at present. I turn now to the 
 lovers. 
 
 They meet, and at first sight change eyes, like Rosa- 
 lind and Orlando, like Ferdinand and Miranda. Love 
 rarely grows in Shakespeare's hands. If it does, it has to 
 be helped from without, as with Benedick and Beatrice. 
 For the most part, it leaps, full-grown, into life, and is 
 reciprocal. Romeo and Juliet take fire at the same 
 moment. A single kiss unites them for ever : ' their only 
 love sprung from their only hate.' This is the Event to 
 which the previous scenes conduct, and from which the 
 rest follows. It may be said not to have been made by 
 them, but to be the work of a Power without them whose 
 aim is to punish the feud, which has injured human 
 life so long in Yerona, by the sacrifice of the lovers and 
 to put an end to it by their sacrifice. They bear the sins 
 of others and carry them away. 
 
 This is certainly, even in so early a play, the intention 
 of Shakespeare. The lovers are star-crossed. The Friar, 
 at the end of the play, thinking of all he had done to save 
 them and heal the feud, confesses that 
 
 A greater power than we can contradict 
 Hath thwarted our intents. 
 
 Even Romeo and Juliet dimly feel a fateful presence in 
 their love. It steals into that mystic consciousness 
 which underlies our common consciousness, and which 
 vaguely warns and vaguely prophesies. Both the lovers 
 feel beforehand the coming tragedy. This is a piece of 
 the mysticism which lay so deep in Shakespeare's mind, 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 49 
 
 and which came of his profound conviction that there 
 
 was a Power behind human life which worked for the 
 
 whole, and was apparently careless of the individual. 
 
 Again we are conscious, as the play goes on, of the fierce 
 
 rapidity with which Justice, once she has begun, hurries 
 
 on the action with terrible insistence. She sweeps to her 
 
 conclusion like an eagle on her prey. For a moment 
 
 human effort tries to interfere. The Friar sends to 
 
 Romeo to tell him Juliet is not dead, and waits for him. 
 
 The Power laughs, and stops the messenger. Had he 
 
 arrived, the lovers had been saved. But the lovers have 
 
 their reward. They have their little day of perfect joy. 
 
 They die rather than injure it by living away from it. 
 
 As they have leaped into love, so through love they 
 
 leap into manhood and womanhood. Romeo is now all 
 
 changed from the dreamer into the man of action, and 
 
 of action as prompt as Tybalt's sword. He has no sooner 
 
 seen Juliet at the feast than he storms the orchard wall 
 
 to see her again. 
 
 Can I go forward when my heart is here ? 
 Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. 
 
 He will marry her the day after. Instead of gloomy 
 silence with his companions, as before, his intellect 
 awakens now to life, and he answers Mercutio's wit with 
 equal wit — with greater, for Mercutio owns himself beaten. 
 And more, he finds Romeo so changed that he thinks 
 Romeo has ceased to love at the very moment when for 
 the first time he is really in love. His fanciful love for 
 Rosaline has made him morose and dull; his real love 
 for J uliet makes him sociable and brilliant. 
 
 Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love ? now 
 art thou sociable, now art thou Eomeo ; now art thou 
 what thou art, by art as well as by nature ; 
 
 Yet, had Mercutio known, it was love that had changed 
 
 the man. All this is excellently conceived by Shakespeare. 
 
 D 
 
50 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Juliet is also lifted into full womanhood. To compare 
 her speech with her mother and her nurse in the first 
 act with her talk with Romeo in the second, is to know 
 that she has instantly grown out of the child into the 
 woman. All that she does and feels afterwards is pure 
 womanhood, full of intelligence and power as well as 
 passion, lovely in truth, fidelity, and resolution ; yet 
 tender and sweet as childhood. 
 
 With their love, and by it, their whole nature- 
 moral, intellectual, passionate, and imaginative — is height- 
 ened. Both hold their love within moral restraint. 
 They break every convention, but they must have 
 marriage and the blessing of the Church. It must be 
 a sacramental bond which unites them. We do not 
 wonder at the intellectual charm of Romeo's talk, for we 
 have seen it even in his talk about Rosaline ; but now, it 
 is no longer on fantastic but natural lines. His passion 
 gives wings to his brain. But we do wonder at the 
 intellectual charm which chimes through the talk of 
 Juliet, at her clear sight of things, at her quiet reason- 
 ing and self-control even in the hour when she receives 
 the passion of Romeo and declares her own ; at her swift 
 determination when the crisis comes to do the only 
 possible thing ; at her luminous vision, before she drinks 
 the drug, of all she has to fear, of all that may happen 
 when she wakes in the tomb. 
 
 As to imagination, love has heightened that into 
 splendid expression. It exalts their speech into poetry. 
 All the beautiful world is laid under contribution to 
 illustrate and make more beautiful their love, but the 
 love itself is the most beautiful thing they know. It is 
 the fountain of their eloquence. And surely no love- 
 poetry in the world, rising out of innocent and youthful 
 love, with all the warmth of fresh-awakened nature 
 longing for union, with the full glow of the south yet 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 51 
 
 with a divine innocence in it, and with faith in the 
 divinity of natural love, was ever written with such beauty 
 as Shakespeare has written the meeting in the orchard, the 
 parting on the wedding night, the call of Juliet before it, 
 Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds. 
 
 It is imagination at a high and lovely level ; nor does 
 the imagination fail when sorrow is as keen in passion 
 as joy has been. The steady beat of its noble wing is 
 preserved. It is even more strong in the last speech of 
 Romeo or of Juliet than it has been before, for death adds 
 to imagination a last intensity. 
 
 When Romeo and Juliet first meet after the Mask 
 Shakespeare, like a great dramatist, encompasses them 
 with scenery as lovely as their love. It is only painted 
 by suggestions through their speech, but we see it quite 
 clearly. It is night, and only the light of stars, when 
 Romeo slips over the wall. There lies the orchard, and 
 there the balcony where Juliet stands. While they speak, 
 the moon rises, and ' tips with silver all the fruit-tree- 
 tops.' Before they part, the morning is at hand. 
 
 Romeo in the deep shade speaks to himself, and then 
 hears his mistress tell of her love for him. What an 
 outburst of sweet speech ! it makes one in love with 
 youth and love. It runs close to the edge of the Over- 
 much, but does not fall over it ; it is hyperbole, but many 
 men would be happy if such hyperbole were natural to 
 them ; if they could feel so deeply as to make it true. 
 There is not a phrase which Romeo uses which is not 
 the necessary expression of life at its overflow into infinity. 
 Only a vast indefinite sea and its furthest shore can 
 image his infinite of love. 
 
 I am no pilot ; yet, wert thou as far 
 
 As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, 
 
 I would adventure for such merchandise. 
 
 Juliet is equally passionate ; but of course Shakespeare, 
 
52 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 with his exquisite tenderness for women, has saved her 
 innocence from too great unreserve. She speaks to the 
 night her love, unaware of her listener; and when she 
 knows he has heard her confession, she delays her yield- 
 ing with an array of questions, seeking to recover her 
 maiden reserve. When she yields, her speech is perfect in 
 its womanhood ; and then, having established her delicate 
 maidenhood, excused her seeming light behaviour, she is 
 as frank in her love's confession as the day. Her child- 
 hood and her womanhood meet in this together; her 
 innocent joy in loving and her passion for her lover; now 
 a woman, now a child. She lives on that sweet border- 
 land. At last, passion, like Romeo, seeks the infinite to 
 express itself, and Juliet uses, but in other ways, the 
 same symbol as he has done ; 
 
 My bounty is as boundless as the sea, 
 My love as deep : the more I give to thee, 
 The more I have, for both are infinite. 
 
 They part with lingering, sweet delay. Juliet's speech 
 has slowly grown bolder, yet more delicate; and the 
 harmonious mingling of these two qualities is beautiful. 
 Romeo's speech has passed into a deep simplicity and 
 quiet, as if he felt too much to speak; it is only when 
 Juliet is gone that he says the truest and most impas- 
 sioned thing, 
 
 Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast ! 
 Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest. 
 
 And now the morning comes. Juliet has no past, and 
 
 waits for the future. But Romeo's past is known to the 
 
 Friar, whom he has to persuade to marry him to Juliet. 
 
 'Tis a difficult task, and the Friar is astounded when he 
 
 hears that Rosaline is utterly forgotten — 
 
 Holy St. Francis ! what a change is here ! 
 
 but blindly working the will of Justice, he agrees to 
 marry them in order to turn ' their households' rancour 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 53 
 
 to pure love ' — so carefully does Shakespeare knit into 
 the theme of the play even this sacred personage. But 
 he is also careful to individualise the man into a varied 
 character. 
 
 Shakespeare was kind to friars, and Laurence is one of 
 the best of them. All Verona respects him ; and though 
 he has played an audacious part in marrying a Capulet to 
 a Montague and in drugging Juliet, his statement of the 
 whole case at the end is listened to quietly, and approved. 
 The Prince does not even reprove him ; 
 
 We still have known thee for a holy man. 
 
 He has done this for policy, to reconcile the feud of the 
 houses. It meets the fate that the interference of 
 churchmen iu affairs most often meets. Yet he is more 
 the man than the churchman. Indeed, in his humorous 
 mocking of Romeo for his forgetting of Rosaline, in his 
 tolerance of the hot blood of youth, as well as in his 
 challenge to Romeo to be a man and face his suffering 
 down, he is not only a charitable priest, but also a man 
 of the world. He still remembers his own youth, and has 
 an ancient tenderness for the lovers; too old not to try 
 and moderate the hurry of their passion by his experience, 
 not too old to be kindly to it ; charmed into poetry by 
 Juliet's lovely youth and by tender memories of his own 
 youth which awaken at her sight — 
 
 Here comes the lady : ! so light a foot 
 Will ne'er wear out the everlasting Hint : 
 A lover may bestride the gossamer 
 That idles in the wanton summer ah-, 
 And yet not fall : so light is vanity. 
 
 His age is sententious but not dry; we hear in his 
 sermonising that gentle philosophy of life which in a 
 good man is nurtured by loneliness. Nor does his bland 
 philosophy want a touch of quiet poetry. His eye is 
 
54 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 quick to see and his voice to celebrate the beauty of 
 nature, when in the dawn he comes from his cell ; 
 
 The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, 
 Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, 
 And necked darkness like a drunkard reels 
 From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels. 
 
 He mingles a rustic science with his poetic feeling; a 
 gentle herbalist who loves and studies the medicinable 
 plants of the earth, and gathers them for use. While 
 yet the dew is deep he seeks them, and musing on their 
 qualities and comparing them with the nature of man, so 
 slips into his pensive philosophy — a many-natured man ! 
 The passage has its charm, and beyond that admits us into 
 one of these curious side-paths into which Shakespeare 
 wandered in his brooding thoughts on life. 
 
 ! mickle is the powerful grace that lies 
 
 In hjrbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities : 
 
 For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 
 
 But to the earth some special good doth give, 
 
 Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use 
 
 Eevolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse ; 
 
 Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, 
 
 And vice sometime 's by action dignified. 
 
 Within the infant rind of this small flower 
 
 Poison hath residence and medicine power : 
 
 For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part ; 
 
 Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 
 
 Two such opposed kings encamp them still 
 
 In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will ; 
 
 And where the worser is predominant, 
 
 Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. 
 
 The event which started the movement of the tragedy, 
 that is, the sudden love of Romeo and Juliet, is now 
 rounded and fulfilled. They are married, and it seems as 
 if the deed had awakened to her work the Justice who 
 punishes and reconciles the feud which had so long dis- 
 tressed Verona. Before even the wedding-night of the 
 lovers, she brings to their death Mercutio and Tybalt. 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 55 
 
 It is the first of the steps she takes to attain her end, 
 and she takes it in spite of Romeo, who hates to fight 
 with Tybalt, Juliet's 'dear cousin.' But he is driven 
 against his will by an outside power to slay him. Shake- 
 speare makes that plain. And now, again, all the streets 
 of Verona are in confusion ; again the Prince enters the 
 scene to denounce the quarrel, again the far-off cause of 
 the tragedy is laid before us. Then Romeo is banished. 
 We leave the civic strife behind, and are now, until the 
 end, involved in the personal fate of the lovers. 
 
 It is characteristic of Shakespeare's contrasting manner 
 that now, at the very moment when doom begins to darken 
 over the lovers, he places on Juliet's lips in solitude (for 
 indeed we must conceive her words as thought by her, 
 not spoken) that rapturous invocation to her wedding- 
 night in which the very height of the mingled joy of sense 
 and spirit in embracing love is imagined and longed for 
 before it is realised. Many would not have dared to 
 express it ; few would have felt they had the power to do 
 it, and to keep it free from grossness. But it slips, in 
 absolute ease, from Shakespeare's sympathy with pure 
 yet passionate maidenhood into language so exquisitely 
 balanced between sensuous and spiritual passion, so thrilled 
 with both inextricably interwoven, so exalted by joy, so 
 on fire with beauty, and all so uplifted by the spirit of 
 imagination, that it seems as if nothing so wonderful was 
 ever written in the world, as if, having been written, it 
 should always be felt to be thought rather than written. 
 
 On this youth and ravishment falls the news of Tybalt's 
 death and Romeo's banishment. Her lover has slain her 
 cousin on her wedding-day, so hot, so quick is Justice on 
 her trail. The to-and-fro of her sorrow and her love, the 
 final conquest of her sorrow for Tybalt and of her momen- 
 tary repulsion from the Montague who has slain a Capulet, 
 the disappearance of all anger, all sorrow, all ties of 
 
56 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 blood, of all the rest of the world, in love and Romeo, 
 is a wonderful piece of subtle analysis, the more subtle 
 from the simplicity of its execution. 
 
 Romeo's misery is not less impassioned, but more des- 
 pairing. The man does not react as quickly as the woman, 
 nor see, as quickly as she does, that nothing matters but 
 the fulfilment of their love. The sentence of banishment 
 brings back the despondent elements in his character, 
 and the Friar inspirits him in vain. He is seized by 
 those quick despairs of youth which an older man leaves 
 behind him. Nothing can be truer to nature than this ; 
 and as true is his swift return to life and joy when he 
 hears that Juliet will receive him. They meet at night in 
 wedded passion, drinking its joy upon the narrow edge of 
 death. That mercy Justice permits them. They win it, 
 as it were with violence, out of her grim sacrifice of 
 them for her own ends. And we are almost satisfied 
 that they should die, we almost accept the cruelty of their 
 fate, because they have had their perfect hour. Death is 
 not much, when life has once reached the top of joy. 
 
 Then comes the parting in the Italian morning. We 
 taste its air and see its skies as they speak. The night- 
 ingale in the pomegranate tree is silent, the lark has 
 begun to sing — 
 
 whose notes do beat 
 The vaulty heavens so high above our heads. 
 
 The dawn grows grey, then bright — 
 
 Look, love, what envious streaks 
 Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east : 
 Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. 
 
 But more beautiful even than this beauty of nature is 
 the passion in their hearts and its expression — steeped in 
 sorrow, drenched in love, still trembling with desire. And 
 because of these, of a poetry so exquisite in feeling, so 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 57 
 
 exalted by imagination, so thrilled with the memory of 
 satisfied love and with the agony of present departure, and 
 of so perfect a melody, that it seems made of the best of 
 all the poets of the world. Sorrow and fear give keenness 
 to the lingering of love ; and hope, almost afraid, glides 
 into the verse and then retreats. The shadow darkens 
 over them; the mysticism of Shakespeare intrudes on 
 their parting, to presage their death — 
 
 Jul. ! think'st thou we shall ever meet again ? 
 
 Rom. I doubt it not ; and all these woes shall serve 
 
 For sweet discourses in our time to come. 
 Jul. God ! I have an ill-divining soul : 
 
 Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, 
 
 As one dead in the bottom of a tomb : 
 
 Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale. 
 Eom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you : 
 
 Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu ! adieu ! 
 
 So Romeo departs, banished by the hand of Justice. 
 Then she plays her next card, swiftly driving on her 
 action. If she were not a goddess, it were unseemly 
 haste to marry Juliet one day to Romeo, and propose the 
 next day that she should be married to County Paris. 
 Yet that is what she does, that is the card she plays 
 m her determined speed. No sooner is Juliet out of 
 Romeo's arms, than her mother comes in with this 
 new proposition. It is enough to madden the child ; 
 though her intellectual power is never better seen than 
 in the way she seems to attack Romeo for Tybalt's death, 
 while in reality she expresses her love for him ; and she 
 refuses indignantly. Her father rates her with senile 
 fury; his language shocks her mother and her nurse; we 
 see the temper which has made the feud continue ; and 
 Juliet is silenced into one piteous prayer — 
 
 Is there no pity sitting in the clouds 
 That sees into the bottom of my grief ? 
 
 Her mother leaves her — 'Do as thou wilt, for I have 
 
58 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 done with thee.' She turns to her Nurse ; a sense of fate 
 is in the words, and great piteousness ; 
 
 Alack, alack ! that heaven should practise stratagems 
 Upon so soft a subject as myself ! 
 What say'st thou 1 hast thou not a word of joy ? 
 Some comfort, Nurse ? 
 
 But the only consolation the Nurse gives is to advise 
 immediate marriage with Paris, who is ' a lovely gentle- 
 man.' Few passages reveal in briefer words more of lonely 
 despair than those in which Juliet meets this traitorous 
 counsel. Father, mother, Nurse are all against her, but 
 this girl of fourteen is resolute: she knits her powers 
 together into quietude. What she will do, she will do 
 alone — 
 
 Jul. Speakest thou this from thy heart 1 
 
 Nurse. And from my soul too ; 
 
 Or else beshrew them both. 
 
 Jul. Amen ! 
 
 Nurse. What ! 
 
 Jul. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. 
 
 Go in ; and tell my lady I am gone, 
 Having displeas'd my father, to Laurence' cell, 
 To make confession, and to be absolved. 
 
 Nurse. Marry, I will ; and this is wisely done. 
 
 [Exit Nurse. 
 
 Jul. Ancient damnation ! most wicked fiend ! 
 
 To deepen her misery, she meets Paris, its cause, who 
 
 claims her for his wife, at the Friar's cell. Her despair 
 
 helps her to be reticent. Only when he goes, does her 
 
 passion break forth — 
 
 ! shut the door ! and when thou hast done so, 
 Come, weep with me ; past hope, past cure, past help ! 
 
 Rather than marry Paris, her knife shall play the 
 umpire in this strife between her honour and her fate. 
 Her speech is wild, the outburst of long-repressed pain, 
 seeking in whirling images to relieve itself. But what 
 a difference from the child of the first act ! A few days 
 of love have done the work of many years. Her woman- 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 59 
 
 hood is not only born; it is mature enough to look 
 
 death in the face. Yet her youth makes death seem 
 
 horrible, and she is haunted by its ghastly images ; 
 
 Or shut me nightly in a charnel house, 
 O'ercover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, 
 With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls ; 
 Or bid me go into a new-made grave 
 And hide me with a dead man in his shroud ; 
 
 Sh8 is sane in her resolution of death rather than 
 dishonour, half insane in her imagination — a subtle situa- 
 tion of the soul, such as Shakespeare loved, in the midst 
 of his simplicities of passion, to draw for his own delight. 
 
 The Friar then proposes the drug which shall make 
 her seem dead for forty-two hours, and Romeo shall fetch 
 her then away from the tomb of the Capulets. She 
 takes the drug that night, alone, with a woman's wild 
 courage, but with a child's imaginative fears, and the 
 fourth act closes with her apparent death. Meantime 
 Justice, not to be baulked, plays her next card. She so 
 arranges events that the Friar's letter to Romeo fails to 
 reach him. And then the ruin rushes, without a break, 
 to its close. The fifth act doubles and redoubles the 
 fierce hurry of Justice to her aim. There is no scene 
 more heavy-laden with death than that in the church- 
 yard, nor one in which the scenery is more vividly 
 conceived. Fear, trembling, and horror possess all the 
 characters but Romeo, Paris, and Juliet; their love lifts 
 them above the power of Death's attendants. Darkness 
 is everywhere; only a lanthorn lights the tomb. The 
 yew-trees darken the churchyard. The ground is loose, 
 infirm with digging up of graves. Romeo cries out at 
 the tomb in a madness of raging grief, 
 
 Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, 
 as he wrenches open the door. It is a masterpiece of 
 representation to the intellectual eye. No visible scenery 
 is needed. 
 
60 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The dramatic action is not less remarkable : the inces- 
 sant rush of circumstance, the change of the actors at 
 every moment, save when Romeo is alone in the tomb ; 
 the haste, the high-pitched excitement of all the 
 characters, even of the Page and Balthasar, as if the 
 fierce passion of Romeo had infected them all; the 
 silences, the cries from every part of the churchyard! 
 And finally the watch, the rousing of the town, the rush 
 of Capulet and Montague to the grave, the streets full 
 with running men and women, the Prince, and in the 
 midst Paris, Romeo, and Juliet dead. We are lost in 
 admiration. Only a playwright could have composed it 
 for the stage, and the playwright one whose imaginative 
 genius excelled Bacon's as the sun excels the moon. 
 
 But I return to the beginning of the act. It opens with 
 
 Romeo at Mantua, waiting for news. It is characteristic 
 
 of Shakespeare's mysticism, that, as he has made both 
 
 Romeo and Juliet have presentiments of evil, so here he 
 
 represents a common contrary — that excited happiness of 
 
 the spirit which so frequently precedes death and ruin, the 
 
 state the Scots call 'fey.' Romeo has had sweet dreams; 
 
 If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, 
 My dreams presage some joyful news at hand ; 
 My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne ; 
 And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit 
 Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. 
 
 On that, swift as lightning, comes the news that Juliet is 
 dead. He receives it with the same quiet with which 
 Juliet received the news that she was to be married to 
 Paris, that quiet which comes of the instant and intense 
 resolve to die. His youth is swift to act, as swift as 
 his absolute despair. The resolute centre of all his sorrow 
 is given in a word ; 
 
 Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. 
 
 The means are at hand — ' I do remember an apothecary ' 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 61 
 
 — a famous description, and so long that some have 
 wondered that Romeo, in his intense passion, could 
 enter into so much and so clear detail. But it is often 
 when passion is most intense that men not only see out- 
 ward things most sharply and in minute detail, but also, 
 perhaps to relieve the awful strain within, play with the 
 illusive scenery of life. All the deeper is his resolve to 
 die. It is piteous that he so young should suddenly 
 become cynical, but Shakespeare knew the quick- 
 changing heart of youth when despair has fallen on 
 love. This is a momentary cry. There is nothing of its 
 bitterness in the soliloquy in the tomb. 
 
 There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, 
 Doing more murders in this loathsome world, 
 Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell : 
 I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. 
 Farewell ; buy food, and get thyself in flesh. 
 
 And he races to Yerona to die by Juliet's side. 
 
 Paris has been before him. Justice wants another 
 victim to make the sacrifice complete, and Paris is laying 
 flowers on the body of Juliet when Romeo enters. We 
 hear from what he says to Balthasar, his servant, into 
 what fierce intensity he has been wrought during the 
 long night of travel. If thou return'st to pry 
 
 In what I further shall intend to do, 
 
 By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint, 
 
 And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs ; 
 
 The time and my intents are savage wild. 
 
 What chance has poor, foolish Paris with one whom 
 deadly sorrow all night long has wrought ? Romeo tries 
 to save him. In vain ! he falls, and dies for his love ; 
 
 If thou be merciful, 
 Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. 
 
 Romeo recognises him, and that he is one writ with 
 him in sour misfortune's book. Death brings all enmities 
 
62 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 into harmony, and he lays Paris in the tomb. And there 
 is Juliet, whose beauty makes the vault full of light. 
 He speaks, and ever since all the world has listened. We 
 see the silence, the dim light, the vaulted tomb, the lovely 
 face, not dead, but dead to him. His soul lives in every 
 word, his love, his sorrow, his imaginative fire, his un- 
 utterable weariness of life. Tenderness is supreme in 
 this lovely speech. Truth thrills through it like a spirit ; 
 beauty, like another spirit, is wedded to the truth in it, 
 and the ' passion of death ' lifts the truth and beauty and 
 tenderness of it into the world where death is lost in life. 
 
 How oft when men are at the point of death 
 
 Have they been merry ! which their keepers call 
 
 A lightning before death : ! how may I 
 
 Call this a bgktning 1 O my love ! my wife ! 
 
 Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, 
 
 Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty : 
 
 Thou art not conquer'd ; beauty's ensign yet 
 
 Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, 
 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there. 
 
 Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet 1 
 
 ! what more favour can I do to thee, 
 
 Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain 
 
 To sunder his that was thine enemy 1 
 
 Forgive me, cousin ! Ah ! dear Juliet, 
 
 Why art thou yet so fair 1 Shall I believe 
 
 That unsubstantial Death is amorous, 
 
 And that the lean abhorred monster keeps 
 
 Thee here in dark to be his paramour ? 
 
 For fear of that I still will stay with thee, 
 
 And never from this palace of dim night 
 
 Depart again : here, here will I remain 
 
 With worms that are thy chambermaids ; ! here 
 
 Will I set up my everlasting rest, 
 
 And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars 
 
 From this Avorld-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last 1 
 
 Arms, take your last embrace ! and lips, you 
 
 The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss 
 
 A dateless bargain to engrossing death 1 
 
 Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide ! 
 
 Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 
 
 The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark I 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 63 
 
 Who is to act this? Shakespeare has thought more 
 than any actor can represent. 
 
 Nor is Juliet's death less passionate, though swifter. A 
 ■woman does not play with thought or its expression on 
 the edge of death. Moreover, she has faced death for 
 the last three days. She is accustomed to its companion- 
 ship. 
 
 What 's here 1 a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand 1 
 
 Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. 
 
 O churl ! drunk all, and left no friendly drop 
 
 To help me after ! I will kiss thy lips ; 
 
 Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them, 
 
 To make me die with a restorative. [Kisses him.] 
 
 Thy lips are warm ! 
 
 happy dagger ! 
 This is thy sheath ; there rest, and let me die. 
 
 And in the tomb is the silence of three dead lovers. 
 On this silence comes the uproar I have described : the 
 cries of the watch, the arrest of the Friar, of the Page, 
 and Balthasar ; the Capulets, the Montagues, the people 
 and the Prince. The stage fills. 
 
 Justice has done her work. She has passed through 
 a lake of innocent blood to her end. Tybalt, Mercutio, 
 Paris, Romeo, Juliet, Lady Montague, have all died 
 that she might punish the hate between the houses. 
 Men recognise at last that a Power beyond them has been 
 at work. 'A greater power,' cries the Friar to Juliet, 
 ' than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents.' 
 The Friar explains the work of Justice to the Prince ; the 
 Prince applies the punishment to the guilty — 
 
 Where be these enemies 1 Capulet ! Montague ! 
 
 See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, 
 
 That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love ; 
 
 And I, for winking at your discords too, 
 
 Have lost a brace of kinsmen ; all are punish'd. 
 
 The reconciliation follows. That is the aim of Justice. 
 The long sore of the state is healed. But at what a price ? 
 
64 LECTUKES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 We ask, was it just or needful to slay so many for this end ? 
 Could it not have been otherwise done? And Shake- 
 speare, deeply convinced, even in his youth, of the irony 
 of life, deeply affected by it as all his tragedies prove, 
 has left us with that problem to solve, in this, the first 
 of his tragedies ; and has surrounded the problem with 
 infinite pity and love, so that, if we are troubled, it may 
 be angry, with the deeds of the gods, we are soothed and 
 uplifted by our reverent admiration for humanity. 
 
 Shakespeare could not tell, nor can we, how otherwise 
 it might have been shaped ; but to be ignorant is not to 
 be content. We are left by the problem in irritation. If 
 the result the gods have brought about be good, the 
 means they used seem clumsy, even cruel, and we do not 
 understand. This is a problem which incessantly recurs 
 in human life, and as Shakespeare represented human 
 life, it passes like a questioning spirit through several of 
 his plays. I do not believe that he began any play with 
 the intention of placing it before us, much less of trying 
 to solve it. But as he wrote on, the problem emerged 
 under his hand, and he became aware of it. He must 
 have thought about it, and there are passages in Romeo 
 and Juliet which suggest such thinking, and such passages 
 are more frequent in the after tragedies. But with that 
 strange apartness of his from any personal share in human 
 trouble, which is like that of a spirit outside humanity — 
 all the more strange because he represented that trouble 
 so vividly and felt for it so deeply — he does not attempt 
 to solve or explain the problem. He contents himself 
 with stating the course of events which constitute it, and 
 with representing how human nature, specialised in dis- 
 tinct characters, feels when entangled in it. 
 
 This is his general way of creating, and it is the way of 
 the great artist who sets forth things as they are, but 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 65 
 
 neither analyses nor moralises them. But this does not 
 prevent any dominant idea of the artist, such as might 
 arise in his imagination from contemplation of his subject, 
 pervading the whole of his work, even unconsciously 
 arranging it and knitting it into unity. Such an idea 
 seems to rule this play. It seems from the way the 
 events are put by Shakespeare and their results worked 
 out, that he conceived a Power behind the master-event 
 who caused it and meant the conclusion to which it 
 was brought. This Power might be called Destiny or 
 Nemesis — terms continually used by writers on Shake- 
 speare, but which seem to me to assume in his knowledge 
 modes of thought of which he was unaware. What he 
 does seem to think is ; That, in the affairs of men, long- 
 continued evil, such as the hatreds of the Montagues and 
 Capulets or the Civil Wars in England, was certain to be 
 tragically broken up by the suffering it caused, and to be 
 dissolved in a reconciliation which should confess the 
 evil and establish its opposite good ; and that this was the 
 work of a divine Justice which, through the course of 
 affairs, made known that all hatreds — as in this case and 
 in the Civil Wars — were against the Universe. We may 
 call this Power Fate or Destiny. It is better to call it, as 
 the Greek did, Justice. This is the idea which Shake- 
 speare makes preside over Romeo and Juliet, and over 
 the series of plays which culminates in Richard III. 
 When we come to the great tragedies this belief of his 
 seems to have suffered shock. Though it lingers in 
 Hamlet in such a phrase as this of Horatio's — ' There 's a 
 divinity doth shape our ends, Rough hew them as we 
 may ' — yet it has weakened ; and it seems replaced in 
 Hamlet and Macbeth by the conception of a Destiny 
 which drives its victims headlong to their death or rain, 
 and the larger ends of whose justice, if it be just at all, 
 we do not see clearly as we see them in Romeo and Juliet 
 
 E 
 
66 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and in Richard III. Hamlet dies a victim of events 
 which occurred before he comes to Elsinore, and carries 
 with him to death innocent and guilty alike. Without 
 those events his character would not have slain him. 
 No good is seen to arise from his tragedy. 'The rest 
 is silence,' says Shakespeare. A blind, half-supernatural 
 power of evil starts Macbeth on his course of crime, 
 not the desire of Justice to set wrong things right in the 
 state. Things were not wrong under Duncan. Macbeth's 
 crime brings its natural result, but we are not made 
 conscious of a presiding Justice as we are in Romeo and 
 Juliet. Shakespeare seems to have lost that belief. 
 
 In Lear and Othello it is not only weakened or 
 lost, it is opposed, it seems, by another conception, or 
 perhaps I should say by another temper of mind, which, 
 looking at the world's misery and guilt, was led to feel 
 rather than to conceive that it was not Justice or 
 Destiny that ruled the world, but a ruthless irony which 
 played with men and women to pleasure its own cynicism, 
 as if the gods sat in a theatre and watched with weary 
 eyes the tragedy, comedy, or farce they ordained for 
 their careless entertainment. It is not Justice which is 
 done; Justice is not their aim, but amusement. And 
 when the curtain is rung down, they think no more of 
 Lear, Othello, Troilus, or Timon. It is not even the 
 Destiny of the Greek which sacrifices Othello, Cordelia, 
 Desdemona, or even Ophelia. It is a blind or a cynical 
 Will which plays with men and women as if they were 
 marionettes. It was well that Shakespeare did not 
 for long continue in this temper, but that he passed 
 through it is, I think, not to be doubted by those who 
 read Othello, Troilus and Cressida, and especially King 
 Lear. He is passing out of it in Ooriolanus, and in 
 Julius Ccesar he has emerged from it. 
 
 Nevertheless, this temper did not wholly master him 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 67 
 
 while he was under its sway. A strange impression, like 
 a spirit proceeding out of the whole of his tragic work, 
 a subconscious efflux from it, leads us to feel, through 
 the pit) 7 with which he encompasses the victims of 
 sorrow, and through the nobleness with w r hich he clothes 
 them, that they were not the mere sport of an ironical 
 Power, but rose above it into a higher world, where such a 
 Power could not follow them. It is so when we think of 
 Othello and Desdemona, of Lear and Cordelia. I do not 
 say that Shakespeare was directly conscious of making 
 such an impression when he wrote Lear and Othello. 
 He could scarcely be, as long as he felt that Justice 
 did not rule the world. But he does make it on us, and 
 in him it was an unconscious reversion to that original 
 type of his thought about the universe, which is to be 
 found in Romeo and Juliet and in Richard III. He there 
 imagined an eternal Justice, such as iEschylus conceived, 
 ' the virgin daughter of Zeus,' who directed the fates of 
 men and who insisted that evil should come to an end. 
 
 Yet there is a difference. The work of Justice in 
 ^Eschylus is simple. No complex problem is bound up 
 with it; it is the assertion of divine law in the punish- 
 ment of the guilty. But in Romeo and Juliet the work 
 of Justice is done through the sorrow and death of the 
 innocent, and the evil Justice attacks is destroyed 
 through the sacrifice of the guiltless. Justice, as 
 Shakespeare saw her, moving to issues which concern 
 the whole, takes little note of the sufferings of indi- 
 viduals save to use them, if they are good and loving, 
 for her great purposes, as if that were enough to make 
 them not only acquiescent but happy. Romeo and 
 Juliet, who are quite guiltless of the hatreds of their 
 clans, and who embody the loving-kindness which would 
 do away with them, are condemned to mortal pain and 
 sorrow of death. Shakespeare accepted this apparent in- 
 
68 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 justice as the work of Justice ; and the impression made 
 at the end upon us, which impression does not arise from 
 the story itself, but steals into us from the whole work of 
 Shakespeare on the story, is that Justice may have done 
 right, though we do not understand her ways. The 
 tender love of the two lovers and its beauty, seen in 
 their suffering, awaken so much pity and love that the 
 guilty are turned away from their evil hatreds, and 
 the evil itself is destroyed. And with regard to the 
 sufferers themselves, there is that — we feel with Shake- 
 speare — in their pain and death which not only re- 
 deems and blesses the world they have left, but which 
 also lifts them into that high region of the soul where 
 suffering and death seem changed into joy and life. 
 We think of them, but in a way we cannot explain, no 
 longer with pity, but with a certainty that all is well 
 with them, that they have arisen into a true happiness, 
 have become a vital portion of the Justice and Love which 
 sacrificed them for the welfare of the whole. Instead of 
 mourning over their fate, we are content : as we are content 
 when Cordelia and Desdemona perish, even though Shake- 
 speare, grimmer then than he is now, does not bring any 
 recognisable good out of their pain. Even in their sorrow, 
 still more in the wild misery of Othello, we feel by a kind 
 of subconsciousness that they are in that kingdom of the 
 soul, and worthy of it, where the pain and death of earth 
 are like dreams when one awaketh, where what they have 
 become through suffering lives for the inspiration of 
 humanity and attracts its love. 
 
 A few observations may be made on the poetry of this 
 play. First, it is sometimes conventional in its phrases. 
 Shakespeare was a playwright, and his audience expected 
 to hear, certainly at intervals, the phraseology to which 
 they were accustomed. It was wise, then, of him to use 
 
ROMEO AND JULIET 69 
 
 it, and even at times to heighten beyond the simplicity of 
 nature the speech of his characters. Such a convention 
 occurs in the speeches of Old Montague and Benvolio in 
 the first act, which describe Romeo's isolation in his love 
 for Rosaline. They are more flowery than natural. But 
 with regard to them and other conventions in the play, 
 they are so inspirited with imagination that we forget 
 they are conventions, and are almost surprised into 
 accepting them as natural because they are so beautifully 
 said. Moreover, in the special instance I have mentioned, 
 we forgive them, not only for their beauty, but also be- 
 cause they strike the keynote of the love-poetry of the 
 play, and enable us to grow into the passionate temper in 
 which the orchard scene and Juliet's invocation and the 
 parting in the morning of the lovers are conceived and 
 wrought. They are another example of Shakespeare's 
 careful gradation. 
 
 Secondly, certain soliloquies must be considered as 
 representing thought, not speech. They are to make the 
 audience understand what is passing through the mind 
 of the character, not what, under the circumstances, he 
 would have said aloud. Not all, but a large number of 
 Shakespeare's soliloquies are of this character. A maiden 
 might easily say aloud what Juliet says at the beginning 
 of the night scene from her balcony. It is intimate, 
 but not too intimate for speech. But her speech, 
 
 Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, 
 represents the secret passion of her body and soul, and 
 Juliet would not in life have said it aloud. And her 
 soliloquy when in bed she takes the drug is also a repre- 
 sentation of her thoughts ; it was not spoken in reality. 
 The dramatist is compelled to put it into words and 
 the actress to speak it — but to add to it gesture or 
 great changes in the voice or outward show is to mistake 
 altogether the idea of the dramatist. These soliloquies 
 
70 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 should be kept quiet ; the actor or actress should, while 
 they speak them, feel them to represent voiceless thought; 
 and the audience should listen to them with the same 
 feeling. If we take this view of them, and that Shake- 
 speare meant them to be so considered, a great deal in 
 them which seems too fantastical, too wild, even too 
 sensational for fine poetry, is both natural and excusable. 
 In some soliloquies, as for instance that of Romeo in the 
 tomb, the contents are mixed. Of this much was said 
 aloud, but some things were only thought by Romeo, and 
 a great actor should make this clear. When he does, he 
 varies easily the delivery of a soliloquy which is too often 
 ranted from beginning to end, and ranted most when it 
 ought to be most quiet. 
 
 I have spoken of the love-poetry. It has, whether in 
 its sorrow or delight, the passion, the charm, and the 
 over-brimming of youth. Imagination is in it like a 
 living spirit, but fancy plays through its lighter thoughts, 
 as when Juliet cries, 
 
 Give me my Romeo : and, -when he shall die, 
 Take him and cut him out in little stars, 
 And he will make the face of heaven so fine 
 That all the world will be in love with night, 
 And pay no worship to the garish sun. 
 
 Its hyperbole is natural to youth. Moreover, Shakespeare 
 knew the Italian tales where this kind of love-talk is so 
 frequent that it must rank as conventional. But in 
 Shakespeare's hands it is exalted into poetry by his im- 
 passioned imagination, and his incessant aspiration to 
 beauty. Finally, he has in this poetry that modern quality 
 which combines human passion with the doings of nature. 
 He harmonises nature to the human feeling of the hour. 
 The moon on the orchard-trees, the solitary star, the silent 
 nightingale, and the lark heralding the morn, are as much 
 in tune with the hearts of the lovers as the roaring wind 
 and cataract-rain are to the heart of Lear. 
 
Ill 
 
 RICHARD II 
 
 In 1592, the first part of Henry VI. was acted at the 
 Rose Theatre, on March 3. The second part, it is pre- 
 sumed, followed; and the third part the following 
 autumn. These plays were originally written by other 
 men than Shakespeare and were, as some conjecture, 
 revised by Shakespeare and Marlowe in partnership. If 
 so, Shakespeare worked afterwards upon them alone, after 
 Marlowe's death. There are passages, notably at the 
 end of the third part of Henry VI, where Gloucester's 
 character is brought into harmony with his character 
 in Richard III, which are entirely from Shakespeare's 
 hand. Whether these Gloucester passages were written 
 before or after Richard III., they lead up to that play, 
 which of all the historical plays of Shakespeare is said 
 to be the first composed, and was probably acted early 
 in 1593. Richard II. followed, it is supposed, almost 
 immediately on Richard III. ; and many say that as 
 the verse and style of Richard III. emulated Marlowe's, 
 so Richard II. was suggested by Marlowe's Edward II. 
 It may be so, I do not know. What we do know is 
 that the work of both plays is done in the manner of an 
 artist whose style is his own. In fire and fury of move- 
 ment and utterance, in passion of action and rhetoric, in 
 dramatic power and in gloom of fate, Richard III. is 
 greater, or shall I say more remarkable, than Richard II. 
 In wisdom, thoughtfulness, in a wider range over human 
 nature, in a kindlier humanity, a softer glow, in the pity 
 
 71 
 
72 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 which accompanies the dark work of fate, and especially in 
 the loveliness of the poetry, Richard II. excels Richard III. 
 It seems astonishing that within a year, two plays, each 
 so great, yet each imbued with so different a spirit, should 
 have been written ; but after all it is, at this creative time, 
 no more astonishing than the writing within a few years 
 of plays so different as Tamburlaine and Edward II. 
 
 There are, however, other reasons which suggest 
 that Richard II. preceded Richard III. Richard II. 
 is more full of the flowing poetry, so rich in senti- 
 ment, which belongs to most of the previous plays. 
 Rhyme is the natural form of such poetry, and it is 
 used copiously in Richard II, and very sparingly in 
 Richard III. The play has less power, less incident, 
 less action, and more of sentiment than Richard III. ; 
 it is less close in texture and less complex — that is, it is 
 inferior in dramatic strength and vitality. As an his- 
 torical drama Richard III. is on a higher level than 
 Richard II. Both are fateful, but the fate that broods 
 over Richard III. is of a deeper, more solemn gloom, and 
 seems to argue a more experienced hand, a graver cast of 
 thought, a more serious view of history. These consider- 
 ations might lead us to say that Richard III. followed its 
 companion ; a conclusion I do not accept. 
 
 The discussion, however, as to which was first, is not 
 of any importance. The plays were written within the 
 same year, and the reason of their difference in manner, 
 strength, experience, and versification ma}^ not arise from 
 any change in Shakespeare's dramatic power, but simply 
 from an artist's desire of change. Shakespeare may have 
 written them differently in order to vary his hand, or 
 because he felt that the character of Richard II, being 
 itself sentimental, fantastic, and fluent, was best repre- 
 sented by the fluid, hurrying, rhyming measures he used, 
 and that of Richard III. by the stately gravity of blank 
 
RICHARD II 73 
 
 verse. The subject then, in both cases, would make the 
 differences. 
 
 Why did Shakespeare and his fellows begin to write 
 plays the subjects of which were drawn from English 
 history? It was that a change had passed over the 
 spirit of England. She had begun to realise, as she had 
 not before, how great she was, how separate from other 
 nations, how free from foreign influences and powers, 
 how united, in spite of some hostile and dividing elements, 
 were her Queen and nobles, burghers and people. A great 
 and imaginative pride in England filled the hearts of men 
 before 1580, thirteen years before Richard III., and is 
 plainly revealed in Spenser's Faerie Queene. Loyalty to 
 Elizabeth as representing this great people now became 
 a passion. France and Spain, hating her Protestantism, 
 were against the Queen ; and though she did not wish for 
 war, though she and her ministers avoided it all they 
 could, yet they matched themselves, in the secret drift 
 of their policy, against the Continental powers; played 
 France against Spain and Spain against France, till 
 Philip, the great overshadower of Europe, was sorely 
 troubled. When the sea-dogs of England took up the 
 game, bled, harried, and plundered Spain in the Spanish 
 main, the folk in England praised God. When in 1587 
 Drake came home laden with spoil, having ravaged the 
 cities, and taken the galleons, of the western coasts of the 
 Americas, and rounded the world ; when he stormed Spain 
 in her own ports, singeing the very beard of Philip, 
 England burst into pride and joy. Philip at last was 
 hurried into fury; and all the world looked on with 
 wonder when the Armada, manned by the flower of Spain,, 
 was driven to flight by a host of small ships ; and in her 
 flight perished, ship by ship, in the northern seas, and on 
 the western coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 The victory was felt to be not only political but moral. 
 
74 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 God, they said, was on the side of England ; and the heart 
 of her people swelled with a religious awe and gratitude 
 when it felt itself chosen as the avenger of injustice and 
 cruelty ; swelled as high with personal pride when it also 
 began to know itself to be the mistress of the seas. No 
 wonder the Faerie Queene rose from the heart of Spenser. 
 No wonder the dramatists, and Marlowe beyond the rest 
 in Edward II, began the long series of historical plays. 
 No wonder Shakespeare, whose humanity felt all that the 
 nation felt, turned to record the history of his people ; and 
 having re-edited Henry VI, began with Richard II. and 
 Richard III. to describe the past sins, sorrows, glories, 
 and the march of freedom, of his people. All his historical 
 plays have their root in patriotism or some outburst of 
 patriotic passion. It were well to collect them together, 
 but none are finer, not even the closing words of the 
 Royal Bastard in King John, 
 
 This England never did, nor never shall, 
 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
 
 But when it first did help to wound itself. 
 
 Now these her princes are come home again, 
 
 Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
 
 And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue 
 
 If England to itself do rest but true. 
 
 than the great cry of Gaunt from his dying bed in 
 Richard II. All who love their country know it well. 
 This patriotism fills the heart of Henry IV. : and the play 
 of Henry V. is full of the sound of trumpets blowing to 
 the glory of England. Had it not been so damaged by the 
 pirates who took it up eagerly because it so spread-eagled 
 England, it would have come down to us less injured 
 by passages unworthy of Shakespeare's dignity. 
 
 Of this historical and patriotic drama these two Richard- 
 plays are the first entirely written by Shakespeare. He 
 made of them — and this point is of great interest — a 
 framework to enclose a greater drama of the Civil Wars. 
 
RICHARD II 75 
 
 He traced their origin, as he conceived it to be, in the 
 usurpation of Bolingbroke and the deposition of Richard. 
 He drew in Richard II. the political causes, which were 
 also the moral causes, of Richard's overthrow, and pre- 
 saged the evils which would follow for the state from the 
 rough seizure of the crown by Bolingbroke. 
 
 Then he drew in Richard III. the close; the final 
 working out by avenging Justice of the punishment of 
 civil war. He made it clear that the war was caused by 
 the ambitions, jealousies, hatreds of great princes and 
 nobles, who remembered only themselves, and forgot the 
 welfare of the people. As the story of Romeo and Juliet 
 expressed the wrath of Justice against the hatreds by 
 which the Montagues and Capulets disquieted Verona, so 
 the dramas from Richard II. to Richard III. told how 
 the justice of moral evolution punished the kings and 
 nobles who made England swim in blood. 
 
 When Shakespeare had written the beginning and the 
 end of this, it stole into the chambers of his imagination 
 to write the intermediate story, to paint the full picture. 
 He had already done some of this work in the three parts 
 of Henry VI. ; and I think he now made a fresh revision 
 of those plays, and added some few things to them, which 
 would serve to round out this idea of his. Then he filled 
 up his space with Henry IV. and Henry V., and the thing 
 was done. 
 
 Some suggest he did this with a purpose — to show 
 what bad government was, and its evils; what good 
 government was, and its results. I do not think this 
 true. His purpose was artistic. He desired to complete 
 his conception, to combine all the plays into a whole. In 
 completing it, the moral and political philosophy of good 
 or bad government came in, as a necessary part of the 
 conception, but its lessons were not directly but indirectly 
 given. His true aim was to represent human life in action 
 
76 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and thought within the events which history laid before 
 him. He did that ; and then the parts shaped themselves, 
 under his guiding conception, into an artistic whole. He 
 saw it, and rejoiced. 
 
 The artistic result is remarkable. We have, in these 
 eight plays, not only eight separate plays, five of which 
 are complete within themselves, but one single drama also, 
 with a unity of its own, with one subject, with one end to 
 which they look forward, and with one divine Justice in 
 them, slowly working out its laws to their fulfilment. 
 And the years over which this mighty drama extends 
 are nearly ninety years. I wish it were possible to act 
 them all in the same day. It would then be seen that 
 Richard III. wound up that web of fate which began to 
 be woven in Richard II. ; and which, weaving on through 
 Henry IV., V., and VI, contains in its living tapestry so 
 great and various a representation of human life as never 
 yet was brought together and harmonised by any genius 
 in the modern world ; of life in all classes of society ; of 
 life passing from the most tragic sorrows to the most 
 comic even the rudest pleasures; life in the streets of 
 London, in the country, on the battlefield, in the council, 
 at the court and the alehouse, in the camps of France and 
 England, by the dying bed of kings, and in the garret 
 where Falstaff passed away with a broken heart. 
 
 The Greek trilogies carry us through long histories, and 
 they are united by the dominance of Destiny working 
 out her moral will. This eight-played drama is a bolder 
 effort. The justice of God, ruling states (for such at 
 this time of his life was Shakespeare's belief), works 
 out in these plays his single aim, and unites them into 
 one Drama. Again, they have not the same unbroken 
 solemnity and dignity which the Greek trilogies possess. 
 They are broken up with comedy and farce, with many 
 scenes unrelated to the end, with the creation of a host of 
 
RICHARD II 77 
 
 needless characters, with many things said and done which 
 exceed just measure. They have indeed their grea't and 
 dignified scenes both of action and speech, scattered and 
 mingled through the rest, and these have a great weight 
 and power. They heighten and establish the whole 
 impression, given to us in the plays, of human life which 
 indeed is a more mingled landscape than any Greek play 
 represents. The plays have, then, a greater variety, a 
 larger range over human life, than any single trilogy ; nor 
 do they want, when we feel them as a whole, an awful 
 solemnity. Their work is unequal, and that is not the 
 case with the giant work of iEschylus, or the steady great- 
 ness of Sophocles — men who do not drop below their 
 power ; but Shakespeare was now only learning his work. 
 We do not have him here at his best. Moreover, and 
 this is a great pity, the three plays of Henry VI. are not 
 originally from his hand. Had he rewritten them alto- 
 gether, and on the same level as even the two Richard 
 plays, the splendour of this great single drama, made up 
 of eight plays, would blind the eyes of the intellect and 
 of the soul of man. 
 
 Again, the dramas of Richard II. and 777. are purely 
 historical. Their subject, their persons, their events, were 
 taken by Shakespeare, without change, almost without 
 addition, from the chronicles. They move among kings, 
 nobles, and their dependants. The people are unrepre- 
 sented except by one or two persons, like the gardener in 
 Richard II, like the two citizens in Richard III. 
 
 In the second type of the historical play which Shake- 
 speare afterwards invented — in Henry IV. and V. — many 
 additions are made to the history. The people are 
 brought in, and drawn with mastery. The great folk 
 are there, but so are the other classes — the country 
 justice, his servant, the rustic recruits, the common 
 soldiers, the mistress of a London tavern, the grooms, 
 
78 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 ostlers, and travellers, thieves, sheriff-officers, courtezans 
 and bullies, the broken-down gentleman, the merchants, 
 the clergy, — a crowd of types, all invented, all making 
 history vital, all disclosing what lay beneath the battles 
 of kings and nobles, of kites and crows, in the upper 
 air of society. 
 
 Richard II. has none of this, nor Richard III. Nothing 
 is added to events, or to the personages, save the develop- 
 ment of their characters. In this play, the character of 
 Richard, carefully and slowly wrought, dominates the 
 whole, makes the events and makes the catastrophe. It 
 is the play. The character of Bolingbroke is quite 
 secondary. Its outlines are drawn, but they are only 
 partly filled up. What he is meant to be is more seen 
 in his opposition to Richard than in himself. He is the 
 strong man against the background of whose character 
 the weakness of Richard stands out clear. But Shake- 
 speare kept the full presentation of his character till he 
 came to write Henry IV. 
 
 The Duke of York is a good sketch, but in his senile 
 bluster of words, and his weak reversal of them when 
 any action is required, and in his soft yielding to fate, 
 he is only a faded representation of what Richard, without 
 his touch of genius, might have been as an old man. 
 Even in his furious demand for his son's death as a pledge 
 of his loyalty to Bolingbroke — a scene which is quite 
 unworthy of Shakespeare — he is another image of the 
 excess into which weakness of will is so often betrayed. 
 His haste, his fury, his exaggerated defiance of natural 
 feeling — how could a father ask the King to slay his son ? 
 — are nothing more than weakness desperately trying to 
 convince itself that it is strong, a condition of soul into 
 which Richard falls again and again. His loyalty, which 
 is his religion, is first broken down by the iniquity of the 
 King, yet in principle is retained. Then circumstance 
 
RICHARD II 79 
 
 steals even his principle away, and he joins Bolingbroke. 
 Then he recovers his principle by transferring his loyalty 
 to Bolingbroke. In a word, he is a very old man, and his 
 words and acts are carefully studied from weak old age. 
 The sketch may well be contrasted with that of Gaunt, 
 who is as old a man, but who has not lost his will, his 
 power, or his courage. He stays but a short time, only 
 in two scenes, but we see him as if he were alive before 
 us ; one of the old school of Edward in. ; chivalrous, 
 honourable, fit for the works and the trials of war, 
 as fit as Richard was unfit for them ; of deep ex- 
 perience in life, yet tender; rigid in justice even to 
 blaming the King; honouring his own caste, yet loving 
 the people; knowing his duties to them and pressing 
 those duties on the King; loving his son, yet loving 
 England more. Old and with the trembling angers of 
 age, as well as its sorrows ; old and dying, but never 
 truer, more valiant, more patriotic, and more sorrowful 
 than in death. 
 
 As we stand by his deathbed, we see the trouble of 
 the land and presage the doom of Richard. It is part 
 of Shakespeare's preparation for his catastrophe. That 
 preparation has already begun in the first scene of the 
 first act. The murder of Gloucester, Richard's uncle, 
 underlies the challenges of Mowbray and Bolingbroke, 
 and also the policy of Richard towards the challengers. 
 That murder was planned by Richard and executed by 
 Mowbray before the play begins. It is now Richard's 
 policy to exile his tool Mowbray, and then to exile Boling- 
 broke. He gets rid of his accomplice in the murder, and 
 also of the man whom he suspects as its avenger. Boling- 
 broke, when he challenges Mowbray, has really attacked 
 Richard for the murder, and the King fears for his crown. 
 This fear is deepened by Bolingbroke's courtship of the 
 common people. 
 
80 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 How he did seem to dive into their hearts 
 
 With humble and familiar courtesy, 
 
 What reverence he did throw away on slaves, 
 
 Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles 
 
 And patient underbearing of his fortune, 
 
 As 'twere to banish their affects with him. 
 
 Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ; 
 
 A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, 
 
 And had the tribute of his supple knee, 
 
 With ' Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends ' ; 
 
 As were our England in reversion his, 
 
 And he our subjects' next degree in hope. 
 
 It is a fine sketch of an ambitious politician, as fine as 
 that of Absalom in the Book of Samuel ; and the sketch 
 is as admirably finished on the same lines in the rest 
 of the play. 
 
 The first and third scenes, with all the pomp and 
 circumstance of court, and tournament, and procession 
 — artistic delight in which is part of the character of 
 Richard — are one long preparation, not only for the 
 overthrow of the King and his death, but seem by their 
 length to be the stately introduction to a greater drama 
 than this single play ; to the vast drama of which I have 
 spoken which culminates in the doom of Richard in. and 
 the pacification of tortured England under Henry vn. 
 
 Every one has said that Richard is a study of weakness 
 of character. But the study is much more complicated 
 than that easy statement would infer. The character of 
 Richard, as freshly conceived by Shakespeare, is origin- 
 ally gentle, good because untempted, imaginative, loving. 
 He is a fantastic, careless dilletant of life, luxurious by 
 nature, easily excited, easily depressed, weak of will, of 
 conscience, and of reason. As long as he was in a 
 private gentleman's position, and when he first was King, 
 before he fell into the hands of flatterers and luxury, his 
 character was inoffensive, nay more, full of easy charm 
 and poetic sensibility; his weakness did then no harm; 
 
RICHARD II 81 
 
 Ms vanity amused but did not injure the state; his 
 slight touch of wild genius made him loveable. He is 
 the Queen's 'sweet Richard,' her 'sweet guest.' But 
 when he becomes a king, he is tempted by power he 
 thinks irresponsible, and by a horde of parasites who 
 play on his idea of himself and his position till he thinks 
 he is lord of the world. And then, his love of luxury, 
 his weakness and light vanity make him their victims. 
 All his good qualities, for the time, are overwhelmed. 
 
 Vanity with a strong character does not destroy good 
 sense or clear sight of affairs, but combined with a weak 
 character and a luxurious life, it rots away, 'insatiate 
 cormorant,' the sense which handles daily life, preys upon 
 itself, and blinds its victim's eyes to events and men. 
 It is no wonder, then, that Richard, now made vain, 
 weak, luxurious — a king, as he thinks, by the decree of 
 God Himself — should be blind to the danger of exiling 
 Bolingbroke and to the strength of Bolingbroke. Shake- 
 speare marks this total blindness, and while we feel, as we 
 read, the folly in Richard of which it is the result, we also 
 feel, as Shakespeare desires us to feel, the piteousness of it. 
 It is impossible to see that lonely figure, ignorant that he 
 has alienated every friend, starting for Ireland, without 
 some dim compassion for his inevitable doom. Even in 
 this far-off way Shakespeare prepares us for the pity we 
 shall hereafter give him. 
 
 But it is difficult to give him any pity now. For his 
 ' rash, fierce blaze of riot ' has made him insolent. That 
 insolence against law and man and the gods, which the 
 Greeks put into a doomed man, reaches a hateful height 
 in Richard, and is the more hateful because he is young. 
 It is shown when, consulting with Bagot and Green, he 
 lightly says that he will farm all England out and give 
 blank charters to his substitutes that they may wring 
 gold from all classes, without one thought of the civic 
 
82 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 guilt and mortal danger of this act ; still more shown 
 when, indignantly reproved by Gaunt for this iniquity, 
 he violates the decencies of life by mocking and abusing 
 a dying old man who is of as royal blood as himself; 
 who is dignified by his age; whom he should honour 
 as the stay of his kingdom; and to whom his pity is 
 due because he has parted him from the son of his old 
 age. His outburst of wrath at Gaunt's rebuke is vile. It 
 is said, however, in anger, but his words before he goes to 
 see Gaunt are said without passion, in the cold indiffer- 
 ence which belongs to a lawless life, and they are viler 
 still- 
 Now, put it, God, in his physician's mind 
 To help him to his grave immediately ! 
 
 This insolence, rooted in the weakness he thinks strength, 
 has neither courtesy, reverence, nor compassion. It is 
 doubled, with an equal ignorance of the danger he incurs, 
 when, with a breath, he seizes all the goods and revenues 
 of which his uncle dies possessed, and disinherits Boling- 
 broke. This is the insolence of a fool who thinks he can 
 violate all civil and moral law with impunity, because he 
 is a king. But above kings are the gods. 
 
 And Shakespeare represents their action. York, 
 Richard's best support, is shaken to the centre of his 
 loyalty. In a noble speech he appeals to Richard not 
 to be unworthy of his great ancestors, and Richard, 
 blind and doomed, buoyed up by the luxurious insolence 
 in him, only says — 
 
 Why, uncle, what 's the matter ? 
 York tells him that in seizing on Bolingbroke's succes- 
 sion, he is endangering his own ; ' you pluck,' he says to 
 the King, ' a thousand dangers on your head.' ' Think 
 what you will,' cries Richard — 
 
 we seize into our hands 
 His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands. 
 
RICHARD II 83 
 
 With that, he leaves for Ireland ; and Shakespeare ends 
 the scene by deepening our sense of the loneliness of the 
 King and of his certain doom, as we listen to the talk of 
 the nobles — Northumberland, Ross, and Willoby — who 
 are left on the stage. With such a king there is no 
 certainty in property or law. He has attacked their 
 whole Order in attacking one. Moreover, he has pilled 
 the commons, and his flatterers devour, like caterpillars, 
 the state. ' Let us go to Bolingbroke,' they cry, ' he will 
 redeem the crown from pawn.' 
 
 The next scene doubles the same impression. The 
 Queen, in Shakespeare's mystic way, feels beforehand the 
 coming trouble — 
 
 Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, 
 Is coming towards me, and my inward soul 
 With nothing trembles ; at some thing it grieves 
 More than with parting from my lord the King. 
 
 And Shakespeare is so interested in this experience of 
 presentiment, that he analyses it in a long conversation. 
 Green breaks in on this quiet scene with the dreadful 
 news of Bolingbroke's arrival, of all the great lords who 
 have gathered to his standard. York follows, crying 
 treason, but conscious of his inability to meet it. The 
 weakness of his character, in which Shakespeare makes a 
 fresh sketch of the weakness which is so great a part of 
 his subject, appears in every speech. ' I know not what 
 to do/ he cries. ' The King is my kinsman and my king. 
 Bolingbroke is also my kinsman, and he is wronged. I am 
 torn between them.' 
 
 Then Bushy, Green, and Bagot, the king's flatterers, 
 are left alone. They know their doom is at hand. They 
 bid farewell; farewell for ever. All is over. The first 
 division of the play is done. The rest is the working 
 out of Richard's ruin. The reader sees the ruin as if 
 
84 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 it were already accomplished; and then, so vivid is its 
 presentation, he also sees, in his mind's eye, the lonely 
 figure of Richard, far away in Ireland, vaguely wandering ; 
 who, unconscious of what he has done, is coming back to 
 death ; scarcely one friend left in England, and the only 
 lovers of his person flying for their lives ; York, his regent, 
 wavering in loyalty, his queen in sad retirement — a blind 
 pathetic figure on whom the shadow of fate lies dark and 
 deep. Even when he is not on the stage his solitary figure 
 thus dominates the play. 
 
 In these early historical plays, Shakespeare, clinging too 
 much to history, does not weave his characters so closely 
 and so dramatically into one another as he does after- 
 wards. Richard n. and Richard in. stand, for the most 
 part, apart from and above the rest, and develop almost 
 independently of the other characters. Nor are the 
 secondary characters less isolated from the play of other 
 characters upon them. In this play Bolingbroke is him- 
 self alone, so is York, so is Northumberland, so is the 
 Queen. Only Gaunt is inwoven with the others, in re- 
 ciprocating thought and action. It seems as if Shake- 
 speare at first felt, as he read his history, that the 
 personal character of a king or a great noble was every- 
 thing in those times ; that it made or marred a state. 
 And he drew that fact into its conclusions in the two 
 Richard plays. But, as he went on thinking, he felt that 
 this could not be quite true. Men were not really so 
 isolated from their fellows. Their character was not only 
 developed by events, but by their clash with other men or 
 women. And he changed his method. In Henry IV., in 
 Henry V., in King John, and afterwards in the Roman 
 history plays, the leading characters are closely influenced 
 by, and inwoven with, other characters. And the result 
 is that each character, unlike Richard u. or Richard in., 
 becomes more various, more complex, more than it 
 
RICHARD II 85 
 
 originally knew itself to be; not the impersonation of 
 one passion, one vice, or one goodness, but also the 
 presentation of the infinite variety which lies hid in 
 each personality; of the unexpected elements which 
 appear, to our surprise, in men and women whom we 
 think we know, at the touch of new events, at the touch 
 of other characters than their own. 
 
 That was a great change in the dramatic development 
 of Shakespeare as a writer of historical plays. I say of 
 historical plays, because he had already reached this 
 point in preceding plays not on historical subjects, as, 
 for example, in Romeo and Juliet, where all the char- 
 acters, down to the Nurse, so act and react on one 
 another that fresh evolution continually takes place in 
 each character. It was this which Shakespeare added 
 to the historical plays which followed Richard II. and 
 Richard III. The lonely dominance of a single character 
 is no longer to be found, except, perhaps, but greatly 
 modified, especially by his close relation to his mother, 
 in Coriolanus. 
 
 When we meet Richard next, on his return from Ire- 
 land, he is a doomed man, brought face to face with the 
 inevitable results of his folly. No change is wrought as 
 yet in his conceit of kingship or in his weakness. But a 
 twofold change has been wrought in him by the sorrow 
 and dismay of the overthrow which has whirled him from 
 the top to the bottom of the world. The first change is 
 that the insolence, the rudeness, the riotous thoughtless- 
 ness, the blindness and folly, which marked him in the 
 first scenes, begin to vanish away. The real amiability, 
 gentleness, sentimentality, affectionateness of the man 
 appear — those qualities for which he was loved by the 
 Queen and his friends. The 'sweet guest,' 'the sweet 
 Richard/ of the Queen takes shape. We see what he 
 would have been, had he never been a king, never been 
 
86 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 spoilt by the unlimited power which was too greatly 
 charged with temptation for his native weakness to resist. 
 
 This change is common in similar circumstances. But 
 the second change is uncommon, and illustrates Shake- 
 speare's desire to carry Richard's character into variety, 
 to give it originality. He adds poetic passion to the King. 
 The shock has awakened in Richard the imagination and 
 passion which his comfortable luxury had kept in slumber. 
 Yet, the weakness of his nature prevents the poetry Shake- 
 speare has put into his mouth from being great. It is 
 half-frenzied, crying like a lost child, wild with self-pity, 
 loose and vagrant in thought, ineffectual with rage and 
 pride ; but it is alive with images, with a constant stream 
 of ideas, with rapid changes, and is frequently conducted 
 by the logic of the imagination to a finished close, as in the 
 passage on page 88. This is an amazing change from 
 the Richard who presides over the duel, or stands by the 
 deathbed of Gaunt, and it makes him profoundly interest- 
 ing. We give him now the admiration and sympathy 
 which we give to an imperfect genius, however weak may 
 be his will. He is now outside the common herd of kings, 
 and enters the royal realm of art; most like some wild 
 poet who has a natural weakness of character which 
 prevents excellence, and whom sore trouble of his own 
 making besets ; out of which trouble he draws the subjects 
 and the bewildered wailing of his verse. 
 
 A third change, a moral change, is afterwards repre- 
 sented — so full of ideas is Shakespeare, so attached to 
 Richard's character. The poetic power of the King con- 
 tinues to the end, but it loses its wildness, because his 
 character loses its weakness. Shakespeare lifts, as we 
 shall see, Richard's character above itself. But this moral 
 change has not yet taken place, only the first two changes 
 already mentioned. The King's weakness still remains, 
 though his imagination has awakened. And one idea of 
 
RICHARD II 87 
 
 his prideful past clings closely to him, till it is beaten out 
 
 of him by successive blows — his sense of the divinity of 
 
 kingship. ' England herself/ he cries, ' her very soil and 
 
 flowers, her animals, her stones, must take their part 
 
 against rebellion ' ; 
 
 This earth shall have a feeling and these stones 
 Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
 Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. 
 
 Nay, God Himself is on the side of anointed kings — 
 
 Not all the water in the rough rude sea 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed king ; 
 The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
 The deputy elected by the Lord. 
 For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd 
 To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, 
 God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 
 A glorious angeL 
 
 So high he flies in the weakness of pride. The next 
 
 moment, with equal weakness, he is hopeless; hearing 
 
 from. Salisbury that his Welsh army has abandoned him. 
 
 The next moment, spurred by Aumerle's reproach — 
 
 Comfort, my liege, remember who you are ; 
 
 he flies as high as before 
 
 Awake, thou sluggard majesty ! Thou sleepest. 
 Is not the king's name twenty thousand names ? 
 Arm, arm, my name ! A puny subject strikes 
 At thy great glory. Look not to the ground, 
 Ye favourites of a king : are we not high ? 
 High be our thoughts : 
 
 Fine words, to which Sir Stephen Scroop brings news 
 of dire calamity. Then Richard, plunged again into des- 
 pondency, unloads his weakness in a flux of words. I 
 quote them ; they prove that he has realised at last his 
 folly in the past, his weakness in the present. They 
 prove more — they prove that the imaginative poetic 
 element, the dreamy sentiment of his real nature, has 
 now taken command. He is henceforward the reflective 
 
88 LECTUEES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 poet of many words; never the man of action, never 
 the man with an aim, never Bolingbroke. 
 
 Of comfort no man speak : 
 Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs ; 
 Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes 
 Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth ; 
 Let 's choose executors and talk of wills : 
 And yet not so— for what can we bequeath 
 Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? 
 Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's, 
 And nothing can we call our own but death, 
 And that small model of the barren earth 
 Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 
 For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings : 
 How some have been depos'd, some slain in war, 
 Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd, 
 Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd ; 
 All murder'd ; for within the hollow crown 
 That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
 Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits, 
 Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp ; 
 Allowing him a breath, a little scene, 
 To monarchise, be fear'd, and kill with looks, 
 Infusing him with self and vain conceit 
 As if this flesh which walls about our life 
 Were brass impregnable ; and humour'd thus 
 Comes at the last, and with a little pin 
 Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king ! 
 Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood 
 With solemn reverence : throw away respect, 
 Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, 
 For you have but mistook me all this while : 
 I live with bread like you, feel want, 
 Taste grief, need friends : subjected thus, 
 How can you say to me I am a king ? 
 
 Carlisle, Aumerle, urge him to deeds on hearing this. 
 And he lifts his heart again. For the moment the ague- 
 fit of fear is overblown. But, when he hears that his 
 uncle York is gone over to the foe, it is the final blow. 
 The up-and-down of his bewildered passion has passed 
 away. Despair is now his only bedfellow. 
 
 Over against this excited and wavering man is set the 
 
RICHARD II 89 
 
 cool, steadfast man, with the single aim. Bolingbroke 
 wins the day, but he is not the protagonist of the play. 
 His presence, now that he is again brought face to face 
 with Richard, is used by Shakespeare, not so much to 
 display his character, as to expand the wild, feeble, senti- 
 mental character of the King. 
 
 We have met Bolingbroke twice before; in the scene 
 between him and Mowbray, and in the scene where he 
 is exiled. In the first he is loud-voiced, somewhat of 
 a blusterer, without the politic courtesy of his after 
 manners. But he may have exaggerated his attack on 
 Mowbray in order to conceal from the crowd what his 
 words really meant — a veiled attack on the King, through 
 Mowbray, for the murder of Gloucester. Mowbray blusters 
 also, but it is the bluster of guilt, side-glancing also at the 
 King, who has with him plotted the murder. 
 
 In the second scene Bolingbroke is quite different, 
 quite self-contained. He speaks to the King whom he 
 despises with covert sarcasm. At heart he is vengeful for 
 Gloucester's death, angry with himself, sorry for his father, 
 indignant with the King's treatment of England — but 
 nothing of these passions appears without. The needs 
 of the hour control his soul ; and his thirst for power is 
 curbed into waiting. He is content to believe in himself 
 and his fate. Exiled, he knows he will return, though 
 exile galls him to the core. He listens quietly to his 
 father who, out of his long experience, and in the cold- 
 ness of old age, tries to convince him that exile is nothing 
 to the philosophic man — ' Think you are not exiled, and you 
 are not.' But Bolingbroke, as unimaginative as Richard 
 is imaginative, who knows what he is, where he is, and 
 what he means, with absolute clearness, disperses the old 
 man's unreality. Exile not exile by thinking it is not ! 
 
 O ! who can hold a fire in his hand 
 By thinking on the frosty Caucasus 1 
 
90 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
 By bare imagination of a feast ? 
 Or wallow naked in December snow 
 By thinking on fantastic summer's heat ? 
 0, no ! the apprehension of the good 
 Gives but the greater feeling to the worse. 
 
 A full revelation of his practical, clear-sighted, steady 
 character. 'Let me come home to plain fact,' it seems 
 to say ; and then we know that Richard, who never sees 
 the facts around him, will be broken to pieces when he 
 meets Bolingbroke. 1 
 
 He meets him now. Bolingbroke, playing his politic 
 game, making no step forward till he has secured his 
 last, luring by a gracious humility Northumberland, York, 
 Percy, to his side, all things to all men, hiding his deter- 
 mined aim to gain the crown, sends a humble message to 
 Richard. ' On both my knees I kiss King Richard's hand. 
 Only to win back my lands, to reverse my banishment am 
 I come.' Yet, in the midst of these meek words, a certain 
 fury once breaks out, born of the wrath and fixed purpose 
 that he hides beneath them — a subtle touch of Shake- 
 speare's — 
 
 If not, I '11 use the advantage of my power, 
 
 And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood 
 
 Bain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen. 
 
 Northumberland bears this message to the King upon 
 the castle wall. Shakespeare, to lift us into pity, makes 
 Richard look like a king ; his eye, like an eagle's, ' lightens 
 forth controlling majesty'; and this pity gathers closely 
 
 1 It is worth saying that Shakespeare makes the patriotism of the 
 father descend to the son. Bolingbroke ends the scene in this way — 
 
 Then, England's ground, farewell ; sweet soil adieu ; 
 My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet ! 
 
 Nor is Richard less fond of his country. When he lands from Ireland he 
 cries — 
 
 I weep for joy 
 
 To stand upon my kingdom once again ; 
 
 Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand. 
 
RICHARD II 91 
 
 round him from this moment; accompanies him to 
 London, to Pomfret, to his death. We forgive the past 
 for the sake of the piteous present. Insolent majesty we 
 resented, but compassion waits on ruined majesty. 
 
 What is most pathetic in the castle scene is the in- 
 ability of its passion. Richard unlades his heart in fluent 
 feebleness till we are touched with contempt. But the 
 contempt is lessened by the imagination in his words. 
 How sensitive they are, every tense nerve thrilling through 
 them ; how full of pitiful, half- frantic poetry ! He stands 
 at first on his divine right as king. God omnipotent will 
 be his avenger; then he cries that his England will be 
 devastated; her maid-pale peace be changed to scarlet 
 indignation — and in the prophecy Shakespeare means us 
 to presage the Civil Wars which Henry's usurpation will 
 begin. From this high cry he falls, bending to Boling- 
 broke's desire, and, having yielded, regrets his shame 
 with bitter passion— 
 
 God ! O God ! that e'er this tongue of mine, 
 That laid the sentence of dread banishment 
 On yond proud man, should take it off again 
 With words of sooth. ! that I were as great 
 As is my grief, or lesser than my name, 
 
 Or that I could forget what I have been, 
 Or not remember what I must be now. 
 Swell'st thou, proud heart ? 
 
 He sees Bolingbroke draw near, and the wild, imaginative 
 self-pity, indignation, and fear of what will be, breaks into 
 a storm of self-revealing words — 
 
 What must the king do now ? Must he submit ? 
 The king shall do it : must he be depos'd ? 
 The king shall be contented : must he lose 
 The name of king 1 o' God's name, let it go : 
 
 1 '11 give my jewels for a set of beads, 
 My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, 
 My gay apparel for an almsman's gown, 
 My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood, 
 My sceptre for a palmer's walking-staff, 
 
92 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 My subjects for a pair of carved saints, 
 
 And my large kingdom for a little grave, 
 
 A little little grave, an obscure grave ; 
 
 Or I '11 be buried in the king's highway, 
 
 Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet 
 
 May hourly trample on their sovereign's head ; 
 
 For on my heart they tread now whilst I live ; 
 
 And buried once, why not upon my head ? 
 
 Aumerle, thou weep'st, my tender-hearted cousin ! 
 
 We '11 make foul weather with despised tears ; 
 
 Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn, 
 
 And make a dearth in this revolting land. 
 
 Or shall we play the wantons with our woes, 
 
 And make some pretty match with shedding tears ? 
 
 As thus ; to drop them still upon one place, 
 
 Till they have fretted us a pair of graves 
 
 Within the earth ; and, therein laid : ' There lies 
 
 Two kinsmen digged their graves with weeping eyes.' 
 
 Would not this ill do well ? Well, well, I see 
 
 I talk but idly and you laugh at me. 
 
 Exhausted by this ebb and flow of passion, but having 
 freed his soul by it, he meets Bolingbroke with the dignity 
 a doomed man borrows from the belief that all is over, 
 with the sarcasm and the courage which are born in a 
 weak man when he feels that the worst has come; and 
 passes, at Bolingbroke's command, to London. 
 
 This to and fro of excitement and depression, soaring 
 and sinking, — and behind it Richard's amazed self-pity, 
 and behind that, our deep pity felt through Shakespeare's 
 pity for one so inevitably mauled by moral law, touched 
 too into sombre colour by our half-contempt for him, and 
 into wild, delicate, sunset colour by our sympathy with 
 his fantastic imagination — are, in this wonderful series 
 of passages, as penetrating, as pathetic as any in the work 
 of Shakespeare. 
 
 The act ends with that gentle scene in the Duke of 
 
 York's garden, where the Queen and her ladies come to 
 
 breathe the air. It is Shakespeare's dramatic way, after 
 
 the turmoil and the tempest, to place us in a quiet place, 
 
 > and in quiet thought. It is, he thinks, the way of human 
 
RICHARD II 93 
 
 life to do so with us. But he does not leave in it his sub- 
 ject. Rather, he resumes the whole of the previous action 
 of the play, and anticipates its close, in the allegory the 
 gardener makes. The garden is England. The gardener 
 is the King ; the fruit-trees are the nobles; the herbs and 
 flowers the people ; and the weeds and caterpillars those 
 who devour the state. The gardener and his aids, in their 
 walled quiet, discuss what is good government, and what 
 is not ; that is, they discuss that which forms one of the 
 underlying motives of the play itself, and of the whole 
 series of plays down to the close of Richard III. And 
 admirably it is done. The serious, philosophic talk of 
 the gardener is set with natural art between the pretty 
 interchange of thought of the Queen and her ladies and 
 the sorrowful break from her ambuscade of the Queen 
 when she hears the gardener blame the King — 
 
 ! I am press'd to death through want of speaking. 
 What, thought Shakespeare, are kings and queens and 
 the quarrels of great nobles to this honest quiet workman 
 who does with vital interest the work he enjoys, who has 
 no foolish resentment against the great folk, even when 
 they abuse him ! Nothing but pity stirs his heart. 1 With 
 a delicate sympathy for the Queen and the woman, with 
 the reflective sentiment of one who lives far away from 
 the world, he plants in her memory a bed of herbs whose 
 nature will recall her sorrow and her fate. The lines are 
 exquisitely fitted to the case, the scene, and the man — 
 
 Poor queen ! so that thy state might he no worse, 
 I would my skill were subject to thy curse. 
 Here did she fall a tear ; here, in this place, 
 I '11 set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace ; 
 Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen, 
 In the remembrance of a weeping queen. 
 
 1 It would be well to compare this passage with the scene in Sir Walter 
 Scott's Abbot between Mary of Scotland and the gardener of Blinkhoolie, 
 who has been, in old days, the Abbot of St. Mary's. The one is as much 
 a piece of genius as the other. 
 
94 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The scene at the beginning of the fourth act in 
 Westminster Hall seems needless, a drag on the move- 
 ment of the play. The only excuses I can find for it 
 are, first, that it forms an introduction to the entrance 
 of King Richard who is the centre of interest ; and 
 secondly, that it reveals those elements of disturbance, 
 lying underneath the seeming peace of the usurpation, 
 which in the succeeding plays bring about the Civil 
 Wars. It is filled with the violent quarrels and fierce 
 speech of hot-headed nobles. We anticipate, as we 
 hear them, rebellion and battle. And this anticipation is 
 enforced by the Bishop of Carlisle, who, indignant at 
 Richard's deposition as violating the divine right of 
 kings, foretells the Civil Wars in a speech which is 
 remembered in Henry IV., when the king draws near to 
 death. The deposition of Richard is the source of the 
 doom that overshadows the following plays. If you crown 
 Bolingbroke, says the Bishop — 
 
 let me prophesy, 
 The blood of English shall manure the ground 
 And future ages groan for this foul act ; 
 Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels, 
 And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars 
 Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound ; 
 Disorder, horror, fear and mutiny 
 Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd 
 The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls. 
 O ! if you raise this house against this house, 
 It will the woefullest division prove 
 That ever fell upon this cursed earth. 
 Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, 
 Lest child, child's children cry against you ' woe ! ' 
 
 It is a passage which suggests that Shakespeare had 
 already conceived the whole series as one drama. 
 
 Then the King enters. Shakespeare has evidently 
 spent so much trouble over this scene that he has over- 
 done his work. He has introduced that spectacular 
 scene with the mirror which is quite unnecessary, which 
 
RICHARD TT 95 
 
 sins against the ' Not too much,' and which, worst of all, 
 not only lowers our pity for Richard because it exhibits 
 his theatrical folly in public, but also degrades the char- 
 acter of Bolingbroke below the level it keeps in the rest of 
 the play. In permitting this antic of Richard, Boling- 
 broke lays him open to a cruel mockery which his terrible 
 sorrow neither deserves nor ought to have. I wonder 
 Shakespeare's exquisite delicacy towards human nature 
 could have permitted it. Nor is it the only stain on the 
 scene. Shakespeare should have felt that Northumber- 
 land's demand that the king, round whom the compas- 
 sion of all gentle folk should gather, must read out, 
 and sign the record of, all his crimes and follies, was a 
 brutal demand. It is also needless for the dramatic 
 action, and, if it be done to increase the pity for Richard 
 which ought to preside over the scene, is a clumsy way 
 of doing this. There is pity enough. It needs no false 
 heightening. There is more of pathos in this short phrase 
 of Richard's than in all these tricks (from whatever source 
 they were borrowed) to make it keener, 
 
 Bol. I thought you had been willing to resign. 
 K. Rich. My crown, I am ; but still my griefs are mine. 
 You may my glories and my state depose, 
 But not my griefs ; still am I king of those. 
 
 It is enough. The words with which afterwards 
 Richard pours out his anger, his misery, are weaker than 
 these. He is, throughout the scene, like a wild animal 
 trapped in the wood, and crying in the night, while the 
 free beasts pass him by and mock at his distress. The 
 scene is piteous; yet we may wish it had been shorter, 
 and less sensational. 
 
 The fifth act now begins, and closes all. The last 
 stroke of fate falls on the King ; and his death is the first 
 stroke of a new fate which broods over Bolingbroke, and 
 the work of which is wrought out through the two parts 
 
96 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of Henry IV. The murder of Richard, the blood of every 
 
 noble, slaughtered to clear the path of Boliugbroke to 
 
 the throne, cry for vengeance. The dragon's seed is 
 
 sown. It springs up finally into the armed men of the 
 
 Civil War, when father slew the son and son the father. 
 
 Richard, in the hour of his doom, sees the beginning 
 
 of this and prophesies it to Northumberland. Again 
 
 Shakespeare seems careful to prepare us for what is 
 
 coming in Henry IV.; seems as if he already looked 
 
 forward to the large design of which we have spoken. 
 
 Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal 
 
 The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne, 
 
 The time shall not be many hours of age 
 
 More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head 
 
 Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think, 
 
 Though he divide the realm and give thee half, 
 
 It is too little, helping him to all ; 
 
 And he shall think that thou, which know'st the way 
 
 To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again, 
 
 Being ne'er so little urg'd, another way 
 
 To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne. 
 
 The love of wicked friends converts to fear ; 
 
 That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both 
 
 To worthy danger, and deserved death. 
 
 Another preparation for Henry IV. is also in this act 
 (Sc. iii.). It is the short talk between Percy and Boling- 
 broke about him who is the Prince of Wales in Henry 
 IV. The dissolute, unthrifty, wanton boy who lives with 
 Falstaff is sketched for us, and then his higher future 
 in Henry V. ' I see,' says his father — 
 
 As dissolute as desperate ; yet, through both, 
 
 I see some sparkles of a better hope, which elder days 
 
 May happily bring forth. 
 
 I wonder, when I read these preparation passages, whether 
 Shakespeare, who was so careful in his art, did not insert 
 them in this play after he had written Henry IV. 
 
 One word must be said about the second and third 
 scenes, in which York plays so curious a part. The 
 
RICHARD II 97 
 
 second is, of course, remarkable for the fine and well- 
 known description of Bolingbroke riding into London. 
 It serves to lift the figure of Richard into even a 
 higher realm of pity. But the third, where York begs 
 the death of his own son from the Bang, offends the 
 natural instinct of the heart, and is one of the few 
 examples of this in Shakespeare ; and though the scene, 
 where Aumerle, York, and the Duchess rush one after 
 another into the closet of the King, may be a good piece 
 of stage effect, it is all the worse for that. It troubles 
 with mere sensationalism the solemn atmosphere of fate 
 which hangs over the death of Richard. 
 
 We now come to the representation of Richard in this 
 final act, which opens with his meeting the Queen on 
 his way to the Tower. We read the scene, and are at 
 first amazed. This is not the Richard whom we have 
 known. He is all changed. Shakespeare, who has con- 
 ceived Richard's original character as of good and loving 
 stuff underneath his native weakness, the Queen's ' fair 
 rose and map of honour,' the ' beauteous inn where no hard- 
 favoured grief should lodge ' ; who had then represented 
 his weakness as rising, through irresponsible power and 
 luxury, over the goodness and love into vanity, blindness, 
 and insolence; who had then, by terrible misfortune's 
 siege, made him, while he retained his weakness, and 
 indeed through his weakness, into the semblance of a 
 fantastic poet, has now made a further change. He felt 
 that Richard, since he was originally good, since he was 
 betrayed by weakness of will but not by native vicious- 
 ness into his faults, could not pass through so fierce a 
 torrent of sorrow and misfortune without losing what was 
 base and weak in him, and recovering whatever might be 
 noble and strong. He is purged of his weakness. He is 
 purged of his selfishness. He is purged of his blindness. 
 He is purged of his insolentia. He speaks no longer with 
 
98 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 a flux of words. All he says is brief and clear. He sees 
 with equal steadiness the past, the present, and the future. 
 His love is no longer a feeble sentiment. The parting with 
 his Queen is marked by strength and self-control deeply set 
 in love, and with the wisdom of death in every word. He 
 knows he is the victim of Fate, and he knows why — 
 
 Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, 
 To make my end too sudden : learn, good soul, 
 To think our former state a happy dream ; 
 From which awak'd, the truth of what we are 
 Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet, 
 To grim Necessity, and he and I 
 Will keep a league till death. 
 
 Can any words, any temper, be more unlike his previous 
 words and temper ? He is quite clear as to what the 
 Queen should do ; and sets her in the way to do it, 
 briefly and fully. When the Queen, seeing he is changed, 
 and mistaking his brave acceptance of the inevitable, 
 urges him to fierceness : 
 
 What ! is my Richard both in shape and mind 
 
 Transform'd and weakened 1 Hath Bolingbroke deposed 
 
 Thine intellect ? hath he been in thy heart ? 
 
 The Hon dying thrusteth forth his paw 
 
 And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage 
 
 To be o'erpowered ; 
 
 he answers, out of the grave atmosphere of death which 
 wraps him so closely, in quiet words, full of peace and 
 beauty. All that was weak and foolish has passed away, 
 but his lovingness is deepened by the change. His parting 
 words are lovely with tenderness and sweet remembrance. 
 Nor does Shakespeare, in that last scene in the 
 dungeon, where the murder is wrought, make him lower 
 than this. His long soliloquy is not only descriptive of 
 the place where he sits — Shakespeare never omits to 
 paint for the intellectual eye his scenery — it is, in its 
 gentle philosophy, its sensitive ear, its poetic sym- 
 bolism, its love of music, and its kindly irony, not un- 
 
RICHARD II 99 
 
 worthy of a man, and of a man in the very shadow of 
 
 death ; and its close is beautiful with pathetic and lonely 
 
 passion. The music which at first he loved, now maddens 
 
 him ; he bids it cease — yet — 
 
 Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me ! 
 For 'tis a sign of love, and love to Richard 
 Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world. 
 
 The tender, pathetic cry of this is deepened when, on 
 
 a sudden, the groom enters and tells how his heart 
 
 yearned when he saw Bolingbroke ride on roan Barbary, 
 
 Richard's favourite — 
 
 Rode he on Barbary ? Tell me, gentle friend, 
 How went he under him ? 
 
 It is only Shakespeare and Walter Scott who are capable 
 of these divine things. At this, and while Richard is lost 
 in recollection, the murderers break in, and all is over. 
 Richard dies sword in hand, 
 
 As full of valour as of royal blood. 
 
 The work of justice is done; the punishment of ill 
 
 government exacted ; the fatal result of weakness, when 
 
 strength was needed, reached ; and pity alone remains, 
 
 and the sorrowful tale to move the hearts of men. 
 
 Richard himself bequeaths that legacy; and no better 
 
 close can be given to all we have passed through than 
 
 his own words, as lovely as they are sad and grave — 
 
 Good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for France, 
 
 Think I am dead, and that even here thou tak'st, 
 
 As from my death-bed, my last living leave. 
 
 In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire 
 
 With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales 
 
 Of woeful ages, long ago betid : 
 
 And ere thou bid good-night, to quit their grief, 
 
 Tell thou the lamentable tale of me, 
 
 And send the hearers weeping to their beds : 
 
 For why the senseless brands will sympathise 
 
 The heavy accent of thy moving tongue, 
 
 And in compassion weep the fire out ; 
 
 And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black, 
 
 For the deposing of a rightful king. 
 
IV 
 
 BICHABD III 
 
 Richard III. completes the vast drama, carried on 
 through eight plays, which was begun in Richard II. 
 It is, as it were, the fifth act, the winding up of the 
 varied threads of the action of ninety years, the coming 
 home to roost of all their curses, hatreds, and crimes, the 
 accomplishment of the work of avenging Justice, and, in 
 Richmond's victory, the initiation of a new England, 
 purged from guilt. 
 
 In Richard III., then, the long tragedy is closed. It 
 brings to death those who, having torn the heart out of 
 their country, have tried to govern England for their own 
 advance, and sacrificed to that the welfare of the people. 
 Richard's figure embodies all the civil evil in himself. He 
 is it, incarnate ; and he dominates the play. Over against 
 him, and towering, is Margaret, who is the embodied 
 Destiny of the play. Her worn and wasted figure hovers 
 above it like a bird of doom. Her curse pervades its atmo- 
 sphere and enters into all its action. One by one the 
 guilty — Clarence, Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Buckingham, 
 all save Richard ; one by one the innocent — the two 
 boy-princes, Anne, Elizabeth, are forced to feel her 
 presence in the hour they meet* their fate, and to re- 
 cognise in her the impersonated vengeance of natural 
 law in the quarrel which has defiled England with 
 fraternal blood. Richard himself is made her avenger 
 in his bloody passage to the throne, and having finished 
 this work, he is himself destroyed by the evil he has 
 
RICHARD III 101 
 
 done. Nothing can be finer than this knitting of all 
 the avenging forces round the supernatural image of 
 Margaret, who is herself the prophetess and the victim of 
 Justice. It clasps all the persons and all the action of the 
 play into unity. It incarnates the judgment of moral law. 
 Within this main purpose of Justice working out the 
 penalties due to those hatreds of great families which in 
 their exercise injure the people — the conception which is 
 at the back of Romeo and Juliet — is the final evolution of 
 Richard's character and of his doom. When this play 
 begins that character has been already fully formed. His 
 long soliloquy in the third part of Henry VI. (Act III. Sc. ii.) 
 is Shakespeare's sketch of what Richard is when the new 
 drama opens. The passion at the root of him is, like 
 Macbeth's, ambition for the crown, with tenfold more 
 steadfastness in ambition than Macbeth possessed. Mac- 
 beth's ambition does not deliberately premeditate the 
 murder of Duncan. It may have occurred to him at 
 intervals, but it is only a sudden opportunity which 
 lures him into it. When he is in it, he debates the 
 crime, hesitates, fears, thinks of his honour, is imagina- 
 tive with dark superstition. None of these things touch 
 Richard. He plots all his murders beforehand with a 
 certain joy, with unblenching resolution. He has no 
 hesitation, nor does he debate with his honour, conscience, 
 fear, or affection. He condemns his brothers as well as his 
 enemies. Every means to his aim is right. ' Would,' he 
 cries, 'Edward were wasted, marrow, bones, and all/ 
 and Clarence, Henry, and young Edward dead. They 
 are in my way, they shall be cleared away. What other 
 pleasure in the world but sovereignty is there for me ? 
 Love ? Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb. 
 Therefore ' I '11 make my heaven to dream upon the 
 crown.' Shall I attain it with all those lives between it 
 and me ? 
 
102 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And I, like one lost in a thorny wood, 
 
 That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns, 
 
 Seeking a way and straying from the way ; 
 
 Not knowing how to find the open air, 
 
 But toiling desperately to find it out, 
 
 Torment myself to catch the English crown : 
 
 And from that torment I will free myself, 
 
 Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. 
 
 Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile, 
 
 And cry, ' Content,' to that which grieves my heart, 
 
 And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, 
 
 And frame my face to all occasions. 
 
 I '11 drown more sailors than the mermaid shall ; 
 
 I '11 slay more gazers than the basilisk ; 
 
 I '11 play the orator as well as Nestor, 
 
 Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, 
 
 And, like a Sinon, take another Troy. 
 
 I can add colours to the chameleon, 
 
 Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, 
 
 And set the murd'rous Machiavel to school. 
 
 Can I do this, and cannot get a crown ? 
 
 Tut ! were it further off, I '11 pluck it down. 
 
 Fierce ambition, cold cunning, finished hypocrisy, ruth- 
 less murder, conscienceless resolve — these are his powers. 
 And he keeps his word. He stabs Prince Edward after 
 the battle with a savage scoff — 
 
 Sprawl'st thou ! take that, to end thine agony. 
 When the others after Tewksbury are talking, he has 
 ridden from the field to London, entered the Tower, and 
 slain King Henry, mocking and rejoicing. And over the 
 dead body of the King he plans the murder of his brother 
 Clarence — 
 
 Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest, 
 Counting myself but bad till I be best. 
 
 A masterful person whose iron will makes and leads 
 events ! He is, on the contrary, the servant of Justice, 
 and Shakespeare rarely did a closer piece of work than 
 when, without any special insisting on this, he makes us 
 conscious of it. Richard thinks he makes and guides the 
 storm in which so many lives are shipwrecked. He is 
 
RICHARD III 103 
 
 really the chief victim of the storm, driven from shoal 
 to shoal, till he is wrecked inevitably. 
 
 But the most remarkable thing in his character, as 
 Shakespeare conceived it, is that he is devoid of the least 
 emotion of love. Not one trace of it exists, and it places 
 him outside of humanity. It is not the absence of con- 
 science which is at the root of his evil. Of course, he 
 who has no love has no true sense of right and wrong, 
 and the absence of conscience in Richard is rooted in the 
 absence of love in him. The source of all his crime is 
 the unmodified presence of self alone. As he stabs Henry, 
 he cries — 
 
 Down, down to hell ; and say, I sent thee thither, 
 I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear. 
 
 This creation of a character absolutely devoid of love 
 is deliberately done by Shakespeare. The Richard of the 
 original play of Henry VI. is not without some power 
 or grace of love. Ambition for the crown is also the 
 leading element in this Richard's character; these lines 
 which must be Marlowe's tell us that ; 
 
 And, father, do but think 
 How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown ; 
 Within whose circuit is Elysium, 
 And all that poets feign of bliss and joy. 
 
 But such an ambition would not alone make him the 
 monster he is in Richard III. — a man incapable of 
 love. It does not : he feels a passionate grief when he 
 thinks that his father is dead. He has no joy till he 
 hears he is alive. His very revenge is coloured by love : 
 it is the wrath of affection. What feeling of love this 
 earlier Richard has is natural, wholly unlike the sem- 
 blance of it which Shakespeare puts upon the lips of 
 the Richard of this play, who himself mocks at the 
 words of love which he uses. Nor do we see anything 
 
104 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in the original Richard of the mask of hypocrisy 
 our Richard wears ; nothing of the intellectual power, 
 the mastery of guile, the love of guile for its own sake, 
 the chuckling pleasure in his cunning, the deliberate 
 contempt of God and man, the deliberate self- contempt, 
 the deep scorn of women because they loved, the piti- 
 lessness, the self-isolation — all of which Shakespeare has 
 added to the Richard of this play; and none of which 
 could have been so complete, so unmodified, if any touch 
 of love had belonged to his character. 
 
 This is a unique attempt in Shakespeare's work. 
 Richard is entirely isolated by this absence of love from 
 humanity. He is deprived even of a great number of 
 the passions — all those which are derived from love or 
 opposed to love. Richard has no good passions, but 
 neither has he the evil passions of hatred, envy, or 
 jealousy. Any passion that he has — if the word passion 
 may justly be applied to ambition — is the servant of his 
 intellect. Of course, without love, and the qualities that 
 depend on it, he has no conscience, no repentance, no 
 fear of God. What seems at times remorse in him at 
 the end is the agony of failure, is fury at the breaking 
 down of his intellectual power. When a sense of the 
 existence of conscience occurs to him, it intrudes in 
 dreams only, not in real life. Awake, he passes from one 
 crime to another without one touch of emotion, without 
 one moment of morality. 
 
 This separates him even from Iago, whose malignity is 
 partly accounted for, who at least attempts to account for 
 his curious, self-gratulating pleasure in torturing Othello 
 by pretending jealousy. This also accounts for the un- 
 hesitating swiftness with which crime follows crime in 
 Richard's course, which otherwise would be unnatural. 
 Macbeth before Duncan's murder is not half so rapid. 
 The sense of honour which serves Macbeth for conscience 
 
RICHARD III 105 
 
 makes him pause again and again before the murder, but 
 Richard never hesitates. Old affections, admiration for 
 Duncan's character, the chieftain's sense of honour, hinder 
 Macbeth's quickness in guilt. Macbeth has some love in 
 his heart ; he loves his wife ; he would not have murdered 
 Clarence nor rejoiced when Edward died. He was natur- 
 ally full of the milk of human-kindness of which Richard 
 had not one drop. When he acts swiftly, and he is hurried 
 by his love for his wife as well as by his ambition, his 
 haste is lest his sense of honour, of which he is always 
 conscious, should get the better of him. It is only when 
 he has realised that honour is irrevocably violated that he 
 becomes the reckless murderer. Guilt is not his natural 
 element, because he is not mere intellect unbalanced by 
 any affection. One with Richard in ambition, he differs 
 from him by the presence of love in his nature. Richard 
 is loveless intellect, ambitious of unchallenged power — 
 absolute self with cunning — an awful solitary. 
 
 Shakespeare felt obliged to account for this super- 
 natural devilry in man; and he does so by making 
 Richard a monster from his mother's womb. 
 
 At his birth Nature rebelled ; 
 
 The owl shriek' d at thy birth, an evil sign ; 
 
 The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time ; 
 
 Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees ! 
 
 The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, - 
 
 And chattering pies in dismal discord sung. 
 
 Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, 
 
 And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope ; 
 
 To wit, an indigest deformed lump, 
 
 Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. 
 
 And his mother confirms the tale when she lays her 
 curse upon him. But Shakespeare does not think this 
 enough to motive the unnaturalness of the character. 
 Therefore he further dwells on Richard's belief that all 
 the world hates him for his misshapen person, and tha> 
 
106 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 heaven — the only touch of religion in Richard — has 
 made him in its anger ; 
 
 Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, 
 
 Let hell make crook' d my mind to answer it. 
 
 I have no brother, I am like no brother : 
 
 And this word ' love,' which grey-beards call divine, 
 
 Be resident in men like one another 
 
 And not in me : I am myself alone. 
 
 ' I am myself alone ' ; that is the keynote of Richard's 
 character as conceived by Shakespeare ; intellect without 
 love, like Goethe's Mephistopheles ; and by the absence 
 of love outside of human nature. 
 
 Be resident in men like one another, 
 And not in me. 
 
 It is this incapacity to even conceive love which makes 
 him try to do things which would seem impossible to 
 any one who loved. No other man could have wooed 
 Lady Anne as he did, or asked Elizabeth for her daughter, 
 yet both are not out of character in one who is wholly 
 ignorant of love. 
 
 What though I kill'd her husband and her father, 
 The readiest way to make the wench amends 
 Is to become her husband and her father ; 
 
 is a speech incredible on the lips of any one who has 
 ever loved. It is only when he has won Anne that he is 
 astonished ; and in the astonishment a faint gleam of 
 belief in the existence of moral right and wrong for 
 others comes upon him. 'She has God/ he says, 'and 
 her conscience against her.' But this only serves to 
 make him proud of his own isolation in lovelessness from 
 other men. His scorn of himself and of others, and the 
 mixture of bitterness, pride, contempt, fierce self-know- 
 ledge, and isolation in the long soliloquy which begins 
 
 Was ever woman in this humour woo'd ? 
 
 is a splendid example of the power by which Shake- 
 
RICHARD III 107 
 
 speare felt and shared within himself a thousand 
 others than himself, and even dared, as here, to paint 
 the nature of one who was set aside by him from all 
 mankind. 
 
 This is followed by that masterly scene in the palace 
 where Richard, the lord here of politic intellect, puts 
 himself forward as ' the plain man,' and then as ' too soft 
 and pitiful and childishly foolish for the world ' ; and so 
 sets all his enemies at loggerheads, plays the interests 
 and passions of each against those of the others, and 
 makes use even of Margaret, the foe of all, to develop and 
 win his schemes. His soulless cunning is triumphant, 
 and he has a certain pleasure, even joy, in his devilment, 
 such as we have in the unhindered exercise of any 
 natural force we possess. In his case, however, the 
 force exercised by absolute want of love is an unnatural 
 force; and the result is — that the will and the intel- 
 lectual cunning which exercise it are finally broken down. 
 It is lovelessness which spoils his cunning, causes him 
 to make mistakes, and finally destroys his aim. Again we 
 get back to the root of his character ; hais self alone. 
 
 The second idea of the drama comes in (Act. I. Sc. iii.) 
 with the presence of Margaret, the incarnate Fury of the 
 Civil Wars, who has been their incessant urger, and is 
 now the Pythoness of their punishment. ' Small joy have 
 I,' cries Elizabeth, 'in being England's queen.' And 
 Margaret, her first entrance into the action, mutters from 
 the background — 
 
 And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech him. 
 
 She is a terrible figure, the Fate and Fury together of 
 the play. She does nothing for its movement; she is 
 outside of that. But she broods above its action, with 
 hands outstretched in cursing. Worn, like 'a wrinkled 
 witch,' her tongue edged with bitter fire, with all the 
 
108 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 venom of the Civil Wars bubbling in her heart; grey- 
 haired, tall, with the habit of command, she has not 
 been, like Richard, without love or exiled from human 
 nature. But all she loved are dead. She has outlived 
 humanity, and passed into an elemental Power, hopeless, 
 pitiless, joyless save for the joy of vengeance. It is not 
 till she finds the Duchess of York and Edward's queen 
 sunk in their hopeless pain that she feels herself at one, 
 even for a moment, with any human creature. She sits 
 down and curses with them, but soon leaves them, as one 
 removed ; towering over them as she flings back on them 
 her parting curse, incensed that she has been even for that 
 moment at one with their feeble wrath. Her eloquence 
 is that of primeval sorrow and hate. Her curses have 
 the intensity of an immortal's passion. 
 
 ' O, well skilled in curses,' cries the Queen Elizabeth, 
 ; teach me how to curse.' ' Life is her shame,' Margaret 
 says, but she will not die till she has vengeance. Tis 
 the only thing which brings a smile to her withered lips. 
 And her vengeance is felt, like an actual presence in the 
 air, by all who die. Shakespeare takes pains to mark 
 that out. She is not only Margaret and hate to them, 
 but the spirit though whom divine justice works its 
 wrath upon them. And when she sees the end, she 
 passes away, still alive, like one who cannot die ; departs 
 in an awful joy — 
 
 These English woes "will make me smile in France. 
 
 Immediately after her first appearance, the curse and 
 punishment begin to act. Richard is left alone on the 
 stage, and the murderers of Clarence enter to receive his 
 command to slay. These are the only persons in the 
 play with whom Richard is at his ease. With murderers 
 he drops his mask. He hails them as if they were 
 comrades ; 
 
RICHARD III 109 
 
 How now, my hardy, stout-resolred mates ! 
 Are you now going to dispatch this thing 1 
 
 I like you, lads ; about your business straight ; 
 Go, go, dispatch. 
 
 This murder fills the fourth scene. Shakespeare does 
 not expose it unrelieved. He feels that the passion in 
 the last scene has been too loud and furious, as indeed 
 it has. He therefore lowers the note, and introduces, 
 not to lessen but to deepen the tragedy, the wonderful 
 piteousness, the wonderful beauty of the dream of 
 Clarence. 
 
 Nevertheless, he does not let loose his main conception. 
 The murder is itself a crime, but it is also part of the 
 great punishment, of the working out of the law that 
 greed produces greed, and the sword the sword. Clarence 
 confesses that his death is morally just. 
 
 God ! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee, 
 And thou wilt be aveng'd on my misdeeds, 
 Yet execute thy wrath on me alone. 
 
 Immediately, pat on the point, and done in Shake- 
 speare's way of setting over against a grave thought 
 the same thought in a grotesque or ghastly framework, 
 there is now a parody, with a grim earnestness in it, of 
 this same question of the vengeance of conscience. Is 
 there that in us which punishes with thought ? Is there 
 a wrath beyond ourselves ? an imperative command 
 within us? If so, is it worth regarding? The mur- 
 derers debate the question from their rude standpoint, 
 and settle the matter as the robbing and murdering 
 kings and nobles had settled it. They have a warrant 
 for their crime; it is done on command. But these 
 considerations are indifferent, of these conscience might 
 get the better ; but the reward, the gain — that conquers 
 conscience; and arguing to and fro with extraordinary 
 variety of base and cunning thought and phrase, they 
 
110 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 end by attacking conscience as the most dangerous enemy 
 of states and societies. 
 
 Sec. Murd. 'Zounds ! he dies : I had forgot the reward. 
 
 First Murd. Where's thy conscience now ? 
 
 Sec. Murd. In the Duke of Gloucester's purse. 
 
 I '11 not meddle with it ; it makes a man a coward ; a man cannot 
 steal, but it accuseth him ; a man cannot swear, but it checks him ; a 
 man cannot lie with his neighbour's wife, but it detects him ; 'tis a 
 blushing, shamefast spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it fills one 
 full of obstacles ; it made me once restore a purse of gold that I found ; 
 it beggars any man that keeps it ; it is turned out of all towns and cities 
 for a dangerous thing ; and every man that means to live well endeavours 
 to trust to himself and live without it. 
 
 This is exactly Richard's point of view, put coarsely. 
 Yet these two are not as bad as Richard. They do feel 
 the pull of conscience. He could not. 
 
 The same elements of division appear in the second 
 act. The hatreds of all parties underlie the hollow 
 reconciliation at the deathbed of the King. Buckingham 
 concentrates the falsehood of them all in his perjurous 
 vow. By that falsehood, as a moral matter, his coming 
 death is accounted for. But Shakespeare, though here in 
 his sternest mood, awakens the pity of the audience by 
 the form in which he casts Buckingham's oath. He 
 prays for the very fate which falls upon him. Whenever 
 Buckingham doth turn his hate (he speaks to the Queen) 
 on you or yours 
 
 God punish me 
 
 With hate in those where I expect most love ! 
 
 When I have most need to employ a friend, 
 
 And most assured that he is a friend, 
 
 Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile, 
 
 Be he unto me ! 
 
 And so it falls out. The words make us think of Richard, 
 and Shakespeare answers our thought. 'We only want 
 Gloucester,' says the king, 
 
 To make the blessed period of this peace. 
 
RICHARD III 111 
 
 He enters, and flings into their false calm, like a shell, the 
 news of the death of Clarence. 
 
 Then, Clarence being the first, Edward is the second to 
 feel the judgment which descends on those guilty of the 
 blood of England. His conscience awakens, and he dies, 
 feeling that God's justice is taking hold on men. 
 
 It is characteristic of Shakespeare's work that the form 
 of Edward's confession (recalling Clarence and. his kind- 
 ness) throws back a new light of pity on the scene of 
 Clarence's death, and keeps up the continuity of the 
 dramatic action and the dramatic pity. And the pity is 
 made almost terrible by the picture Edward's confession 
 contains of the universal selfishness of the court, where 
 not one has thought of Clarence, only of himself. 
 
 My brother kill'd no man ; bis fault was tbougbt : 
 And yet bis punisbnient was bitter deatb. 
 Who sued to me for him ? Who, in my wrath, 
 Kneel'd at my feet, and bade me be advis'd 1 
 Who spoke of brotherhood 1 Who spoke of love ? 
 Who told me how the poor soul did forsake 
 The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me ? 
 Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury, 
 When Oxford had me clown, he rescu'd me, 
 And said, ' Dear brother, five, and be a king ' % 
 Who told me, when we both lay in the field 
 Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me 
 Even in his garments ; and did give himself, 
 All thin and naked, to the numb cold night ? 
 All this from my remembrance brutish wrath 
 Sinfully pluck'd, and not a man of you 
 Had so much grace to put it in my mind ! . . . 
 
 The proudest of you all 
 Have been beholding to him in his life, 
 Yet none of you would once beg for his life. 
 O G-od ! I fear thy justice will take hold 
 On me and you and mine and yours for this. 
 Come, Hastings, help me to my closet. ! poor Clarence ! 
 
 Nor is the main scope of the play lost sight of in the 
 next scene between the boys and their aunt and grandam 
 — a quiet moment in this tempest of crime. The fate of 
 
112 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the young princes is shadowed forth in the talk of their 
 
 cousins. The fate which overglooms the play is heard 
 
 in the grief of the women. The gloom is deepened when 
 
 the Queen enters wailing her husband's death, and she 
 
 and the Duchess (who, with Margaret, serve the uses, in 
 
 some sort, of the Greek chorus) toss their sorrow to and 
 
 fro with the children of Clarence, till the whole world 
 
 seems full of weeping. Then Gloucester, sheathed in 
 
 hypocrisy and mocking inwardly the sorrow he has 
 
 caused, adds poignancy to the tragic pain the audience 
 
 feels. 
 
 The act ends with the arrest by Buckingham and 
 
 Gloucester of the kinsmen of the Queen. ' Ah me,' she 
 
 cries, ' I see the ruin of my house '; and then the Duchess, 
 
 sick even to death of strife and slaughter, gathers together 
 
 all the woes of the long quarrel as they have touched 
 
 the house of York. 
 
 Accursed and unquiet wrangling days, 
 How many of you have mine eyes beheld ! 
 My husband lost his life to get the crown, 
 And often up and down my sons were toss'd, 
 For me to joy and weep their gain and loss : 
 And being seated, and domestic broils 
 Clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors, 
 Make war upon themselves ; brother to brother, 
 Blood to blood, self against self : ! preposterous 
 And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen ; 
 Or let me die, to look on death no more. 
 
 Amidst an astonishing variety of circumstance and 
 character which the Greek dramatists would have re- 
 pudiated as injurious to unity, the third act keeps 
 close to the tragic development of the work of Justice. 
 The audience knows what fate hangs over the princes 
 on their arrival in London. It expects to have it pre- 
 saged. And it is. Touch after touch, in their graceful 
 prattle, awakes our pity. Some are even put into the 
 mouth of Gloucester. The gallant bearing of the prince, 
 
RICHARD III 113 
 
 Lis hopes to be a famous warrior like Caesar, while 
 his murderer stands by; his misliking of the Tower; 
 the light, peevish, innocent talk of York; his scoff at 
 Gloucester's deformity ; the sudden overshadowing of his 
 heart also when he hears of the Tower — all deepen the 
 tragic darkness. And now Richard, having resolved on 
 the murder of the princes, murders all who stand in the 
 way of his design. Yet it is not he who really slays the 
 new victims. It is avenging Justice, wading, as usual, 
 to her conclusion through the blood of the innocent as 
 well as of the guilty. Richard is her blind instrument. 
 Rivers, Grey, Yaughan are now slain, the third, fourth, 
 and fifth after Clarence and Edward who feel the sentence 
 of conscience and the curse of Margaret. Their last words 
 remember her. Next Hastings meets his unexpected 
 fate. While he is talking of Gloucester's friendly face 
 (Shakespeare is at home in these bitter contrasts of life) 
 Gloucester breaks in suddenly, ' Off with his head.' ' He 's 
 sudden, if a thing comes in his head,' said King Edward 
 — and Hastings also sees Margaret as he dies. Richard 
 slays them, but Justice holds his sword. 
 
 The scenes which follow, where Richard is induced to 
 accept the crown, as it were by force, and where he 
 apparently persuades Elizabeth to give him her daughter, 
 are weakened by their great length, and almost trench 
 on farce. Richard between the two bishops, with the 
 prayer-book in his hand, is ridiculous ; and the scene 
 drags on without Shakespeare's crispness, clearness, or 
 concentration of thought. It is a worse blot on the play 
 than the scenes between Richard and Lady Anne, be- 
 tween Richard and Elizabeth. Richard's dissimulation, 
 in spite of the variety of the dramatic talk, seems in these 
 scenes to pass the bounds of nature. Yet it is difficult 
 to find just fault with Shakespeare. It may be that 
 he desired to mark by their strained unnaturalness that 
 
 H 
 
114 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 weakness in the intellect of Richard which arises from 
 the absence of love in his character. Intellectual power, 
 without love, grows abnormal, unbalanced, and weak 
 through pride of itself. Nay more, Shakespeare felt that 
 it would not only lose its power, but finally itself. It 
 would be sure to make mistakes in dealing with mankind 
 and with the movements of the world; to overdo its 
 cunning ; to end like the plotting of Mephistopheles, in 
 folly and failure. The common-sense of mankind has 
 decided that long ago. In all folklore stories the Devil — 
 intellect without love — is invariably made a hare of in 
 the end. 
 
 In the fourth act the coronation of Richard brings 
 about the first movement towards his overthrow. Eliza- 
 beth sends Dorset to Richmond, and we scent from afar 
 the ruin of Richard ; and, like the rest, she, when antici- 
 pating doom, remembers the curse of Margaret. 
 
 As the speakers of this scene depart, they are standing 
 
 in front of the Tower. Shakespeare, who always prepares 
 
 his audience, does not let these sorrowful women leave 
 
 the stage without hinting at the murder of the princes, 
 
 and with an exquisite tenderness speaks — 
 
 Stay yet, look back, with me unto the Tower. 
 Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes 
 Whom envy hath immur'd within your walls, 
 Eough cradle for such little pretty ones ! 
 Kude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow 
 For tender princes, use my babies well. 
 So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell. 
 
 Imagine that ! What a playwright was Shakespeare ! 
 how effective for the stage is that farewell ! 
 
 And now, in the next scene (Act iv. Sc. ii.), the dis- 
 integration of Richard's intellectual power continues. 
 Anne has already told how in sleep he is not able to 
 beat back superstitious fear. Even his physical courage 
 is then, as we see afterwards, in abeyance. 
 
RICHARD III 115 
 
 For never yet one hour in his bed 
 
 Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep, 
 
 But with his timorous dreams was still awak'd. 
 
 Richard is represented by Shakespeare as without a 
 soul, being without love. But this is when he is awake, 
 and his will at the helm of his life. When he is asleep, 
 Shakespeare, with his belief that in the far background 
 of an evil nature the soul lives, but unknown, unbelieved 
 in, by its possessor, shows how it awakens at night when 
 the will sleeps, and does its work on the unconscious 
 man. Then, and only then, conscience stirs in Richard. 
 Then, and only then, fear besets him. The day-result of 
 this work of the soul at night in Richard is plainly 
 suggested in the dialogue. He is represented at all points 
 as in a state of nervous strain of which he does not know 
 the cause ; and this ignorance, irritating the intensity of 
 his wrath with any obstacle, throws not only his intellect, 
 as I have said above, but his management of men and 
 events out of gear. His intellect is no longer clear, for his 
 body is no longer sane. All his powers, even his hypo- 
 crisy, are decaying. His doom has begun. 
 
 Moreover, he now begins to feel the steady pull of 
 the universe against immoderate crime. To escape this 
 hitherto unknown terror he is driven, as it were by neces- 
 sity, to add crime to crime. He proposes the death of 
 the princes to Buckingham — ' I wish the bastards dead.' 
 Buckingham retreats from this, with a courtier's words — 
 
 Buck. Your grace may do your pleasure. 
 
 K. Rich. Tut, tut ! thou art all ice, thy kindness freezes. 
 
 And this hesitation dooms him — 
 
 Cates. The King is angry : see, he gnaws his lip. 
 
 K. Eich. I will converse with iron-witted fools 
 
 And unrespective boys : none are for me 
 That look into me with considerate eyes. 
 High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect. 
 
 And when the princes are dead, Anne his wife shall die, 
 
116 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and he will marry Elizabeth. ' Murder her brothers, and 
 
 then marry her — uncertain way of gain.' 
 
 This is the wild hurry of crime — Justice driving its 
 
 victim — 
 
 But I am in 
 So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin : 
 Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye. 
 
 To double this guilty speed, the news comes of Rich- 
 mond preparing a power, and the news abides, stings 
 and irritates within him. Its inward insistence breaks 
 out in short soliloquies, even when alone with Buckingham. 
 The accomplished mask-wearer drops his mask; betrays 
 himself. His self-control is giving way ; and with that, 
 his intellect fails still more; fails so much that he is 
 touched with superstition. He talks of prophecies — of 
 warnings given by a bard of Ireland. All through this 
 little scene with Buckingham (Act iv. Sc. ii.) he has lost 
 his coolness of temper and his hypocrisy in irritability. 
 His nerve is gone, like Macbeth's, but, also like Macbeth, 
 his courage lives on. The affection is of the mind, not of 
 the body. 
 
 And now, just at the turn of things, when Richmond 
 begins to increase and Richard to decrease, Margaret 
 fitly appears for the last time, and at first alone, to 
 concentrate their curse, and hers. Two splendid lines 
 introduce the vengeful Queen. 
 
 So, now prosperity begins to mellow 
 And drop into the rotten mouth of death. 
 
 To her enter the Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess 
 of York ; and they join in the doom Margaret pronounces 
 on Richard. Had Shakespeare written this scene with 
 his matured power and concentration, it would have been 
 a matchless scene. As it is, it is of an extraordinary 
 force — mightily conceived and shaped. One after another, 
 these three, whose darlings Richard has slain, sit down, 
 
RICHARD III 117 
 
 ravished with sorrow, like three Fates, on the earth of 
 England 'unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.' 
 Hooded, old, grey with grief, are Margaret and the Duchess; 
 Elizabeth, though not yet old, is one with them in 
 sorrow, a prey of time. Under the palace walls, all 
 three, royal yet huddled in the dust, prophesy the wrath 
 and the decrees of justice. They concentrate, not only 
 the misery of their own grief, but all the woe of the Civil 
 Wars, into their speech; and bring the whole weight of 
 their sorrow and sin to a point in Richard, on whom 
 falls their accumulated curse. Margaret rises above the 
 others in the joy of revenge, and leaves them to their 
 session on the earth, ' Forbear,' she cries to Elizabeth, 
 who asks for help in cursing — 
 
 Forbear to sleep the night, and fast the day ; 
 Compare dead happiness with living woe ; 
 Think that thy babes were fairer than they were, 
 And he that slew them fouler than he is : 
 Bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse : 
 Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. 
 
 Their curse is deep, but it is deepened when Nature 
 herself retreats before it, when it is stronger than 
 motherhood. The scene closes when on Richard's head — 
 who now, in fine dramatic contrast to this almost solitary 
 scene, comes marching by with warlike sound and pomp 
 on his way to overthrow Buckingham — falls his mother's 
 curse. And the curse is a prophecy, as it were, of all 
 his victims will say to him the night before Bosworth 
 field. It is often Shakespeare's habit to anticipate in 
 a short passage a scene which he means to give in full, 
 a sketch of the picture to be completed ; 
 
 Therefore, take with thee my most grievous curse, 
 Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more 
 Than all the complete armour that thou wear'st ! 
 My prayers on the adverse party fight ; 
 
118 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And there the little souls of Edward's children 
 Whisper the spirits of thine enemies 
 And promise them success and victory. 
 Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end ; 
 Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend. 
 
 The scene with Elizabeth which follows is of that 
 cunning which overreaches its aim. Richard thinks he 
 has persuaded Elizabeth to give him her daughter — 
 
 Relenting fool, and shallow changing woman ! 
 
 But it is he who has been deceived, he whom the woman 
 
 has played with. She pretends to consent, but is already 
 
 in communication with Richmond, to whom she does give 
 
 her daughter. From this point of view, which I think 
 
 Shakespeare meant, 1 the unnaturalness of the scene (the 
 
 far too great length of which is only excused by the 
 
 impossible effort Richard makes) is modified; and the 
 
 weakness which has come on Richard's intellect is more 
 
 than suggested. All is breaking down in him ; his self- 
 !i . . . . . 
 
 jControl, his temper, intelligence, his clear sight of things, 
 
 his foresight, his power to keep men and subdue them to 
 
 his will. 
 
 The art is excellent with which this is shown in 
 
 Richard's talk with Catesby, Ratcliff, Stanley, and the 
 
 messengers. He is no longer the calm, smooth, cautious, 
 
 deliberate, unimpassioned politician, all his powers held 
 
 in hand. He gives half-orders, and stops short, yet thinks 
 
 he has fully given them, as with Catesby. He gives 
 
 orders and withdraws them, suspicion darting into his 
 
 mind, as with Ratcliff — 
 
 K. Rich. Catesby, fly to the duke. 
 
 Cates. I will, my lord, with all convenient haste. 
 
 1 See Act iv. Sc. v. , where Stanley says to Sir Christopher Urswick 
 Richmond's emissary — 
 
 So, get thee gone, commend me to thy lord. 
 Withal, say that the Queen hath heartily consented 
 He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter. 
 
RICHARD III 119 
 
 K. Rich. Ratcliff, come hither. Post to Salisbury : 
 
 When thou com'st thither,— [To Catesbt] Dull, 
 unmindful villain, 
 
 Why stay'st thou here, and go'st not to the duke ? 
 Cates. First, mighty liege, tell me your highness' pleasure, 
 
 What from your Grace I shall deliver to him. 
 K. Rich. ! true, good Catesby : bid him levy straight 
 
 The greatest strength and power he can make, 
 
 And meet me suddenly at Salisbury. 
 Cates. I go. [Exit. 
 
 Rat. What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury ? 
 
 K. Rich. Why, what would'st thou do there before I go ? 
 Rat. Your highness told me I should post before. 
 
 [Enter Stanley. 
 K. Rich. My mind is chang'd. 
 
 He flies into a passion with Stanley, but in the end 
 
 believes in him; yet Stanley is the only one of his 
 
 followers who is deceiving him. Richmond's name makes 
 
 him as fierce in words as Macbeth was when his doom 
 
 had come. The nerve-storm is speaking. 
 
 Stan. Richmond is on the seas. 
 
 K. Rich. There let him sink and be the seas on him ! 
 
 White- liver'd runagate ! What doth he there 1 
 
 Speech after speech his fury increases. Messenger after 
 messenger comes in with bad news. The third brings 
 good tidings. Richard anticipates it as misfortune, and 
 strikes him down — 
 
 Out on ye, owls ! nothing but songs of death. 
 The furies are upon him. 
 
 The fifth act opens with the death of Buckingham. 
 He also feels that divine justice has descended on him. 
 His false oath has come home ; and, like the rest, he sees 
 Margaret as he dies. 
 
 ' When he,' quoth she, ' shall split thy heart with sorrow, 
 Remember Margaret was a prophetess.' 
 
 And now all the interest centres around Richard. 
 He has been used by Justice to punish the rest. His 
 
120 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 own doom (now that he is with himself in a terrible 
 solitude) is close at hand. Richmond, who is here only 
 a shadow, brings with him the just sentence of God. 
 
 God and good angels fight on Richmond's side. 
 
 But though justice is to be done, yet Shakespeare will 
 not quite degrade Richard out of the sympathy of the 
 audience. Action and its need have partly healed his 
 fluttering temper. His native courage, his pride of birth, 
 his natural joy in battle, have dispersed his dreams for 
 a time. His orders are sharply, clearly given. He speaks 
 again like a great commander, and he dies a soldier and 
 a king. 
 
 Shakespeare knew the relief which the crisis, having 
 come, gives to a courageous man. He knew also that 
 no amount of crime could do away with physical courage, 
 or make a man forget that he was of high lineage, if that 
 had ever been a power in his life. And it was deep in 
 Richard : 
 
 Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, 
 
 And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun. 
 
 Yet, neither courage nor pride are what they were. 
 
 So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine : 
 
 I have not that alacrity of spirit, 
 
 Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. 
 
 The phrase prepares us for the well-known scene in 
 which the courage of Richard when he is asleep trembles 
 before the ghosts of all whom he has slain. It is equally 
 prepared for by the prayer of Richmond for the help of 
 God whose captain he accounts himself, the minister of 
 whose chastisement he is. Night falls, and each ghost, 
 rising one after another — Prince Edward, Henry vi., 
 Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, the young 
 Princes, Lady Anne, Buckingham — speaks to Richmond 
 
RICHARD III 121 
 
 of victory, lays a curse on Richard. Each bids him 
 ' Despair and die.' 
 
 In this, the predominant idea of the drama — the work- 
 ing out into catastrophe of all the evil of the Civil Wars 
 — is brought into full prominence, since Richard is the 
 incarnation of that evil. The connected idea of the 
 supremacy of justice in the course of the world is also 
 brought out so forcibly that Richard, for one brief hour, 
 recognises the lordship of conscience, though he argues 
 that it ought to have none over him. The supernatural 
 world can alone convince him of his guilt, and he fights 
 against the conviction. It is only in the half-conscious 
 state, between sleep and waking when one is scarcely 
 one's self, that Richard gives way to conscience and to 
 fear, and in that state speaks that wonderful soliloquy, 
 which — if we take it as the confused utterances of a man 
 who is half asleep and half awake, half in the supernatural 
 terror of his dreams and half in his reaction from them, 
 half himself, half not himself — is an amazing piece of 
 subtle analysis, only not succeeding altogether because 
 it was more difficult to shape in words than mortal man 
 could manage. None but Shakespeare would even have 
 tried to put it into form. 
 
 K. Rich. Give me another horse ! bind up my wounds ! 
 Have mercy, Jesu ! Soft ! I did but dream. 
 O coward conscience, bow dost thou afflict me. 
 Tbe bgbts burn blue. It is now dead midnight. 
 Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
 What ! do I fear myself ? there 's none else by : 
 Richard loves Richard ; that is, I am I. 
 Is there a murderer here 1 No. Yes ; I am : 
 Then fly : what ! from myself ? Great reason why : 
 Lest I revenge. What ! myself upon myself ? 
 Alack ! I love myself. Wherefore 1 for any good 
 That I myself have done unto myself ? 
 
 ! no : alas ! I rather hate myself 
 
 For hateful deeds committed by myself. 
 
 1 am a villain : Yet I lie ; I am not. 
 
 Fool, of thyself speak well : fool, do not flatter. 
 
122 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 My conscience hath a thousand several tongues 
 And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
 And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
 Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree : 
 Murder, stern murder, in the dir'st degree ; 
 All several sins, all us'd in each degree 
 Throng to the bar, crying all, ' Guilty ! guilty ! 
 I shall despair. There is no creature loves me ; 
 And if I die, no soul will pity me : 
 Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself 
 Find in myself no pity to myself ? 
 Methought the souls of all that I had murder d 
 Came to my tent : and every one did threat 
 To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. 
 
 On this Ratcliff breaks in and, for a minute or two, tne 
 dream, lingering as dreams linger, still holds Richard in 
 its grip. Then, fully awake, he shakes it off — 
 
 By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
 Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
 Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers, 
 Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond. 
 
 The momentary weakness of fear, the momentary belief in 
 conscience, which, with all that guilt behind, might make 
 him die ignobly, pass away. He scorns his dreams, he 
 mocks at conscience. 
 
 Go, gentlemen ; every man unto his charge : 
 Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls ; 
 Conscience is but a word that cowards use, 
 Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe : 
 Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. 
 March on, join bravely, let us to't pell mell ; 
 If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell. 
 
 And his speech to his army is a masterpiece of bold 
 mockery of the foe, and of appeal to the pride of England ; 
 the words of a fighting partisan, of a king at bay. As 
 we read it, we should sit in his soul, below the words. I 
 wonder if Shakespeare meant the overstrain I seem to 
 detect in it to express the hungry despair which so lately 
 had clutched his heart, and which he strove by passionate 
 
RICHARD III 123 
 
 words to beat under. He blufi's himself. It is impossible 
 not to sympathise with his self-conquest and courage; 
 and Shakespeare meant us to do so. Since justice is 
 done, pity may steal in; and circumstance has made 
 Richard its victim, as well as his own will. He goes to 
 battle with a joyful courage, as to a banquet. Macbeth's 
 courage was intermingled with the despondencies of crime 
 and of loss of honour, for he had loved and sorrowed, and 
 of old had resisted evil. Richard's courage has no tender- 
 ness, no sense of violated honour to trouble it, for he has 
 never loved. It has no despondency, no philosophising 
 on life and death, when the crisis comes. There is a 
 physical rapture in it. 
 
 A thousand hearts are great within my bosom : 
 Advance our standards ! set upon our foes ! 
 Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, 
 Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons ! 
 Upon them ! Victory sits on our helms. 
 
 But there is no victory for him — 
 
 The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. 
 
 Yet, he perishes like a king, slaying five Richmonds in 
 the throat of death. His death would be the death of 
 despair, were he not greater than despair itself. The 
 drama closes with that speech of Richmond's, in which 
 the wrong, the fraternal slaughter, the misery of the 
 Civil Wars are dwelt on, resumed, and absolved in the 
 reconciliation of the white rose and the red, in the union 
 of Richmond and Elizabeth — 
 
 Smile, heaven, upon this fair conjunction, 
 That long hath frown'd upon their enmity ! 
 
 Justice has done her work ; and she retires, well pleased. 
 
 In this play there is the same conception of an over- 
 ruling Justice as we have found in Romeo and Juliet. 
 Punishment, not arbitrary, but the direct consequence 
 
124 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of crime against humanity, falls on all those who have 
 caused the Civil Wars. This is clearly an artistic con- 
 ception, and has its parallels in the Greek drama, as for 
 example in the Seven against Thebes. 
 
 As a dramatic subject, Richard III. did not afford 
 sufficient opportunity for the representation of the mani- 
 fold varieties of human life which now began to allure 
 Shakespeare. It was confined within a limited set of 
 people — kings, queens, the noblesse and their dependants 
 — within their selfish quarrels and ambitions. And what 
 a set they are ! And the women, if we exclude the Duchess 
 of York, are nearly as bad as the men. Nor, with the 
 exception of Richard and Margaret, is any one of them 
 seriously intelligent or interesting. Shakespeare must 
 have been tired of the odiousness of it all, tired even of 
 his conception of Justice working out her law on states ; 
 anxious to live among a brighter and more varied class of 
 characters, and freely to develop them. 
 
 Moreover he was, I think, weary of the limitations laid 
 upon him by the close following of history. Of this last 
 weariness he got rid, as I have said, in Henry IV. by 
 entering into the life of the people. 1 I am not sure 
 that he did not begin to break loose from both these 
 limits by the writing of Richard II., where, while follow- 
 ing the main lines of history, he develops out of his own 
 imagination, and apart from history, the character of 
 Richard after his return from Ireland. The Richard of 
 the castle scenes and of the rest of the drama is not the 
 Richard of history. He is Shakespeare's own, as complex 
 in character as Richard in. is simple. It is this out- 
 
 1 We may trace this desire to represent the people even in Richard III. 
 The little sketch of the Scrivener, Act III. Sc. vi. , is done by a master- 
 hand. We see and feel the man. The three citizens who meet and 
 discuss the political situation in the second act belong to the honest, 
 god-fearing, steadfast, commonplace burghers of London. Their talk is 
 representative, yet each of them is quite distinct in character. 
 
RICHARD III 125 
 
 break of Shakespeare's into pure invention which seems 
 to suggest that Richard II. was written after Richard III. 
 Richard n. has no ambition to be greater than he is. He 
 desires to be let alone to enjoy himself. Richard ill. is 
 ambition incarnate. The one has only one desire, the 
 other has a hundred ; and the hundred desires make his 
 character as complex as the other is simple. The one is 
 devoid of love, and therefore devoid of imagination. The 
 other has tenderness, pity, sweetness, and thoughtfulness, 
 when he has gone through sorrow ; and because he loves 
 and desires to love, he is capable of imagination. Shake- 
 speare makes him more than capable of it. He gives it 
 to him after his fall, and in his hands he becomes the 
 shaper of poetry. 
 
 Then, again, the character of Richard n. grows into 
 nobility ; at every change he gains ; he is noblest before 
 death ; but the character of Richard in. loses power day by 
 day, loses even intellectual power, and he ends as only a 
 royal bravo. There is also far more characterisation and 
 invention in Richard II. than in Richard III, and I think 
 this suggests at least that the former was written after the 
 latter. Moreover, the characters who are of vital interest 
 are much more numerous in Richard II, more vivid, 
 more distinct, more complex. The Queen in Richard II. 
 is only touched, yet she is alive and distinct, and so is the 
 Duchess of Gloucester. Anne and the Duchess of York 
 in Richard III are not clearly, though they are 
 elaborately, drawn. In Richard II. Gaunt is extremely 
 interesting; Old York and Bolingbroke, even Mowbray, 
 are all clearly individualised; but Buckingham, Rivers, 
 Hastings, and Grey in Richard HI. are not. The only 
 creature, save Margaret and Richard, who is specialised 
 into a greater vitality than the others in Richard III. is 
 Clarence in the Tower before his death. 
 
 The play itself is unequal, strangely unequal. Its con- 
 
126 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 duct wavers from excellence to mediocrity. The over- 
 length of such scenes as that before the coronation, and 
 that between Richard and Elizabeth, wearies an audience, 
 and the first of these is not redeemed by brilliancy of 
 thought or dramatic play. Shakespeare had not yet 
 learned concentration or moderation. There is none of his 
 plays in which one more regrets the Greek measure, and 
 the Greek power to say enough and no more. 
 
 Its finer poetry is of less impressiveness because it is 
 the poetry of cursing — a matter somewhat naturally apart 
 from beauty. And the cursing is too long to be intense, 
 to have that closely knitted passion which lifts the curse 
 into the world of art. Margaret rarely reaches that : Lear 
 reaches it in a few sentences. Only one passage in the 
 whole play rises into a splendour of poetry, so piteous and 
 so beautiful that it will live for ever. It is the dream of 
 Clarence. 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 
 
 This play is made up of two separate stories woven to- 
 gether by the dramatist, and with his finest stage-skill, 
 intelligence, and passion. Both of them came down 
 from ancient times. These are the story of the cruel 
 Jew and his debtor, and the story of the heiress, her 
 suitors, and the caskets. They seem to have had a kind 
 of chemical affinity for one another, for it is said that 
 they were combined in a lost play called The Jew, acted 
 before 1579. The story of Antonio, Bassanio, the Jew, 
 and the Lady of Belmont who rescues the debtor, Shake- 
 speare found fully developed in Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's 
 collection of Italian tales {It Pecorone), and followed its 
 plot closely; adding to it the casket tale, which, in the 
 midst of serious elements bordering on the tragic, intro- 
 duces others of lightness, grace, charm, and love. Yet, 
 in the lightness is a weighty strain of thought, made 
 partly by the deep and steadfast qualities of Portia's 
 womanhood, and partly by the greatness of the love 
 between her and Bassanio. 
 
 To enliven the drama with gaiety, three additions are 
 made — first, the elopement and the characters of Lorenzo 
 and Jessica ; secondly, the story of the rings which winds 
 up the play ; and, thirdly, the humour of Launcelot Gobbo. 
 These are so skilfully intertwined with the two main 
 stories that they enhance their interest, seem to have been 
 always part of them, and play in and out of them like gay 
 and happy children among grown-up folk. 
 
128 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 What with these two stories combined, with two episodes 
 added, and with a humorous element, one might expect 
 some failure in their amalgamation by the dramatist ; but 
 it is not so. The plotting of the play is admirable; its 
 stage-management a triumph ; and the characters so 
 relieve, excite, develop, act and react on each other, that 
 there is not one hitch, one jar, in the play from end 
 to end. It is a masterpiece in its own difficult kind of 
 drama, and it has always kept the stage. 
 
 The Merchant of Venice is an early play, probably 
 written in 1596, before the tragedy of life had laid its 
 heavy hand on the mind and heart of Shakespeare. Yet, 
 early as it is, it is as mature in form, stage-craft, and 
 execution as it is in thought. The art-development of 
 Shakespeare's imagination was as quick in its movement 
 as his intellect, and that seems about as quick a thing as 
 this world has ever known. In a great artistic genius 
 all the capacities have equal power and penetration; 
 and the formative power, as here, does not fall below 
 the conceiving power. And both are as various and 
 distinctive in the making of the lesser, as they are in the 
 making of the greater, characters in the play. Lorenzo, 
 Nerissa, Bassanio, Jessica are as clearly presented as 
 Shy lock and Portia and Antonio, and as self-harmonised. 
 
 In its combination of the serious and the gay the 
 drama is fully romantic. It is also romantic in its ming- 
 ling of the two stories, in its being a delightful piece of 
 story-telling, and in the freshness and frankness of its two 
 love-stories of Portia and Bassanio, of Lorenzo and Jessica. 
 But it is not romantic in its conciseness, nor is the 
 story of the heiress, the suitors, and the caskets in itself 
 romantic. It is rather an old folk- tale which has been 
 variously wrought in various nations. But it is made 
 romantic by the passionate love between Portia and Bas- 
 sanio, and by the bold adventure Bassanio, when he is so 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 129 
 
 poor, makes, for love's sake, to win his wife. Men may 
 accuse him, he feels, of desiring the money of the heiress, 
 but he does not care; he knows he desires her, and 
 her alone. Moreover, Antonio's lavish friendship, will- 
 ing to sacrifice not only wealth but life for Bassanio's 
 love, is another motive common in the great stories of 
 romance. And whenever, in modern fiction or drama, 
 such a friendship lives between a grave man, bordering on 
 old age, and a young, gay, affectionate, wild fellow, cap- 
 able of better things, and nice in honour, it is as instinct 
 with the spirit of romance as the Merchant of Venice is. 
 
 Shakespeare has not yet passed out of his romantic, 
 though he has begun his patriotic and historical, period. 
 The romantic still overlaps the patriotic. The time 
 came when he left it behind him, and entered the tragic 
 darkness of mankind. Something of that tragedy is 
 already here. The romance of the play is less prominent 
 than the tragedy of life. The tragedy passes into happi- 
 ness for all but Shylock, but the tragic also moves through 
 our horror at the hatred and vengeance of Shylock; 
 through our pity for his nation's fate, and for his own over- 
 whelming ruin ; as well as through our pity for Antonio's 
 loss and pain. But the element of romance steals into 
 the tragic matter when a woman is made the dissolver 
 of all the trouble, when Portia cuts the knot of Shylock's 
 cruelty; and in still lighter fashion, when, in order to 
 prove that she was the lawyer, she invents the episode 
 of the rings, the gaiety of which relieves the seriousness 
 of the judgment scene. 
 
 Along with the romantic elements in the play, there 
 are, as in Romeo and Juliet and in Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, elements which belong to the Renaissance, now 
 fully afloat in England. The drama is laid in Italy, 
 whence the New Learning came, to which all the culti- 
 vated class of young men who could afford it went to be 
 i ' 
 
130 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 filled with the spirit of the classic life ; where they found 
 education in art and scholarship, in law, in literary form, 
 in stories and story-telling, in the finest poetry and in 
 the knowledge of life. There too they drank deep of the 
 spirit which filled them with an unappeasable desire to 
 attempt every kind of art, of knowledge, of adventure ; to 
 realise every kind of life — a spirit which ran through the 
 whole of the Renaissance of that time, like blood through 
 the veins of a man. 
 
 Those who were by nature good brought back good 
 from Italy ; those who were weak or wicked came back 
 either exhausted or five times as wicked as before. This 
 play is full of Renaissance characters. Salanio, Salarino, 
 Gratiano are the full-blooded young men of the time. 
 They feast and drink and sing, invent pageants, and fill 
 the streets with jovial riot. They are pleasant attendants 
 of Antonio, the rich merchant ; of Bassanio, the fine gentle- 
 man of the period. Lorenzo is the gentler type, the half- 
 scholar, the half-poet, who loves the classic tales and 
 philosophy, and who lives on a higher level of character 
 than the rest of the young men. Also, Jessica has heard 
 the Greek and Latin stories ; and her charming talk with 
 Lorenzo about the night and stars and music reveals the 
 widespread culture of the time. Even Launcelot talks 
 of 'the Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the 
 Sisters Three, and such branches of learning.' 
 
 Moreover, that Shakespeare shared in the trend of the 
 Renaissance to philosophic disquisition, thickly sown with 
 classical allusions, such as formed the amusement of the 
 Academies in Florence and elsewhere, is proved by this 
 play. The Prince of Morocco, and he of Aragon, indulge 
 in such disquisitions over the caskets. Bassanio does the 
 same, though his philosophising is saturated with his eager 
 love. The whole scene might be a pleasant exercise of 
 the wits in the Rucellai Gardens in Florence playing with 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 131 
 
 different views of life. Portia is always a piece of a philo- 
 sopher, full of gracious moralities, of wise thoughts of life 
 and lore and service ; and her speech to Nerissa, or that 
 to herself while Bassanio is choosing the casket, with its 
 classic imager}- and its passionate wisdom, is instinct with 
 the finest elements of the Renaissance. Of the same kind 
 is the talk of Lorenzo about music, in which all the stars 
 are quiring to the young-eyed cherubim, in harmonies 
 that our muddy vesture of decay prevents our spirit 
 hearing ; where love of music is the test of goodness in 
 men, of gentleness in beasts. Pure Renaissance that ! 
 pure Florentine ! 
 
 And now we may think of the mise-en-scene, and of 
 the clearness with which Shakespeare has realised the 
 life of Venice and of the mainland. We see nothing 
 of the beauty of the sea-city. Shakespeare had never 
 seen it. But we get the atmosphere of its world- 
 wide trade, of Venice as the Lady of the seas. Antonio 
 is the merchant prince, loved of all who knew him, 
 save of those whose usury he hinders. He neither lends 
 nor borrows for advantage, but lives on the level of 
 the ancient Roman honour. Such were the great lords 
 of Venetian commerce in the noble days. All his ven- 
 tures are at sea and all are large : ' his argosies, with 
 portly sails, do overpeer the petty traffickers.' North, 
 south, east, and west the Venice merchants drove their 
 barks. Antonio has ships which do business with Mexico, 
 England, the West Indies, India, Barbary, Tripolis, and 
 Lisbon. So wide, Shakespeare felt, was the outgoing trade 
 of Venice ; and no less wide did he make the inflowing 
 of nations into her port. The suitors of Portia arrive 
 from all parts of the world — from France, England, Saxony, 
 Morocco, 
 
 From the four corners of the world they come. 
 
 This overshadowing commerce is then the point on which 
 
132 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Shakespeare seizes, in an England now bidding for the 
 commerce of the seas ; that is, he seeks, in order to give 
 weight to his imaginative work, for historical reality. Then, 
 he pictures the internal life of the city — the merchants 
 congregated in the exchange and mart of Venice on the 
 island of Rialto. We see the crowds, we hear the chaffer, 
 and among the rest watch Shylock and Tubal creeping 
 by ; the usurers, the hated Jews of the time. Then, too, 
 in the talk of Salanio, Salarino, and Gratiano, the gossip 
 of the exchange is brought to our ears. 
 
 Another piece of historical reality is the way in which 
 the unswerving constancy of Venetian law is dwelt on. 
 The royal merchant must bend to the law, even when his 
 adversary is a cruel Jew, whom every Christian abhors. 
 The Duke himself cannot wrest the law to do a great right. 
 Shylock rests on the law, on the sanctity in the law's eyes 
 of his bond. The court is strict ; 
 
 There is no power in Venice 
 Can alter a decree established : 
 'Twill be recorded for a precedent, 
 And many an error by the same example 
 Will rush into the state. It cannot be. 
 
 Moreover, it is by process of rigid law that Shylock is 
 disappointed of his revenge, and punished. All this is 
 fully characteristic of Venice when she was great. Shake- 
 speare knew it from the many English who in times 
 past had done business with the merchants and state of 
 Venice ; he grasped it and used it to give vitality to his 
 play. 
 
 One other piece of reality remains. At that time 
 and afterwards, and even now in sad decay, there were 
 on the mainland stately country-houses where the rich 
 Venetians lived. They had noble gardens, and were 
 adorned with art. Music, dancing, the joy of life, went 
 to and fro among their rooms, and a crowd of followers 
 filled them. Belmont is a good picture of one of them. 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 133 
 
 We see the large reception-rooms, the host of retainers ; 
 we hear the trumpets that herald the Princes; we are 
 told of the great park and the gates. And the only 
 description of natural beauty which we find in this play 
 is of the night-scene in the gardens, when the moonlight 
 sleeps on the bank, and in the soft stillness the musicians 
 wake Diana with a hymn. This too is strict reality, yet 
 it is romance — romance, instinct with love, and set over 
 in the drama against the rigid law and eager commerce of 
 the city of Venice. 
 
 I have said that it was difficult to bring together two 
 stories of so different a spirit as those of the Jew and 
 Antonio on one side, of the caskets and Portia on the 
 other. But once it was done, and with such superb skill, 
 their interlocking adds a great charm of change and 
 variety to the play. We are transferred, but not too 
 often, from the heated atmosphere of a great town to the 
 quiet of the country ; from trade, usury, and specula- 
 tion to the affairs of love ; from the sadness of Antonio 
 and the hatred of Shylock to the gaiety of Portia, to the 
 mingled mercy and justice of her noble nature ; from the 
 solemnity of the judgment-hall, where life and death are 
 at strife, to the stillness of the starry night, and lovers 
 in the garden for whom life is opening all its brightness. 
 To and fro, in this fashion, like the earth's sphere, like 
 life itself, we pass from sunshine to shadow, and from 
 shade to sun. Love and hatred, cruelty and mercy, sorrow 
 and joy, worth and villainy, age and youth, stern justice 
 and soul-subduing pity, meanness and magnanimity, 
 interchange their action and their passion in this play. 
 Every character is alive from head to heel with intellect, 
 emotion, and imagination. The ideal voice of poetry 
 speaks always, but at the base of the idealising lies fact. 
 Truth to the realities of life is the foundation on which 
 Shakespeare builds the palace of the ideal. 
 
134 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The play opens with the sadness of Antonio, striking 
 the keynote of the tragic in the tale. It is perhaps the 
 sadness of presentiment; presentiment of which Shake- 
 speare was so fond ; which he so often, with his tendency 
 to mysticism, introduced into his plays. Antonio does 
 not know why he is so sad. He is yet to learn the reason. 
 It is the shadow of the future moving towards him ; and 
 Shakespeare wakens thus the curiosity and interest of his 
 audience. It is not anxiety for his merchandise that 
 makes Antonio sad. He denies that imputation. It is 
 not the sadness of love. ' Fie, fie,' the dignified gentleman 
 answers to that accusation. The sorrows and joys of love 
 are both behind him. 
 
 The causeless sadness wearies him, Antonio says. And 
 it may be that Shakespeare wished to sketch in him the 
 merchant, who, engaged for many years in large affairs 
 of trade, feels weariness of this life steal upon him. 
 It is not, then, the sadness which is the cause of his 
 weariness; it is the weariness which makes the sadness. 
 Antonio is tired of the world, and these words are full 
 of that obscure disease — 
 
 I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; 
 A stage where every man must play a part, 
 And mine a sad one. 
 
 His cry is still stronger in the judgment-hall, but with 
 
 more reason. The very pleadings of the court for mercy 
 
 to him weary his impatience with life. Let me have done 
 
 with living ; 
 
 Most heartily I do beseech the court 
 To give the judgment. 
 
 I am a tainted wether of the flock, 
 Meetest for death : the weakest kind of fruit 
 Drops earliest to the ground ; and so let me : 
 You cannot better be employ'd, Bassanio, 
 Than to live still, and write mine epitaph. 
 
 Nor is his farewell to Bassanio less charged with the 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 135 
 
 apathy of life. With, this grey, melancholy middle-age is 
 contrasted Gratiano, his dependant, but his friend; the 
 embodiment of riotous youth, overflowing with life like 
 a sapling in spring. He is too wild even for Bassanio, 
 who begs him to tame his spirits before he goes to 
 Belmont. Nay, answers Gratiano, ' but I bar to-night : 
 you shall not gauge me by what we do to-night.' He 
 cannot hold his tongue in the judgment-hall, and his 
 outbreaks are in detestable taste. He speaks ' an infinite 
 deal of nothing, more than any man in Venice.' Nerissa 
 will tone him down a little, when he marries her. They 
 are well matched. She also has a tongue of her own. 
 But in spite of this gallop of speech over infinite nothings, 
 Gratiano, in defence of himself, has plenty of good sense. 
 Not one of the folk in this play is without the active 
 intelligence of the New Learning. His view of the 
 transiency of love is set forth admirably and in good 
 poetry (Act n. Sc. vi.). His answer to Antonio's cry that 
 his part on the world's stage is a sad one is full of that 
 wisdom of youth which is so much wiser than the wisdom 
 of a wearied age — 
 
 Let me play the fool : 
 With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, 
 And let my liver rather heat with wine 
 Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. 
 Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, 
 Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster 1 
 Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice 
 By being peevish ? I tell thee what, Antonio — 
 I love thee, and it is my love that speaks — 
 There are a sort of men whose visages 
 Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, 
 And do a wilful stillness entertain, 
 With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion 
 Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit. 
 
 But fish not, with this melancholy bait, 
 For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion. 
 
 This is the brimming note of idle youth. It jars the 
 
136 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 graver man, but men have no right to become as weary 
 as Antonio. He owed this good manners to the world, to 
 meet his troubles brightly. Yet he was a lover of men 
 and was loved by them. Therefore, he had great consola- 
 tion, and should have made more of it. He had magna- 
 nimity, that rare possession. With it went a splendid 
 generosity. He gave, even to the danger of his life. 
 Wealth had not degraded his character. He lent his money 
 without interest, and when he borrowed, 'twas 'not for 
 his own advantage.' He kept his state, was lavish in it, 
 yet without ostent. His flatterers and dependants speak 
 freely to him. Neither Salanio nor Salarino can be called 
 his parasites. He enjoys the enjoyment of others, though 
 he is sad; and his love for Bassanio passes the love of 
 woman. He is almost pleased to die for him — 
 
 Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death ; 
 And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge 
 "Whether Bassanio had not once a love. 
 Repent not you that you shall lose your friend, 
 And he repents not that he pays your debt ; 
 For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
 I '11 pay it presently with all my heart. 
 
 The friendship of such a man lifts Bassanio to a higher 
 level in our eyes. Only at one point does Antonio jar 
 upon us — in his intolerance of Shylock, which is carried 
 beyond our sense of decency. He spits on him and spurns 
 him, calls him dog, misbeliever, cut-throat, cur. But this 
 is of the time at which he lived. It was the common 
 usage ; and Antonio was not beyond his age. Moreover, 
 a great part of it Shylock deserved. 
 
 Opposite Antonio, at all points contrasted with him, 
 Shylock is set. Mean, mercenary, ungenerous, ignoble 
 in thought and deed, consumed with evil passions — he 
 is the darkness to Antonio's light. They clash : in the 
 struggle Antonio is, day by day, pressed down into 
 misery; but when Shylock's evil is at the point of 
 triumph, it is utterly overthrown. And there is the 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 137 
 
 centre of the play. There the ancient contention of dark- 
 ness and light, of summer and winter, of good and evil, 
 the root of a million million shapes of art, is presented in 
 another shape before us. 
 
 Shylock is not only Shylock : he is the personification, 
 in Shakespeare's intention, of the evil side of the Jewish 
 nation. And, in Shakespeare's mind, the evil side was 
 rooted in love of money. It was in the carelessness and 
 contempt of gain for gain's sake that Antonio found the 
 greatness of his character. It was in the sordid care for 
 money that Shylock lost his soul. Out of this filthy 
 desire were born hatred, malice, cruelty, revenge, and 
 envy — envy of Antonio's greatness of mind, hatred of his 
 generosity, revenge on him for his scorn of usury. At 
 last, as greater serpents devour the less, these dreadful 
 passions in him devour even the love of money. The 
 offer of thrice his money does not tempt Shylock away 
 from his revenge. The baser passion is despised in the 
 kingdom of evil by the aristocrats of that kingdom, 
 hatred and vengeance. It is only when Shylock knows 
 that he cannot gratify them, that his love of money 
 returns, and he leaves the court more ignoble than he 
 was when he was feeding fat his grudge against Antonio. 
 
 Shakespeare goes to the heart of Shylock in his first 
 meeting with Antonio. 
 
 Shy. What news on the Kialto 1 who is he comes here ? 
 
 Bass. This is Signior Antonio. 
 
 Shy. [aside]. How like a fawning publican he looks ! 
 I hate him for he is a Christian ; 
 But more for that in low simplicity- 
 He lends out money gratis, and brings down 
 The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
 If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
 I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 
 He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, 
 Even there where merchants most do congregate, 
 On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrilt, 
 Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe, 
 If I forgive him ! 
 
138 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 This hate and malice double and treble: these passions 
 are always their own fuel. Moreover, they gather fuel 
 from every circumstance, as love gathers love. The great 
 passions scoop all the world into themselves. 
 
 As on the Rialto, so in his home his soul is in his 
 moneybags. His daughter cannot bear living with him. 
 His servant thinks himself famished and runs away, like 
 his daughter. He hates the feast he is bid to, but goes 
 to feed on the prodigal Christian. He detests masques, 
 pageants, music, and joy. Yet, he is sensitive enough to 
 have presentiments, like Antonio. The spirit in a man is 
 deeper than his character, and feels, in another dimension, 
 by a consciousness beyond our tabernacle, what is coming. 
 Such a spirit, thought Shakespeare, is even in the evil 
 man. 'There is some ill,' cries Shy lock, 'a-brewing 
 towards my rest.' 
 
 By Jacob's staff I swear 
 I have no mind of feasting forth to-night ; 
 
 Then fresh circumstance — Jessica's flight with Lorenzo 
 — doubles his rage. It is increased by her becoming 
 a Christian, and still more by the loss of his money 
 and jewels. This maddens his evil passions into fury. 
 When serpents are hatching, the sand grows hot around 
 them, hurries their growth, sharpens their poison. 
 
 Sal. I never heard a passion so confus'd, 
 
 So strange, outrageous, and so variable, 
 
 As the dog Jew did utter in the streets : 
 
 ' My daughter ! my ducats ! my daughter ! 
 
 Fled with a Christian ! my Christian ducats ! 
 
 Justice ! the law ! my ducats, and my daughter ! 
 
 And jewels ! two stones, two rich and precious stones, 
 Stol'n by my daughter ! Justice ! find the girl ! 
 She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats. 5 
 
 But Shakespeare is not content to picture his rage by 
 another man's mouth. He brings it, with Shylock him- 
 self, upon the scene ; and few things more wonderful have 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 139 
 
 ever been briefly written of many broken, varied passions, 
 confused by their own fury, and storming through a man's 
 soul, than the interview of Tubal and Shylock. 
 
 All this infernal fire seethes in him, till at last Antonio 
 is in his hands ; and it motives, sufficiently to satisfy 
 what is just in art, the inexorable thirst of his revenge 
 in the scene in the court. Without this preparation, his 
 height of malice and fury would seem immoderate — 
 
 So can I give no reason, nor I will not, 
 
 More than a lodg'd hate and a certain loathing 
 
 I bear Antonio, that I follow thus 
 
 A losing suit against him. Are you answered ? 
 
 Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love ? 
 
 Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill ? 
 
 Bass. Every offence is not a hate at first. 
 
 Shy. What ! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice ? 
 
 These are terrible sentences, and they are matched by 
 those that follow, till he leaps forward with the knife to 
 the breast of Antonio : ' Most learned judge ! A sen- 
 tence ! come, prepare ! ' Then, at the very height of his 
 passion, on the very finest edge of his revenge, he is 
 defrauded of his desire. Baffled by his own passions, 
 hurled from his dark heaven to his deepest hell, he 
 passes from the court in a dreadful loneliness ; so baited 
 by his foes that we feel half inclined to take his part. 
 To take his goods was just, and half of them goes to his 
 daughter. To make him a Christian on pain of death 
 was unjust, and unfair to Christianity. 
 
 It is like Shakespeare to gather some vague pity round 
 him at the last. Moreover, we are prepared beforehand 
 even for that. Shylock is made bad by the degradation 
 of the world, the love of money. But he is made more 
 than bad by untoward circumstance. One man, who 
 has no care for money but flings it away, stands in his 
 path and loathes him as a Jew. His daughter robs 
 
140 LECTURES OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 him, flies from him with a spendthrift Christian, and 
 becomes a Christian. There is some excuse for his over- 
 topping hatred. In an odd recess of our nature, it is 
 possible to give it a faint sympathy. Then, he is once, 
 at least, not thinking of himself, but of his nation 
 and his religion. He is not only Shylock, he is a Jew. 
 He hates Antonio, for he is a Christian. The sorrows 
 of his race, the injustice done his people for ages are in, 
 his heart, and he adds them to his personal hatred. 
 Moreover, even in his rage, he has his tender memories 
 of the past. Perhaps only Shakespeare would then, midst 
 of Shylock's sordid soul, bid arise the vision of Leah, the 
 sweetheart of his youth : ' Thou torturest me, Tubal ; it 
 was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a 
 bachelor : I would not have given it for a wilderness of 
 monkeys.' 
 
 We pity him then in his torment, but Shakespeare 
 makes a bolder claim on our pity. Shylock appeals to 
 humanity itself against the vast injustice meted out to 
 his race. We are Jews, but we are men. I will avenge 
 my nation and myself. 
 
 Salar. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh : 
 what 's that good for ? 
 
 Shy. To bait fish withal : if it will feed nothing else, it will 
 feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a 
 million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, 
 thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies ; and 
 what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not 
 a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with 
 the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, 
 healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and 
 summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you 
 tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and, if 
 you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? If we are like you in the rest, 
 we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his 
 humility 1 Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his 
 sufferance be by Christian example ? Why, revenge. The villainy you 
 teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the 
 instruction. 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 141 
 
 This is bis challenge to humanity, and fierce as it is, 
 it stirs our pity and our sense of justice. 
 
 In the midst of this whirlpool of rage and sorrow, 
 Shakespeare, with his dramatic habit of relieving and 
 enlivening his audience, introduces Launcelot Gobbo, 
 the peasant-servant, the humourist of the piece. His 
 father, a poor peasant of the mainland, brings a basket of 
 doves as a suitable present to Shylock. Launcelot, now 
 of the town, is far beyond that naivete. The city has 
 given him wit and individuality. He is able to imagine 
 two persons in himself, the fiend and his conscience, and 
 to conceive of himself as a third who judges between the 
 other two. Jessica finds him a merry devil, and he is 
 as self-contented as Autolycus, but no rogue. The 
 humorous strife he pictures in himself between his 
 conscience and the fiend, his jaunty play with his sand- 
 blind father, are a happy change, for the moment, from 
 the furious hatred of Shylock and the heavy fates hang- 
 ing over Antonio. Yet Shakespeare, always careful for 
 the knitting of his play into unity, links Launcelot to the 
 Jew, to Lorenzo and to Jessica ; and then, having bound 
 him up with the Jew story, now binds him up with 
 the casket story. He sends him to Belmont as one of 
 Bassanio's servants. 
 
 At Belmont we meet Portia, the queen of the play, the 
 Muse of Wisdom and of Love. Her wisdom, we under- 
 stand, is partly hereditary : it is the wisdom of her father's 
 goodness. The fantastic lottery he devised, in the Three 
 Caskets, for his daughter's marriage, is felt, even by 
 Nerissa, to be wise. The right casket, she thinks, will 
 never be chosen rightly, but by one who shall rightly 
 love, who ' shall give, and hazard, all he hath ' — a keen 
 definition of the true lover; and Bassanio, the true lover, 
 understands it. But Portia's wisdom is, above all, the 
 wisdom of fine womanhood. Underneath her distinct 
 
142 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 type, and unaffected by her wealth and rank, the 
 instincts natural to pure womanhood direct her speech 
 and action. She is as natural as Eve in Paradise. And 
 it is by these instincts, that, in moments of crisis, she acts 
 with a noble promptitude. When she hears Antonio's 
 letter telling of his cruel fate, touched with sorrow, she 
 breaks out with her native impulsiveness ; 
 
 O love, despatch all business, and be gone. 
 
 Her passionate pity forgets her marriage. 
 
 When Bassanio is gone, when all the rest are con- 
 fused, she sees in a moment the right thing to do, and 
 does it instantly. She carries out her plan with a gracious 
 audacity, and is so gay in her travesty of herself as a man 
 — as Rosalind was — that she makes fun of herself with 
 Nerissa. Yet, the steadfast weight of* her character always 
 tells on her company. Respect and honour follow her. 
 The princes bow to her will. The love she so frankly 
 confesses to Bassanio does not lessen, but increases, his 
 reverence for her. That light girl, Jessica, loves her and 
 thinks that 'the poor, rude world hath not her fellow.' 
 Her servants worship her ; and Nerissa, in her close con- 
 fidence, at home with all her thoughts, never varies in 
 respect for her. Lorenzo, full of reverence, is struck by 
 her intelligent judgment of affairs, by the nobility of her 
 quick unselfish action in all that concerns Antonio and her 
 husband. She knows, as few women do, what a friendship 
 between one man and another is, and acts for it, even 
 though it separates her from Bassanio on her wedding 
 
 day; 
 
 Madam, although I speak it in your presence, 
 You have a noble and a true conceit 
 Of god-like amity ; which appears most strongly 
 In bearing thus the absence of your lord. 
 
 A great lady, of a great house, her manners are those of 
 well-bred society. It is a gross mistake when the actress 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 143 
 
 who represents her forgets this, and, when Portia is gay, 
 makes her skip about the stage as if she were Nerissa. 
 Because she is merry, it does not follow that she is 
 skittish. She ought always to keep her dignity on the 
 stage, and the stately manners of her rank. With what 
 graceful courtesy she receives the princes of Morocco and 
 of Aragon ; how full of respect they are, even when they are 
 disappointed ! Yet, she is as natural as the day, as uncon- 
 ventional as Rosalind, though she is so much older ; and 
 as free of her tongue as that delightful girl. Her intellect 
 is not as keen and swift as Rosalind's ; it is more the 
 intellect of a highly educated person who has great 
 practical ability, than a naturally fine intellect like Rosa- 
 lind's. She has the training of the New Learning ; is not 
 without its knowledge of the classics, nor without its 
 philosophic moralities, nor without its love of music. 
 This play is full of the loveliness and charm of sweet 
 music, and Portia is its lover. So is Lorenzo, so is Jessica. 
 The gardens of Belmont are alive with music. And here 
 Bassanio is to choose the casket to the sound of music. 
 If he fail, he makes then a swanlike end, fading in music ; 
 if he win, the music is the flourish with which a king is 
 welcomed, or a bridegroom hears on his marriage day. 
 When Bassanio goes to the caskets, she is quite at home 
 in her classical illustration — 
 
 Now he goes, 
 With no less presence, but with much more love, 
 Than young Alcides, when he did redeem 
 The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy 
 To the sea-monster : I stand for sacrifice ; 
 The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, 
 With bleared visages, come forth to view 
 The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules ! 
 Live thou, I live : with much, much more dismay 
 I view the fight than thou that mak'st the fray. 
 
 Her philosophic turn is always womanly. It does not 
 argue, but speaks on the impulse of the hour, touched 
 
144 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 into sudden thought by some impression from nature or 
 human life. Quick on the touch her natural wisdom begins 
 to flow. A happy goodness then inspires her soul into 
 speech, as when her unpremeditated appeal for mercy 
 enchants the court of law. Or, we hear some note of 
 the universal reason, some pregnant saying to explain 
 life ; I quote her talk with Nerissa when she comes 
 home. It touches with delicate grace one side of Portia's 
 character, the meditative, pensive side — 
 
 Por. That light we see is burning in my hall- 
 How far that little candle throws hi3 beams ! 
 So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 
 
 Ner. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. 
 
 Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less : 
 A substitute shines brightly as a king 
 Until a king be by, and then his state 
 Empties itself, as cloth an inland brook 
 Into the main of waters. Music ! hark ! 
 
 Ner. It is your music, madam, of the house. 
 
 Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect : 
 
 Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. 
 
 Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. 
 
 Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark 
 When neither is attended, and I think 
 The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
 When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
 No better a musician than the wren. 
 How many things by season season'd are 
 To their right praise and true perfection ! 
 Peace, ho ! the moon sleeps with Endymion, 
 And would not be awak'd. 
 
 Again, like many other women of the time, she knows 
 some law ; and has probably studied at Padua. When she 
 adopts the lawyer's robe at the trial, she is quite at home 
 in it. The phrases of the profession are at the fringe 
 of her lips. Never was a more charming lawyer ; she is 
 easily counsel, jury, and judge; and all the men show dull 
 before her mastery. She alone is the overthrower of 
 Shylock, the saviour of Antonio. She knits together in 
 this judgment scene the two parts of the play. The 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 145 
 
 woman of the caskets solves the question of the Jew 
 and his victim. Everything in the drama radiates to 
 this scene, and Portia is the centre of the radiation. 
 
 What I have said of her belongs chiefly to her woman- 
 hood as it appears openly to the world. But she is far 
 more than these externals, though they are part of her 
 womanhood. They suit her like well-fitting garments, 
 but they scarcely reveal her inmost self. When, how- 
 ever, we first meet her, she is alone with her maid 
 Nerissa, and we are nearer to her secret. Her first 
 sentence, and perhaps Shakespeare meant this, matches 
 her temper with the first sentence of Antonio. He is 
 weary in his age. She, in her youth, is momentarily 
 tired : ' By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a- weary 
 of this great world.' Nerissa smiles, and answers to her 
 mood, playing, like her mistress afterwards, with philo- 
 sophy. Even the servants are touched with the New 
 Learning — 
 
 You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same 
 abundance as your good fortunes are : and yet, for aught I see, they are 
 as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It 
 is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean : superfluity 
 comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. 
 
 At this sententious mirth Portia is weary no longer. 
 When her intellect is stirred, her sadness vanishes into 
 gaiety. ' Good sentences,' she cries, ' and well pro- 
 nounced.' ' They would be better,' answers Nerissa, ' if 
 well followed.' Then Portia lets her wise wit fly — 
 
 If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had 
 been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good 
 divine that follows his own instructions : I can easier teach twenty what 
 were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own 
 teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper 
 leaps o'er a cold decree : such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er 
 the meshes of good counsel the cripple. 
 
 And now, being turned to wit, she sketches, with a gay 
 K 
 
146 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 sarcastic grace, all her suitors. The passages are worth a 
 little study, for they probably express Shakespeare's opinion 
 of the uneducated upper classes in society; in Naples, 
 France, England, Scotland, Germany. 'God defend me 
 from them,' says Portia. ' God made him,' she says of the 
 Frenchman, ' therefore let him pass for a man.' ' I like 
 the German very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, 
 and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk. I 
 will do anything, Nerissa, ere I '11 be married to a sponge.' 
 As to the English baron, Shakespeare himself speaks 
 by Portia's mouth. 'How oddly he is suited! I think 
 he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, 
 his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' 
 
 This is the gay, unmalicious satire of a girl amusing 
 herself at home ; and we think, with no ungracious envy, 
 how entertaining Bassanio will find her in the morning 
 garden after breakfast. She will be different when 
 evening falls, and the sentiment of night is born. Then 
 she will speak as she does to Nerissa in the scene that 
 I have quoted. For her moods change with change of 
 circumstance. But we have not pierced as yet to the 
 inmost shrine of her nature, where Love sits and com- 
 mands her. She would not be true Italian, not a woman 
 of her time, nor the complete woman she is, had she not 
 felt through all her nature the lifting wave of passion. 
 Her confession of love to Bassanio, before he chooses 
 from the casket, might seem too frank were it not that 
 they had often met before, as Shakespeare is at pains 
 to tell us, and interchanged ' speechless glances ' ; were it 
 not that Bassanio has declared his love again and again 
 before he runs his risk of failure. Her speech to him is 
 an answer, not a proposal. Yet, though warm with love, 
 it is full of a noble restraint. She says enough to let 
 Bassanio be sure she loves him, but she keeps back much, 
 for, if he were to choose wrongly, she must say farewell 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 147 
 
 to him forever. Yet we feel, while she speaks, that she 
 faith true love will solve the riddle rightly. This 
 little speech is a masterpiece. 
 
 Afterwards, when her lover has chosen and he is hers, 
 the humility of love enters into her soul and makes it 
 the home of grace, dignity, and happiness. She lays 
 herself, her heart, her spirit, her home at his command. 
 It might seem as if she had lost her individuality too 
 h were it not that Bassanio's reverence for her is 
 deepened by the yielding of her love. It is the giving 
 of love, not the giving up of personality. She claims, not 
 long after, full equality with him in affairs, and she is 
 more than his equal. Only love makes Portia yield 
 herself, and in the yielding she retains her dignity and 
 her distinctiveness. But the cry, where we reach to her 
 very centre, is that she utters to herself alone when she 
 sees Bassanio choose the right casket, and knows that 
 she will have her life in having her love. No one hears 
 it ; it is the voice of lonely passion, and no words of love 
 are more intense in Shakespeare — all the more intense 
 for her call for temperance in that she feels. This cry 
 comes out of the white fire in the innermost chamber 
 of Portia's soul. She sees him touch the leaden casket 
 where her portrait is, and to herself she speaks — 
 
 How all the other passions fleet to air, 
 
 As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair, 
 
 And shuddering fear, and green-ey'd jealousy. 
 
 love ! be moderate ; allay thy ecstasy ; 
 In measure rain thy joy ; scant this excess : 
 
 1 feel too much thy blessing ; make it less, 
 For fear I surfeit. 
 
 There is the essence of the woman. 
 
 In the trial scene she is the mouthpiece of Bellario, 
 but her speech on the excellence of mercy is her own. It 
 is excellent, but it owes its astonishing vogue more to 
 the religious form it takes than to any unequalled 
 
148 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 supremacy in its poetry. There are many passages in 
 Shakespeare far beyond it in high imagination. We are 
 glad when the judgment scene is over, and she becomes 
 the Portia whose quiet wisdom says to Nerissa, as she 
 comes into her park beneath the moon — 
 
 How many things by season ,season'd are 
 To their right praise and true perfection ! 
 
 Farewell, then, to Portia. She will live as long as the 
 stage lives, and, after that, in the hearts of men who like 
 a woman to be better than themselves. 
 
 Lastly, there is the little pretty idyll at the end, 
 a pleasant relief from the heated airs of the judgment- 
 hall. We slip from Venice and the crowd, from trade 
 and its angers, from the tragic fates of men, into the 
 moonlit gardens of Belmont, into the laughing, loving 
 company of Jessica and Lorenzo. Shakespeare was 
 still, in this early play, the dramatist of love — of love 
 with a hundred facets, like a diamond. It was not now 
 so much the passion itself that he described as the 
 various forms the passion took. Here, having repre- 
 sented in Portia and Bassanio love in its stateliness 
 of manners and of thought, in its recognition of duty 
 and great affairs as moderating its intensity, he repre- 
 sents a lighter phase of love — not stately and without 
 any relation to duty or society, not immoderate because 
 so light, having the passionateness of youthful life but 
 no more than that — in Jessica and Lorenzo. These gay 
 and airy creatures, the butterflies of the play, dart in and 
 out of the scenes, flitting, with a touch of pleasure, from 
 character to character ; quite irresponsible, not conscious 
 of a conscience as yet, all for love and joy and for both 
 without a thought of the past or the future ; not knowing 
 where they are going, drifting by chance to Belmont; 
 but so charming, so honest in their lightheartedness and 
 loving that Portia hands over to them the care of her 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 149 
 
 household, that every one is fond of them. They 
 je, though they have done nothing to deserve it, 
 the fortune of the Jew. It will not make them more 
 happy or less happy than they are. They will spend or 
 give it all away. 
 
 Here, in this final act, these butterflies are at last at 
 rest at night under the stars; and though their love 
 is gay and aerial, it is, at this learned and cultured 
 time, decked out with imagination and with thought. 
 Their imagination is poetic and their thought not remote 
 from the philosophy and the classic spirit of the New 
 Learning. Few passages in Shakespeare have more of 
 the far-off magic of poetry than this converse between 
 Lorenzo and Jessica. 
 
 Belmont. Avenue to Portia's house. 
 Enter Lorenzo and Jessica. 
 
 Lor. The moon shines bright : in such a night as this, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees 
 And they did make no noise, in such a night 
 Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls, 
 And sigh'd his soul towards the Grecian tents, 
 Where Cressid lay that night. 
 
 Jess. In such a night 
 
 Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew, 
 And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, 
 And ran dismay'd away. 
 
 Lor. In such a night 
 
 Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 
 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 Jes3. In such a night 
 
 Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs 
 That did renew old iEson. 
 
 Lor. In such a night 
 
 Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, 
 And with an unthrift love did run from Venice, 
 As far as Belmont. 
 
 Jess. In such a night 
 
 Did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, 
 
150 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, 
 
 And ne'er a true one. 
 Lor. In such a night 
 
 Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, 
 
 Slander her love, and he forgave it her. 
 Jess. I would out-night you, did no body come ; 
 
 But, hark ! I hear the footing of a man. 
 
 Then, after an interruption — 
 
 Lor. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this hank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
 Sit, Jessica : look, how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
 There 's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. 
 
 Enter Musicians. 
 
 Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn : 
 With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, 
 And draw her home with music. 
 
 Jess. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. 
 
 Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive. 
 
 Such was, in Shakespeare's imagination, the pleasant 
 talk of lovers in that cultured time, lovers worthy of 
 that exquisite song Bassanio hears when his love leads 
 him to choose rightly. 
 
 Tell me where is fancy bred, 
 Or in the heart or in the head ? 
 How begot, how nourished ? 
 
 Reply, reply. 
 It is engender' d in the eyes, 
 With gazing fed ; and fancy dies 
 In the cradle where it lies. 
 
 Let us all ring fancy's knell ; 
 
 I '11 begin it, — Ding, dong, bell. 
 All. Ding, dong, bell. 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 151 
 
 And so, with that sweet sound, farewell to the 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 The conventional poetic note which we have observed 
 here and there in Romeo and Juliet, and which tragedy 
 may excuse, may be said to have wholly disappeared in 
 this play. Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano and the rest speak 
 among themselves the language of men of the world, 
 engaged in great or small affairs. Antonio's high-moving 
 phrases, when they occur, are natural enough to his senti- 
 mental character. When Bassanio and Lorenzo talk to 
 their sweethearts, their speech, of course, lifts itself into 
 poetic forms ; and it is the same with Portia, who speaks 
 in gay prose when she is not deeply moved. Salarino's 
 description of the possible loss of Antonio's ships is 
 heightened by his imaginative turn; but otherwise we 
 may say that in this play, and for the first time, the 
 conversation is entirely natural and easy, in harmony 
 with the character of the speakers and with the various 
 situations. Shakespeare has simplified his methods. 
 
 The characters, not only of the chief but of the lesser 
 personages, are clearly divided from one another. No 
 one could confuse Gratiano with Salarino whose half- 
 poetic fancy divides him from his companions ; or Salanio, 
 who is of a less intelligent type, with Salarino. Each 
 stands separate. 
 
 As to Bassanio, much more might be made of him on 
 the stage than is usual among actors. To conceive him 
 rightly one ought to know something of the social life of 
 Venice when the city was not only great but magnificent. 
 Bassanio is not only young, handsome, with love-inspiring 
 eyes, and impetuous (he will not wait a moment, even at 
 Portia's request, to make his choice of the caskets) ; he 
 is also a splendid noble, whose train and liveries are 
 gorgeous, who comes to woo Portia in all the glory of 
 
152 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 young Venice. A fine splendour ought to belong to his 
 representation. Along with that, the actor ought to con- 
 ceive his soul. He is essentially loveable. Men like 
 Antonio love him; Portia loves him, Nerissa thinks no 
 one so worthy of Portia. He is himself capable of true 
 and passionate love ; yet, to rescue his friend, he leaves 
 Portia upon his wedding day. Moreover, he is not the 
 splendid lover only ; he is also one who has considered 
 the world in quiet thought. His speech over the caskets 
 is that of a man who has seen and brooded over many 
 characters, and the two illustrations he uses in talking 
 to Portia are both drawn from public affairs, as if he 
 were at home in them. They lower, it is true, the note 
 of passion which ought then to prevail, but they also 
 slide into the scene the image of the Venetian state which 
 is deliberately impressed upon the play. There is a cer- 
 tain conventionalism in his speech when he unveils ' fair 
 Portia's counterfeit,' but he makes up for that afterwards 
 when his modesty is made certain of her love for him. 
 He is worth an actor's study. 
 
 A word may be said concerning the representation of 
 Shylock. I suppose it is the tradition to represent him 
 as a decrepit, old, and dirty Jew, in worn and almost 
 ragged clothes, with a senile stoop and manner — I have 
 seen him look like Fagin on the stage. The Duke calls 
 him ' old Shylock,' but to be old is not to be decrepit. He 
 is in full possession of his faculties ; he can dine out ; he 
 is active on the Rialto ; his stormy passion of wrath and 
 revenge is not that of a feeble old man, but of a man of 
 sixty or so who may be called old, but whose blood is hot 
 and his will resolute. 
 
 He is a miser, or rather a gold-breeder, but he is not a 
 ragged miser, nor a dirty one. I am sure Shakespeare 
 meant him to be clean and decently dressed, and re- 
 spected by his countrymen on the Rialto. The Christians 
 
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 153 
 
 might call him dog, but Tubal and the rest knew better. 
 Though he keeps Lancelot's extravagant temper in order, 
 he does not really stint his food. Loss of. jewels and 
 money maddens him, but other folk than misers are 
 affected in the same way. His miserliness has been 
 exaggerated into an extreme, and it is plain that his 
 love of money is absorbed by his hatred and his love of 
 vengeance. 
 
 At first he is only the business man who makes money 
 breed as Jacob made his ewes. Then suddenly it occurs 
 to him that he will take the chance of entrapping Antonio ; 
 and then hate conquers money-getting. Moreover, the 
 Jew in him arises, and money-getting is also lost in the 
 desire to avenge the cause of Israel against the Christian. 
 Both of those passions mingle in him, one-'^5ersonal, 
 one national, and strengthen one another. Then, he is 
 uplifted, far above the usurer and the vulgar Jew, on to 
 the tragic plane. The servility of the Jew is killed. His 
 speech gains nobility ; it is resolute and strong. Only to 
 Tubal, his countryman, does he reveal any weakness after 
 his first outburst of rage in the streets. He claims the 
 law ; he appeals to the Duke, he puts the whole of Venice 
 into action and disturbance. He attacks the jailer in the 
 streets for permitting Antonio to take the air. The fury 
 of his passion has made him for the moment another 
 man. He ought to tower in the court. Bated breath 
 and whispering humbleness or mean cunning have no- 
 thing to do with his appearance. His revenge should 
 straighten his back, and flame in his eyes, and dignify 
 his port. The more he towers above the rest, the more 
 dramatic his sudden fall may be made ; the fiercer, the 
 more absorbing is his passion, the more it forgets every- 
 thing but itself, the more the actor has to do when his 
 revenge is cut away from under his feet. When the 
 actor makes him an object of pity during the judgment 
 
154 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 scene, he misses Shakespeare's aim. When the judgment 
 is given, and not till then, pity may be claimed ; but it 
 is pity greatly modified by horror at the image he has 
 presented of unrelenting and furious revenge. I do not 
 believe that Shakespeare meant us to have more pity for 
 Shylock than may be felt for him after his speech in 
 which the Jew appeals to the Christian as man to man : 
 'Hath not a Jew eyes?' Nor do I think that his last 
 speech is the speech of a broken man. Even after his 
 terrible overthrow, enough of the swell of his rage and 
 hatred lasts to take him with some tragic dignity out of 
 the court. He accepts his fate, but it is with flashing 
 eyes, and his ' I am not well ' need not contradict this. 
 He flings it to them as an excuse for departure. 
 
 I pray you give me leave to go from hence ; 
 I am not well. Send the deed after me, 
 And I will sign it. - • 
 
 When Shylock breaks down, it is when he is alone in 
 his empty house. And Shakespeare leaves that to our 
 imagination. 
 
VI 
 
 AS YOU LIKE IT 
 
 The title strikes the chord of this beautiful, gay, and 
 graceful play. Shakespeare laughed out the title one day 
 after reading what he had written. ' Take it as you like 
 it, in whatever way it pleases you. Take its mirth or 
 seriousness, its matter of thought or fancy, its grave or 
 lively characters, its youthful love and self-conscious 
 melancholy — take anything you like out of it. There is 
 plenty to please all kinds of men. It is written for your 
 pleasure. Take it for your pleasure.' 
 
 The solemn professor, the most solid moralist, will not 
 be able to assert that Shakespeare wrote this play with 
 a moral purpose, or from a special desire to teach 
 mankind. He wrote is as he liked it, for his own delight. 
 He hoped men would listen to it for their pleasure, and 
 take it just as they liked best to take it. It is true there 
 is much matter in it, as there is in human life, which 
 the prophets and moralists may use for their own pur- 
 poses, but Shakespeare did not write these things for 
 their ethical ends. He wrote them because they were 
 the right things in their places; and he smiled, as he 
 wrote them, with pleasure in them. ' I do not mind,' he 
 would have said, ' how you use my play, if only you let the 
 lover and his maiden, the Duke and his hunters, the fool 
 and the shepherd, Jaques and Silvius and Phoebe, aye and 
 the forest and the deer, do with it also what they like, 
 and as they like it. I have made a new Thing ; let every 
 one enjoy it.' 
 
156 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 We have therefore got back, out of the tragic and semi- 
 tragic world in which we have been, to Shakespeare's full 
 and delightful gaiety, to the very root of his nature, to 
 that which made his tragedy so intense — paradox as that 
 saying may seem to be. In As You Like It we touch 
 Shakespeare as Nature freshly made him, the wise, de- 
 lightful, sunny Creature, whom Nature in her happiest 
 hour gave to us for our eternal pleasure. And, indeed, 
 Milton seems to have felt that this grace, wildness, gaiety, 
 sweetness and joy, were the primal things in Shakespeare. 
 When he writes of him, he does not think of the great 
 tragedies, but of the times when 
 
 Sweetest Shakespeare, Nature's child, 
 Warbles his native wood-notes wild. 
 
 And ' wood-notes,' that selected word, may have been used 
 as Milton thought of the wood near Athens and of the 
 forest of Arden. 
 
 It was after the misery and slaughter of the Civil Wars, 
 after Richard II. and 777., after Henry IV. and V., that 
 Shakespeare returned to his sunny happiness in three 
 delightful comedies — Twelfth Night, Much Ado About 
 Nothing, and As You Like It. With this return he re- 
 sumes his constant subject, in its joy or its sorrow, the 
 subject of love. And in these comedies he is at play with 
 love. They are ruled by the god of love at his choicest 
 pranks, in Protean shapes, and varied through a multi- 
 tude of moods. Most men at Shakespeare's age (he was 
 now about thirty-seven or thirty-eight) would have lost 
 their youthful brightness, gamesomeness, and delight in 
 life. Love would have ceased to be radiant, jewelled with 
 joy, and full of sport. But Shakespeare has lost nothing. 
 He is Orlando ; he is Rosalind. ' Age cannot wither him, 
 nor custom stale his infinite variety.' 
 
 In this play love lives in many forms : in Orlando and 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 157 
 
 Rosalind. Celia and Oliver, Silvius and Phcebe, Touch- 
 stone and Audrey. We see also other forms of love : 
 the love of two girls for one another, of Adam for his 
 master and his master for him, of Touchstone for Celia 
 and Rosalind. Even a few touches are given to us of a 
 daughter's affection for her father. But these lands of 
 love, outside the passion of youthful love, are but side- 
 issues, due to the love of Shakespeare for lovingness. Of 
 them all, in comparison with the enchanted drawing of 
 love between man and woman, Rosalind's phrase may be 
 said, ' But what talk we of fathers, when there is such a 
 man as Orlando ? ' 
 
 In this play also the lovers love one another at first 
 sight. 
 
 Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might : 
 Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight 1 
 
 is the cry of Phoebe when she sees Rosalind, and thinks 
 she is a man. Rosalind is smitten the moment she sees 
 Orlando, Orlando when he sees Rosalind. When Oliver and 
 Celia meet, they 'no sooner saw one another but they 
 loved.' We know from The Tempest that Shakespeare kept 
 this belief of his early life to his later days. It was like his 
 naturalness to believe in love at first sight, like a man who 
 lived in that swift and undelaying time, like the southern 
 warmth of his temperament, like his reverence for passion 
 as a native goodness in human nature. And love, in his 
 work, even when it breaks at once into the full-blown rose, 
 is always modest, chaste, true, faithful, and full of fire and 
 joy. Moreover, when circumstance is not dark, it is not 
 isolating, selfish, foolish, or sentimental. It thinks of 
 others ; it sees things clearly, and is quick to meet them. 
 It has fine intellect at hand to use, and uses it. And it 
 is full of common-sense. 
 
 There is not a word of this which might not be proved 
 from the love-play of Orlando and Rosalind. That is one 
 
158 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 of the gayest things in Shakespeare. The wit which 
 flashes through their conversation does not lessen its clean 
 brightness from the beginning to the end, neither does 
 the pleasant humour which plays innocuous over every 
 circumstance, over every character, and over the natural 
 world. Nor is the humour forced or conventional or 
 derived from others. It is the natural bubbling up of the 
 fountain of happy youth into gracious gaiety of temper, 
 into self-delighting joy. We, who listen, cannot enjoy the 
 humour of the situation when, dressed as a gallant hunter 
 Rosalind meets Orlando, half as much as she enjoys it her- 
 self. She plays with it as a kitten with a ball. Her love 
 develops, does not check or dim, her humour. As to her 
 natural intellect, it is the same with that. Love has not 
 impaired it. It is as swift and various as summer light- 
 ning; and though it flashes here and there and every- 
 where, it always strikes the point at issue. It sees into 
 the centre of all masked conventions. It understands 
 Jaques in a moment, though he is a man of the world 
 and she a girl; and lays him bare to himself. Yet all 
 the time this clear-eyed intellect is working on life, she is 
 so deep in love that it cannot be sounded. In her, emotion 
 and intellect are equal powers. 
 
 coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou- didst know how many 
 fathom deep I am in love ! But it cannot be sounded : my affection 
 hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal. 
 
 Orlando's love is of the same quality, full of gaiety, 
 even though — for he cannot find Rosalind — it be dashed 
 with a shade of natural melancholy : amusing itself with 
 delightful verses hung on happy trees, ready to play with 
 the pretty youth he is pleased to call his Rosalind ; witty 
 enough to make the talk lively, not witty enough to dis- 
 please the girl who would not wish him to be brilliant 
 when he thought he was away from her ; of a grave intel- 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 159 
 
 Hgence also when he chooses ; able, like Rosalind, to over- 
 come Jaques with his own weapons. 
 
 Love, with him, is no mournful, depressing companion. 
 It kindles into brightness all his powers, as it does with 
 Rosalind. There is no fading in its rose, no false senti- 
 ment, none of the marks of a dying lover. Rosalind sees 
 this, and would be inwardly pleased with it — 
 
 A lean cheek, which you have not ; a blue eye and sunken, which 
 you have not ; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not ; a beard 
 neglected, which you have not ; but I pardon you for that, for, simply, 
 your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue. Then, your hose 
 should be uhgartered, your bonnet unhanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, 
 your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless 
 desolation. But you are no such man : you are rather point-device in 
 your accoutrements ; as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any 
 other. 
 
 In both, their love enkindles, not only itself to finer 
 loving, but all their natural qualities. To read of it is 
 pleasure. It gives almost as much pleasure as it has. 
 
 The love of Celia and Oliver is of a different kind, a 
 swift, mutual passion, more of the senses that the soul. 
 Rosalind does not like it, as we hear from her account of 
 it. She is more scornful than pleased. It jars on her 
 dignity, on her humorous nature. There is no play in it, 
 such as she has had with Orlando, to keep it healthy. And 
 we do not expect it of Celia ; this kind of passion does 
 not lie in her character as we have seen it ; and I think 
 Shakespeare has been betrayed into inventing something 
 which is not quite in nature by his desire to wind up 
 his play by such a reconciliation of Oliver and Orlando 
 as will make everything comfortable for Rosalind and 
 Orlando in the future. It is against probability that 
 Oliver should change in a moment from the scoundrel he 
 is in the first act to a high-bred gentleman, only because 
 his brother did not allow him to be killed by a serpent 
 and a lioness. The invention of the lioness and the fight 
 
160 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 becomes improbable because of the main improbability. 
 And, moreover, I cannot get over the matching of Celia to 
 a man whose nature has been for many- years that of a 
 ruffian, a murderer, and a greedy dog. It stains her 
 pleasant image. Oliver has repented, but we are sorry for 
 Celia. Shakespeare ought not to have made him so very 
 bad in the beginning, if he was to be so good in the end. 
 It is out of tune. 
 
 In the original story the improbability is not so great. 
 Oliver, after his banishment, meets Celia as she is being 
 carried away by. robbers, and rescues her. Had Shake- 
 speare alluded to this event, as he might easily have done, 
 he would have 'motived' that strangeness in Celia's conduct 
 which even love does not fully excuse. It would make 
 her conduct possible, but not beautiful. The event may 
 have been in his mind, and itfi insertion neglected, but the 
 text does not support that suggestion. This thing is a 
 blot on the play. 
 
 The love of Silvius and Phoebe is the conventional 
 love of the Elizabethan Pastoral; and it may be, in 
 this love - drama, a satire on that academic, literary 
 love. He who conceived the natural love of Orlando and 
 Rosalind would* see no reality in the artificial love of 
 Corydon and Phyllis ; and it would be quite like Shake- 
 speare to make a picture of it, partly for the sake of pleasant 
 mockery of it, and partly in order to contrast it with 
 natural love in Rosalind and Orlando. But, as he is in 
 earnest all through this play, and as love of whatever 
 kind is at root serious as well as gay to him, he touches 
 the love of Silvius with reality. Its expression goes far 
 beyond the conventional phrasing of the Pastoral. It 
 seems a pity that Silvius is almost too great a fool for 
 any woman to care for. But he is in earnest, and Rosalind 
 sees that he is ; and while she strives to lash him into 
 rebellion against Phoebe, she also takes some pains to get 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 161 
 
 his sweetheart for him in the end. She does not pity 
 him, for his want of manliness deserves no pity ; but she 
 uses Phoebe's love for her (as a man) to soften her heart, to 
 make her understand what Silvius has suffered ; and, in 
 that new temper, Phcebe takes Silvius because he has 
 been faithful. The conventional love is led into the 
 natural ; and the way it is managed is as pretty a piece of 
 work as is to be found in Shakespeare. 
 
 The best characteristic of the play is beauty. I am 
 not sure that it is not the most beautiful of all the 
 comedies, because the beautiful in it is so joyous, and 
 distributed with so equal a hand over the whole. It is 
 pervasive, like a sweet air in which all things are seen 
 delicately. There may be lovelier or grander passages of 
 poetry in other comedies than any we find here, but no 
 other comedy has the same equality of poetry, the same 
 continuity of lovely emotion, of delightful charm, and of 
 finished execution. And though the poetry in the tragic 
 plays may have more of fire and sensuousness, of emotion 
 breaking into ideal form, of thought on the verge of the 
 eternal intelligence, yet here, where the gentle note of 
 gaiety naturally eludes these supreme qualities, there is 
 abundance of good matter, of the stuff of thought, of 
 what Arnold would call the criticism of life. Few plays 
 are wiser, more full of affectionate experience of human 
 nature. And without that element of human wisdom and 
 affection there is no great poetry. 
 
 A greater beauty even than this is the beauty of 
 character. Rosalind and Orlando ! could any one desire 
 to have more charming, more ennobling companions 
 than these two enchanting persons ? To live with them 
 is to live with moral beauty, but it is not a beauty 
 which the pharisaic moralist will like at all. Their life 
 will do good to every one they meet. Rosalind even lifts 
 her thought, at times, into a spiritual beauty, and then 
 
 L 
 
162 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 returns to the natural, like the lark who soars in song 
 and then drops downward to her nest. The characters 
 of Celia, and of almost all the rest, are lower than Rosa- 
 lind's, but they have a steady sweetness of nature. Of 
 course, Jaques is set over against them, but even he is 
 better than the cynic. There is a sadness in him which 
 is real; he is not so bad a man as he has been; he is 
 meditative, and has at times the gentleness of pensiveness. 
 Then the banished Duke is a noble gentleman ; worldly- 
 wise but enjoying the woods, pleased even with Jaques 
 when in his sullen fits he is full of matter ; taking all his 
 misfortunes with a gallant air, and turning them into good 
 fortune; translating the stubbornness of ill-luck into so 
 ' quiet and so sweet a style ' that all the banished lords are 
 happy with him ; finding good in everything, and as kind 
 in his thoughts of animals as of men. Amiens, the other 
 lords, even the pages, are courteous, good-humoured, 
 musical, and ready to help. Silvius is not intelligent, 
 but he is good ; Phcebe turns out very graciously ; Audrey 
 is an honest creature; Touchstone loves his mistresses 
 with fidelity, though he is naughty enough ; Corin is not 
 only an honest labourer, he has also loved and can feel 
 with those in love. As to Orlando, he is as good as 
 gold. The mantle of Rosalind's sweetness and good- 
 ness is over them all. We dwell in a world of moral 
 beauty. Its characters soothe and heal the trouble of 
 the world. 
 
 Lastly, on this matter of beauty, how fair is the scenery, 
 when we have left the Court ! Shakespeare builds it up 
 by suggestions on the lips of the actors into lovely land- 
 scape. The forest of Arden, by a lucky coincidence of 
 name, puts us in mind of an English forest ; and seems 
 to transfer the action to our own land. And Shakespeare, 
 no doubt, with his patriotic passion, would have desired 
 this. Whether he desired it or no, he played into this 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 163 
 
 idea. He used, as material, his youthful wanderings in 
 the glades and by the streams of Warwickshire. 
 
 I was staying at a little village some years ago, and went 
 to walk in Leigh Park So vivid was the resemblance of 
 the scenery to that of As You Like It, that I looked to 
 come across the Duke and his lords dining in a glade, to 
 find a copy of verses on a tree, to meet Rosalind, more 
 than common tall, glancing from grove to grove. Great 
 oaks were in the park, secular gentlemen, knotted and 
 gnarled with many sorrows, and some had their ' boughs 
 mossed with age, and high tops bald with dry antiquity.' 
 A quiet-moving stream ran through the opener wood, 
 pleased with its own chatter; with low sandy banks 
 which broke down towards the shallows ; and on one of 
 these, under a broad oak, the animals were wont to cross 
 the stream. ' This,' I said, is the very place where Jaques 
 watched the stricken deer weep in the stream, and the 
 careless herd go by.' And while I stood there, hidden 
 by the oak, it was my good fortune to see a stag leave 
 the herd, and come to drink at the water. Such happy 
 moments belong to life, and are beloved for ever. 
 
 It is likely enough that Shakespeare had seen this very 
 place. But whether he drew direct from nature or not, 
 his forest is beautiful. We have walked in it a hundred 
 times. We know intimately the oaks whose antique roots 
 peep out, seen through the water, under the brook which 
 brawls along the wood ; the shadowy glades where the Duke 
 dined and the dead deer were laid on the grass ; the green- 
 wood, where Robin Hood in old days blew his horn, where 
 the merry-throated birds were singing, where the care- 
 less herd 01 deer swept by; and in whose hollows grew 
 thick the brambles, hawthorn, and green holly. We have 
 seen the outskirts of the wood, where it passed into 
 meadows and low hills covered with sheep. And there, 
 near the edge, we met another stream that broke out 
 
164 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 from the forest, amid a rank of osiers. And in a neigh- 
 bour bottom stood the cottage Rosalind rented from the 
 churlish farmer. Outside the forest skirts she dwelt, 
 like fringe upon a petticoat, a pleasant place that listened 
 to the murmuring stream ; and near at hand a sheep-cote 
 fenced about, as by a special gift of Providence to her, 
 with olive-trees. She and Celia, even Touchstone, love 
 the forest, and Rosalind loved it more when she heard 
 Orlando had set up his dwelling in one of its caves. And 
 Orlando thought it a pleasant place when he met the girls. 
 But it had also its horror to one who came upon it, exiled, 
 sorrowful, and starving. When Orlando first sees it, it 
 is to him a 'desert inaccessible, shaded by melancholy 
 boughs ' ; and in winter those who dwelt in it tell of the 
 • icy fang, and churlish chiding of the wintry wind,' and 
 of the ' foggy south puffing with wind and rain.' 
 
 But now it was summer, now when Orlando and 
 Rosalind flash into it, like two swallows; and the wood 
 is altogether fair; a lovely place for beautiful people to 
 dwell in, and ' fleet the time carelessly as in the golden 
 world.' And now and then, Shakespeare, enchanted 
 with his own creation, carries the forest away from this 
 earth where winter breaks up the joyous plenitudes of 
 summer, and places it in the far land of the imagination, 
 where it is always summer, and wonderful things are 
 common. And while he is there, in the dream, olive-trees 
 slip into the northern forest, and palm-trees receive the 
 love-rhymes of Orlando ; the green and gilded snakes of 
 the tropics glide from bush to bush, and crouching in the 
 brake a lean and hungry lioness, with udders all drawn 
 dry, watches a sleeping man — such happy games, for its 
 own delight and careless of reality, does imagination play. 
 The forest is real, and yet slides into a dream, the stuff 
 we are made of. But whether it be real or visionary, it is 
 beautiful. 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 165 
 
 And now we come more directly to the play. It is 
 adapted from, and follows very closely, Lodge's romance, 
 Rosalynde, Ev/phues' Golden Legacie, a book issued in 
 1590. The story is there, but the dialogue, the dramatic 
 arrangement, the characters, and the life in the play 
 are altogether Shakespeare's. He has, moreover, added 
 Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, three different types of 
 human nature. 
 
 The first act makes the framework of the play. It tells 
 of all the tangles which Rosalind un-ties in the end — 
 the quarrel between the two Dukes, the quarrel between 
 Orlando and Oliver, the dull anger of Duke Frederick, the 
 fate of the banished Duke, the flight, with him, of many 
 great lords to the forest. The working of this main 
 quarrel is the cause why Rosalind and Celia take their 
 flight, and Touchstone with them ; is the cause also why 
 Orlando is banished and afterwards Oliver. And finally, 
 out of this quarrel emerges Duke Frederick's repentance 
 and the full solution of the drama. This then is the event 
 which binds all the action into unity. 
 
 This act moves at a quiet pace. It is varied, but it only 
 awakens a pleasant excitement. Shakespeare neither 
 hurries his beginnings nor wastes the sensations he keeps 
 for their right place. As usual, he is most careful in 
 his preparation. There 's not a matter branched out in 
 the following acts which is not rooted in the first act, 
 except the episode of Silvius and Phoebe, and the love- 
 matter between Celia and Oliver, which seem like after- 
 thoughts. In it Rosalind and Celia are longing for 
 freedom ; Orlando sees Rosalind in it, and both are shaken 
 into love ; in it Celia is so pained by her father's 
 banishment of Rosalind, that she proposes flight. Rosalind 
 is glad, for she may meet Orlando, who has already 
 gone. Touchstone would go to the world's end with 
 Celia. All converges, speech after speech, scene after 
 
166 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 scene, to the flight and the forest ; and the gentle excite- 
 ment of one event after another, and of the thoughts the 
 events have made, has lifted us slowly to the central point, 
 the new and crowning theme on which all the rest of the 
 music is to be wrought — the meeting of Rosalind and 
 Orlando at the beginning of the third act in the forest 
 of Arden. Around these two the rest are grouped, all the 
 action plays, and all the characters develop themselves. 
 
 Yet Rosalind and Orlando do not overtop or over- 
 weight the play. Shakespeare's dramatic genius has 
 now matured. The too great dominance of the leading 
 characters — that common mistake of dramatists into 
 which Shakespeare seems to have fallen in Richard II. 
 and 17/. — is now quite absent from his work. Rosalind is 
 chief, and Orlando next to her; but they do not over- 
 whelm the Duke, or Jaques, or Touchstone, or Celia, or 
 even Phoebe, Silvius, and Corin. These all play their 
 parts, and the part each plays is full of life. And yet, 
 Rosalind does not lose her supremacy. She is still first, 
 but first, not because she is isolated from the other 
 characters, but because she adds life to all that is living 
 in them. She does not put out their light, but kindles 
 it into a brighter flame of character. They burn all the 
 brighter for her influence. A touch from her makes them 
 reveal themselves. 
 
 In the first act, Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando are not 
 the gay persons they are afterwards ; and no wonder, their 
 circumstances are disagreeable. The suppressed spirit of 
 their youth is longing for freedom. Rosalind, having 
 this longing — and her father's exile and her uncle's 
 jealousy of her intensify it — is sad enough. Yet in her 
 light liftings out of sadness we hear the far-off music 
 of what is coming, the prelude to the happiness of her 
 forest love-adventure. In her sadness also, and because 
 of it, a part of her character is developed by Shakespeare 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 107 
 
 which we might not have divined from the following acts. 
 We see the seriousness, the deep feeling, the solid sense, 
 which lie beneath her youthful brightness. She cannot 
 'forget her banished father,' cannot take part in any 'ex- 
 traordinary pleasure.' She has now the reticent courtesy, 
 the grave dignity and courage of a great lady. No actress 
 who makes Rosalind even half a hoyden has the remotest 
 idea of her character. She speaks to her uncle with due 
 reverence for a great kinsman. But when he attacks her 
 father, and her own honour, she answers him with a 
 noble resolution — 
 
 Treason is not inherited, my lord ; 
 
 Or if we did derive it from our friends, 
 
 What 's that to me ? My father was no traitor ! 
 
 Thus she speaks out of that ' silence and patience ' — 
 strange words, unlike the Rosalind we chiefly know — which 
 have made the people pity her, and which, mistaken 
 for subtlety of treason, urge the Duke to drive her away. 
 This injustice impels her to a deeper melancholy — ' be 
 cheerful, cousin,' says Celia ; and Rosalind, in a transient 
 gloom, is placed before us. Yet, in a moment, so strong 
 is youth in her, she flashes into agreement with Celia's 
 proposition to fly to the forest, and will suit her at all 
 points like a man. An actress should take with her 
 through the forest scenes this serious side of Rosalind's 
 character; the dignity which even in her 'saucy' play 
 ought to appear, her high sense of honour, her steady 
 common-sense, this clearness of vision, this high resolve in 
 sorrow; else her acting will miss half of Shakespeare's 
 idea of Rosalind. 
 
 But she does not allow her common-sense or her sadness 
 in this first act to interfere with the affairs of love. There 
 she lets Nature have her way, and slips into her love with 
 delight; silent at first, but silent from inward pleasure. 
 The joy of it uplifts her into a new-created world. And 
 
168 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Orlando enters the gates of it along with her. And with 
 the joy comes, of course, the SAveet and tender melancholy 
 of love which knows not yet that it is returned, but is 
 all but sure it is ; and which in puffs of alternate painful 
 pleasure and pleasurable pain makes its own drama in 
 the heart. A charming little dialogue tells the story — 
 
 Eos. 0, how full of briers is this working-day world ! 
 
 Cel. They are but burrs, cousin, thrown on thee in holiday foolery : 
 if we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats will catch 
 them. 
 
 Eos. I could shake them off my coat : these burrs are in my heart. 
 
 Cel. Hem them away. 
 
 Eos. I would try, if I could cry ' hem,' and have him. 
 
 Cel. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections. 
 
 Eos. ! they take the part of a better wrestler than myself ! 
 
 We feel, through the light melancholy, her innate 
 gaiety; and then out of the gaiety arises her serious 
 fidelity to love. ' Yet,' says Celia, ' I hate not Orlando.' 
 
 Eos. No, faith, hate him not, for my sake. 
 
 Cel. Why should I not ? doth he not deserve well ? 
 
 Eos. Let me love him for that ; and do you love him, because I do. 
 
 It is a mingled skein — serious mirth, mirthful melancholy. 
 But it is only untoward circumstance that weighs her down. 
 When she is free in the forest where life and summer 
 are wed, sure of Orlando whose verses she has found, in 
 attire in which she can play with his love and go further 
 in speech than a maiden can — her brightness, joyousness, 
 her happy nature, mount and sing like a bird let loose 
 from a cage. She is fresher than the dew in the forest, 
 more glancing than the stream, and as wild in her grace 
 as the wild rose that flings its branches everywhere ; yet, 
 in her wildness is no extravagance, no rudeness, no want 
 of harmony. 
 
 With this grave, gay girlhood, with this beauty, she has 
 also intellect and its charm. Celia has quite enough, but 
 Rosalind overbrims with it. It is a natural growth in her, 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 109 
 
 and comes of her own divine vitality. It illuminates her 
 argument with Celia on the gifts of Nature and Fortune, 
 but there Celia is as quick-minded as she. It is only when 
 she gets to the forest, and is warmed by meeting Orlando, 
 that it develops into sparkle of wit, into power, insight, 
 and good sense. And it adds to her grace, beauty and 
 entangling charm a gaiety that never makes mistakes, 
 a clearness of atmosphere in which what is foolish or 
 merely fantastic, and all speech which is not true or 
 is masked to deceive the world, are revealed, shamed, 
 and undone. When Jaques, attracted by her brightness, 
 airs his melancholy before her, she puts him to flight with 
 a luminous good sense — 
 
 Jaq. I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with thee. 
 
 Eos. They say you are a melancholy fellow. 
 
 Jaq. I am so ; I do love it better than laughing. 
 
 Eos. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows, 
 and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards. 
 
 Jaq. Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. 
 
 Eos. Why, then, 'tis good to be a post. 
 
 Jaq. I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation ; 
 nor the musician's, which is fantastical ; nor the courtier's, which is 
 proud ; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious ; nor the lawyer's, which is 
 politic ; nor the lady's, which is nice ; nor the lover's, which is all these :. 
 but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, ex- 
 tracted from many objects, and, indeed the sundry contemplation of my 
 travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous 
 sadness. 
 
 Eos. A traveller ! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I 
 fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's ; then, to have 
 seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands. 
 
 Jaq. Yes, I have gained my experience. 
 
 Eos. And your experience makes you sad ! I had rather have a fool 
 to make me merry than experience to make me sad : and to travel for 
 it too ! 
 
 Enter Orlando. 
 
 Orl. Good day, and happiness, dear Eosalind ! 
 
 Jaq. Nay then, God be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse. 
 
 And he leaves her in a huff of vanity, while Rosalind cries 
 after him — 
 
 Farewell, Monsieur Traveller ! Look you lisp, and wear strange 
 
170 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be out of love with 
 your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance 
 you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. 
 
 Thus, her good sense unveils him. Again, when Silvius 
 crouches under Phoebe's treatment of him, Rosalind is 
 ashamed for the man, and she has no sympathy with 
 the woman. She protects Silvius because he is faithful, 
 for she sees good when it is there ; but she despises him 
 for his weakness, and strikes hard on the weak spot. 
 Celia pities him, ' Alas ! poor shepherd.' 
 
 Eos. Do you pity him ? no, he deserves no pity. Wilt thou love 
 such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument, and play false 
 strains upon thee ! Not to be endured ! Well, go your way to her, for 
 I see love hath made thee a tame snake. 
 
 These are the kind of things which weight her wit, 
 charm and joyousness, which add respect for her mental 
 power to our pleasure in her naturalness, which make us 
 think, with satisfied faith in its strength, of her woman- 
 hood in contest with the future, and in triumph over it. 
 0, fortunate Orlando ! 
 
 In the third act she meets Orlando, and that is the 
 centre of the plaj^. Meantime in the second act we are 
 inside the forest, and meet its indwellers. Rosalind, Celia 
 and Touchstone have found their way thither and meet 
 Corin and Silvius. Corin is the honest labourer, old, 
 tired, and practical, but who has had his day of love 
 in youth and remembers it. This hallows his age, and 
 makes it sweet with thought, for Shakespeare was too 
 kindly to leave the old unblessed. Silvius seeks Corin's 
 sympathy, for he has known the game and tenderness 
 of love. To ask such sympathy from a shepherd, whose 
 greatest pride now is ' to see his ewes graze and his 
 lambs suck,' who is ' a true labourer,' seems strange, but 
 in Shakespeare's affectionate regard, Corin, whenever he 
 remembers that he was young, and that he loved, is 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 171 
 
 another man in that sweet air. And then both these lives 
 of his, thinking together, make him say — ' that he that 
 had learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of 
 good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred.' Such a 
 one is ' a natural philosopher/ says Touchstone, who, while 
 he plays his mocking wit on Corin, respects his honesty 
 and sense. And Rosalind likes the old labourer, and he 
 understands Rosalind. When he talks with her, he rises 
 above his natural level of thought, so greatly does her pre- 
 sence heighten and kindle whomsoever she touches. It is 
 the Corin whom love plagued of old, who makes this speech 
 when he calls Rosalind to see Silvius and Phcebe meeting — 
 
 If you will see a pageant truly play'd, 
 Between the pale complexion of true love 
 And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, 
 Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you, 
 If you will mark it. 
 
 That is the kindling of Rosalind. Corin is breathing 
 the poetic air of his youth. The years of long labour are 
 forgotten in her presence. 
 
 The episode of Silvius and Phoebe seems unnecessary. 
 Its excision would leave the play untouched in interest. 
 The only character it adds to is Rosalind's, and what it 
 adds is scarcely worth adding. But it is amusing on the 
 stage, and it enhances the pastoral and woodland element. 
 It also fills up a gap in the action, and plays another tune 
 than that played by Rosalind and Orlando. Shakespeare 
 was now so brimming over with invention and life that 
 I suppose he could not help these additions. There are 
 artists who would become ill if they did not relieve them- 
 selves of some of the host of conceptions which beset 
 them and call aloud for form. This episode is fully and 
 carefully worked, but it impresses one as an insertion. 
 
 The little tale of Touchstone and Audrey might also have 
 been left out without loss, and in itself it is disagreeable. 
 
172 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Audrey is scarcely worth drawing, nor is her simplicity 
 humorous except in contrast with Touchstone's cynical 
 cleverness. The worst side of Touchstone appears in his 
 relation to her, and it was a pity to lower his character. 
 Perhaps Shakespeare felt that Touchstone — who is quite 
 out of place in the forest — needed some pursuit, some 
 amusement to vary a life which bored him ; and supplied 
 him with a rustic maid to seduce, and a rustic lover to 
 outrival. But the story is unnecessary. Touchstone is 
 elsewhere quite sufficiently and agreeably drawn. 
 
 Jaques, like Touchstone, is an invention of Shakespeare. 
 He_dominates the second act. Too much has been made, 
 I think, of the Duke's account of the past life of Jaques, 
 as if Shakespeare intended him to be, here in the play, as 
 ugly a character as he had been in the past. That is 
 quite out of the question. Jaques has given up that dis- 
 solute life, and shows no desire to return to it, even in 
 thought. 
 
 Some say that Jaques is the mere cynic, and his 
 melancholy a bitter melancholy. He has the cynicism, 
 they think, of the exhausted debauchee, who sees no good, 
 or if he sees good, claims it as evil. Jaques does not 
 deserve that accusation. If he has ever had cynicism 
 in him he has now put it outside of him ; but he keeps 
 it in his pocket, ready to put it on and off like his cap, 
 as circumstance and fancy lead him. Nor is he a bad 
 man now. No evil creature could laugh so heartily at 
 Touchstone, or enjoy him so thoroughly. Touchstone is 
 professionally what Jaques is actually,, the tired man of 
 experience who mocks the world but who would like to 
 find freshness of life again. 
 
 Men who have lived the life of a libertine, as ' sensual as 
 the brutish sting itself,' who have exhausted in it phy- 
 sical and mental power, who have not given it up of their 
 own will but because they could not go on with it, who 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 173 
 
 are consumed inwardly with regret of it — these men hate 
 the world which can give them no more pleasure, envy 
 those who enjoy life, and speak their hate with savage 
 bitterness. The poison of asps is under their lips. 
 
 Jaques is no such man. He envies no one. He is 
 satirical, but not venomous. He is drawn to Rosalind and 
 Orlando, though they will not have anything to do with 
 his melancholy egotism, which, in their eyes, makes him 
 wearisome. He seeks people who think, which the worn- 
 out sensualist does not; who have what the Duke calls 
 'matter' in them "for which the mere cynic does not 
 care. He is really interested in the fate of the wounded 
 deer, though he makes it a text for his moralising only, 
 and will not stir from his couch of moss to help it. He is 
 vain of his brooding thoughtfulness, and of course he has 
 plenty to think of. His wild life has given him know- 
 ledge of the purlieus of human nature, and their many 
 problems. When he remembers all this matter of 
 humanity, he is sullen, but not savage; and then old 
 gentlemen, like the banished Duke, who are void of his 
 storied experience of life, seek him out and taste through 
 his moralising a pleasant savour of far-off naughtiness, 
 of a world fuller and more varied than the forest. This 
 was sure to please an exile from the world like the 
 Duke, who, though he makes the best of the wild 
 wood, will not be sorry to get back to the court. The 
 good stuff of thought in Jaques somewhat excuses his 
 egotism. But he is over-vain of it, and when Rosalind 
 laughs at his apparent wisdom and tells him it is really 
 folly, he is hurt ; and the hurt is the deeper, because an 
 inward whisper tells him Rosalind is right. 
 
 Jaques, as Shakespeare drew him, has left his sensual 
 life before he was exhausted, while his body was in 
 good trim, and his brain unworn ; left it because he was 
 bored by it. The beginnings of satiety disgusted him, 
 
174 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 and he fled to the woods to think and moralise. And 
 there, he used his thinking and moralising to exalt 
 himself in his own eyes ; and became a ripe medlar of 
 an egotist. And, naturally, the egotist proclaims his" 
 superiority to others, and tries to prove it by mocking 
 at men's folly, and by disclosing their evil. In this way 
 he flatters himself that he is the cleanser of the 'foul 
 body of the infected world,' if only they will receive his 
 medicine. Then, that he should be melancholy belongs 
 to the part he plays, because he thinks he sees so clearly 
 how wrong, silly, and dirty is the world. 
 
 This is not cynicism, but may become it. It is a self- 
 created melancholy which runs into abuse of others in 
 order to prove its own rightness ; and Orlando and Rosa- 
 lind, with the clear eyes of youth, and unselfish because 
 they love, see straight into Jaques, think him a poor 
 creature, and he himself sometimes knows it. His 
 melancholy is but the mask his egotism wears, But he 
 wears it well, because he has brains, and because his 
 original nature, which was kindly, saves him from com- 
 plete bitterness. His indignation is never cruel, and his 
 humour takes the venom out of his sarcasm. Nor is 
 he devoid of imagination, that power too noble to lodge 
 with a cynic. He is indeed more imaginative than 
 Orlando, who is only imaginative because he is young 
 and in love. Jaques is an artist in words. His moral- 
 ising on the stag is done by one who had great experi- 
 ence in putting things well. And as to his celebrated 
 speech of the world as a stage — it is a model of form, 
 splendidly representing an imaginative conception of all 
 mankind. The one thing its imagination wants is passion, 
 nor has it sympathy or the warmth of pity. But it is his 
 cue, as one of the masquerade, as himself wearing a mask 
 of scornful melancholy, to leave that out. Yet, deep- 
 hidden in his soul, there may have been passion enough as 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 175 
 
 he declaimed with conventional grimness this picture of 
 poor, foolish mankind strutting and fretting its hour 
 away to end in 
 
 Second childishness and mere oblivion, 
 
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 
 
 This was a thought which often troubled Shakespeare, 
 But he fell back then on the ineradicable brightness and 
 gaiety of his nature, and made Orlando and Rosalind and 
 a thousand other happy creatures — and then he knew. 
 Men have eyes to see in joy ; in half-cynic sorrow they are 
 blind. Nor will Jaques ever see the world truly till he 
 looks at it through the eyes of Rosalind. 
 
 It seems probable that Shakespeare intended him to 
 be cured, at least partly, before the end of the play. The 
 snubbing, if I may use that word, he gets from Rosalind 
 and then from Orlando ; the opposition of their natural- 
 ness to his conventional sadness, of their freshness to his 
 withered leafage, have done him good, lifted him out of 
 his untruth, and made him fling away his mask in the 
 fifth act. In that act there is no trace of cynicism in his 
 talk. His enjoyment of Touchstone's ways is frank. He 
 wishes the Duke to share it. Nor does he now turn the 
 quaint humour of Touchstone, as he does in the previous 
 acts, into food with which to feed his egotism. He will 
 not yet go back to the world, but will seek the usurper 
 who has taken on a religious life ; not himself to be a 
 religious, but to suck some fresh experience — 
 
 Out of these convertites 
 There is much matter to be heard and learn'd. 
 
 And there is no cynicism in the desire. I should not 
 be surprised, if, a few years hence, when Rosalind and 
 Orlando are comfortably settled, Jaques were to visit 
 them, in an excellent humour, and laugh away some days 
 in memory of his follies in the forest. 
 
176 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Touchstone is the professional humorist, the court- 
 jester, the Fool of mediseval society, who 'uses his folly 
 as a stalking horse, and under the presentation of that, 
 shoots his wit.' His conventional wit is set over against 
 the natural wit of Rosalind and is conquered by it. In 
 his encounter with her, he is reduced to silence ; but he 
 expresses his defeat with charm. 'You have said; but 
 whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.' Outside of 
 his profession, he is a ' human person. 5 He is gentle with 
 Rosalind. He loves Celia, and would go over the world 
 with her. He is faithful as the day to her and Rosalind. 
 When he is alone, he basks in the sun, and rails at 
 Fortune to amuse himself. Then Jaques comes upon 
 him, and he detects Jaques as quickly as Rosalind, and 
 without saying anything about what he detects, plays 
 on him, parodies his melancholy, and laughs at him. 
 Jaques describes him, and does not understand what he 
 describes — 
 
 And then he drew a dial from his poke, 
 
 And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, 
 
 Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock ; 
 
 Thus may -we see,' quoth he, ' how the world wags : 
 
 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, 
 
 And after one hour more 'twill be eleven ; 
 
 And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, 
 
 And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, 
 
 And thereby hangs a tale.' 
 
 And Jaques, in his vanity, does not know that Touch- 
 stone has penetrated him, and is mocking him. So much 
 wiser is the fool than the half-embittered sage. 
 
 Touchstone has some learning, and uses it to overawe 
 the simple forest-folk. And it gives him pleasure to 
 play with them and puzzle them. His talk with Corin is 
 full of wit which Corin does not understand, but which 
 is a delight to the audience, who see his real wisdom peep- 
 ing out under the mask of his folly. With Rosalind, he is 
 not foolish, he is gay. The real man is, as usual, drawn 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 177 
 
 out by her. With Audrey, he lets the worst of him appear, 
 but with all these folk he is not professional ; only a 
 simple mocker, not from any real cynicism, but for the 
 pleasure of mocking. It is only, at the end, when he is 
 brought before the Duke and the lords and pages, in the 
 air of a court again, that he becomes, as he was in the first 
 act, the professional fool again ; and is swift, sententious, 
 fantastic, inventive of the pleasant statement of the lie 
 seven times removed, and the quarrel on the seventh 
 cause. All he says now is said by the pure jester who 
 lives to make idle society laugh. The forest episode 
 in his life is over, and he is glad of it. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, we get back to Rosalind and 
 Orlando, or indeed to Rosalind alone. With her arrival 
 in the forest, her discovery of Orlando's presence, and 
 the freedom to play with him which her man's garb gives 
 her, all her sadness vanishes, all her nature expands. She 
 opens like a rose in the sun. The forest is her fitting 
 home. Its wild- wood freedom is in her heart, its beauty 
 in her eyes, its summer in her temper. Gay delight in 
 life, enraptured girlhood made tender by love, are at their 
 height in her; the bubbling spring is not more happy. 
 In this exalting of her nature, her wit and wisdom are also 
 exalted. Her wit is more brilliant every hour ; her wisdom 
 glances more brightly through her wit ; and she uses both, 
 in her sportiveness, to heighten the waywardness with 
 which she adorns the passing hour. ' My Rosalind is wise,' 
 says faithful Orlando. ' Or else,' Rosalind answers, 
 
 she could not have the wit to do this : the wiser, the way warder : 
 make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement ; 
 shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole : stop that, 'twill fly with the 
 smoke out at the chimney. 
 
 There 's no play so delightful as hers with Orlando 
 through these two acts. It would be folly to describe it 
 or analyse it, for it may be read ; and it is as simple as it 
 
 M 
 
178 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 is charming. Light as it is, light as the flight of a swallow, 
 it flies above a deep nature. The moment she parts from 
 Orlando, she shows to Celia the depth of her love. I 
 tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of sight of Orlando ; 1 11 
 go And a shadow and sigh till he comes.' When she 
 thinks he is wounded, she swoons ; and then, having had 
 play enough, she brings her love to full fruition. She 
 knows when to stop — 
 
 Eos. Why then, to-morrow I cannot serve your turn for Rosalind. 
 
 Orl. I can lire no longer by thinking. 
 
 Ros. I will weary you then no longer with idle talking. 
 
 And she winds up her own love, and all the loves of the 
 play, and dissolves all the quarrel, by disclosing herself to 
 her father and Orlando — 
 
 To you I give myself, for I am yours. 
 
 Nor can I put in better words her charm, her nature — 
 
 the resolver of all tangles, the uplifter of all that is best 
 
 in each character, the queen of wit and love, than in 
 
 the verse Orlando wrote of her — 
 
 Why should this a desert be ? 
 For it is unpeopled ? No ; 
 Tongues I '11 hang on every tree, 
 That shall civil sayings show. 
 Some, how brief the life of man 
 Runs his erring pilgrimage, 
 That the stretching of a span 
 Buckles in his sum of age ; 
 Some, of violated vows 
 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend : 
 But upon the fairest boughs, 
 Or at every sentence' end, 
 Will I Rosalinda write ; 
 Teaching all that read to know 
 The quintessence of every sprite 
 Heaven would in little show. 
 Therefore Heaven Nature charg'd 
 That one body should be fill'd 
 With all graces wide enlarg'd : 
 Nature presently distill'd 
 
AS YOU LIKE IT 179 
 
 Helen's cheek, but not her heart, 
 
 Cleopatra's majesty, 
 
 Atalanta's better part, 
 
 Sad Lucretia's modesty. 
 
 Thus Rosalind of many parts 
 
 By heavenly synod was devis'd, 
 
 Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, 
 
 To have the touches dearest priz'd. 
 
 Heaven -would that she these gifts should have. 
 
 And I to live and die her slave. 
 
VII 
 MACBETH 
 
 This play, it is concluded, was begun in 1605 and finished 
 the following year. It existed only in manuscript till 
 1623, when it was printed, seven years after Shakespeare's 
 death. Owing to this, it had suffered grievously. There 
 is perhaps no text among Shakespeare's plays more corrupt. 
 Moreover, passing in acting copies through so many repre- 
 sentations, it may have been abbreviated here or enlarged 
 there, and there seem to be indications of such work in 
 the text that we possess. Shakespeare, however, followed 
 fairly the general lines of the story as he took it from 
 Holinshed's Chronicle of Scottish History. The variations 
 and the additional matter he introduced, as for example 
 the character of Banquo, suggest his desire to please 
 -Tames I. The part the witches are made to bear is perhaps 
 an indirect compliment to the king's views on witch- 
 craft. Then Banquo was said to be an ancestor of James, 
 and Banquo is the noblest character in the play. James 
 was quite vain enough to attribute to himself the excel- 
 lences of Banquo, and the vision of Banquo's descendants 
 carrying twofold balls and treble sceptres, which predicts 
 for James's gratification the union of Scotland with Ireland 
 and England, underlines the symbolic identification of the 
 character of Banquo with that of James. It seems an 
 incredible resemblance, but a poet who, like Shakespeare, 
 was also a practical man of the world, may well be excused 
 for this. He was a manager as well as a dramatist, and 
 it was the habit of the day to flatter kings — so settled a 
 
MACBETH 181 
 
 habit that our only wonder is that it scarcely appears in 
 Shakespeare. There is nothing in his work which re- 
 sembles the fulsome adoration of kinghood which we 
 find in the dramatists who continued to write after his 
 death. h 
 
 It is said that Act I. Sc. ii. and Sc. hi. up to tk^arrival 
 of Macbeth and Banquo on the stage are by another hand. 
 In that case the last words of the witches in Act i. Sc. i. 
 
 Fair is foul, and foul is fair, 
 
 Hover through the fog and filthy air. 
 
 would be immediately followed by Macbeth's first phrase, 
 
 So foul and fair a day I have not seen. 
 
 And the catching repetition of the thought and the 
 adjectives would not be ineffective on the stage, and for 
 the audience. Moreover, if the play were to be swift, as 
 Shakespeare, when it finally left his hands, certainly 
 meant it to be, this arrangement, which omits the scene 
 of the bleeding sergeant and the second appearance of the 
 witches, would create at the very beginning an impression 
 of headlong speed, as if the dramatist were being driven 
 by a ' fine frenzy ' to hurry, incapable of delay, to the 
 terrible centre of the main event. 
 
 I should not regret the omission ol Sc. ii., which is in 
 parts unworthy of Shakespeare, but I should be led with 
 great difficulty to think that he did not write the greater 
 part at least of the rhyming dialogue of the witches at 
 the beginning of Sc. iii. I see no poetical reason for 
 allotting it to another hand. On the contrary, there are 
 phrases in it which belong to his imagination, and cry 
 out to us, 'We are his only.' 
 
 However, this Sc. ii. and the witch-part in Act. I. Sc. iii. 
 delay the play, if it was intended to leap swiftly without 
 Shakespeare's usual preparation into the heart of the 
 tragedy. They seem like a remnant of a longer play. 
 
182 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The same may be said of Act iv. Sc. iii., 'before the 
 king's palace in England/ where Malcolm and Macduff 
 converse. Malcolm's trial of Macduff's honesty by repre- 
 senting himself as a lustful, avaricious, virtueless prince, 
 and asking if such a one is fit to govern, is quite unneces- 
 sary to the movement of the play, and delays its speed. 
 The episode concerning the king's evil is equally needless 
 and delaying. Both are out of the atmosphere of the rest 
 of the drama ; as if they belonged to a play written 
 originally at much greater length. It is not till the 
 arrival of Ross on the scene that we feel ourselves again 
 in the sweeping wind of the action of the tragedy. 
 
 These two parts of the play suggest that Shakespeare 
 did originally write Macbeth at greater length, and then, 
 taking out all that delayed it, clasped the rest together 
 into the concentrated rush of the drama as we possess it. 
 In that case Sc. ii. would be the amalgamation, perhaps 
 by another hand, of two or three slow-moving scenes in 
 which Shakespeare prepared for the main event. Were 
 this so, it would account for the lines of fine poetry, 
 plainly from Shakespeare's hand, which illuminate this 
 scene. With regard to the English scene, it would, on 
 this theory, be a remnant of the original play, not 
 reduced, not brought closely together, left with all its 
 loitering, and conceived in another and a quieter atmo- 
 sphere. This theory is only conjecture, but it is perhaps 
 worth a passing thought. 
 
 Macbeth is now the shortest of the plays. Swiftness, 
 every one says, is its main characteristic. We seem, 
 especially if we leave out Act i. Sc. ii., to be caught up 
 from the beginning into the skirts of a hurricane, then 
 swept into its centre when Macbeth meets Lady Macbeth, 
 whirled round and round in it, deafened and blinded by 
 it all through the murderous night, kept in its tem- 
 pestuous blast through the death of Banquo, the rising 
 
MACBETH 183 
 
 of his ghost, the furious visit of Macbeth to the Weird 
 Sisters, the slaughter of Macduff's wife and children — a 
 tempest of guilt and blood. Nor even then, when all 
 the slaughters are done, are we relieved from the 
 oppression of the storm. Its full fury returns, not in 
 outward crime, but in the hearts of the murderers — in 
 the visions of Lady Macbeth, in the raging despair 
 of Macbeth — till at last the whirlwind which has borne 
 us with such terrible speed suddenly ceases with the life 
 of him who has been its spirit. We have had scarcely 
 time to breathe. Yet nine days are represented on the 
 stage, and there have been intervals of many days. The 
 days, however, make no matter. We are not involved in 
 time as we read or listen to the play, but in that imagi- 
 native realm in which a thousand years are as one day 
 and one day as a thousand years. It is not so much 
 events which we hear and see as the thoughts and 
 passions of the soul of man, and especially of two souls 
 who are driven headlong by proud ambition into the abyss. 
 In this metaphysical world there is neither time nor place ; 
 the outward crimes, sorrows, battles, are but shadows of 
 the inward realities of which they are the dread result. 
 
 The Weird Sisters who preside over the play as the 
 ministers of evil are partly 'metaphysical,' as Coleridge, 
 following Lady Macbeth's phrase of 'metaphysical aid,' 
 justly called them. It has been said that Shakespeare 
 meant them to be no more than the witches of his 
 day as they were commonly conceived. This is quite 
 incredible when we think of that high poetic genius in 
 him which could not have left them unspiritualised by 
 imagination, and which must have felt that these person- 
 ages, if conceived only as the vulgar witches, would be 
 below the dignity of his tragedy. It is also said that all 
 that was not vulgar in them was in the soul of Macbeth, 
 and not in them. That is a credible theory, but it is not 
 
184 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 borne out by the text ; and it seems to assert that Shake- 
 speare did not believe in, or at least did not as a poet 
 conceive of, spiritual creatures, other than ghosts, who 
 dwelt in a world outside of humanity, and yet could touch 
 it at intervals when certain conditions were fulfilled. 
 These spiritual creatures, as he conceived them, had 
 chiefly to do with nature ; were either embodiments of its 
 elemental forces, or their masters. Such were Oberon 
 and Ariel, but they had most to do with the beneficent 
 forces of nature. Here the Weird Sisters command its 
 evil forces. Whether Shakespeare believed in this half- 
 spiritual world of beings, dwelling and acting in a sup- 
 posed zone between us and the loftier spiritual world, 
 and having powers over the natural world — I cannot 
 tell, but at least he conceived this realm; and if he 
 believed in it, there were hundreds of persons at his time 
 who were with him in that belief, as there are numbers 
 now who share in it, in spite of science. I do not think, 
 then, that the spiritual part of his conception of the 
 witches was intended by him to exist solely in the mind 
 of Macbeth. On the contrary, I hold that it is in- 
 credible Shakespeare should have taken up witches into 
 his tragedy and left them as James I. and the rest of 
 the world commonly conceived them. His imagination 
 was far too intense, his representing power much too 
 exacting, to allow him to leave them unidealised. It is 
 true he kept their vulgar elements for the sake of the 
 common folk who did not think; but for those who did, 
 Shakespeare unvulgarised the witches. 
 
 They materialise themselves only for their purpose of 
 temptation; their normal existence is impalpable, invis- 
 ible, unearthly. When they vanish Banquo cries 
 
 The earth hath bubbles as the water has, 
 And these are of them. Whither are they vanished ? 
 Macb. Into the air, and what seem'd corporal melted 
 As breath into the wind. 
 
MACBETH 185 
 
 Elemental beings ! inhabiting the world of nature be- 
 yond our senses, from whose evil will the limits of our 
 perception defend us. Here Shakespeare has made 
 them, on one side of their being, the comrades or im- 
 pellers of the destroying forces of nature. They meet 
 in thunder, lightning, and in rain. They make storms ; 
 they preside over the hurly-burly of the battle. ' I con- 
 jure you,' cries Macbeth, giving them, as the Norsemen 
 to their witches, all power over destructive tempest, 
 
 I conjure you, by that which you profess, — 
 
 Howe'er you come to know it, — answer me ; 
 
 Though you untie the winds and let them fight 
 
 Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 
 
 Confound and swallow navigation up ; 
 
 Though bladed corn be lodg'd and trees blown down ; 
 
 Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; 
 
 Though palaces and pyramids do slope 
 
 Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 
 
 Of Nature's germens tumble all together, 
 
 Even till destruction sicken ; answer me 
 
 To what I ask you. 
 
 These are their works and ways in nature, in dreadful 
 
 gaiety of destruction. 
 
 But the witches are much more than creatures who 
 
 have power over nature. They have influence also 
 
 on the soul, but only on the soul that has admitted 
 
 evil to dwell in it. When the soil is tainted their 
 
 poisonous seeds take root. When a man has already 
 
 sheltered a temptation they come to him charged with 
 
 fresh temptation, and hurry the already cherished evil 
 
 into outward execution of it. They master the thoughts 
 
 of Macbeth because they are in tune with them. 1 They 
 
 1 They are the servants of a mistress whose business and pleasure is to 
 do evil. Hecate is ' the close contriver of all harms,' who urges by ' the 
 glory of her art' the wicked man to ' confusion,' to a ' dismal and a fatal 
 end.' She, like the Weird Sisters, belongs partly to the vnlgar witch- world, 
 but chiefly to the supernatural world of evil powers. She leads Macbeth 
 into his ruin by a ' false security.' She can distil a magic drop from the 
 corner of the moon. And her delight is in the destruction of Macbeth — 
 soul and body. 
 
186 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 have no influence on Banquo, who is innocent of wrong. 
 Nowhere in Shakespeare is a more subtle delineation of 
 the effect of suggested evil on two souls, one in sympathy 
 with evil, the other not, than there is in the scene between 
 Macbeth and Banquo after the disappearance of the 
 witches. 
 
 Then, again, they hand on their power of doubling evil 
 in the evil soul through Macbeth's letter to Lady Macbeth. 
 The murder they have half- suggested to Macbeth jumps 
 with the murder in her heart. She recalls their prophecy 
 of the crown for Macbeth when she receives his letter, 
 and conceives at once the murderous means to reach 
 the throne. The golden round, she cries, shall be thine 
 
 Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
 To have thee crowned withal. 
 
 She feels the wicked influence of the Weird Sisters, though 
 she has never seen them. They seem to her to be the 
 materialised images of those malignant ministers of evil 
 she invokes to help her to her fierce and bloody aim. 
 
 Come, you spirits 
 That tend on mortal thoughts ! unsex me here, 
 And fill me from the crown to the toe top full 
 Of direst cruelty ; make thick my blood ; 
 Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
 That no compunctious visitings of nature 
 Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
 The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts, 
 And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, 
 Wherever in your sightless substances 
 You wait on nature's mischief! 
 
 Evil to evil ! the witch-suggestions come home and 
 press for execution. This, then, is Shakespeare's con- 
 ception of the Weird Sisters — not only creatures that 
 have power over the natural forces which do harm to 
 men, but also creatures that have a spiritual power over 
 the soul which has cherished guilty thoughts. Then, 
 Shakespeare, from the common notions of witchcraft, 
 
MACBETH 187 
 
 added to this conception, (since he was a playwright,) 
 the cave, the cauldron, the gruesome ingredients in the 
 wicked broth, the wild and withered aspect of the 
 Weird Sisters, the choppy finger and the skinny lip, the 
 grim mirth of these inhuman Things. These additions 
 did not interfere with the spiritual conception. They 
 belonged to the witches only when they materialised 
 themselves for a material purpose. And, as I think, no 
 one despised them more than the witches themselves. 
 Indeed, these material adjuncts were illusions. They 
 vanish with those that formed them into the filthy air 
 from whence they came. 
 
 The play begins with their appearance on the dark 
 moorland near Forres which the wild weather and fire 
 have blasted, and over which, as Macbeth and Banquo 
 enter, a storm is passing with thunder, lightning, and rain. 
 The day has been fair before their coming, now it is foul, 
 and in the foul weather are those who have made it to 
 suit their wicked work. Thus we are brought into the 
 dark atmosphere of the play, as dark without, as it is 
 within the souls of the characters. Night and tempest 
 pervade the play. Duncan dies in a storm; Banquo 
 perishes in the night, in the night his ghost rises ; Lady 
 Macbeth walks with her conscience by night and dies 
 before the dawn. Macbeth and she slay their guest in 
 the night, and cry to the night, at every dark deed they 
 do, to hide their guilt, and to assist it. Only one other 
 element of imagination is stronger in the play — that 
 which drenches it with blood. Every scene is crimson 
 with it ; it is like the garments in Isaiah's battle, rolled in 
 blood. Macbeth's imagination incarnadines with blood 
 the multitudinous seas. No Arabian perfume will 
 sweeten away from Lady Macbeth's hand the smell of 
 Duncan's blood. 
 
 Tempest and terror, blasting lightning, and everywhere 
 
188 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 * u he scent and sight of blood, are the outward image of 
 the inward life in the Weird Sisters and the murderers. 
 This dreadful darkness of the play, spiritual and physical, 
 is deepened at the beginning by the supernatural pro- 
 phecies which contain in them the slaughter of the 
 king. Macbeth's soul is at one with the tempest and the 
 blasted heath, and the supernatural cry. To Banquo 
 the day is the ordinary Highland day, and the witches 
 are not supernatural. He is the same when he leaves 
 the heath as when he entered it. Macbeth is not. 
 There is that now in his soul which drives him as 
 hunger drives a beast of prey. He carries it with him 
 through his interview with the king, where its urging 
 is quickened by the king appointing his son heir to the 
 crown; where its temptation is kindled into action by 
 Duncan's saying that he will stay the night at Inverness. 
 The opportunity has come. He rides in front of the king 
 with murder in his heart. 
 
 Stars, hide your fires ! 
 Let not light see my black and deep desires. 
 
 The dark castle rises before us, and within it, waiting 
 in the gloom, murder in every vein, the rider's wife, settled 
 into grim resolve to press on him the finish of the thought 
 with which he rides. And behind rides through the 
 soft afternoon, pleasure and trust in his heart, their mur- 
 dered man. The evening is calm and lovely when he 
 arrives. Duncan and Banquo speak of its beauty and 
 peace. Shakespeare loves these contrasts. Night falls, 
 and with the night a terror-striking tempest invades the 
 sky, maddening both men and beasts. Lamentings are 
 heard in the air, strange screams of death ; the obscure 
 bird clamours the live-long night ; the earth is feverous 
 and shakes. A falcon, towering in her pride of place, is 
 by a mousing owl hawked at and killed ; Duncan's horses 
 devour one another. Shakespeare fearlessly piles terror 
 
MACBETH 189 
 
 on terror; nature herself, as in all his plays, in aristo- 
 cratic sympathy, celebrates with earthquake and wreck 
 the death of princes. But there is no outward terror so 
 deep as that in the soul of Macbeth in the castle court 
 before he goes to his slaying, and in the soul of his wife 
 as she waits, every sense attent, in the same court for 
 his return, I doubt if in all literature there is any silent 
 and whispering fear to be compared with that which 
 thrills the air in this scene when Macbeth descends the 
 stair with his bloody hands, and she welcomes him with 
 question on question, and wears away his misery with 
 bold encouragement. We are so enthralled, that we start 
 with as much terror as they, when the knocking comes at 
 the south entry. The awe of crime, the darkening ven- 
 geance of coming justice, the devastation of the soul by 
 fear, the boldness of accomplished sin reacting against 
 fear, the awful, silent solitude of the mind after the 
 irreparable deed — 
 
 Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! 
 
 rise out of the words of the dialogue like phantoms. This 
 is the true supernatural. 
 
 The knocking awakes the Porter, round whose speech 
 so much controversy has taken place. I cannot see why 
 it should not be from Shakespeare's hand. It seems, 
 indeed, to jar with the tragic height of the last scene. 
 But Shakespeare was not only an idealist in his work, 
 but also a bold realist ; and it is one of his excellences as 
 a dramatist that his most ideal representations rest on a 
 basis of reality. Even in the tragic height of passion in 
 the last scene, there are such touches of close reality as 
 these — 
 
 retire we to our chamber ; 
 A little water clears us of this deed ; 
 
 Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, 
 And show us to be watchers. 
 
190 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 With such realism underlying the ideal representation of 
 the passion and thoughts in the murderers, the rude 
 realism of the Porter is not out of harmony ; nor is the 
 audacious representation of his coarse sensualism, mixed 
 as it is with the bold humour of a drunkard, apart from 
 the savage temper of a time in which the murder of 
 Duncan was possible. There is nothing in his talk and 
 shaping which injures the dramatic impression of the 
 whole. Nay, I am not sure that his total ignorance of 
 what has been done, and the lightness of his talk with 
 Macduff and Lennox, does not make, dramatically, the 
 deed which has been done more ghastly to the audience. 
 They see, behind the rough, ignorant talk, the bloody 
 room and the murdered men. 
 
 Then, the Porter's soliloquy, his fancy of himself as 
 porter of Hellgate ; his inventive conversation with those 
 who seek admittance into hell; his sudden, drunken 
 turn that he is mistaken ; the place is too cold for hell ; 
 his disquisition on the effects of drink ; his sudden leap 
 into poetic imagination — 'that go the primrose way to 
 the everlasting bonfire ' — are all in Shakespeare's manner 
 and invention. 1 I do not believe there was another 
 Elizabethan dramatist who could have written this. 
 
 Dramatically considered, the whole passage down to 
 the entrance of Macbeth lowers the pitch of the last 
 scene, and wisely. It enables Shakespeare to climb 
 easily, and with gradation, through the heightening 
 description of the storm of the night, to another climax 
 — the great scene of the discovery of the murder of 
 Duncan. There is nothing in the play which is more fit! 
 
 1 Shakespeare had used this thought before. The clown in All's Well 
 that Ends Well tells Lafeu— 
 
 I am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp 
 to enter : some that humble themselves may ; but the many will be too chill and 
 tender, and they '11 be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the 
 great fire. 
 
MACBETH 191 
 
 to the moment and finer in execution than the shouting 
 of Macduff to the sleepers in the castle ; 
 
 Awake ! awake ! 
 Eing the alarum bell. Murder and treason ! 
 Banquo and Donalbain ! Malcolm ! awake ! 
 Shake off' this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, 
 : And look on death itself ! up, up, and see 
 
 The great doom's image ! Malcolm ! Banquo ! 
 ' As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites, 
 To countenance this horror ! Ring the bell. 
 
 One after another, with dramatic effect carefully 
 arranged for each, the main characters now rush in and fill 
 the court of the castle : Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Macbeth 
 and Lennox again, Malcolm and Donalbain. There is that 
 which is terrible in Lady Macbeth's phrase when Macduff 
 cries to Banquo, ' Our royal master 's murdered ' ! 
 
 Woe, alas ! 
 What ! in our house ? 
 
 and in Banquo's answer — ' Too cruel anywhere.' There is 
 that which is still more terrible in the awful change, on 
 which I must hereafter dwell, in Macbeth's character, in 
 the cool, deliberate hypocrisy of his temper, in the well- 
 sustained apartness from the crime, the poetic turn, as of 
 an orator over the honoured dead, of all he says — 
 
 Had I but died an hour before this chance 
 
 I had liv'd a blessed time ; for, from this instant, 
 
 There 's nothing serious in mortality, 
 
 All is but toys ; renown and grace is dead, 
 
 The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees 
 
 Is left this vault to brag of. 
 
 The difference of the temper of the character who 
 makes these fine phrases from his temper of the night 
 of the murder is immense. It is as firm, as settled, as 
 cool, as it was wavering, hot and fearful. Nothing but 
 what is supernatural can shake it again. 
 
 The centre of the play has now come. Macbeth has 
 reached the crown. As yet he has not begun to fall. His 
 
192 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 fall begins with the murder of Banquo. The preparation 
 for that begins the third act ; and Banquo's speech, which 
 introduces it, makes clear the danger he is to Macbeth, 
 and motives his murder. Macbeth's soliloquy reveals this 
 fear, and, to knit the future to the past, Shakespeare again 
 brings in the prophecy of the witches as still exercising its/ 
 evil power over the soul of Macbeth. ' Banquo's children 
 shall be kings. It shall not be. He and his son shall die.' 
 The interview with the murderers in its chill unflinching 
 wickedness is not half so dreadful as the interview with 
 his wife that follows it, where he is ready to dissolve the 
 whole frame of things rather than not secure himself in 
 his seat, where he thinks of the death of Duncan as a 
 mercy to Duncan, now relieved from all the distress and 
 trouble of the world. 
 
 But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, 
 
 Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep 
 
 In the affliction of these terrible dreams 
 
 That shake us nightly. . Better be with the dead, 
 
 "Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, 
 
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie 
 
 In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave ; 
 
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 
 
 Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison, 
 
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 
 
 Can touch him further. 
 
 'Be jocund,' he cries to her, in an appalling mirth; 
 this night ' shall see a deed of dreadful note.' 
 
 Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, 
 Till thou applaud the deed. 
 
 An awful partnership ! 
 
 Banquo is slain. It is the middle of the third act, and 
 the end of that central period of the play during which 
 Macbeth has kept his sovereign place. From that 
 moment his doom darkens down day after day till it is 
 accomplished. 
 
MACBETH 193 
 
 The conduct of the play has been, up to this point, my 
 consideration. I turn now to the main characters ; and as 
 Banquo drops here out of the play, I take him first. There 
 could be no better foil than he to Macbeth. It is against 
 ius white background that Macbeth stands out blacker 
 than night. He is, by Macbeth's own testimony, as brave 
 as Macbeth, as good a soldier. He does not care for money 
 or high place, but he does care for a soldier's fame. No 
 jealousy of Macbeth corrodes his soul, nor has he any 
 suspicion at first of evil thought in his comrade. Good 
 himself, all are good to him, till their guilt is clear. 
 Without ambition for himself, he is yet in the simplest 
 way pleased frankly with the notion of his descendants 
 being kings, but his sensitive conscience forces him to 
 distrust this prophecy of the witches. He feels, by this 
 sensitiveness? that they are evil, and he rests on the truism 
 — that from evil arises no good. Only once afterwards 
 does the prophecy enter his mind. He has put it aside. 1 
 Because of this alert distrust of evil, he warns Macbeth 
 against thinking of what the witches say. So delicate is 
 his conscience that he prays, before he sleeps, against the 
 cursed thoughts that nature, when the will is in abeyance, 
 gives way to in repose. 
 
 Banquo, with this keen, clear conscience, trembling to 
 anger against even the suggestion of evil, is set over 
 against Macbeth, whose only conscience is his sense of 
 honour. And that gives way after a struggle at the call 
 of his ambition. But Banquo's sense of a soldier's honour 
 is backed up by the strength of his conscience; and 
 
 1 When he finds (Act in.) that Macbeth has gained all the Weird 
 Women promised, but by the foulest play, he thinks again of their 
 prophecy. They have told truth to Macbeth. ' They may have told 
 truth to me. If so, my children will be kings.' There 's no evil in that 
 thought, no selfishness. He would not play foully for any success. 
 He thinks only of what will be when he is dead, of the honourable hope 
 that he may father a great posterity. 'Tis an innocent thought. 
 
 N 
 
194 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 when Macbeth tempts him with promises of greatness, lie 
 
 answers — 
 
 So I lose none 
 In seeking to augment it, but still keep 
 My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear, 
 I shall be counselPd. 
 
 Macbeth hears, and cannot endure this conscientious- 
 ness. It is a ceaseless menace, and it settles Banquo's 
 fate. Indeed, he is too good for a rough world; he is 
 sure to perish in contact with an evil will. Along with 
 this clear conscience is a clear intellect. They sometimes, 
 ,not always, go together. Here both, acting together, set 
 free Banquo from superstition, and again put him into j 
 contrast with Macbeth who is superstition's slave — a/ 
 'contrast meant by Shakespeare. Banquo has no illusive 
 dreams, sees no ghosts, has no supernatural terrors. He 
 faces the witches boldly, and gives no credit to their 
 prophecies. They may not be dwellers on the earth, 
 but that is no matter. His soul is free from fear. He 
 questions them as if they were natural. If they are 
 supernatural, he will neither beg their favours nor their 
 hate. When they vanish, he thinks his reason has been 
 for a moment taken prisoner, so full of clear good 
 sense is his mind. He argues that the devil cannot tell 
 truth ; and when he finds that these evil ministers have 
 told the fact as it is, his conscience helps his intellect to 
 see the under- truth — that the fiend may tell what is true 
 to betray us to ambition's harm — the very thing which 
 at that moment is working in the mind of Macbeth. Of', 
 
 course, after the murder of Duncan, Macbeth had to 
 
 j 
 
 \ get rid of this clear-sighted man, whose intelligence was ... 
 
 I as dangerous as his conscience. 
 
 Lastly, we have seen him only as the soldier of a rude 
 age, with a conscience touched to finer issues than was 
 common at the time. Shakespeare, to complete his sketch 
 of a noble character, adds to it a love of natural beauty, 
 
MACBETH 195 
 
 a tender observation of things delicate. Banquo com- 
 bines with his sensitiveness of conscience sensitiveness to 
 beauty. We expect from Duncan's gentle character these 
 gentle words — 
 
 This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 But we scarcely expect from Banquo those fine perceptive 
 verses which reveal how often he had observed and loved 
 the fair things of the outward world : 
 
 This guest of summer, 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
 By his lov'd mansionry that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd 
 The air is delicate. 
 
 It is a lovely passage, done with Shakespeare's most 
 magical finger. He draws it forth from the high re- 
 cesses of Banquo's soul, and it belongs to his careful 
 purity. Compare it with what Lady Macbeth and Mac- 
 beth, charged with the dark thoughts in their souls, see in 
 nature. She cries 
 
 The raven himself is hoarse 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements. 
 
 Macbeth, planning the murder of Banquo in his black 
 soul, sees all things black. 
 
 Come, seeling night, 
 Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, 
 And with thy bloody and invisible hand 
 Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond 
 Which keeps me pale ! Light thickens, and the crow 
 Makes wing to the rooky wood ; 
 Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, 
 
 The only point at which Banquo and Macbeth are at 
 one is, that both are good soldiers, brave, and jealous of 
 
196 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the point of honour ; but Banquo's honour, being united 
 to an active conscience, remains untainted; while Mac- 
 beth's breaks down fatally. 
 
 Macbeth is the bold soldier of a rude time. We must 
 not apply to his actions, if we would conceive him as 
 Shakespeare conceived him, the standards of our time, 
 especially in the matter of killing. He was accustomed 
 to slaughter, and the mere slaying of Duncan, Banquo, 
 and Fleance was nothing to him. When a man stood 
 opposed to the aims of a soldier of that date, unless he 
 had like Banquo a delicate conscience, he slew his enemy 
 at once, in the shortest and surest way. Stone dead has 
 no fellow. Killing was Macbeth's trade ; assassination of 
 an obstacle caused him no remorse. But though mere 
 killing or murder did not trouble his mind, it did trouble 
 him when it violated his code of honour. The killing of 
 Duncan, under the circumstances, was such a violation. 
 In that famous speech beginning 
 
 If it were done when 'tis done, 
 
 he does not dwell on the guilt of murder, but first on the 
 penalties which follow it. These he fears ; if there were 
 no punishment, no return of blood for blood, here on this 
 earth, it is little I would think of the life to come. I 'd 
 take the risk of that. Then, secondly, he dwells on the 
 dishonour to him of the murder. To slay one who is in 
 my castle in double trust violates all the laws of honour. 
 Duncan is my kinsman, I am his subject, and he has 
 done me kindness. Duncan is my guest, under the shelter 
 of my roof. This is not the cry of conscience, but of the 
 common code of honour. Then he thinks again of the 
 consequences. Duncan has been so good, so gentle a king 
 that his virtues will plead like trumpet-tongued angels 
 against my deed, and pity for his fate awake the tears of 
 the world. This too is not his personal conscience speak- 
 
MACBETH 197 
 
 ing; it is partly that it jars honour to slay so excellent a 
 chief, and partly it is fear of the results. 
 
 This sense of honour in Macbeth, frequently a man's 
 only conscience, disappears altogether after the murder 
 of Duncan. He has irredeemably violated it, and it never 
 has another shred of influence upon him. Moreover, since 
 nothing isolates a man like the loss of honour, Macbeth is 
 henceforth separated by Shakespeare from the whole of 
 his world, except from his comrade in the murder. He is 
 isolated also from his earlier self, from the honourable 
 soldier that he was ; he is an outlaw to himself. 
 To know my deed were best not know myself. 
 
 And the loss of his honour makes him absolutely reckless. 
 No crime, after his great crime, in which he murdered his 
 own honour, seems more than a trifle to him. He dooms; 
 in savage petulance, the wife and children of Macduff to 
 an innocent and useless death. 
 
 On the whole, if we would see Macbeth clearly we must 
 not dwell on his conscience, of which so much is made, 
 but on his sense of honour. They are, of course, related 
 to one another, but the realm of each is quite distinct. 
 Were it conscience that troubled him he would have been 
 pictured by Shakespeare as a victim of remorse, like Lady 
 Macbeth. There is no remorse in him, but there is the 
 wild, indifferent recklessness which comes to one who is 
 conscious that he has shut himself out from his fellows by 
 a fatal act of dishonour. And when we think of this, 
 that pathetic statement of his case in Act v., which is 
 not at all the cry a remorseful conscience would make, 
 seems naturally in' harmony with his self-consciousness. 
 It is what a dishonoured gentleman, even now, might say. 
 
 I have liv'd long enough : my way of life 
 Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf ; 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 
198 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I must not look to have ; but, in their stead, 
 Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. 
 
 Again, Macbeth is described by a modern critic as the 
 type of the practical man, not imaginative; who knows 
 himself; who knows his purpose, and goes straight to it 
 by the shortest way. I do not think any description can 
 be further from the reality, before his murder of Duncan. 
 Even after the murder this description is only partially 
 true. I suppose his wife was aware of his character, and 
 this was not her view of him. The very contrary was her 
 experience. ' Infirm of purpose/ she cries, at the very top 
 of the event, ' give me the daggers.' 
 
 Art thou afeard 
 To be the same in thine own act and valour 
 As thou art in desire ? Would'st thou have that 
 Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life 
 And live a coward in thine own esteem, 
 Letting ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would ' 
 Like the poor cat i' the adage ? 
 
 This is not the swift-acting, practical man. He hovers 
 to and fro ; now ambition seizes him, now fear. He wants 
 much, but dreads to take the straight way to it. He's 
 soft by nature in one part of him, and lets the weaker part 
 of him tyrannise over his bolder thoughts. He needs his 
 wife's quicker, bolder,, more practical nature to heighten 
 him into audacious, rapid action. This is her view of his 
 character; and till after the murder, it is the character 
 Shakespeare meant him to have. That is plain from 
 Lady Macbeth's description of him in her first speech 
 in the play. 
 
 Glainis thou art, and Cawdor ; and shalt be 
 
 What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature ; 
 
 It is too full of the milk o' human-kindness 
 
 To catch the nearest way ; thou wouldst be great, 
 
 Art not without ambition, but without 
 
 The illness should attend it ; what thou wouldst highly, 
 
 That wouldst thou holily ; wouldst not play false, 
 
MACBETH 199 
 
 And yet wouldst wrongly win ; thou ! dst have, great Glarnis, 
 
 That which cries, ' Thus thou must do, if thou have it ' ; 
 
 And that which rather thou dost fear to do 
 
 Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, 
 
 That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, 
 
 And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
 
 All that impedes thee from the golden round, 
 
 Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
 
 To have thee crown'd withal. 
 
 All through the murder scene Macbeth remains this 
 character. He wavers, through over-thinking of it, before 
 the deed ; now cold, now all on fire. He needs his wife's 
 scorn to spur him to the act. He piles up extravagant 
 words about it till he feels himself that he is chilling by 
 words his purpose. He loses his head in the horror of 
 the murder, when it is done, considering it too deeply for 
 sanity. His brain is sick ; every noise appals him. The 
 blood of his hands seems to stain the universe. He is lost 
 in fear ; he thinks he will never sleep again. His wife is 
 tender to him, but is shamed for his white heart. This 
 is not the practical, swift, purposeful man, but one wildly 
 troubled by imagination, doubling and trebling, through a 
 host of images, the terror and hate of what he has done. 
 
 Imagination — that is his trouble ! I do not know 
 whether this salient element in his character has been 
 much dwelt on. It ought to be. We cannot understand 
 Macbeth without realising it. Indeed, it is this lively, 
 shaping, various imagination, continually multiplying new 
 aspects of anything to be done, or that has been done, 
 which is at the root of his hesitations, his fears, his out- 
 bursts of agony. His wife has none of it, but brings her 
 impulsive common-sense to meet it, check it, and dissolve 
 it. Her cool reasoning face to face with the imagination 
 which has overwhelmed his intellect is one of the most 
 remarkable and dramatic contrasts Shakespeare has con- 
 ceived. She pulls him out of fantasy into reality. He 
 slips back ; she drags him out again. 
 
200 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Macbeth, as Shakespeare saw him, was instinct with 
 imagination. Had he not been a soldier and cousin of 
 the king, had he lived in a less rude time, and in a 
 private gentleman's condition, he might have had the 
 poet's name. Everything he says in this play is poeti- 
 cally said, cast in keen imagination's mould, thought 
 and form equally good; and rising easily, at times of 
 great emotion, into words equal to the emotion. The 
 conception, for example, of all the oceans of the world 
 incarnadined by the blood on his hand is equally mag- 
 nificent in passion, conception, and execution. Even his 
 common phrases are couched in poetry. 1 The ideal his 
 imagination laid before him was to be king, to wear the 
 golden top of sovereignty. In comparison with this ideal 
 and its imaginative charm, all its material advantages 
 were as nothing in his mind. Lady Macbeth alludes to 
 these. He does not. 
 
 Before, during, and after the murder, this imagination, 
 blown into a white heat by the intense passion of the 
 hour, is so alive and powerful that it doubles the horror 
 of the murder. It lifts it out of a vulgar assassination 
 into the archet;fpe of all terrible, soul-shaking murders. 
 It flies from heaven to e^rth and down to hell. It sees an 
 air-drawn dagger, ' a metaphysical dagger of the working 
 soul,' pointing him to Duncan's chamber. It blackens all 
 Nature with his thought. It drags in the remotest things 
 to increase the terror of the present — Hecate, Tarquin 
 whose strides towards his design are like those of withered 
 murder with her sentinel the wolf. In the very midst of 
 his slaughter he hears a voice, ' Sleep no more ! Macbeth 
 
 1 Can such things be 
 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
 Without our special wonder ? 
 
 Of course, as in tragic work, the other characters speak poetically, but 
 none of them approach in speech the continuity, the depth, and the 
 passion of Macbeth's imagination. ' 
 
MACBETH 201 
 
 does murder sleep,' and at the word his imagination takes 
 fire, and runs away from the horror of the moment 
 into all the poetry of sleep — strange island of peaceful 
 imagination in this sea of murder — 
 
 the innocent sleep, 
 Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast, — 
 
 There speaks the natural poet. Lady Macbeth, who has 
 none of this imagination, cannot comprehend this divaga- 
 tion. ' What do you mean ?' she says. ' Who was it that 
 thus cried ? ' He is the same throughout. He adds 
 more than an imaginative, I may say an artist's, touch 
 to "everything he says. Matter, passion, and form are 
 equally good. He is always mixing up his deeds and 
 himself with the whole of Nature. In his mind Nature, 
 dark Nature, sympathises with him. The heavens, the 
 solid earth, the sea, are companions of his thoughts. He 
 makes them his by universalising himself into them, and 
 with them — a common element in poets. Even at the 
 end when, driven to bay, he feels that all is over, and 
 meets his coming fate with reckless courage and weari- 
 ness of life, he is still poetic in the hours of his lone- 
 liness. Few soliloquies are richer in imagination and 
 humanity than his are in the fifth act. 
 
 We cannot understand Shakespeare's Macbeth till we 
 realise this element of poetic imagination in him. It 
 lifts him above the brutal murderer. Yet it makes 
 his ruthlessness more abominable. The artist who is 
 bloodthirsty and cruel is not unknown to history. Art 
 and savagery are often ugly lovers. 
 
 This great imaginative power in a rude and ignorant 
 time, and in a man who had no natural opportunity of 
 expressing it in its proper forms, was sure to have, as its 
 child, not only superstition, which is ignorant imagination 
 
202 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 in a wrong place, but also the fears which accompany 
 superstition. Shakespeare lays this deep in Macbeth's 
 temperament. Its presence is one of the main keys to his 
 thoughts and acts. Conscious of it himself, he describes 
 its keen and nervous thrill of mingled curiosity and fear 
 when he was a boy, even a man. 
 
 The time has been my senses would have cool'd 
 To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair 
 Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir 
 As life were in 't. 
 
 What seems supernatural sets at once his nerves into a 
 storm. It appears strangely in a brave soldier, but there 
 are many examples of this co-existence of physical courage 
 and metaphysical terrors in the same man. We see how 
 close the imaginative nerve-storm is to Macbeth, when 
 the first suggestion of Duncan's murder makes his hair 
 rise, and his heart knock at his ribs, against the use of 
 nature. 
 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
 Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
 Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 
 But what is not. 
 
 All the visible world has perished to him. Only the fierce 
 invisible thought is real. So intensely strained is imagi- 
 nation that it breaks into fear when the murder is 
 at hand ; afraid as a child of his own fears. ' If we should 
 fail,' he cries, almost like a coward. He sees the dagger 
 he cannot feel marshalling him to murder. He sees it 
 again black with gouts of blood. He thinks the stones 
 of his castle will prate of his whereabout. He hears 
 voices in the air. He is afraid to think of what he 
 has done ; he dare not look upon it. His wife has no 
 patience with his superstitious nerves. His eyes are 
 those of a child, which, unchecked by reason, believe all 
 they imagine they see. 
 
MACBETH 203 
 
 The sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures : 'tis the eye of childhood 
 That fears a painted devil. 
 
 Into that grey world of the supernatural which some are 
 said to see, Macbeth is continually carried. Terrible dreams 
 shake him nightly with fear. It is only he that sees the 
 ghost of Banquo rise, the very painting of his imaginative 
 dread. His courage is proof against any mortal foe, his 
 nerves firm against any natural horror, but not against the 
 immortal, the supernatural. Then his cheek is blanched 
 by terror. As time goes on, when he is no longer young 
 in murder, the initiate fear declines ; but though the fear 
 has gone, the superstition remains. He believes the 
 witches. He is still the slave of their will to ruin him. 
 The apparitions they make him see cause him now no 
 dread, but he listens to them as if they were true pro- 
 phets. His superstition has bred credulity; and out of 
 his false security partly arises the half-insane recklessness 
 with which he presses on to meet his fate. 
 
 These keys unlock the man. On such a temperament, 
 naturally brave, supernaturally fearful; weak in resolve, 
 strong in imagination ; a rude soldier with a poet's heart; 
 honourable, but not having any moral foundation for 
 his honour, without the conscience which is honour's 
 guard; his honour only the custom of his class — on 
 such a temperament falls the heavy temptation of ambi- 
 tion. He has nursed the thought of being king ; he has 
 talked it over, it is plain, with his wife. She has taken 
 the same infection. The witches suggest outwardly his 
 inward ambition. The dreadful means to reach it dawns 
 upon him, but he has not yet formed it into Duncan's 
 murder. Duncan's proclamation of his son as his heir 
 swells his thought into a kind of rage till he is on the 
 edge of murder. Then unlooked-for opportunity comes 
 to him. Duncan will sleep at his castle. Murder springs 
 
204 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 now into his mind. The means, the time, are given him. 
 His wife hears that news. And in her also murder on the 
 opportunity leaps into swift life. Duncan, in the minds 
 of both, is dead already. The long-cherished forces of 
 various thoughts, leading to one thought, explode into 
 form. 
 
 Macb. My dearest love, 
 
 Duncan comes here to-night. 
 
 Lady M. And when goes hence ? 
 
 Macb. To-morrow as he purposes. 
 
 Lady M. ! never 
 
 Shall sun that morrow see ! 
 Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 
 May read strange matters. To beguile the time, 
 Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye, 
 Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower, 
 But be the serpent under 't. He that 's coming 
 Must be provided for : and you shall put 
 This night's great business into my dispatch ; 
 Which shall to all our nights and days to come 
 Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. 
 
 Macb. We will speak further. 
 
 Lady M. Only look up clear ; 
 
 To alter favour ever is to fear : 
 Leave all the rest to me. 
 
 And he does leave it to her. He is but the hand which 
 does the murder. She is the impelling soul of it, the 
 incarnate slaughter. She lifts his weakness into strength, 
 his fears into courage ; opposes her reason to his fears, her 
 common-sense to his imaginings. She spends as much 
 force and intelligence to have her own wild will, as would 
 have enabled her to do good to the whole of Scotland. 
 It is impossible not to admire her strength when we set 
 aside the evil to which she puts it. 
 
 The penalty of an evil passion is that it harnesses to 
 its car, and degrades, the original goodness of a character. 
 Had Lady Macbeth been thrown by circumstances into a 
 right way, or had her passion been a noble one, she had 
 very swiftly learnt goodness. For, unlike her husband, 
 
MACBETH 205 
 
 she could develop a conscience. He had no remorse ; she 
 had. It rose in her when the tempest of her desire was 
 over, its impulse dead. Nor was she heartless, save in 
 the rage of her impulse. 
 
 Lady Macbeth, as Shakespeare conceived her, was 
 not by nature a bad woman, but a woman who became 
 bad by long cherishing of ambition for the crown. This 
 desire, not an impossible one for Macbeth had some preten- 
 sions to the crown, was made much stronger by that which 
 was good in her — by her love for her husband. This whiff 
 of goodness mixes with the murder. It is plain that these 
 two, even in crime, loved cne another well, and had been 
 closely knit together. Macbeth knew her strength and 
 loved her, before the murder, more than she loved him. She 
 knew his weakness in action, weakness through over- think- 
 ing, over-imagination ; but she loved the man, and perhaps 
 all the more that his weakness enabled her to feel her own 
 power when she kindled him to act, and defended him in 
 trouble. When she inspirits him to the murder, we are 
 repelled, even when we are surprised into a strange 
 admiration; but when she guards him, in his weakness 
 on the apparition of Banquo, she awakens our emotional 
 interest and our pity. But, at that time, the overwhelm- 
 ing impulse which momentarily drove her to murder has 
 departed from her. She has passed into the reaction from 
 it, and the natural good in her character, undeveloped as 
 it had been, has begun to emerge. When we nest see her, 
 in the sleep-walking scene, she is the thrall of avenging 
 conscience and of womanly horror for her deed. And 
 finally, in another rush of unregulated impulse, she lays 
 violent hands on herself, for the conscience Macbeth has 
 not she has now developed. 
 
 She is then, from the time she receives Macbeth's 
 letter and hears that Duncan is coming that night to 
 the castle, the victim of one of those unbridled impulses 
 
206 LECTUEES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 whose outburst, like that of a volcano, is the result of 
 inward thoughts and passions directed to one end, in- 
 creasing during years of silence, and at last reaching their 
 highest point of expansion. A single touch, a sudden 
 chance, and they explode into irresistible and transient 
 energy. In some women, in whom the love of power is 
 supreme, and whose intellect is cold if their passions 
 are hot, such an impulse of passion — of love or jealousy, 
 of ambition, hatred or fear — is, for the time, their only law. 
 For them, in this sudden outbreaking into form of long- 
 nurtured thoughts — each making its own passion, each 
 unrepressed but its outward shaping repressed — everything 
 else but the impulse to fulfil their desire disappears. Earth 
 and heaven flee away, and there is no place for them. 
 Honour, duty, the claims of the affections, motherhood, 
 friendship, morality, the conventions of society, all the 
 ties of the past, are counted as dust in the balance in 
 comparison with the attainment of their will. The emo- 
 tion is so intense that, while it lasts, it lifts them above 
 nature, above the natural feeling and restraints of their 
 sex. They are capable of saying things which violate even 
 the first instincts of nature, such as this — 
 
 I have given suck, and know 
 How tender 'tis to love the babe that inilks me : 
 I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
 Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
 And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
 Have done to this. 
 
 One thing, the impulse, whatever it be, is the despot of the 
 whole character; and the unity of the force employed, 
 utterly unmodified by any other element, makes its energy 
 overwhelming. Macbeth and his objections were as soft 
 clay in a furious potter's hand before the whirling wheel 
 of his wife's illimitable impulse. 
 
 The known characteristic of such an impulse is that it 
 
MACBETH 207 
 
 arises suddenly into action, and is quickly exhausted. It 
 came on Lady Macbeth in a moment on the reception of 
 Macbeth's letter. That voiced the possibility of the 
 hopes being realised over which she had brooded for so 
 long, and the wild image of the reality seized on her 
 brain. But, at first, no clear opportunity is given. Then 
 comes the news that Duncan is coming to spend the night 
 at her castle, and the full fury of her impulse falls upon 
 her. She sees, hears, feels nothing but the death of the 
 king. We hear the all-consuming tyranny of her desire 
 in the low cry she utters when the messenger tells her, 
 'The king comes here to-night! Thou'rt mad to say it' 
 is the voice her inward passion wrings from her. Then 
 follows the whispered intensity of the scene which begins 
 
 with 
 
 The raven himself is hoarse 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements. 
 
 When Macbeth enters, the impulse is doubled by her love 
 of him, by her consciousness that in his thought he is at 
 one with her. She receives him with the rapture of her 
 desire. She sees him already slaying Duncan. The pre- 
 sent has perished; she lives in the future; she is in a 
 whirlwind of terrible hope. 
 
 Thy letters have transported me beyond 
 This ignorant present, and I feel now 
 The future in the instant. 
 
 This transporting passion never fails during the mur- 
 derous night. All Macbeth's hesitations go down before 
 it. She uses all a woman's weapons. She denies her 
 motherhood's tenderness, though she knows she is false 
 to herself, as she is when outside of the storm on which she 
 is borne away. She mocks him with bitter sarcasm. He 
 is untrue to himself and a coward. Her very love for him, 
 as he resists, momentarily fades away. To support the 
 
208 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 impulse, when at the instant of the murder it lessens 
 through the stress of horror, she drinks of the spirit with 
 which she has drenched the grooms — 
 
 That which hath made them drunk hath made me hold ; 
 What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. 
 
 Had Duncan not resembled her father as he slept — 
 strange, yet natural moment of recurrence to old affec- 
 tionateness — she herself had stabbed him. Nothing is 
 impossible in the whirl of the impulse. 
 
 Not till the murder is done does the force of the impulse 
 begin to diminish. When she sees Macbeth in a tremble of 
 imaginative terror, touched by superstitious horror, his 
 phantasies (though she supports, uplifts, and encourages 
 him) begin to bring on the reaction. Its first note is 
 
 These deeds must not he thought 
 After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 
 
 But this is only the beginning. She is still in the rush of 
 her desire. She knits her energies to the needs of the 
 hour, opposes her reason to his fancies, bids him be 
 practical, wash his hands, get on his nightgown, go to his 
 bed. She takes the daggers, sees without a tremor the 
 murdered man, makes bloody the faces of the grooms, and 
 comes back to say 
 
 A little water clears us of this deed ; . . . 
 
 Be not lost 
 So poorly in your thoughts. 
 
 No impulse, borne to so wild a height as hers had 
 been, could continue at that height. There was a 
 certainty of reaction. Macbeth, on the contrary, had 
 not been so borne away. He had resisted his wife's 
 pleading; he had done what he had done in fear and 
 trembling ; he had yielded to her with many reasonings 
 and difficulties. At last he had done the deed in cold 
 horror, hearing a dreadful voice — Sleep no more. He too 
 
MACBETH 209 
 
 would suffer a reaction, but it would take an opposite 
 form to that which hers would take. And, true enough, 
 next day their roles are entirely changed. Macbeth, 
 having exhausted all his objections, all his fears, and 
 having irreparably committed his murder, is absolutely 
 changed from the trembling, reasoning, white-hearted 
 personage of the murder scene. He is cool, determined, 
 quick in action, ruthless, fearless, save when, seeing the 
 ghost of Banquo, the superstitious fear native to him 
 from his childhood grips him for a time. No one sus- 
 pects him but Duncan's sons. He sticks at nothing, 
 murders the servants to put the deed upon them and to 
 hide their evidence, covers blood with blood, describes 
 with a ghastly poetry Duncan's body, and acts as swiftly 
 as the lightning. Before his purpose cools he does the 
 deed he projects, even though it means the needless 
 murder of such innocent folk as the wife and children 
 of Macduff. 
 
 For mine own good 
 All causes shall give way : I am in blood 
 Stepp'd in so far, that should I wade no more, 
 Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 
 
 The flighty purpose never is o'ertook 
 Unless the deed go with it ; from this moment 
 The very firstlings of my heart shall be 
 The firstlings of my hand. . . . 
 
 No boasting like a fool ; 
 This deed I '11 do, before this purpose cool : 
 But no more sights ! 
 
 No change can be greater. We look upon another 
 man. 
 
 As great a change comes upon Lady Macbeth. The 
 storm of impulse is over. She has slept it away, or it has 
 died in the silent sleeplessness of that dreadful dawn 
 before the grfeat- cry came which brought her down to 
 face the terror-stricken crowd, and to faint away. She 
 o 
 
210 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 has wakened to the horror of what she has clone ; and she 
 returns to her natural self — as she was, before the tempta- 
 tion she had long cherished rose into fierce action, and 
 transported her beyond herself. She is a wholly different 
 woman, when she comes down in the morning, from the 
 woman of the night before. Macduff has called her a 
 'gentle lady,' and something of this gentleness emerges. 
 When Macbeth, bolder and cooler than thrice-tempered 
 steel, describes Duncan, his 'silver skin laced with his 
 golden blood,' in the strange play of his poetic imagina- 
 tion — describes what he and she have done — she cannot 
 bear it ; she faints away. Some have said that the 
 swoon was pretended. That is foolish ; there is no 
 reason in Shakespeare for such a suggestion. Even if 
 nothing of her natural womanhood were now returning, 
 as I think it was, the terrible strain on her brain and 
 body of the night, and now of the morning's discovery, are 
 enough to account for her fainting. But there was more 
 in it than that. What appears afterwards in her sleep- 
 walking — the woman's natural horror of the bloody deed 
 — had already begun to move in her. Then all through 
 the scene where the ghost of Banquo rises, her words, 
 even when they reproach Macbeth and sting him into 
 courage, have so much tenderness breaking through them, 
 her defence of him to the lords is so anxious, so wistful, 
 that it is impossible not to pity her, to feel kindly for her. 
 She says nothing ill, nothing unwomanly, but wisely, with 
 clear sense, clear intelligence, and courage, in her guarding 
 of Macbeth. Those great qualities she yet retains, and 
 they serve well her love, and the piteous comradeship in 
 crime of these two isolated souls. When the guests 
 depart, and Macbeth alone with her gives vent to the 
 fears he has — but only when the supernatural thrills his 
 nerves — and swears that he will drown them in the 
 slaughter of all whom he suspects, there is a worn 
 
MACBETH 211 
 
 pathetic cry, half for herself, half for him, in the words 
 with which she answers him ; 
 
 You lack the season of all natures, sleep. 
 
 They are all the more pathetic when we find afterwards 
 that sleep could not soothe her miserable misery. She is 
 changed indeed. 
 
 Moreover, her conscience now begins to awake. She 
 dwells on the irreparableness of what they have done. 
 
 How now, my lord ! why do you keep alone, 
 
 Of sorriest fancies your companions making, 
 
 Using those thoughts which should indeed have died 
 
 With them they think od 1 Things without all remedy 
 
 Should be without regard : what 's done is done. 
 
 She repeats this in her sleep — 'What's done cannot be 
 undone.' It is only the awakened conscience which dwells 
 on the irreparable past. Macbeth does not. He seeks 
 only to secure the future. She lives in the ghastliness 
 of the past. When she is alone, for with her husband she 
 is always brave, we hear how deep the arrow of remorse 
 
 has pierced. 
 
 Nought 's had, all 's spent, 
 Where our desire is got without content : 
 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy 
 Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. 
 
 The only wicked thing she says — but she says it to back 
 up her husband when he tells of the scorpion- thought that 
 Banquo and Fleance still live — is wicked indeed. 
 But in them nature's copy 's not eterne. 
 
 'There's comfort,' cries Macbeth, but we cannot argue 
 from this one wicked phrase to a total searing of her con- 
 science, especially when we find that this very slaughter 
 of Banquo forms part of her agony in sleep. 
 
 That dreadful vision of her soul tells us what a pro- 
 found change has taken place in her since the murder. 
 Her natural womanhood and her conscience are both 
 
212 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 alive in her sleep-walking, and she voices in it the 
 thoughts of the day. Night after night she lives over 
 again the murder of Duncan, of Banquo, of Macduff's wife 
 and children. These deeds sit heavy on her soul, and 
 among them are her own urgings to Macbeth that make 
 her feel she has been even guiltier than he. There is a 
 piteousness in her words wholly unlike what she was 
 before the murder. 
 
 Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood 
 in him. . . . The Thane of Fife had a wife : where is she now 1 What ! 
 will these hands ne'er be clean ? . . . Here 's the smell of the blood 
 still : all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 
 Oh! oh! oh! 
 
 This woman is, like Macbeth, but how differently, all 
 changed. Her conscience and her womanhood slay her. 
 She dies by her own hand. 
 
 The reason of this astonishing change in the feeling and 
 action of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, both moving in an 
 opposite direction to that in which they moved before the 
 murder, may be found in a general difference between 
 man and woman ; a sex-difference which, always existing in 
 ordinary life, does not plainly appear until they are placed 
 together in extraordinary circumstances, such as a sudden 
 temptation or a strong impulse of passion. We can 
 discuss this difference in the case of Macbeth and Lady 
 Macbeth, for the one was wholly a man and the other 
 wholly a woman. I have already said that sex in Shake- 
 speare is always normal. 
 
 The general difference is this. In a man emotion 
 rarely exists without thought being exercised upon it. 
 Any passionate desire, like Macbeth's temptation to slay 
 Duncan in order to gain the throne, is accompanied by 
 an intellectual discussion of its reasons, its difficulties, 
 and its consequences. They are entered into before the 
 temptation is yielded to, or the impulse followed. Every 
 
MACBETH 213 
 
 emotion is bound up with its thoughts, and every thought 
 with its emotions, like two clasped hands. 
 
 But in a woman it is not so, whenever passion or in- 
 tellect is dominant in her. If her intellect be dominant, it 
 acts, and governs her actions alone, without any emotion 
 accompanying it. If her passion dominate, it also acts 
 alone without any thought mixed up with it. No reason- 
 ing, no discussion of objections or results, such as Macbeth 
 indulged in, accompanies the execution of her desire. 
 
 Lady Macbeth, in the whirl of her impulse, saw no 
 objections to the murder of Duncan. No sense of honour, 
 no scruples of conscience, no womanly feelings, inter- 
 vened to stay her will. Her intellect and what sense of 
 right or wrong she may have had do not exist for the 
 time. She acts as unself-restrained as a law of nature. 
 Macbeth, on the contrary, sees all the objections, reasons 
 out the whole question, considers that he risks his soul 
 and stains his honour black, looks the consequences in 
 the face and fears them, understands his peril and his 
 crime beforehand, and deliberately, with his reason see- 
 ing all these matters clearly, fulfils his passionate desire, 
 executes his murder. Of all this there is not a trace in 
 Lady Macbeth on the night of the slaughter. 
 
 It is easy now to explain the change. When the furious 
 wind of her passion had died away, all the thoughts Lady 
 Macbeth's passion had concealed from her, now rushed 
 upon her, weakened by the storm. The fears, the doubts 
 her husband had, beset her now when her deed is 
 irreparable ; the violation of her roof-tree, the gentleness 
 and trust of Duncan, the horror of blood, the dreadful 
 consequences, the battering of awakened conscience 
 and she breaks down into mortal ruin. Moreover, 
 the momentary loss of her womanhood, of all tender- 
 ness, the unsexing of herself in the intensity of her 
 impulse, are avenged by that return of her womanhood 
 
214 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 which is disclosed to us when sleep has loosened her 
 self-control. 
 
 But Macbeth has faced beforehand all the consequences, 
 has seen his crime in all its bearings. He has met and 
 put aside, before he has committed the murder, all that 
 his reason, and the sense of honour which serves him 
 for conscience, can urge against his crime. He has seen 
 the results and accepted them. When they come, they 
 are already discounted. After their fever they sleep well, 
 as well as Duncan. Therefore he is cool, indifTerent to 
 his guilt, ready at all points to meet what he has already 
 presaged; quite free from all self-reproach, as reckless 
 now as he was before anxious. Having once steeped his 
 hands in blood, he cares for no after-slaughters — ruthless, 
 physically undaunted, no whiteness now in his heart. 
 And his reason turns now, not to object to crime, but 
 to organise fresh crime in order to clear and secure his 
 position. Even his superstitious fears, when the vision of 
 Banquo has ceased, are dispersed. He has supped full of 
 horrors, and they trouble him no more. He faces the 
 witches and their apparitions, even that of Banquo, as if 
 he were one of themselves. This is the difference between 
 the man and the woman. 
 
 I have sketched the conduct of the play up to the 
 coronation. The death of Banquo is the doubling of 
 crime, and from it dates the ruin of Macbeth. Inwardly, 
 it began with the murder of Duncan, but the murder of 
 Banquo begins it outwardly. The apparition of Banquo 
 shakes his imagination into terror, and in order to bluff 
 his fear, he exalts his will to 'wade' deeper into blood. 
 He is, he cries, in a wild excitement for murder, ' yet but 
 young in deed.' He will go to see the Weird Sisters and 
 know the worst. And now the witches reappear, and 
 Hecate bids them by further illusion draw Macbeth on 
 to his confusion. These scenes are by some taken away 
 
MACBETH 215 
 
 from Shakespeare. I should like to know who else could 
 have written them. The vaporous drop profound which 
 hangs on the corner of the moon, and which Hecate 
 distils to raise the sprites which confuse Macbeth, is not 
 from any other imagination than Shakespeare's. If the 
 cauldron and its ingredients are borrowed from the witch- 
 books, the form and execution of the whole are of so weird 
 and potent a grotesque, that we feel in the actual presence 
 of high ministers of evil, at the very 'pit of Acheron.' 
 Nor are the things done and shown, or the cauldron and 
 its ingredients real. They are illusion, and they vanish 
 into air. They are to act on the soul of Macbeth, to ruin 
 him by false security. He knows at the end that they 
 were juggling fiends 
 
 That palter with ue in a double sense ; 
 That keep the word of promise to the ear, 
 And break it to our hope. 
 
 Dramatically, their promises contain the rest of Macbeth's 
 action and his death. 
 
 Meantime, we have heard of Macduff's flight to England, 
 and of Macbeth's rage at this news. And the two next 
 scenes belong closely to this news. We find Lady Macduff 
 in her castle at Fife complaining of her husband's deser- 
 tion. He loves us not : 
 
 He wants the natural touch ; for the poor wren, 
 The most diminutive of birds, will fight — 
 Her young ones in her nest — against the owl. 
 All is the fear and nothing is the love ; 
 
 She does not understand the policy which, wise for the 
 kingdom, is not wise for her. And indeed she is right. 
 Macduff had probably killed her love. ' Sirrah, your 
 father's dead,' she tells her son. Whatever petulant 
 impatience of the moment may be in her cry, I do not 
 think she would have ever forgiven her husband. Ross 
 defends him, but Ross and all those who defend him 
 
216 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 do not know a woman; nor do they see that Macduff, 
 who is honest, politic, brave, is yet_of a . weak intellect. 
 He made, with excellent intentions, a grave mistake 
 in abandoning his wife to the power of a man whose 
 wicked ruthlessness he knew. And the mistake has two 
 results. One is that Malcolm suspects him of treachery. 
 He cannot understand the ' rawness with which he left 
 his wife and child. He has been untrue to them; is he 
 untrue to me ? ' The other result is the slaughter of his 
 home. It is absurd to say that Macduff is punished, as 
 some say. There is no moral guilt in his action. It is an 
 error, but errors have the nature of vices, and Shake- 
 speare remembers that curious truth from play to play. 
 Indeed this short sketch of Macduff's conduct, its result 
 on his wife, and on the action of the play, is an admirable 
 example of Shakespeare's careful work on his less import- 
 ant characters. 
 
 The scene before the king's palace in England is taken 
 up with these two results. We feel the weakness of 
 Macduff when he excuses, for the sake of policy, all the 
 villainies with which Malcolm loads his own character. 
 It is only when Malcolm paints himself as the foe oi all 
 unity and peace, that honesty in Macduff breaks loose 
 from policy. 
 
 Fit to govern ! 
 No, not to live. 
 
 They are reconciled, and an episode of a doctor and a 
 history of King Edward curing the king's evil is dragged 
 in. The whole scene, I have said already, grossly delays 
 the action, and is quite unnecessary. It ought to have 
 been omitted. It is only when Ross comes, in, that the 
 movement is again afoot. The tenderness and pathetic 
 beauty of the passages when the bold warrior is smitten 
 down with the news of his slaughtered home are an 
 island of grace in the midst of this ocean of blood. 
 
MACBETH 217 
 
 The overwhelming stress of our feelings is relieved by its 
 nobleness. 
 
 Then follows the sleep-walking scene; and the fall of 
 Lady Macbeth is revealed to us. She reaches her ruin 
 through the terrible depression of the reaction from the 
 fierce impulse which slaughtered Duncan. We are first 
 shown its work on the night when Banquo is murdered. 
 She keeps up her strength to defend her husband, but 
 when she is alone with him, she is utterly exhausted. 
 And now, when she walks in her sleep, her soul is laid 
 bare. The hopeless misery of her quick- coming fancies, 
 all of them crimsoned and horrible with blood, is eating 
 away her life. The great cry of her women, at the moment 
 when Macbeth realises that he is face to face with his foes, 
 tells us that she is gone. Poor soul ! weak through want 
 of will to curb the impulse of passion, she recurs, when the 
 passion which made her strong to do evil and for the 
 time supreme in tragedy has passed away, to her original 
 weakness and dies by her own hand. 
 
 And now we are left alone with Macbeth, and he is 
 alone with himself. He is as exalted as his wife is de- 
 pressed. The murder has opposite results on each of 
 them, and I have tried to explain the reason of this. 
 
 He is quite reckless — almost in the same temper in 
 which his wife was just before the murder of Duncan. This 
 recklessness has grown from the days when he sacrificed 
 Banquo because he feared his royalty of nature and his 
 wisdom, because it was bitter as death to him that 
 Banquo's issue, while he was childless, should be kings. 
 It has grown still more since the dreadful night when 
 he saw Banquo rise and glare into his eyes. When that 
 vision passed him by, its only result was to exalt his 
 transient terror into so intense a rage that while the 
 vision of Banquo's heirs sears his eyeballs, he looks 
 now untremblingly at Banquo himself, whose blood- 
 
218 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 boltered visage smiles upon him. As the danger from 
 without increases, his distempered excitement increases, 
 till it issues in that which seems to some a valiant 
 fury, to others madness. The valiancy of his recklessness 
 is supported by his faith in the promises of the witches ; 
 he is safe till Birnam wood shall come to Dunsinane, 
 till he meet an enemy not born of woman. He is always 
 brave, but this credulity makes him speak like a swash- 
 buckler at the very hour, when his mind tells him his 
 cause is lost. 
 
 Another element in him is physical. Macbeth's nerves, 
 as we have seen, are always thrilling. Now, of course, 
 when doom is gathering thick around him, they are worse 
 than before. They must be like harp-strings overstrung. 
 The effort to repress their cry intensifies the storm. Hence 
 his shouting, his wild cries for war, the outbreaks of un- 
 controlled and furious speech to the servants — 
 
 The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon ! 
 
 Outward furies like this tell of the raging of the nerve- 
 storm within. It bursts into anger with the slightest 
 things; with a servant's pale face, with a stammering 
 tongue. This is to be on the knife-edge of madness. 
 
 The only solace, the only countercheck to this, is in 
 violent acts of war, in preparation for combat. 
 
 I '11 fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd. 
 Give me my armour. 
 
 In this condition, so battered, so self : stormed, sojisolated 
 in his own fears and in his tempestuous soul, it is no 
 wonder that his love for his wife, though not lost, is dulled, 
 is part of the walking shadow of life. He discusses her 
 illness coolly, almost with a scornful philosophy. She is 
 troubled, says the Doctor, with thick-coming fancies that 
 keep her from her rest. 
 
MACBETH 219 
 
 Macb. Cure her of that : 
 
 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
 Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff 
 Which weighs upon the heart % 
 
 Doct. Therein the patient 
 
 Must minister to himself. 
 
 Macb. Throw physic to the dogs : I '11 none of it. 
 
 When he hears of her death, he only says, ' She should 
 
 have died hereafter ' ; and passes on to think of himself. 
 
 The freezing shadow of the doom that has enwrapt him 
 
 has almost frozen his love. 
 
 Amid all this conflict of diverse elements, or rather, 
 
 behind them all, is unspeakable weariness of life — all lost, 
 
 all done — and with that, an infinite pity for himself, and 
 
 infinite pity for poor humanity. He transfers, with that 
 
 sympathy which belongs to a poetic nature, his own 
 
 failure to all humanity. Life, and all its passions, hopes, 
 
 and endeavour, are nothing but illusion. When he is 
 
 alone ; when he gets down, apart from the race of action, 
 
 into his deepest self; this raises its head within him. 
 
 And he expresses it with that strange poetry which, even 
 
 in physical, mental, and moral ruin, still survives. 
 
 Seyton ! — T am sick at heart 
 When I behold — Seyton, I say ! — This push 
 Will chair me ever, or disseat me now. 
 I have lived long enough : my way of life 
 Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf ; 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 I must not look to have. 
 
 Still more poetical, of the finest strain — more human, 
 mingling his own life with all the life of humanity — when 
 the cry of women tells him the queen is dead — 
 
 To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
 To the last syllable of recorded time ; 
 
220 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
 Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 And then is heard no more ; it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 There is Macbeth, deep down. The next moment he is 
 all fire and action. And both the valiant fury of war and 
 the unutterable weariness of life meet in the last thing he 
 says before the last battle. 
 
 I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun, 
 And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. 
 Ring the alarum bell ! Blow wind ! come, wrack ! 
 At least we '11 die with harness on our back. 
 
VIII 
 
 COKIOLANUS 
 
 This play was written, probably in 1609, when Shake- 
 speare's genius had fully matured, after he had proved 
 the splendour of his work in the great tragedies — Lear, 
 Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth — and just before he wrote, 
 in his latest period, Cymbeline, Winters Tale, and The 
 Tempest It has been greatly praised, and even com- 
 pared, for dramatic interest, with Othello. For my part, 
 I cannot feel that. Shakespeare's power in it, magnifi- 
 cent in many places, is not so equally distributed as in the 
 greater plays, and the splendid passages make the change 
 of amalgamating power even more remarkable. Then, 
 it is, in a lesser degree than Richard II. and III., a 
 one-man play. The figure of Coriolanus, and his fate — 
 of Coriolanus in a twofold relation; to his mother and 
 to the people — dominates almost too overwhelmingly the 
 interest of the rest of the drama. Cominius, Aufidius, 
 Menenius, the tribunes, even the women, except Volumnia, 
 are a little too much in the background. If they had 
 been more fully interwoven with the action, the play 
 would have been closer to human life. It is true, we have 
 a great variety in the crowds and disturbance of Rome, 
 in the scenes at Corioli. The stage is full of the move- 
 ment and clash of parties. A vivid impression of a crisis 
 between the nobles and the people in a great city is given 
 to us. But when the play is done, and even while we 
 read, we feel as if all the noise, fury, folly, and wisdom 
 of the strife were but a scenery for the overmastering 
 
222 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 presentation, first of Coriolanus, and then of Coriolanus 
 and his mother. I think, but with great diffidence, that 
 Shakespeare's power of combination, of giving unity to 
 his play in the midst of a vivid variety, had now less- 
 ened; or that he did not take as much pains in this 
 matter as of old. He was not quite the absolute dramatic 
 master he had been. And of the three plays that follow 
 this, midst of all their exquisite beauty, I would say the 
 same. The poetry itself is as lovely as ever, even more 
 lovely than ever before, in these swan-songs of his, but the 
 co-ordinating power is either less or less carefully exercised. 
 
 The story of this play, though it is found in Painter's 
 Palace of Pleasure, a book Shakespeare read, was taken 
 by him, with singular cleverness, from the life of Corio- 
 lanus in North's Plutarch, and it is worth while to com- 
 pare the translation with the play, especially in such im- 
 portant passages as the speech of Coriolanus to Aufidius, 
 and the scene between him and his mother in the fifth 
 act, where Shakespeare has often followed North's render- 
 ing almost word for word. The title-page acknowledges 
 Shakespeare's indebtedness to that book of Plutarch's, 
 which indeed, for nearly two thousand years, has been an 
 imaginative inspiration in the souls of all eager young 
 men, and a wise, impelling, and thought-stirring power in 
 the lives of statesmen, philosophers, artists, lawmakers, 
 and of heroic souls in every class of men. It is curious 
 to think that, as the mighty spirit of Shakespeare read 
 his Plutarch, he knew that at certain great moments of 
 his play he could say nothing better than Plutarch had 
 said. It is equally curious that this great creator deli- 
 berately copied down the words of Caius Marcius to 
 Aufidius, of Volumnia to Coriolanus. This honours alike 
 Shakespeare and Plutarch. 
 
 Three matters of interest are prominent in this work of 
 art : (1) Shakespeare's treatment of the political question 
 
CORIOLANUS 223 
 
 in Rome; (2) the character and fate of Coriolanus; (3) 
 Coriolanus and his mother. 
 
 Hazlitt says that all has been said in this drama that 
 can be said for both aristocrat and democrat. It is, he 
 adds, a storehouse of political commonplaces. There are, 
 of course, political commonplaces in the play. Shake- 
 speare was bound to include those opinions and phrases 
 which the man in the street delivers in the midst of every 
 political crisis between the people and the richer classes. 1 
 But there are a number of wise things also said, such as 
 fall from far-seeing persons, who at a crisis of this kind 
 look backward and look forward. And above all, as I 
 venture to think, we are made to feel, moving like a spirit 
 through the play, the sympathy of Shakespeare with the 
 struggle of the people. It is almost traditionary among 
 the critics to claim Shakespeare as a tolerant mocker of 
 the people, and as a supporter, on the whole, of those, 
 whether of wealth or rank, who stood above them. They 
 make him a kind of Menenius ; as if that giant intellect 
 were wholly led away by prejudice, as if he were entirely 
 faithless to his own class and their strife for justice. No 
 one seems to think how impossible, how almost miracu- 
 lous, considering his many-sided genius, such a position 
 would be for Shakespeare. 
 
 It would be wiser to say to ourselves : ' Shakespeare was 
 certain, with that brain of his, to see all sides of the ques- 
 tion, and to represent them.' And that is exactly what 
 he does. He had his 'good-humoured laugh' at mobs, 
 their blindness, changeableness, violence, and 'tall talk.' 
 We see the mob of Rome, here and in Julius Ccesar, 
 
 1 In another play where, as here, the principal character is dominant 
 — in Richwrd III. — Shakespeare has, for the first time, represented the 
 opinions of the man in the street ; not those of demagogues, but of three 
 grave London citizens who, without anything to do with the main actions, 
 discuss the news of the day and the affairs of the state with admirable 
 prudence, and each in character (Act n. Sc. iii.). 
 
224 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 following the last orator, blessing in one act those whom 
 they curse in another ; heaping honour on their tribunes 
 in one scene, and haling them to the Tarpeian rock in 
 another. We read his picture of the mere demagogue, 
 so like our own, and we know how Shakespeare despised 
 the type. He paints it in the first citizen, who shouts 
 for the death of Coriolanus : ' Let us kill him, and we 11 
 have corn at our own price. Is 't a verdict ? ' ' Let us 
 revenge our wrongs with our pikes, ere we become rakes : 
 for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not 
 in thirst for revenge.' Menenius calls this man, in scorn, 
 ' the great toe of the assembly ' — 
 
 For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, 
 Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost, 
 
 to win vantage for himself, rather than good for his party. 
 Coriolanus is the enemy to him. He sees no good in him 
 at all; what services he has done to his country were 
 done to please his mother and foster his pride, not for the 
 people of Rome. ' He 's a very dog to the commonalty.' 
 
 But to paint what is foolish and extreme in the people 
 did not prevent Shakespeare from painting what was 
 just in their demands, wise and modest in their conduct ; 
 as, when he painted the pride, scorn, and oppressiveness 
 of Coriolanus, he did not involve the whole of the 
 patricianate of Rome in the same vices. 
 
 In this play Shakespeare, but not so openly as to offend 
 his patrons, was in sympathy with the people. He records 
 with severe plainness the injustice and misery which 
 they had suffered; and to make this more remarkable 
 he places their cries in the mouth of the shouting dema- 
 gogue he has so broadly sketched. He knew that the 
 wrongs were real even though their mouthpiece was 
 violent. So far Shakespeare sj^mpathised even with him. 
 These wrongs are fully detailed. Menenius answers, just 
 as these oppressors are customed to say, that the patri- 
 
CORIOLANUS 225 
 
 cians ' care for the people like fathers.' ' Care for us ! ' 
 answers this citizen — 
 
 True, indeed ! They ne'er cared for us yet : suffer us to famish, and 
 their store-houses crammed with grain ; make edicts for usury, to sup- 
 port usurers ; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the 
 rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain 
 the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will ; and there 's all the love 
 they bear us. 
 
 Then, too, his drawing of Coriolanus suggests his 
 sympathy with the popular movement. No one can help 
 seeing that Shakespeare did not love Coriolanus, nor 
 approve his conduct. The last words spoken over him 
 are not like those spoken over Brutus; and both are 
 spoken by enemies. They are chill and half-hearted. 
 His speeches rarely reach nobility of feeling or thought ; 
 except when they are concerned with war, or with his 
 mother. They are loaded with big words, so turgid that 
 when we know how Shakespeare could make his great 
 characters speak, we are convinced that he had no admira- 
 tion, but all but contempt, for Coriolanus. Of course, he 
 pitied his fate, and this pity recurs again and again in the 
 play, but nothing can be more rigid than his steady draw- 
 ing of the inevitable punishment to which such a character 
 has doomed himself. It is as if Shakespeare were himself 
 Nemesis. In fact, Coriolanus is made to bear the same 
 relation to the body of the patricians that the dema- 
 gogue of the first act bears to the mass of the people. He 
 is the blustering assertor of the rights and claims of the 
 aristocracy, without foresight, intelligence, temperance, 
 humanity or knowledge, the victim of his violent temper 
 and fatal pride ; but withal the greatest of soldiers. 
 
 Again, consider Shakespeare's representation of other 
 citizens and the tribunes. He has drawn the reeling mob 
 and the mouthing demagogue. At the same time he 
 draws the temperate and tolerant citizens in the person of 
 
226 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 the second citizen. ' Consider,' he says, ' what services 
 Coriolanus has done for his country.' ' Speak not 
 maliciously,' he cries to the demagogue. And he excuses 
 Coriolanus, even for his pride. ' What he cannot help in 
 his nature, you account a vice in him. You must in no 
 way say he is covetous.' All that is like a prudent and 
 kindly hearted Roman ; the very opposite of the loud 
 violence of the mob-leader. Moreover, the people are 
 made by Shakespeare to behave exceedingly well at the 
 election of Coriolanus. They repress their rancour in 
 dealing with their great enemy because he has fought 
 so well for Rome. ' If he tell us of his noble deeds, we 
 must also tell him of our noble acceptance of them. In- 
 gratitude is monstrous.' ' I say, if he would incline to 
 the people, there never was a worthier man.' ' He has 
 done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's 
 voice.' It is impossible to believe that Shakespeare could 
 really despise the people when he makes them speak in 
 this fashion. 
 
 And then the tribunes ! They are not mere dema- 
 gogues. They are fighting the battle of their class with 
 prudence, intelligence, and skill, against the stupidity 
 and oppression of the upper class. Not with the unreason 
 of the mob-orator, but with resolute foresight, they deter- 
 mine to overthrow Coriolanus as the common enemy of 
 the people. Once he is exiled they can deal with the rest 
 of the patricians in a quiet way, and with a good hope of 
 success. And they give themselves to that aim with cool 
 precision of attack. They use no wild words. They 
 speak throughout with quietude and resolution, as men 
 who care for the cause of their fellow-citizens more than 
 for themselves. 
 
 Politically considered, the play is the artistic record of 
 the victory of a people, unrighteously oppressed, over 
 their oppressor, who is the exaggerated incarnation of the 
 
CORIOLANUS 227 
 
 temper of his class. I will glance through the play from 
 this point of view. 
 
 While the citizens are debating their wrongs Menenius 
 comes upon them. He is the old and jovial aristocrat, 
 who loves a cup of hot wine, and adores a hero like 
 Coriolanus ; hasty in temper but keeping no malice, and 
 in politics eager for moderate counsels; bluff of speech 
 because he is old, and because of his class-contempt for 
 the people, which contempt he generally modifies into 
 good-humoured attacks on their follies. He is endured, 
 but seen through, by the tribunes of the people — ' Come, 
 sir, come, we know you well enough.' A thorough patri- 
 cian, who yet desires to be hail-fellow-well-met with the 
 people; who has among them the fame of caring for 
 them, but who does not really care for their wrongs in 
 comparison with the smallest right the patricians claim ; 
 the prosperous conservative, quite ready to help the 
 people provided the people are kept down. The possi- 
 bility of any democratic change never enters his mind. 
 The world of Rome will always go on as it is now. You 
 may as well, he says to the citizens, 
 
 Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them 
 Against the Eoman state, whose course will on 
 The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs 
 Of more strong link asunder than can ever 
 Appear in your impediment. 
 The patricians, the senate, are the centre of Rome ; if the 
 centre be weakened the people will perish — and he tells 
 his story of the belly and the rebellious members of the 
 body. ' But we are perishing now,' they say, ' and the 
 nobility are the cause.' ' Wait, keep quiet, don't disturb 
 the state, all will be soon quite comfortable. The one 
 thing needful is no change. All your good comes from 
 the patricians ' — 
 
 No public benefit which you receive 
 
 But it proceeds or comes from them to you, 
 
 And no way from yourselves. 
 
228 LECTUEES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 When change has been wrought, and he hears that tribunes 
 have been granted, he does not understand it. { This is 
 strange,' he says- Then, when further change is wrought, 
 and Coriolanus is banished, Menenius accepts the tribunes 
 and the change ; and then, when Rome turns against the 
 tribunes, throws himself back into his old position. His 
 conservatism is permanent opportunism. However, at 
 this early point of the play (in his belief in the everlasting 
 continuance of the state as it is), the blindness of this 
 Roman Polonius is clear, though he seem so wise. Corio- 
 lanus sees twice as far, just because his hatred of the 
 people opens his eyes. He knows, when the tribunes are 
 given to the people, that the predominance of his class 
 is doomed. Hatred, often blind, is sometimes keen-eyed. 
 There are many instances of the blindness of Menenius, 
 of the clear sight of Coriolanus. Here is one. Menenius 
 is the slave of custom ; Coriolanus is not. One of the 
 touches of the play nearest to his character is where his 
 pride, and in this case his intelligence, overcomes his con- 
 servatism, and he throws precedent overboard — 
 
 Custom calls me to 't ; 
 What custom wills, in all things should we do % 
 The dust on antique time would lie unswept, 
 And mountainous error be too highly heap'd, 
 For truth to o'erpeer. 
 
 That is not the conservative position. Menenius cannot 
 agree with him ; Coriolanus must follow all the precedents 
 of the past. Again and again he implores him for tem- 
 perate conduct ; and the battle in his mind between love 
 and admiration of Coriolanus and disapproval of his un- 
 controlled choler is excellently drawn by Shakespeare. 
 Yet, while he disapproves, and is even weary of the furious 
 temper of his friend, he hates the people the more because 
 they attack his friend. From the moment the battle is set 
 in array till the banishment of Coriolanus no one is harder 
 
CORIOLANUS 229 
 
 on the people than Menenius. No Philippe Egalite is to 
 be trusted. The traditions of their class are stronger than 
 their popular good-nature. 
 
 The battle has now begun. The one desire of Corio- 
 lanus is to overthrow the concession of tribunes to the 
 people : he sees that it 
 
 tv ill in time 
 Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes 
 For insurrection's arguing. 
 
 The one desire of the tribunes is to overthrow Corio- 
 lanus, the unyielding spirit of that aristocratic temper 
 which the people have begun to conquer. If he be not 
 crushed, all they have won is lost. This civil war is 
 aggravated by the proud scorn of Coriolanus for the 
 intelligence, even for the lives of the people. They are 
 of no account in the world save as servants. Whether 
 they live or die, suffer or rejoice, is no matter. If they 
 complain, let me slaughter them ; 
 
 Would the nobility lay aside their ruth, 
 And let me use my sword, I J d make a quarry 
 With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high 
 As I could pick my lance. 
 
 Hang 'em ! Bid them wash their faces, and keep their 
 
 teeth clean. Then he mocks at their sufferings — 
 
 They said they were an-hungry ; sigh'd forth proverbs : 
 That hunger broke stone walls ; that dogs must eat ; 
 That meat was made for mouths ; that the gods sent not 
 Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds 
 They vented their complainings ; . . . 
 
 Go ; get you home, you fragments ! 
 
 ' If they want food,' said Foulon, in the French Revolu- 
 tion, ' let them eat grass.' 
 
 The Volscian War then complicates the situation. 
 Coriolanus hails it with joy. It will enable the nobles to 
 expend the ' musty superfluity ' of the people ; and the 
 huge success of Coriolanus in it makes the patricians 
 
230 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 hope that they will now get the upper hand, and by in- 
 stalling Coriolanus as consul, either balance the power of 
 the tribunes, or finally win their cause. 
 
 It seems to promise well. Coriolanus comes home, and 
 is at the top of Rome — people, children, women throng to 
 welcome him. But this only serves to make more pro- 
 minent that division of classes which is the curse of 
 states. Menenius, who was kindly to the people once, is 
 now bitter against them. His scorn of the tribunes is 
 almost as great as that of Coriolanus — ' God-den to your 
 worships; more of your conversation would infect my 
 brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians.' If he 
 thought thus, the rest of the patricians, less tolerant than 
 he, would think the same more strongly. Nor is the real 
 division of the people from the patrician class, in spite of 
 the apparent unity of Rome under the excitement of 
 military glory, less clear. The tribunes are not carried 
 away by the triumph of Coriolanus. They see in it a fresh 
 danger to that liberty of the people for which they are 
 contending: they lay a plot for his destruction as the 
 enemy of the people, and it is just that they should do it. 
 Coriolanus deserved death. 
 
 The talk of Sicinius and Brutus, admirably conceived 
 by Shakespeare, proves them masters of the situation. 
 It is marked by that steadfast pitilessness towards the 
 oppressing class which has characterised, in all revolu- 
 tions of the people, the leaders of the people ; and at the 
 back of which is the long hatred of years, sometimes of 
 centuries, as it was in the French Revolution. The enemy 
 must be annihilated. And the way to destroy Coriolanus 
 is clear — to work on his choleric pride till he insults the 
 people. He is elected consul, but the tribunes call him 
 before the tribunal of the people to answer for his ill- 
 deeds against them. He faces them with a suppressed 
 fury of wrath, which, lashed by the tribunes' accusa- 
 
CORIOLANUS 231 
 
 tions, breaks forth into a torrent of mad and scornful 
 anger. They sting him to the quick, playing on his 
 wrathfumess as on an instrument. In the whole of 
 these wonderful scenes in the second and third acts, the 
 tribunes are the only cool-headed, dignified folk. Every 
 one else is infected with the rage of Coriolanus. When, at 
 last, Sicinius cries, 'He hath spoken like a traitor, and 
 shall answer for it as traitors do,' Coriolanus bursts out 
 into a full fury — 
 
 Cor. Thou wretch ! despite o'erwhelm thee ! 
 
 What should the people do with these bald tribunes 1 
 
 On whom depending, their obedience fails 
 
 To the greater bench. 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 i' the dust. 
 Bru. Manifest treason ! 
 Sic. This a consul ? no. 
 
 Bru. The sediles, ho ! Let him be apprehended. 
 
 And instantly, Rome is up. The tAvo parties fight in a 
 riot. The tribunes are masters, and condemn Coriolanus 
 to death. Menenius intervenes, and Coriolanus stands his 
 trial, but his rage, though he tries for temperance, breaks 
 out more wildly than ever. His courage, his pride, his 
 selfishness, his insolence, his furious temper, are worked 
 up to their extremes; and he never ceases to indulge 
 them till he has settled his own ruin. The oppressor 
 of the people is self-oppressed. Violence and weakness, 
 the sister of violence, are his tyrants. Pride is their 
 root, but it is not the pride of a great or a strong man, in 
 whom pride is the master of the passions. The pride of 
 Coriolanus is but the servant or the slavish comrade of 
 his choler. A single word like ' traitor ' drives him 
 beyond all bounds, and the reticence of a stately pride 
 is lost. 
 
232 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The fires i' the lowest hell fold-in the people ! 
 Call me their traitor ! Thou injurious tribune ! 
 Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, 
 In thy hands clutch'd as many millions, in 
 Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say 
 ' Thou liest ' unto thee with a voice as free 
 As I do pray the gods. 
 
 This settles his fate ; but as a galling favour, he is let off 
 death, and banished on pain of death. His last speech, 
 as he turns on them, has that nobility of tone which adds 
 itself to a vice when the doom of the vice is pronounced. 
 The majesty of the irreparable belongs to it. 
 
 Cor. You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate 
 As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize 
 As the dead carcases of unburied men 
 That do corrupt my air, I banish you ; 
 And here remain with your uncertainty ! 
 Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts ! 
 Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes, 
 Fan you into despair ! Have the power still 
 To banish your defenders ; till at length 
 Your ignorance, — which finds not, till it feels, — 
 Making not reservation of yourselves, — 
 Still your own foes, — deliver you as most 
 Abated captives to some nation 
 That won you without blows ! Despising, 
 For you, the city, thus I turn my back : 
 There is a world elsewhere. 
 
 The people do not care a straw for his scorn. They are 
 lost in joy at getting rid of him — 
 
 ^Ed. The people's enemy is gone, is gone ! 
 
 Citizens. Our enemy is banish'd ! — He is gone! — Hoo ! hoo ! 
 [They all shout and throw up their caps. 
 
 So ends the contest between Coriolanus and the 
 tribunes. They and the people are the victors. And we 
 may fairly conclude that Shakespeare did not despise the 
 cause of the people or its leaders, when we find that the 
 leaders are represented throughout as men who have 
 kept their heads ; cool, temperate, prudent, but resolute 
 to attain their end ; and using steadily and ruthlessly the 
 
CORIOLANUS 233 
 
 best means for this end. Having won, they are quite 
 sober and quiet. They indulge in no boasting, but go 
 about their business, congratulating themselves on the 
 quiet of Rome. Their just mastership of the stormy 
 elements of the people keeps down the anger of the 
 partisans of Coriolanus. Every day of quiet makes Corio- 
 lanus less missed by his friends, who ' blush that without 
 him the world goes well.' Menenius has grown kind 
 again to the tribunes, and talks to them as if they were 
 nobles. He even criticises Coriolanus. Shakespeare has 
 taken pains to lift the struggle of the people into 
 our approval. 
 
 Enter Sicinius and Brutus. 
 Sic. We hear not of him, neither need we fear him ; 
 His remedies are tame i' the present peace 
 And quietness o' the people, which before 
 Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends 
 Blush that the world goes well, who rather had, 
 Though they themselves did suffer by % behold 
 Dissentious numbers pestering streets, than see 
 Our tradesmen singing in their shops and going 
 About their functions friendly. 
 
 Enter Mekenius. 
 
 Bp.u. We stood to 't in good time. Is this Menenius 1 
 Sic. "lis he, 'tis he. ! he is grown most kind 
 
 Of late. Hail, sir ! 
 Men. Hail to you both ! 
 
 Sic. Your Coriolanus is not much miss'd, 
 
 But with his friends : the commonwealth doth stand, 
 
 And so would do, were he more angry at it. 
 Men. All 's well ; and might have been much better, if 
 
 He could have temporiz'd. 
 
 Sic. This is a happier and more comely time 
 
 Than when these follows ran about the streets 
 Crying confusion. 
 
 Nor does this sympathetic representation end here. 
 When Coriolanus joins the Volscians, and threatens Rome 
 with ruin, the whole city is in wild terror and disturbance ; 
 Cominius, Menenius, and the rest of the nobility lose 
 
23_4 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 their heads. All they can do is to abuse the tribunes. 
 Sicinius and Brutus alone are self-controlled and quiet. 
 All they say then and afterwards is full of care for Rome, 
 for the people, for the patricians who only care for their 
 own safety. They speak like steadfast Romans to the 
 terrified citizens ; 
 
 Go, masters, get you home : be.not dismay'd : 
 These are a side that would be glad to have 
 This true which they so seem to fear. Go home, 
 And show no sign of fear. 
 
 And the people disperse at once. Afterwards, the tribunes 
 are the accepted advisers of Rome. It is they who per- 
 suade Menenius to ask peace from Coriolanus; and he 
 obeys. They speak like men who know they have done 
 right, and who are willing to accept the consequences. 
 Even when all seems lost, they do not lose their dignity. 
 It is the same when the mob attempts their life. Thus, 
 amid the tossing turmoil of Rome, Shakespeare has made 
 the leaders of the people's cause the only hope and trust, 
 and the quiet powers, of the city. He does not point this 
 out. He says nothing. But what he has written stands, 
 and it stands for the people's cause in this play against that 
 idea of government which Menenius held, and Coriolanus 
 exaggerated into its extremes. 
 
 (2) Important and dramatic as this political aspect of 
 the play is, it does not take us on to the high levels of 
 poetry. From the poetic point of view the fate of Rome is 
 inferior in interest to the development and representa- 
 tion of the character and fate of Coriolanus. Everything 
 else is brought to bear on this. Cominius, Menenius, and 
 the rest illustrate him. Aufidius, the soldier, is set over 
 against him. His mother, his wife and Valeria bring out 
 new elements in his character; the tribunes whip into 
 activity his evil and foolish qualities. The whole people 
 of Rome are in arms against him. He rises alone before 
 
CORIOLANUS 235 
 
 us, like a towering rock from a wide and tossing sea. At 
 the beginning of the fourth act all eyes are fixed on the 
 banished man, as he goes out alone into the friendless 
 world — 
 
 Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen 
 
 Makes fear'd and talk'd of more than seen, — 
 
 The fourth and fifth acts tell the results of his action, 
 and his fall. The play is almost the play of one man. 
 
 What ruins Coriolanus ? Pride in himself and for him- 
 self alone, and the furious choler which, never controlled, 
 breaks out when his pride is injured. 1 He has never 
 from a boy curbed his violent nature, and his mother 
 has encouraged it. He is its victim now. 
 
 The force of circumstance ruins the Brutus of Julius 
 Ccesar. It partly spoils the life of Coriolanus. Had he 
 bent his nature only a little to circumstance, he might 
 have lived honoured in Rome ; and been bettered by the 
 bending. Brutus could not have bettered but worsened 
 himself by bending to his circumstances. They were 
 such that to bend to them would have been to lose his 
 moral character. Brutus is overthrown by the Tightness 
 of his nature, Coriolanus by the wrongness of his. Rome, 
 and not self, is first with Brutus. Self, and not Rome, 
 is first with Coriolanus. The cause of freedom is first 
 with Brutus, and he dies for it. The cause of his own 
 pride is first with Coriolanus, and he dies for himself. 
 His pride and fury slay him ; and he deserves his 
 fate. When a government reaches the same state, it 
 
 1 Shakespeare, who often thinks of heredity, makes the son of Corio- 
 lanus repeat the nature of his father in a boyish fashion, — and a hateful ! 
 
 Val. 0' my word, the father's son; I'll swear 'tis a very pretty boy. O' 
 my troth, I looked upon him o' Wednesday half an hour together : has such a 
 confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded butterfly ; and when he 
 caught it, he let it go again ; and after it again ; and over and over he comes and 
 up again ; catched it again ; or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he did 
 so set his teeth and tear it ; 0, I warrant, bow he mammocked it. 
 
 Vol. One on's father's moods. 
 
 Val. Indeed, la, 'tis a noble child. 
 
236 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 slays itself; but a government dies slowly, an individual 
 quickly. 
 
 On the other hand, Coriolanus is brave, eager for fame, 
 noble in act and thought when in war, war the very breath 
 of his nostrils. He claims to be modest, and is not truly 
 so. He loves his mother dearly and his wife ; he is a 
 good friend, but he does not love — until the end — any 
 of them well enough to sacrifice, for their sake, either the 
 vengeance he desires for the galling of his pride, or his 
 resolve to fulfil the demands his fiery nature makes upon 
 him. This — ' to be true to his nature ' — is his only con- 
 science ; and when the nature is selfish, it is the hardest 
 selfishness in the world. 
 
 In relation to the people, he is the type of the haughty, 
 irresponsible feudal noble, whose only law was his own 
 will ; the plague of humanity. The people to Coriolanus 
 are a rabble, curs, cowards, not to be trusted, changing 
 every moment; peace makes them proud, war terrifies 
 them. They are not men but beasts, and to be ruled 
 like beasts. In relation to his own class, he is honour- 
 able, courteous, even kindly when his nature is not too 
 much interfered with. His mother has trained him to 
 give a loose rein to his impulses ; and he cannot under- 
 stand why she desires him to speak well to the vile 
 people. ' Would you have me,' he cries, ' false to my 
 nature ? ' 
 
 Pride of this kind is sometimes silent and dignified, 
 when there is some other quality in the nature as strong 
 as itself and more noble ; but when it devours into itself 
 all the other qualities, it becomes almost a frenzy, and 
 is entirely devoid of pity. It issues then in a raging 
 madness of unbridled temper. This is the case with 
 Coriolanus, and it is splendidly wrought out bjr Shake- 
 speare. On this swiftly raised choler the tribunes build 
 his ruin. Pie is, on account of it, a child in their 
 
CORIOLANUS 237 
 
 hands. When they have lashed him into fury, he loses 
 
 the game — 
 
 Bru. Put him to choler straight. He hath heen us'd 
 Ever to conquer, and to have his worth 
 Of contradiction : heing once chaf 'd, he cannot 
 Be rein'd again to temperance : then he speaks 
 What 's in his heart ; and that is there which looks 
 With us to break his neck. 
 
 Yet, in his farewell to his own people, he is as gentle, 
 courteous, brave and steady as he is the opposite to the 
 citizens. To his own caste he is the ' perfect gentleman,' 
 to his mother the revering and loving son. That he should 
 be so fine a character among his own class makes his con- 
 duct to those not of his class all the worse. Shakespeare 
 understood the ruthless pride of the feudal noblesse to its 
 last grain. And it is like his infinite variety to intro- 
 duce between the furious scenes of Coriolanus's battle 
 with the people, and the drear misfortunes of his lonely 
 fall into treason to his country, the sweet and tender 
 scene with which the fourth act begins. He bids farewell 
 to his mother, wife, to Menenius, Cominius, and the young 
 nobility of Rome outside the gate of the city; and he 
 speaks nobly to his mother — 
 
 Cor. Come leave your tears : a brief farewell : the beast 
 With many heads butts me away. Nay, mother, 
 Where is your ancient courage 1 you were us'd 
 To say extremity was the trier of spirits ; 
 That common chances common men could bear ; 
 That when the sea was calm all boats alike 
 Show'd mastership in floating ; fortune's blows, 
 When most struck home, being gentle, wounded, craves 
 A noble cunning : you were us'd to load me 
 With precepts that would make invincible 
 The heart that conn'd them. 
 
 Nor is his farewell to his friends less gentle, less noble. 
 Yet in the midst of it, Shakespeare makes us feel that 
 his rage is only for the moment at rest. His wife inter- 
 rupts him. He cannot bear it. He turns on her angrily 
 
238 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 — ' Nay, I prithee, woman.' His mother is afraid of his 
 imprudence, of his going away alone. And when Corio- 
 lanus hears the doubt, even though it is his mother who 
 expresses it, his temper almost breaks out — ' O ye gods!' 
 he cries. The waves are still running high in his soul ; 
 his solitude will be dark with wrath and vengeance. 
 That is within his heart which will not cease to gnaw ; 
 the snake of a galled pride, the selfish biting of 
 revenge. 
 
 Formerly, he fought for fame rather than for his 
 country, but the two happened to be coincident. There- 
 fore, love of his country was attributed to him. Now that 
 he is divided from his country, angered pride is stronger 
 than what seemed love of his country, and he betrays 
 his country. The treason the tribunes accused him of 
 is now really his. He is half conscious of this, and he 
 imputes the change — to what ? Not to himself at all, 
 but to the work of circumstance. This is a common 
 mental trick of those who have spoilt their life by self- 
 indulgence. 
 
 O world ! thy slippery turns. Friends now fast sworn, 
 
 Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, 
 
 Whose house, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise, 
 
 Are still together, who twin, as 'twere, in love 
 
 "[Inseparable, shall within this hour, 
 
 On a dissension of a doit, break out 
 
 To bitterest enmity : so, fellest foes, 
 
 Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep 
 
 To take the one the other, by some chance, 
 
 Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends 
 
 And interjoin their issues. So with me : 
 
 My birth-place hate I, and my love's upon 
 
 This enemy town. 
 
 This is the pure nonsense of self-excusing pride. 
 Friendships and enmities are not broken or united in 
 that fashion. When in that fashion love is broken, it 
 proves that, on one side at least, there has been no real 
 
CORIOLANUS 239 
 
 love at all ; only that self has been at the bottom of the 
 apparent love. Coriolanus never loved any one half as 
 much as he loved himself. Even his love of his mother 
 was founded on her encouragement of the self within him. 
 
 In the whole of the striking scene with Aufidius, when 
 he declares his treason and his greed for vengeance, 
 Coriolanus is savagely true to what he calls his nature. 
 He declares boldly that it is spite and anger that bring 
 him to his enemies' camp ; he desires no mercy ; he will 
 not abate a jot of himself to save his life. If Aufidius will 
 help him to avenge himself — well ; if not, why he will die. 
 His treason is complete. He does the only thing in the 
 world which would turn his friends in Rome against him. 
 
 Deeper and deeper, then, is the loneliness in which he 
 moves. The Volscians, however glad they are to have 
 him, know him as a traitor to his country, one who 
 has done that which no common soldier in Corioli would 
 do. Menenius, Cominius, look on him with fear and 
 pain. His mother, wife, and child feel him to be their 
 enemy. He has proved that the tribunes and people 
 were right. To this, at last, to this supreme solitude, 
 self, unrestrained, leads a man. To this treason to 
 himself, his country, and his friends, a furious temper, 
 backed by pride, conducts its victim. Coriolanus accuses 
 his ill-luck; but he is his own destroyer. That which 
 overwhelms him is not destiny, but his own creation. 
 Nothing follows which is not the inevitable result of the 
 hideous position in which he has placed himself. And 
 Shakespeare has wrought out magnificently this inevit- 
 ableness of ruin. Aufidius is the instrument of the fate 
 of Coriolanus. He shows the bottom of his heart in his 
 answer to his former enemy — 
 
 Martins, Marcius ! 
 Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart 
 A root of ancient envy. 
 
240 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 But it is only rooted out because he sees his ancient foe 
 in the gloom of misfortune. Envy is too subtle a devil 
 to leave the heart so soon: and Shakespeare knows its 
 fashions. Moreover with envy ever goes hate. It is 
 envy's boon companion. And Aufidius's hate was deep. 
 
 Where I find him, were it 
 At home, upon my brother's guard, even there 
 Against the hospitable canon, would I 
 Wash my fierce hand in 's heart. 
 
 Such a hatred does not die; it only sleeps for a time. 
 We have a comfortable way of thinking that our vices 
 have gone when the reason of them is momentarily 
 taken away. It was agreeable to Aufidius at first to 
 be magnanimous to his rival, to be able to say, 'Poor 
 Coriolanus,' and to give him half his power. That 
 flattered his patronising pride. But the moment Corio- 
 lanus again took precedence, envy came back with seven 
 more devils than before ; and in this resurrection of envy 
 and its results lies the rest of the drama. The envy 
 of Aufidius is deepened by the pride of Coriolanus, who 
 will even in exile have the first place ; and he uses this 
 insolent pride, as the tribunes used it before, to work the 
 ruin of Coriolanus, who had learned nothing from all his 
 pain and follies, who was still himself his only law, his 
 only right. 
 
 It is characteristic of Shakespeare's work that he 
 introduces here, after Aufidius and Coriolanus meet, a 
 humorous episode in the talk of the servants. The two 
 leaders deceive themselves into an apparent friendship, 
 each ignorant of what their passions of pride and envy 
 are sure to produce. But the servants see much further 
 than their masters. They see the folly of both these 
 great men and laugh at it, especially at that of their 
 master. Their talk is an excellent piece of wit, of human 
 nature ; and also of their class, when they are mere hire- 
 
CORIOLANUS 241 
 
 lings. They have not a vestige of care for their country, 
 only for their own interests. ' Let me have war, say I ; it 
 exceeds peace as day does night ; it 's sprightly, waking, 
 audible, full of vent. . . . The wars for my money. I 
 hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians.' And it may be 
 that Shakespeare meant a satire on the class feeling of 
 the nobility of Rome by noting something of the same 
 kind in a different and a lower class. 
 
 Then we find Coriolanus worshipped as a leader, not as 
 a man, by the Volscian soldiery : apparently on the peak 
 of fortune. But he is really more lost, more alone than 
 ever. No one loves him. He can have no communion 
 with his comrades. It is almost pitiable to hear his 
 appeals to Aufidius, who hates him, to tell him what 
 to do. Then in his solitude, his affections, the best part 
 of him, which his pride had smothered, awake again. 
 Though he repulses Menenius, who comes to implore 
 grace for Rome, we feel that he loves him. He longs to 
 see his mother, his wife and son, but his position is such 
 that he dare not satisfy his longing. It is a piteous case, 
 for if we add to his vast loneliness this intense and silent 
 emotion of natural affection, whose indulgence is for- 
 bidden, he becomes (as Shakespeare's sympathy with 
 sorrow meant him to become) an object of noble pity to 
 the audience — and perhaps to the gods. 
 
 At last the desire of his heart is given him as he sits 
 alone in his great chair, encompassed by the envious 
 Volscians. His mother, wife and son, their friend Valeria, 
 approach him to beg for peace. The home-loving man in 
 him, the only soft part in his nature, long repressed, long 
 unoccupied, sees in them his home, remembers all the 
 past, and breaks forth like a torrent, which in vain he 
 tries to dam ; 
 
 My wife comes foremost ; then the honoured mould 
 Wherein this trunk was fram'd ; and in her hand 
 
242 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection ! 
 
 All bond and privilege of nature, break ! 
 
 Let it be virtuous to be obstinate. 
 
 What is that curtsy worth ? or those doves' eyes, 
 
 Which can make gods forsworn ? I melt and am not 
 
 Of stronger earth than others. 
 
 This is Coriolanus at his best, thrilled by those natural 
 affections which last longest, and which in their natural 
 working are the best medicine for the selfish heart. 
 Coriolanus fights against them ; his promise to Aufidius, 
 his vow of revenge beat back his yie]ding and forgiveness. 
 But when his mother finally turns from mere arguing the 
 question to her ancient way with him, and claims his 
 reverence for her motherhood ; and then, when he is still 
 silent, breaks into scorn of him, and bids him, repudiat- 
 ing him, seek his family among the Yolscians — 
 
 Come, let us go : 
 This fellow had a Volscian to his mother ; 
 His wife is in Corioli, and his child 
 Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch : 
 I am hush'd until our city be a-fire, 
 And then I '11 speak a little. 
 
 why, then, Coriolanus can bear no more. His lonely 
 pride is shattered by the dominance of what is tender, 
 good, and natural in him. For the first time in his life 
 he is truly unselfish. He gives up his most passionate 
 desire, revenge. He puts away pride and anger, the 
 tyrannic qualities of his nature ; and he does this know- 
 ing, at least suspecting, that this means his death — and it 
 does mean it. 
 
 The man is redeemed. The repentance is not too late 
 for honour, not too late for moral greatness; for thus 
 conquered, he is at last great, having won, by renoun- 
 cing all that he once thought were the sources of his 
 fame, immortal fame. But he is not freed from the 
 results of his long wrong-doing. Repentance is too late 
 to save his life ; and that he knows he is doomed makes 
 
CORIOLANUS 243 
 
 his act the nobler. Thus Shakespeare veils the perish- 
 ing man with tenderness, pity, and admiration. We 
 forgive what we hated in him in the past. His wife 
 and mother, knowing he is lost, yet went home with peace 
 in their heart, and Rome remembered only his fame as 
 a warrior. Over his dead body the patricians and the 
 tribunes came to respect each other more. The dead 
 Coriolanus was greater than the living. 
 
 Nothing is more impressive than the contrast, at the 
 end of the play, of the triumph and joy of Rome at her 
 deliverance, of the mother and wife of Coriolanus lauded 
 to the skies while death and the passion of death must 
 have been in their hearts, with the wild scene of the 
 conspirators and Aufidius closing, in envy and revenge, 
 round the dying Coriolanus at Antium. He dies like a 
 lion ringed by the hunters; alone to the close, brave, 
 angry, all himself to the very last breath. Aufidius, 
 playing on his choler, calls him ' traitor ' — the word has 
 followed him — then ' boy.' And Coriolanus, smitten into 
 his own furious anger, speaks with such contempt of 
 the Yolscians that he drives them to his slaughter. One 
 of the lords, looking on him dead, speaks what might 
 serve as his epitaph 
 
 His own impatience 
 Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame. 
 Let 's make the best of it. 
 
 Yet, Aufidius is not ignoble. He can see more clearly 
 than either patrician or plebeian what is of a fine nature 
 in Coriolanus. He has not been as much subjected as 
 they to the worry of his pride and rage. Even when he 
 most envies Coriolanus, he can make a judgment of his 
 character and career — as he does to the lieutenant at the 
 end of Act iv. — which is at once tolerant and wise, and 
 which, in itself, is a most noble piece of poetry. It is 
 
244 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 given almost against his will, for he is as determined as 
 the tribunes were to put an end to Coriolanus. 
 
 When, Caius, Rome is thine, 
 Thou art poor'st of all ; then shortly thou art mine 
 
 He has now done this work ; he has sated his hatred and 
 envy, and thinks it politic to seem sorry for his fate. It 
 is not true sorrow ; envy has no grief ; it is only to seem 
 noble that he says. 
 
 My rage is gone, 
 
 And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up : 
 
 Help, three o' the chiefest soldiers ; I '11 be one. 
 
 Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully ; 
 
 Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he 
 
 Hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, 
 
 Which to this hour bewail the injury, 
 
 Yet he shall have a noble memory. 
 
 Assist. 
 
 Meanwhile the feast is high in Rome. 
 
 Finally, there are the women, and the relation between 
 Coriolanus and his mother. The tragedy is set in the 
 early days of the Republic, before the days when luxury 
 had eaten up simplicity. The life, even of the great 
 nobles, was austere and quiet, the women lovers of their 
 home and keepers at home. Shakespeare, who always 
 loved simplicity of life, was pleased to draw with a still and 
 gracious hand the household of Volumnia and Yirgilia, 
 and the visit to it of their friend Valeria. Its charm 
 and dignity are not in any splendour, but in the characters 
 of its women. Virgilia is as quiet as a forest lake. She 
 will not leave the house while Coriolanus is away. The 
 streets and shows of Rome shall not see her till he 
 returns, and she is firm as a rock in this. A stead- 
 fast resolvedness attends on her quietness. Silence is 
 her chief speech. All through the play she scarcely 
 speaks. Yet she is alive before us. Only the greatest 
 artist could, with a few touches here and there, placed 
 exactly where they should be, and in fitness to their 
 
CORIOLANUS 245 
 
 place, paint a whole character with such force and 
 livingness that she remains for ever clear, for ever interest- 
 ing. Shakespeare had done this for Cordelia ; he does it 
 again for Virgilia. When Volumnia praises the battle-rage 
 of Coriolanus, and extols his blood and wounds, Virgilia 
 cries — 
 
 His bloody brow ! Oh, Jupiter, no blood ! 
 
 Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius ! 
 
 And we know her heart from that moment. When 
 Coriolanus meets her on his triumphant return from 
 Corioli, he meets her with this word — 
 
 My gracious silence, hail ! 
 Wouldst thou have laugh'd had I come coffin'd home, 
 That weep'st to see me triumph 1 Ah ! my dear, 
 Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, 
 And mothers that lack sons. 
 
 And we seem to see in the tender words, and in the 
 admiration of ' My gracious silence,' the secret married life 
 and love of Yirgilia and her stormy husband. All through 
 the long talk of Volumnia with the senators and Corio- 
 lanus about the consulship, Virgilia does not say one 
 word. The only time she breaks out into speech is 
 against the tribunes after the banishment of her hus- 
 band, and her strong words then are sufficiently motived 
 by the occasion. Twice only does she speak in that great 
 scene when with his mother she comes to plead for Rome, 
 and the secret depths and even fierceness of her Roman 
 nature are shown in the force and tenderness with which 
 she urges her right as wife and mother on her husband. 
 'Thou shalt tread,' says Volumnia, 'if thou march to 
 Rome, upon thy mother's womb,' 
 
 That brought thee to this world. 
 ViR. Ay, and mine, 
 
 That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name 
 Living to time. 
 
246 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Only long silence can concentrate so much into a few 
 words ! 1 And we hear of her no more. 
 
 Valeria is a lively sketch of a great lady. The patrician 
 note is in all her speech when she comes to visit Virgilia. 
 She finds her sewing, and bids her come out into the 
 movement of Rome. What are household cares to life ? 
 Why think of a husband when there is so much to 
 do and see? — 'all the yarn Penelope spun in Ulysses' 
 absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.' She praises 
 Virgilia's boy — '0' my word, the father's son: I'll swear 
 'tis a very pretty boy — he has such a confirmed coun- 
 tenance,' and she tells with no pity how he mammocked 
 a butterfly. ' Come, go with me ; turn your solemnness 
 out of doors, Virgilia.' 
 
 She is a noble, idle, pleasant, honourable, free-spoken 
 lady. Yet, when misfortune is near, she is as dignified as 
 she is silent. She says not one word when she meets, with 
 Volumnia, Coriolanus ; no, not even when she hears that 
 splendid praise of her which has made her immortal. 
 
 The noble sister of Publicola, 
 The moon of Rome ; chaste as the icicle 
 That 's curdied by the frost from purest snow, 
 And hangs on Dian's temple : dear Valeria ! 
 
 Volumnia is more fully drawn. She is the Roman 
 patrician and the Roman mother. The reverence of 
 Coriolanus for her is a record of the ancient Roman 
 honour for the ties of home, especially for motherhood. 
 She is not only a mother; she is as much a patrician 
 as her son, but without his furious temper; on the 
 contrary, with a good share of politic prudence. She 
 has the faults of her class and her position, otherwise 
 she is a noble woman. These faults are, however, too 
 much for her womanly tenderness — and for her honour. 
 Her honour slips away when she advises Coriolanus to 
 
 1 Volumnia's words are Plutarch's, Virgilia's Shakespeare's. 
 
CORIOLANUS 247 
 
 deceive the people in order to get the consulship. He 
 is true, and he resents giving the lie to his nature. She 
 excuses the fraud by the practice of war. It is lawful to 
 deceive an enemy, and to her the people are the foe. 
 As to her tenderness, she has it for her son and friends, 
 but it is tenderness modified by the hunger for fame, 
 for glory in war. The thoughtless militarism which has 
 in all ages infected her class has made her its victim. 
 She loves to see her son's wounds which tell of his might 
 and bravery. She has no care for the wounds of his 
 men, for the wretched people who are victimised to 
 make the fame of her son. She boasts in a terrible 
 phrase of the terror and woe he causes. The trumpets 
 sound as he returns. ' These,' she cries, ' are the ushers 
 of Marcius : before him he carries noise, and behind him 
 he leaves tears.' 
 
 When we come to the close relationship between her 
 son and her, we come to a serious study. They stand 
 together in an inner circle, isolated, as it were, from the 
 rest. When the political interest, even when the fate of 
 Coriolanus in the play, are dimmed in memory, the 
 mother and the son still dwell in our thoughts. Their 
 relationship is the inmost heart of the drama, where the 
 deepest affections play. The love that is between them 
 glorifies them, and creates round the haughty woman and 
 the terrible warrior the gracious atmosphere of home. 
 We retire, from time to time, from the noise of Rome and 
 Volscian wars, into an island of domestic peace and steady 
 affection of which Volumnia and Coriolanus are the 
 source. Virgilia sits and sews, Volumnia talks to her 
 of her husband and her own son ; the boy plays in the 
 garden ; Valeria drops in to gossip ; and here Coriolanus — 
 his violence and pride lost in his reverence and love of 
 his mother who admires and loves him, and herself in 
 him — finds his better self. Not till he is divided from 
 
248 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 his mother is he lost. The mother lives in the son. She 
 
 has made him from his birth; both of them dwell on 
 
 that long education. The son is the mother in a man. 
 
 His fighting is what she would have done had she been a 
 
 man. Had she been the wife of Hercules, she would have 
 
 taken half his labours on herself. Her pride in her class is 
 
 his. And his scorn of the people is hers. She taught 
 
 him 
 
 To call them woollen vassals, things created 
 To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads 
 In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder, 
 When one but of my ordinance stood up 
 To speak of peace or war. 
 
 Her love of fame has been his inspiration. Every 
 charge he has made on the enemies of Rome, every 
 wound he has received, have been made and received 
 with the voice of his mother in his ears ; and she has, in 
 thought and admiration, made the charges and received 
 the wounds. ' ! he is wounded ; I thank the gods for 't,' 
 she cries, when he comes home from Corioli. For his 
 glory she has lived. One honour yet remains — he must 
 be consul. 
 
 I have liv'd 
 To see inherited my very wishes, 
 And the buildings of my fancy : only 
 There 's one thing wanting which I doubt not but 
 Our Rome will cast upon thee. 
 
 They stand apart and together. The honour we give 
 to the son we give also to the mother who is its source. 
 The pity we finally give to the son in his ruin, we give in 
 fuller stream to the mother. 
 
 Yet there is a difference — a difference belonging to 
 sex. The pride of the man has no policy, the violence 
 of his temper has no self-control. She has both. In 
 that scene, where his friends press Coriolanus to coax 
 the people for the sake of the consulship, his pride 
 
CORIOLANUS 249 
 
 refuses their request. Volumnia loves his pride; it is 
 her own creation. But it were well it should be modified 
 by policy. And she argues, till in her impetuous arguing 
 she contradicts herself, and declares that his pride is not 
 of her own making; 'Owe thy pride thyself.' Here is 
 her advice ; 
 
 You might have been enough the man you are 
 With striving less to be so : . . . 
 
 Pray be counsell'd ; 
 I have a heart of mettle apt as yours, 
 But yet a brain that leads my use of anger 
 To better vantage. . . . 
 
 Prithee now, 
 Go and be ruled : although I know thou hadst rather 
 Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf 
 Than flatter him in a bower. 
 
 And when he refuses to bend his truth to flatter the 
 mob, Volumnia, employing the argument of her mother- 
 hood, displays, in what she says, her own character and 
 her^ son's ; and where they divide from one another — 
 
 At thy choice then : 
 To beg of thee it is my more dishonour 
 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. 
 
 Yet his fury is his mother's fault, who was even pleased 
 when as a boy he let loose his rages, for she thought of 
 what they would make him do in battle. But now, when 
 his consulship depends on his keeping his temper, she 
 advises him in vain. She herself has learned self- 
 restraint; to gain her end she has a woman's hypocrisy. 
 But yet, when the cruel hours come, she is like her son, 
 borne beyond all self-restraint, all fortitude, into raging- 
 words. ' The hoarded plague of the gods requite your love,' 
 she cries to the tribunes who have banished Coriolanus. 
 
250 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I '11 tell thee what : yet go : 
 Nay, but thou shalt stay too : I would my son 
 Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him, 
 His good sword in his hand. 
 
 And when the tribunes have left, the storm still rages 
 in her heart ; 
 
 I would the gods had nothing else to do 
 But to confirm my curses ! 
 
 Anger 's my meat ; I sup upon myself. 
 
 And when the parting comes, her anger and her love 
 break out together ; 
 
 Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Konie, 
 And occupations perish ! 
 
 We see the fierce temper which, unmodified by her 
 womanly self-control, she has handed on to her son. 
 It ruins him, and the bitter consciousness of that must 
 have been her dreadful punishment, when it made him 
 a traitor to his country. 
 
 When that terrible day came, and she saw her son 
 arrayed against Rome, that which was greatest in her 
 character — the solid courage, the invincible fortitude of 
 the woman — opened out to undo the evil she had made 
 in her son. She uses her motherhood to conquer him. 
 That which is deeper in her even than motherhood 
 appears. Her country is more to her than her son or 
 her son's wrongs. His wrong against Rome is greater 
 than all the wrongs done to him by Rome; and she 
 speaks against him for Rome. Most of her speeches are 
 taken directly from Plutarch, but the exquisite tender- 
 ness in the scene is Shakespeare's. It is Shakespeare 
 who makes Coriolanus turn to his wife and cry with an 
 exile's passion — 
 
 ! a kiss 
 Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge ! 
 
 Then the rest is between the mother and the son, between 
 
CORIOLANUS 251 
 
 these two who, in the isolation of their long love, are 
 
 alwa} r s alone. He kneels to her in the depth of duty. 
 
 When she kneels to him, she thinks it wrong, but it is 
 
 for Rome. He knows it is wrong ; it strikes him into 
 
 a passion of denial. 
 
 What is this ? 
 Your knees to me ! to your corrected son ! 
 Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach 
 Fillip the stars ; then let the mutinous -winds 
 Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun, 
 Murd'ring impossibility, to make 
 What cannot be, slight work. 
 
 He is wrought into wild hyperbole — Shakespeare's way, 
 and the way of his time, when passion was represented 
 as supreme. Then Volumnia shows him Valeria, his son, 
 his wife, and the form of these appeals is out of Shake- 
 speare's heart. The rest, till Coriolanus yields, is from 
 Plutarch, but Shakespeare, by heightening the phrases 
 into passion and by his melody, lifts the prose of Plutarch 
 into poetry. Moreover, and on this he dwells more than 
 Plutarch, he makes it quite clear that Volumnia abjures 
 her motherhood if her son will not save his country. 
 The golden tie will then be broken. All that was dear 
 to her in him — his honour, his good fame, his filial piety 
 — are then lost, and his life accursed for ever. They are 
 no longer one, but two, if he do not yield to her. So far 
 Plutarch is his source, but at the close, when she turns 
 to scorn, and with a bitter scoff flings her motherhood 
 away, the terrible phrase is Shakespeare's own 
 
 Come, let us go : 
 This fellow had a Volscian to his mother. 
 
 Then Coriolanus, that being shattered which was his 
 very life, breaks down into a passion of repentance ; 
 
 mother, mother ! 
 What have you done 1 
 
 And these two, whose love is at the heart of the play, 
 
252 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 are again at one. They part in peace. But that has 
 been which is irreparable. A mighty rending asunder 
 has divided this island of love for ever. The sea rolls deep 
 between Rome and Corioli. Mother and son look at one 
 another with love, but it is across a gulf of intolerable 
 regret. Yet, the division is not for long ; it cannot long 
 be borne. Coriolanus goes to his death, his mother to 
 her sorrow and her failure. And it is better, perhaps, 
 for him in his swift death than for Yolumnia in her 
 life amid the rejoicing of Rome. When the news came 
 that he had died in a brawl and by Aufidius, hov; could 
 she live with all the past in her heart ? 
 
IX 
 WINTER'S TALE 
 
 The story is taken from Greene's Pandosto, and to be the 
 origin of so dulcet a play is enough for the praise of 
 Greene. All we need here to know is that it is one of 
 the dramas Shakespeare wrote in his latest period, after 
 the great tragedies and the Roman plays. Its temper 
 then is the temper of the last years of his life, and that 
 temper is full of the experience of a man, and }^et of the 
 spirit of youth. Winters Tale is so varied in events and 
 characters, aDd the characters play in and out of one 
 another with such a charm of contrast, that the surprises 
 of intellect and emotion are as numerous as they are 
 pleasant. And these surprises are yet so mellowed by 
 the temperance and beauty of the poetic tongue in which 
 they are given, and so carefully motived, that they do not 
 startle us more than noble art permits. Of course, the 
 interval of sixteen years in the middle is awkward. The 
 impression, it is said, of two plays instead of one is made 
 on us; the unity of the action is too rudely broken. But 
 there is, at the end, the impression of a spiritual unity 
 when the ruin wrought by Leontes' jealousy of Polixenes 
 is repaired by the love of the son of Polixenes and the 
 daughter of Leontes, and in the new atmosphere of their 
 love Hermione rc-embraces Leontes, and this is the true 
 action of the piece. The sixteen years are then like a 
 dream-interval, and seem naturally to belong to a tale 
 told on a Winter's Night ; Xct,/xept.vbs oveipos, ore /jbrjKiarac 
 at vvferes. 
 
254 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 The building of such a tale necessitates a great variety. 
 We pass suddenly from the life of courts to that of a 
 pastoral village, and from the village back to the court ; 
 and throughout the changes the mastery of the dramatist 
 over the extremes of human life is easy and complete. 
 We pass from the destroying jealousy of Leontes to the 
 tender idyll of Perdita and Florizel ; from the blunt scold- 
 ing of Paulina to the grave dignity of Hermione; from 
 the top of joy in Perdita's heart to the abyss in which 
 her love seems shattered ; from the maiden whiteness of 
 Perdita and the honesty of the shepherd to the rejoicing 
 roguery and gross jests of Autolycus — and we pass through 
 all these changes without any shock, the fitness of speech 
 to each character is so finished, the truth to nature so 
 convincing. 
 
 It is a Winter's Tale, to be told in the firelight ; with 
 enough fantasy in it to charm the children, and enough 
 passion to make the elders pensive. The pastoral episode 
 of the disguised Prince and the shepherdess-Princess 
 who prefer love to thrones, the resurrection of the statue 
 into Hermione, the child exposed in the desert-country, 
 the bear who devours the servant of the jealous king, the 
 discovery of Perdita's birth, are all linked to common 
 folk-tale, have its sentiment and breathe its air. The 
 land also is the land of romance, where geographical and 
 historical realities are subjected both by Greene and 
 Shakespeare to the play of the imagination. We sail into 
 Bohemia from Sicily. Even Apollo has become romantic. 
 As usual, the classic revival plays in and out of the 
 romance of Shakespeare. Delphi is still sought to solve 
 a doubtful question. The temple is still served by the 
 priests, the rites and groves still inspire awe; and all 
 the time ' that rare Italian master, Julio Romano,' is 
 painting in Rome. That other element of the Elizabethan 
 Pastoral is also here. Florizel and Perdita find their best 
 
WINTER'S TALE 255 
 
 parallels in the shepherds and maidens of Sidney and 
 Spenser, in the Arcadia and the Faerie Queen. There 
 is no need to trace them further back. Lastly, we slide 
 in the very middle of the play over sixteen years, and 
 claim the right of the sovereign imagination to do so, 
 since it is in his power, as in that of Time, 
 
 To o'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour 
 To plant and o'erwhelm custom. 
 
 The introductory scene is wrought with Shakespeare's 
 usual art of preparation and explanation. Camillo and 
 his friend dwell on the old friendship of Leontes and 
 Polixenes till it fills the thought of the audience. They 
 relate, and the point is important, that the two kings have 
 not met for many years. 
 
 It was skilful of Shakespeare to insist on this friendship. 
 For on its sudden breaking the knot of the drama which 
 has to be untied is made. And the breaking up of it is 
 half suggested by the reiterated insistence of Camillo and 
 Archidamus on its constancy. Their confidence appears 
 to fly in the face of the known mutability of the course 
 of the world. The heavens seem so sunny that we pre- 
 sage that the gods will be jealous. It is against experi- 
 ence to believe that friendship, when it has been the 
 friendship of boys, and when long absence has intervened, 
 can continue to be in age what it was in youth. Inter- 
 changed letters do not record the change of character 
 which the long years have made. We think we have 
 been living together. The fact is, we have steadily 
 deviated from one another. Moreover, it is quite possible 
 that each has, in absence, idealised the other, and when 
 they meet, the shock is indeed a disillusion. Neither 
 is the man the other knew. A gulf opens then be- 
 tween them. Efforts are made to bridge the gulf. They 
 only deepen it. Affections of this kind, being forced, fly 
 
256 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 further apart. At last, wearied by this unnatural state 
 of things, and by its half- falsehood, we know that we have 
 deceived ourselves, and are angry with ourselves and with 
 our friend. Some slight circumstance intervenes, like 
 Hermione beseeching Polixenes ; and the long-repressed 
 irritation, catching on to some latent evil passion in our 
 nature, like jealousy, explodes in a moment into hatred, 
 repulsion, or at least indifference. The soil in the heart of 
 Leontes had been charged, now and for some time past, 
 with anger, suspicion, with a kind of hypocrisy, with false- 
 ness, and with all the evil elements which come into us 
 when we are dreadfully bored with some one we once 
 loved, and conceal our boredom. Polixenes had been stay- 
 ing nine months and more with Leontes. No wise man 
 would expose his friend to so severe a trial. Polixenes 
 must have been something of a good-natured fool; and 
 his conversation confirms that judgment. 
 
 Again, as part of this preparatory work, observe the art 
 by which Shakespeare, in this first conversation, secures 
 our pity for Mamillius, the frank and princely son of 
 Leontes. He is soon to die of sorrow for his mother; 
 and the appearance of him is so slight in the play that 
 it seems difficult to make us feel tragically for his death. 
 Therefore, at the beginning, he is drawn by Camillo in so 
 happy and bright a light, that we long for him to live. 
 We see the gallant boy, the promise of the kingdom, 
 riding on the top of the wave of youth. This first sketch 
 is afterwards intensified by that all -charming scene 
 between him and his mother, in which Shakespeare im- 
 mortalises boyhood. There is nothing more attractive in 
 his work. And then, in a few days, this gallant piece 
 of nature, who ' made old hearts fresh,' is dead of grief 
 and shame, and by a father's guilt. All other genius in 
 literature lowers its helm before such masterly sketching 
 as this. Yet Shakespeare's finish is just as masterly. 
 
WINTER'S TALE 257 
 
 Then the second scene takes us at once into the break- 
 ing of the friendship between the kings, into the sudden 
 rising into storm of the jealousy of Leontes. Sudden in 
 its explosion, it had been long growing, unconsciously, in 
 his heart. Its origin is slight; the foremost character 
 of jealousy is unreasonableness; yet Shakespeare, with his 
 fine skill, does not leave it without some motive. He 
 makes it spring out of the frank, impetuous, unself- 
 conscious character of Hermione. She speaks as freely and 
 affectionately to Polixenes as she would to a brother. Her 
 husband has asked her to do this. Then, she is at ease 
 with her husband's early friend, and talks to him on that 
 common ground with the freedom of unconscious inno- 
 cence. Moreover, she has lived in these pleasant relations 
 with him for nearly a year. He is going, and refuses to 
 stay. Leontes has asked his wife to persuade him to stay. 
 He sees her press him, touch his hand ; scattered drifts of 
 slight suspicions coalesce; and in a moment jealousy leaps 
 from smouldering ash into roaring flame. It is the way 
 of that selfish passion. 
 
 Leontes creeps up to them ; the spying of jealousy, one 
 of its most degrading but constant habits, has begun. 
 Then Shakespeare marks its outburst in a single phrase. 
 1 Is he won yet ? ' asks Leontes. Hermione answers, ' He '11 
 stay, my lord ! ' And Leontes growls to himself, ' At my 
 request he would not.' Jealousy, we see, is native to 
 Leontes. It arises from within. But up to this time it 
 has been a sleeping devil in him. Till now the jealous 
 nature has had no reason to awaken. No one has, till 
 now, met his wife on equal terms. But, at last, partly 
 motived by friendship having changed into weariness and 
 nervous disgust, it rises furiously and destroys for a time 
 everything but itself; all other passions, thoughts, and 
 memories; his wife, his child, his friends, his courtesy, 
 his reason. It awakens the brutality which we derive 
 R 
 
258 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 from the brutes and which civilisation subdues. Jealousy 
 is always subject to foul thoughts, and it pleases its anger 
 to express them with the savage grossness Leontes uses. 
 It makes him also fierce and cruel as a tiger. It forces 
 him to suspect the goodness of his friends ; makes him his 
 own scorn, and the ridicule of the world. And finally, 
 it crushes out all the noble qualities of his nature, even 
 his honour, and is absolute tyrant. 
 
 The nature of Leontes is naturally noble ; that we see 
 afterwards. Even Paulina (and after she has known his 
 crimes) confesses his nobility. But his nature is also 
 weak; he is weak even in his repentance. Violence, 
 it is said, goes with weakness ; and the more furious the 
 violence, the greater the weakness. 1 Again, violence is 
 often the refuge of that ignorance of what to do in trouble 
 which results from the wavering of weak-mindedness. 
 Then, again, the weak man knows he is weak, and is 
 violent, as Richard n. was, to hide his weakness from 
 himself, or to prove himself strong. He who knows his 
 strength has no desire to prove what he knows, and 
 is quiet. 
 
 Excess of passion adds a new weakness to the natural 
 weakness of Leontes. ' I have tremor cordis on me,' ' My 
 heart dances, but not for joy — not joy.' Enervated by 
 unbroken happiness, he has no guard against the invasion 
 of jealousy. It reaches its full and,maddest height in him. 
 There is not one touch of any other passion, of any other 
 thought but jealous thought, while the tempest lasts. He 
 is not a man; he is jealousy itself. 
 
 This tempest of passion is brief: it dies as suddenly as 
 it arose. Evil naturally exhausts itself, and all the more 
 
 1 These studies of violence as weakness are frequent in Shakespeare. 
 For example, at the back of the pride and raging of Coriolanus, which he 
 mistakes for strength, there is a weakness of character of which Shake- 
 speare, with great skill, makes us feel that his mother and his friends 
 were conscious. 
 
WINTER'S TALE 259 
 
 if the nature it attacks be good. And Leontes, originally 
 a good but weak man, repents with as much passion as 
 he sinned. But a good passion does not exhaust itself; 
 on the contrary it grows in power. And then, the wrong- 
 doer, having done deeds meet for repentance, gets the 
 good, but not till then, of the evil trouble he has battled 
 through. He suffers the inevitable punishment, but he 
 conquers a higher goodness than he had when as yet his 
 goodness was untried. And in the end Leontes attains 
 full purification. Weakness in him becomes strength; 
 pride, humility ; remorse, repentance; sudden judgments, 
 temperate acts; sorrow, sympathy with others; punish- 
 ment, a means of progress ; violence, steadfast obedience 
 to law. As to his native jealousy, it has been worked 
 through. It cannot occur again. And its complete 
 destruction means the destruction also of the other evil 
 passions. When one passion, raised to its highest pitch 
 of evil force, has been extinguished, there is no need to 
 care about conquering the others. They are alread}^ 
 beaten. For the thing to crush, in order to be self-con- 
 queror, is not the passions, but their excess ; and if we 
 conquer excess in one, we conquer it in all. For then we 
 have strengthened the will to win the good which is 
 opposite to the evil in which we have been entangled ; 
 and if we have made the will strong, it is as strong against 
 all the passions as it has been against one. The work is 
 done, and needs not twice doing. The whole nature of 
 Leontes is tempered into steadfast calm. 
 
 Some might expect that emotion, through over-indul- 
 gence of which he had erred, would be (in this passage 
 into quietude) chilled ; that temperance of feeling might 
 be equivalent to coldness of heart. But that is not the 
 truth of things. Feeling is made deeper by restraint of 
 it. It were well to compare Leontes' affections and their 
 expression in the first act with the same affections and 
 
260 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 their expression in the fifth act. Quiet intensity now 
 belongs to them. 
 
 Some have complained of tho suddenness of this jealous 
 outbreak. But I have already hinted that Shakespeare 
 intended us to understand that it had been brooding for 
 a long time. Suspicions had arisen and been put aside. 
 But at last they concentrated, and then the volcanic forces, 
 long repressed, broke into full fury. Here, in less than 
 a day, Leontes dishonours, and to a friend, the wife he has 
 known for many years; degrades his son, employs the 
 blackest treachery against his friend, urges murder on his 
 councillor, all to glut his revenge. Polixenes then escapes 
 with Camillo, and their flight is new fuel to the passion 
 of Leontes. It proves to him the guilt of Polixenes. 
 
 From this scene of base passion we change to one of 
 homelike peace and charm, in the room where Hermione 
 and her son are talking. Her motherhood is in tune 
 with her frank and open character. The boy is her 
 very son, as fearless, as natural as she is. He plays 
 with his mother as if she were not only his mother but 
 his friend. A pleasant chaff passes between them, full 
 of charm. This sweet and deep friendship enhances 
 the natural piety of the child to his mother; brings a 
 greater weight and delight to the boy's affection; and 
 together they account for the intensity of love and 
 sorrow which afterwards breaks Mamillius' heart when 
 he learns his mother's fate and is forced to abhor his 
 father. Poor little man ! — orphaned of both his parents 
 while they are still alive. No wonder his gallant bright- 
 ness is quenched in death ! 
 
 This gracious interlude, in which the name and inten- 
 tion of the play are given by Mamillius ; 
 
 A sad tale 's best for winter : 
 I have one of sprites and goblins, 
 
 is in full dramatic contrast with the pity and terror of the 
 
WINTER'S TALE 261 
 
 next, when Leontes breaks in like a maniac upon its 
 peace, resolute to denounce his wife before his lords. He 
 does not speak to her at first, but dwells on that flight 
 of Polixenes with Camillo which proves to him that his 
 suspicions are just. Sick with universal mistrust, dis- 
 believing everything except his own opinion, blind with 
 passion and hatred, writhing under the belief that he is 
 the object of universal ridicule, he speaks — 
 
 How blest am I 
 In my just censure, in my true opinion ! 
 Alack, for lesser knowledge ! How accurs'd 
 In being so blest ! There may be in the cup 
 A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, 
 And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge 
 Is not infected ; but if one present 
 The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known 
 How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, 
 With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. 
 Camillo was his help in this, his pandar : 
 There is a plot against my life, my crown ; 
 All 's true that is mistrusted : that false villain 
 Whom I employ'd was pre-employ'd by him : 
 He has discover'd my design, and I 
 Eemain a pinch'd thing ; yea, a very trick 
 For them to play at will. 
 
 A devastated soul ! Charged with these fierce emotions, 
 he drags her son away from his wife, accuses her of 
 adultery, and that with hideous brutality in gesture, and 
 in the grossest words. Jealousy — and it is another of 
 its marks — takes away even the sense of honour — honour, 
 the last thing that leaves a fallen gentleman. In shaming 
 his wife before the lords, he dishonours his name and 
 rank. It is worth while — in pursuance of Coleridge's 
 distinction between the jealousies of Othello and Leontes 1 
 — to compare Leontes' consistent brutality and his firm 
 belief in Hermione's guilt as growing out of a nature 
 
 1 I have used in the text that most admirable note in which Cole- 
 ridge compared the jealousy of Leontes and Othello. No one could help 
 using it. 
 
262 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 to which jealousy is native, with the bursts of tender- 
 ness which intrude into Othello's fierceness, and with 
 his wavering belief in Desdemona's guilt as proceeding 
 from a nature to which jealousy is not native. Leontes 
 leaps from within himself into all the horrors of jealousy. 
 Othello is slowly dragged into them from without. 
 
 Hermione's conduct and speech under the storm are 
 those of a woman as strong as Leontes is weak. At first 
 it is blank astonishment : ' What is this ? sport ? ' This is 
 followed by a grave indignation with the husband, couched 
 in words of deep respect to the King — 
 
 How will this grieve you 
 When you shall come to clearer knowledge that 
 You thus have publish'd me ! Gentle my lord, 
 You scarce can right me throughly then to say 
 You did mistake. 
 
 There 's some ill planet reigns ; 
 I must be patient till the heavens look 
 With an aspect more favourable. Good my lord3, 
 I am not prone to weeping, as our sex 
 Commonly are ; the want of which vain dew 
 Perchance shall dry your pities : but I have 
 That honourable grief lodg'd here which burns 
 Worse than tears drown : . . . 
 
 . . . Adieu, my lord : 
 I never wish'd to see you sorry ; now 
 I trust I shall. 
 
 Any man but one poisoned with jealousy, another 
 characteristic of which is to make all things but itself 
 seem false, would see that this woman was true, and that 
 truth was her deepest desire. The noble expression of 
 her guiltless sorrow convinces the lords of her innocence. 
 But every word she says, so blinding is his passion, adds 
 fuel to the fire in Leontes, as afterwards in the trial-scene; 
 and, at last, he is left among his courtiers, utterly alone, 
 and alone in his opinion, assuming on his own head the 
 whole evidence of his wife's guilt. Shakespeare is careful 
 to keep up this insane blindness of jealousy, even when 
 
WINTER'S TALE 263 
 
 the gods, by the oracle, declare the innocence of Hermione. 
 His passion denies the gods — 
 
 There is no truth at all i' the oracle : 
 
 The sessions shall proceed ; this is mere falsehood. 
 
 The third scene in the second act is a revelation, 
 not only of the fierce sleeplessness and incessant dis- 
 quietude, but also of the cruelty, of jealousy. Hermione 
 has been delivered in prison of a girl. Paulina brings 
 the child to Leontes and calls on him to recognise it. 
 But before she comes in, we look into the soul of Leontes, 
 full of an awful restlessness, only to be hushed by blood. 
 Nothing but the cruel death of those who have tortured 
 him can quiet that. Polixenes is out of his power. Let 
 Hermione and her brat be burnt alive. Then half his 
 pain may pass. 
 
 Nor night, nor day, no rest : it is but weakness 
 To bear the matter thus ; mere weakness. If 
 The cause were not in being,— part o' the cause, 
 She the adultress ; for the harlot king 
 Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank 
 And level of my brain, plot-proof ; but she 
 I can hook to me : say that she were gone, 
 Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest 
 Might come to me again. Who 's there ? 
 
 All that follows is full of horror and pity. The dreadful 
 imputation of his belief in his wife's unchastity to his 
 little son who is really dying for love of his mother; 
 his attack on Paulina's honesty of life, on the loyalty of 
 his lords; his character, his very blood poisoned by his 
 madness ; even the pitiable phrase, ' I am a feather for 
 each wind that blows,' said because he saves the child 
 from the fire only to expose it to the wild beasts — the 
 slightest variation from the worst cruelty of the passion 
 seeming to him the acme of changeableness — all reveal, 
 with magnificent penetration and execution, the over- 
 whelming way in which the vengefulness of jealousy has 
 
264 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 sucked everything in his world into itself, and yet is 
 hungry still. 
 
 Then the scene changes, and the third act opens with 
 the bright air and peace of the description of Delphi. 
 
 The climate 's delicate, the air most sweet, 
 Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing 
 The common praise it hears. 
 
 This happy, gentle picture relieves the mind, oppressed 
 with the furies of the last act. Moreover, the description 
 of the grave and reverent priests and sacrifice at Delphi 
 prepares us by its solemn ceremony for the gravity of the 
 Court of Trial, and the divine deliverance of the innocent 
 Queen. 
 
 Hermione's defence raises higher the solemn note. It 
 is dignified as from a Queen, but even more dignified as 
 from her innocence. It avows, with her own frank bold- 
 ness, her loving friendship for Polixenes. It appeals to 
 heaven ; nor does she doubt, as she looks straight at the 
 King with indignant purity, 
 
 but innocence shall make 
 False accusation blush, and tyranny 
 Tremble at patience. 
 
 She appeals to the King himself and to her past life with 
 him; her honour has always been unstained. It is a 
 passing revelation of her quiet intellect, steady in the 
 midst of danger, when she allows, as if it were an abstract 
 question, the truth of her husband's remark, when he 
 brutally answers her self-defence 
 
 Leon. I ne'er heard yet 
 
 That any of these bolder vices wanted 
 
 Less impudence to gainsay -what they did 
 
 Than to perform it first. 
 Her. That 's true enough ; 
 
 Though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to me. 
 
 Nor is her half-contempt of her husband, who could be 
 so swept into folly by the phantoms of his imagination, 
 
WINTER'S TALE 265 
 
 less a revelation of her innocence, her good sense, her 
 
 intellectual repose — 
 
 You speak a language that I understand not : 
 My life stands in the level of your dreams, 
 Which I '11 lay down. 
 
 Her acceptance of death is as splendid in form as it is 
 quiet in speech. She loves life but not life dishonoured 
 by Leontes ; she loves her honour that now she defends 
 by a last appeal, 
 
 I do refer me to the oracle : 
 
 Apollo be my judge. 
 
 The oracle is read; it speaks her innocence. Leontes, 
 it declares, is a jealous tyrant; Polixenes blameless; 
 Camillo a true subject. Then the last wave of the jealous 
 fury breaks in foam against the very gods : ' There 's no 
 truth at all in the oracle,' shouts Leontes. 
 
 On this final insolence the servant comes in to tell that 
 Mamillius is dead, and dead through ' mere conceit and 
 fear of the Queen's speed.' This quick misfortune at last 
 shocks Leontes out of his madness, and convinces him of 
 the truth of the oracle. 
 
 Apollo 's angry ; and the heavens themselves 
 Do strike at my injustice. 
 
 So desperately blind is jealousy, that only the gods them- 
 selves and their oracle, backed up by the death of his son, 
 can open the eyes of Leontes. Then his repentance is as 
 swift as his evil, and that swiftness is in his character. 
 
 Were the play to be a tragedy, it should have ended 
 here with the death of Leontes. His heart should have 
 broken. But this is to be a Winters Tale, and we pass to 
 that which would be superfluous had it been a tragedy — 
 the entrance of Paulina to pour out her indignation on 
 Leontes, and to tell him that the Queen is dead. The 
 scene is needed to bring out the deep penitence of the 
 King, to prepare us for his future happiness — sixteen 
 
266 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 years away — and to make clear that his guilt is not rooted 
 in his nature, but the result of a sudden storm of evil 
 overwhelming a nature naturally noble. Paulina makes 
 us feel this. She repents her rage as he repents. As she 
 speaks peace to him, a hope steals in that all may not 
 be so wrong as we think. Her wrath is the last effort of 
 the storm. When she forgives, the storm dies down, and 
 the scene ends in a strain of quiet sorrow. 
 
 But during this hurricane of base passion what destruc- 
 tion has been wrought ! Hermione is given for dead. 
 Mamillius, the heir of the crown, is dead. Antigonus is 
 in exile and is slain. The long friendship of the kings is 
 broken. Camillo, Leontes' most trusty councillor, is gone. 
 The new-born babe is exposed to the wild beasts. Leontes 
 stands alone. The desert country near the sea, in which 
 Perdita is cast away, is not more a desert than his life. 
 
 The fate of only one element in the story remains 
 uncertain — the fate of the new-born child whom Leontes 
 has given to Antigonus to cast away. In this little seed 
 is the redemption of the past hidden. What the guilt of 
 jealousy's selfish love has wrought is to be undone by 
 the unselfish love of Florizel and Perdita, of the son of 
 Polixenes and the daughter of Hermione. 
 
 The story of the child is told in the last scene of the 
 third act. This scene, where the shepherds find the child 
 and carry it home, links the first three acts (even after 
 the lapse of sixteen years) to the fourth and fifth. The 
 saved child is the girl of the fourth act. 
 
 Not only in this is the art of the dramatist seen, but 
 also in the continuance of the stormy atmosphere through 
 which we have passed. It would not be in tune to 
 introduce now the lovely peace of the fourth act; and 
 the child, born in the tempest of passion, is cradled in 
 the tempest of the elements. The ship which carried her 
 is wrecked with all on board. Antigonus, who did the 
 
WINTER'S TALE 267 
 
 wicked will of the King, is devoured by a wild beast, and 
 Hermione (to knit this scene to w T hat has gone before) 
 appears in a dream to Antigonus and prophesies his death. 
 
 I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, 
 
 So fill'd and so becoming : in pure white robes, 
 
 Like very sanctity, she did approach 
 
 My cabin where I lay ; 
 
 Our eyes are filled with the image of the motherhood of 
 the abandoned child. It is a touch of the finest art. 
 
 Antigonus lays down the child on the earth : ' Blossom, 
 speed thee well.' His cruel death is somewhat excused by 
 his belief, even after his dream, in the guilt of Hermione, 
 and by his crude obedience to the hateful command of the 
 King to expose the child. The storm begins, the day 
 darkens, the heavens are wroth with the cruelty of man. 
 Antigonus flies from the savage clamour of the wild beast 
 that devours him, and the shepherds come in to find the 
 child. The scene ends with their rustic talk, full of 
 quaint humour and peasant wisdom. Coarse and home- 
 spun as the speeches are of the Shepherd and the Clown, 
 yet the true humour in them redeems their coarseness. 
 The only infamous coarseness is that which has no 
 humour. Moreover, after the tornado of passion in which 
 we have lived at the court, we are relieved to find our- 
 selves in the honest life of the country, among clownish 
 wits. As we listen to the rude talk of the shepherds, we 
 presage the simple, peaceful, working, and festive life of 
 the country folk, in the midst of which we shall, in the 
 next act, find Perdita set like a pearl in a rough-grained 
 shell. 
 
 Time, the Chorus, now calls on us to pass over sixteen 
 years, and the fourth act opens with a dialogue between 
 Polixenes and Camillo. The dialogue, as it takes up one 
 matter after another, shows and clears the way for the 
 renewed action of the drama. We hear first of Camillo's 
 
268 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 longing to return to Sicilia, and this is afterwards used 
 to supply means for the flight of the lovers; secondly, 
 the suggestion is made of a reknitting of the broken 
 friendship of the two kings, and we begin to expect 
 the close; thirdly, the loves of Florizel and Perdita are 
 discussed by Polixenes and Camillo who determine to 
 visit in disguise the shepherd's farm on the feast-day. 
 We know what will come of that. Polixenes will break 
 up the unequal love-affair. 
 
 The first conversation thus prepares us for all that 
 follows. It is Shakespeare's way : ' Expectation, not sur- 
 prise.' And our pleasure, as we listen, is in seeing how 
 he will work out the matter, and what emotion he will 
 charge it with, and convey to us. That also was the 
 way of the great Greek dramatists. The Athenian 
 audience knew beforehand all the events of the play. 
 Their interest was not in the story, but in the manner 
 it was presented. 
 
 However, we do not get at once into the heart of the 
 action, and of the lovers. Shakespeare prepares us for 
 his idyll by a scene between Autolycus and the Clown, 
 Perdita's supposed brother. The song of Autolycus strikes 
 the keynote of the rustic life we are to enter, in which 
 flowers and the singing of birds are dear to maids and 
 lovers, in which rude wit makes holiday, and which is 
 afterwards wrought into perfect melody by the exquisite 
 tongue of Perdita, and by the play of tender mirth and 
 romantic love between her and Florizel. Even to 
 Autolycus there is pleasure in the daffodils that begin 
 to peer when the sweet of the year comes in, though the 
 tirra-lirra of the lark only minds him of ale and sport in 
 the hayfield. But then he is a gay good-for-nothing who 
 brings the cunning of the city into the simplicity of the 
 country. When the Clown appears, the business of the 
 feast appears ; and, with pleasant art, Perdita's open hand, 
 
WINTER'S TALE 269 
 
 her happy extravagance in joy, and her love of lovely 
 things, are sketched by her brother. 'What will this 
 sister of mine do with so much rice. But my father 
 hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. 
 She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the 
 shearers.' This is a great artist's sketch. The finished 
 picture is to come. 
 
 I do not wish to interrupt the close, therefore I shall 
 take here Autolycus and the Clown. Autolycus is the 
 incarnate rogue. He has come down from Greek-land, 
 but he is English also, and Elizabethan. He lives on the 
 simplicity of the world, and thinks he is right in that. 
 The world, he thinks, exists for rogues. And indeed, he is 
 so frank of his roguery, and enjoys it so heartily, that it is 
 easy not to be angry with him. We begin to think that 
 he and his fellow-sinners are of use in the world. Indeed, 
 if there were none like him, dull people might never 
 become intelligent. 
 
 But the best excuse for him, and his excellent use, is his 
 gaiety. Nothing interferes with that, nothing darkens it. 
 He has been degraded from the court for dishonesty ; he 
 is a piece of a coward ; he is, now and then, for practice of 
 his art, something of a sneak, but he is as gay as a cuckoo 
 who has been a fraud from the beginning. And the world 
 is so stupid, that it is thankful for the rogue, provided 
 he makes it mirth ; so uninventive, that it likes the im- 
 aginative liar ; so lazy, that the hustling of the rogues is 
 excellent for its activity. Nothing can be better done 
 than his fooling and robbing of the Clown, especially if we 
 read what is said with our eyes on the stage. All he 
 says supplies by-play for the actor. 
 
 While he is stealing in this scene, we are conscious, 
 with delight, that Autolycus is playing with his own wit, 
 and rejoicing that he is cheating so admirably. When 
 the Clown is gone, he breaks out into self-gratulation. 
 
270 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 I'll be with you at your sheep-shearing too. If I make not this cheat 
 bring out another, and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled, and 
 my name put in the book of virtue. 
 
 He has entered on the scene, singing ; and the song shows 
 he is not without some enjoyment of nature. Shakespeare 
 knew that if a man be naturally merry, and has good 
 health, and also the want of conscience which, in slight 
 natures, so often accompanies good health, roguery does 
 not prevent him from having pleasure in sweet air and 
 the songs of birds, from feeling the charm of the spring 
 dancing in his blood, from having a vague happiness 
 in the beautiful world. Indeed, Nature herself, having no 
 conscience, unmorality, like that of the Greek nymphs 
 and fauns, is in good tune with her. It is preoccupation 
 with ourselves, not wrong-doing, which prevents us from 
 enjoying her. Hear how Autolycus finishes the scene — 
 
 ' Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, 
 
 And merrily hent the stile-a ; 
 A merry heart goes all the day, 
 Your sad tires in a mile-a.' 
 
 Yet Shakespeare felt that he must say something about 
 conscience, give us some hint how it happens that Auto- 
 lycus is happy, and yet such a rascal. And one pregnant 
 touch explains it. ' Beating and hanging are terrors for 
 me ; for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.' 
 Coleridge objects to that; I think it hits the very white of 
 the matter. Moreover, Autolycus, if a whiff of conscience 
 troubles him, gets rid of the trouble of it, as many of 
 us do, by confession of his roguery to himself — priest 
 and penitent in one — by absolving himself, after he has 
 blamed himself. The moral burden is lifted off when he 
 describes himself, to the Clown, by name, as a rascal, 
 whipped out of the court for his vices, and settled into 
 roguery. 
 
 It is not only bodily health, but intellectual quickness 
 
WINTER'S TALE 271 
 
 that makes his life happy. There is not one touch of 
 noble thought or delicate feeling from end to end of 
 Autolycus. He is strictly kept within his low, monkey- 
 inspired range ; but within that he is clever, imaginative 
 when he is lying, and always ravished with his own 
 tricksy intelligence. His quickness gives as much plea- 
 sure to the world as to himself. When the servant comes 
 to report his arrival at the feast, we see how he has 
 ravished the simple rustics. 
 
 master ! if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would 
 never dance again after a tabor and pipe ; no, the bagpipe could not 
 move you. He sings several tunes faster than you '11 tell money ; he 
 utters them as he had eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to his 
 tunes. 
 
 Why, he sings over his lawns and ribbons as they were gods and 
 goddesses. You would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants to 
 the sleeve-hand, and the work about the square on 't. 
 
 When he is among them, he boldly risks their unbelief 
 with marvels of lying, preferring the fun of his rogue- 
 imagination to even the money he wins by it. He is 
 the life and soul of all the homely foolery of the feast ; 
 and though he robs everybody, he makes everybody 
 happy. 
 
 But afterwards, when, dressed in Florizel's clothes, he 
 passes himself off as a courtier to the Clown and Shepherd, 
 he is a rogue out of his element, and both seem to detect 
 something out of place in him. ' This cannot be but a 
 great courtier,' says the Clown, a vague doubt in his mind. 
 The Shepherd, being older, is not so credulous. 'His 
 garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.' 
 Shakespeare knew how keen the English rustic was, and 
 he marks it in this single phrase. But Autolycus, by 
 terrible lying, gets the better of them ; and yet is the 
 cause of the secret of the play being discovered. He is, 
 though he is no less a rogue, of this use, at least, in 
 the play. 
 
272 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Lastly, his self-delight in his roguery raises it almost 
 into the dignity of a profession. He is Hermes, fallen 
 from his high estate, into evil times, and modern ways. 
 When he has sold all his pedlar's pack, and robbed most 
 of the purses at the sheep-shearing, his success proves to 
 him that honesty is ridiculous. ' Ha, ha 1 what a fool 
 Honesty is ! And Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple 
 gentleman ! ' Then, afterwards, when he is drawn in to 
 help the Prince and Perdita, and sees, in revealing their 
 secret, new ways of getting fortune open, he cries that 
 the very gods have been changed by his cleverness to his 
 side, that Fortune has made the time lucky for thieves. 
 
 I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive. Sure, the gods 
 do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. ... If 
 I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not suffer me : she drops 
 booties in my mouth. 
 
 Set over against this flashing bit of roguery is the dull, 
 honest, good-natured Clown, who believes in every one; 
 who, the moment he is turned into a courtier, believes 
 he is at all points a fine gentleman; and lords it over 
 Autolycus in a fashion which, because he is good and 
 honest, has indeed some touches of the gentleman. 
 When we first meet him, in the fourth act, a single 
 phrase marks the uneducated clown. He is casting up 
 the expenses of the feast. ' I cannot do it,' he says, ' with- 
 out counters.' Another phrase, when he is in his new 
 estate — as Perdita's supposed brother — places his whole 
 mind before us. ' Hark ! the Kings and the Princes, our 
 kindred, are going to see the Queen's picture.' 
 
 And now in the fourth act, we hear the story of the 
 love of Perdita and Florizel. No scene in these dramas 
 is more delicate in imagination, sweeter with youthful 
 love. We breathe the old idyllic air, scented with the 
 breath of flowers. All our country sights and sounds 
 are there, and the dew that drenches them is the dew 
 
WINTER'S TALE 273 
 
 of young passion, pure, ardent ; and its tenderness is gay. 
 We walk on the grass ; trie garden is near at hand that 
 Perdita has tended; the tents and tables are set out in 
 the open air, the brightness of May is over the feast ; and 
 there, at last, is Perdita amidst the flowers, herself a flower 
 of grace, weaving in her hands the garland which is to 
 become a crown. The rustic dance and fun, the songs 
 and chaff of the men mingle with the hospitable, homely 
 courtesy of the Shepherd, with the singing of Autolycus. 
 The pastoral life of Stratford is before us, the feast in the 
 meadows where the sheep are wandering. Shakespeare, 
 we feel, is happy in it. 
 
 In the midst are Florizel and Perdita, like two rose- 
 trees in a garden of herbs. They are high-born, and 
 they become their rank. Shakespeare, in an age when 
 high-birth honoured itself, makes their birth shine in 
 their words and ways. Florizel is known by Camillo and 
 Polixenes, who are now present in disguise, for what he is ; 
 but Perdita is not known, save as a girl who has always lived 
 among the shepherds. Shakespeare keeps her princess at 
 every point but pride. To Florizel, as he looks at her, the 
 sheep-shearing is as a meeting of the petty gods, and she 
 the Queen of it. Polixenes, though angry with her, can- 
 not resist her charm. He calls her ' enchantment,' and 
 sees in her more than she seems — 
 
 This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever 
 Ran on the green sward ; nothing she does or seems 
 But smacks of something greater than herself ; 
 Too noble for this place. 
 
 Her talk belongs to her native nobleness. She has, 
 like the shepherdesses of Sidney's pastoral, drunk from 
 the classic spring, and this little learning is exalted into 
 poetic beauty by her gracious character, her imagination 
 of beauty, and by the uplifting impulse of her love. All 
 the world knows how exquisite, how creative is her 
 
274 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 speech as she comes to meet her guests, half-buried in 
 her flowers : 
 
 Proserpina ! 
 
 For the flowers now that frighted thou let'st fall 
 
 From Dis's wagon ! daffodils, 
 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; pale prime-roses, 
 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 
 Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
 
 Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips and 
 
 The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds, 
 
 The flower-de-luce being one. ! these I lack, 
 
 To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend, 
 
 To strew him o'er and o'er ! 
 
 Added to this poetic beauty is the grace of native intel- 
 lect. She holds her own with Polixenes when he discusses 
 the mutual relation of nature and art. Her sight of the 
 knot of a difficulty is always clear, and so is her solution 
 of it. This is the mother's intellect in the child. Then, 
 her love for Florizel is confessed as simply, with as little 
 care for what others think of her, as her mother confessed 
 her friendship with Polixenes. In this handing down of 
 similarity of character, Shakespeare is perhaps scienti- 
 fically and certainly poetically right ; and he supports 
 this idea of his throughout the rest of the play. Perdita, 
 with a difference, descends from her mother. 
 
 The noble frankness in her confession of love when 
 Florizel asks, if she will strew flowers over him, as over a 
 corse, is divinely beautiful. 
 
 Flor. What ! like a corse ? 
 
 Per. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on ; 
 
 Not like a corse ; or if, — not to be buried, 
 
 But quick and in mine arms. 
 
 When Florizel answers, his love lifts him to her level, 
 and he speaks the finest praise of a maiden ever 
 spoken ; 
 
WINTER'S TALE 275 
 
 What you do 
 Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 
 I 'd have you do it ever : when you sing, 
 I 'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms ; 
 Pray so ; and, for the ordering your affairs, 
 To sing them too : when you do dance, I wish you 
 A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
 Nothing but that ; move still, still so, 
 And own no other function : each your doing, 
 So singular in each particular, 
 Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, 
 That all your acts are queens. 
 
 Even the old Shepherd, when he tells of their affection, 
 
 is so moved by its beauty that he slides into poetry. Had 
 
 the Shepherd been too home-spun then in speech, he 
 
 would have lowered the note of the scene. Yet what 
 
 he says is not pitched too high ; 
 
 He says he loves my daughter ; 
 I think so too : for never gaz'd the moon 
 Upon the water as he'll stand and read 
 As 'twere my daughter's eyes ; and, to be plain, 
 I think there is not half a kiss to choose 
 Who loves the other best. 
 
 Nor is it less in Shakespeare's manner of expressing 
 love in early youth — such love as speaks in Romeo — that 
 Florizel, towards the close of the scene, breaks into 
 an extravagance of words, exhausts himself in a rush of 
 metaphors, in the vain attempt to paint his inexpressible 
 
 love: 
 
 ! hear me breathe my life 
 Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem, 
 Hath sometime lov'd : I take thy hand ; this hand, 
 As soft as dove's down and as white as it, 
 Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow 
 That 's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er. 
 
 Be witness to 't, you and he and more than he, and men, 
 
 the earth, the heavens, and all ; 
 That, were I crown'd the most imperial monarch, 
 Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth 
 That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge 
 
276 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 More than was ever man's, I would not prize them 
 Without her love ; for her employ them all ; 
 Commend them and condemn them to her service 
 Or to their own perdition. 
 
 To this outburst what an answer is Perdita's ? She is 
 
 all but silent, for Florizel has said so much ; but her little 
 
 phrase is as passionate as his words, and broken at every 
 
 pause with emotion — 
 
 I cannot speak 
 So well, nothing so well ; no, nor mean better : 
 By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out 
 The purity of his. 
 
 The one touch where Florizel carries too far this love of 
 his, so as to be lower in right feeling than he ought to be, 
 is where he is made in presence of his father to speak 
 of his father's death. ' One being dead,' he says, ' I shall 
 have more than you can dream of yet.' It is true, this 
 accounts for the violence of his father's anger. On hear- 
 ing it, Polixenes, after an attempt to control himself by 
 reasoning with Florizel, breaks out into such a fury with 
 every one that it almost seems as if Shakespeare, having 
 represented in Leontes jealousy overwhelming reason, in- 
 tended in Polixenes here to represent a swift storm of 
 anger in which all reasonableness is destroyed. 
 
 At any rate, this is the central point of the action of 
 the second part of the play. It shatters all the air-built 
 castles of the young lovers. Perdita and Florizel take 
 the blow differently, but each in character. Perdita is, 
 as Coleridge said, more than exquisite in her way. Her 
 good-breeding comes forth, under these circumstances, as 
 love's democratic feeling. The sun looks on the cottage, she 
 says, as brightly as on the court. Her love lifts her above 
 all fear. She sweeps through change after change of feel- 
 ing and temper, being a little confused by the shock. A 
 momentary touch of contending sorrow and love makes 
 her turn to Florizel — 'WiU't please you, sir, be gone?' 
 
WINTER'S TALE 277 
 
 Then quickly she breaks down into grief, into a memory 
 of her presentiments in the past, into a half-reproach to 
 Florizel, into a half-ironical self-pity and self-scorn that 
 she should have given herself up to this foolish hope for 
 
 happy love. 
 
 Even here undone ! 
 I was not much afeard ; for once or twice 
 I was ahout to speak and tell him plainly, 
 The self same sun that shines upon his court 
 Hides not his visage from our cottage, but 
 Looks on alike. Will 't please yon, sir, be gone ? 
 I told you what would come of this : beseech you, 
 Of youx own state take care : this dream of mine — 
 Being now awake, I '11 queen it no inch farther, 
 But milk my ewes and weep. 
 
 But Florizel is equal to the moment. His love over- 
 masters his father's anger, his hope of the throne, im- 
 prisonment, poverty, death itself. He resolves on, and 
 plans, his flight with Perdita. The world is well lost for 
 
 his love — 
 
 Why look you so upon me ? 
 I am but sorry, not afeard ; delay'd, 
 But nothing alter'd. What I was, I am. 
 
 There is a parallel in this firm intensity of love to 
 the madness of Leontes in the first act. In the case of 
 Leontes a bad passion hurries him into a world of death. 
 In the case of Florizel a good passion hurries him 
 into a world of life. Both passions are represented as 
 reaching a height in which reason is in abeyance; and 
 though I do not say that Shakespeare, of set purpose, 
 contrasted here a noble and an ignoble passion when 
 they were both in flood ; yet he does, in the rush of his 
 genius, make it clear that the being carried away by a 
 noble passion is as right as being carried away by a base 
 passion is wrong. 
 
 Leontes sacrifices everything to his jealousy, and ruins 
 his own life and the lives of others. Florizel sacrifices 
 
278 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 everything to his pure love, and the resolve produces 
 the circumstances which restore all that the jealousy of 
 Leontes has ruined. The common world would say that 
 Florizel's conduct was madness. He himself believes his 
 folly better reason than the world's judgment. When 
 Perdita says, she knew her dignity would last but till 
 'twere known, he answers with the charming extrava- 
 gance of young love 
 
 It cannot fail but by 
 The violation of my faith ; and then 
 Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together 
 And mar the seeds within ! Lift up thy looks 
 From my succession wipe me, father ; I 
 Am heir to my affection. 
 
 Be advis'd,' says Camillo ; 
 
 Flor. I am ; and by my fancy : if my reason 
 
 Will thereto be obedient, I have reason ; 
 
 If not, my senses, better pleas'd with madness, 
 
 Do bid it welcome. 
 Cam. This is desperate, sir ! 
 
 Just what every one thought of Leontes; but how 
 different ! Again, I drew attention to that phrase of 
 Leontes, ' I am a feather for each wind that blows,' in 
 which, because he modified the burning of the babe to 
 exposure in a desert, he seemed to himself, so fierce was 
 the single-eyed demand of his tyrant passion, to be as 
 inconstant as a feather in a veering wind. So Florizel 
 here, over-mastered by his deep feeling, thinks, when 
 Camillo induces him to make a slight alteration in his 
 first plan of flight, that he is the very slave of chance. He 
 is really moving like an arrow to his point, shot from the 
 strained bow of his will, yet he says 
 
 We profess 
 Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and liies 
 Of every wind that blows. 
 
WINTER'S TALE 279 
 
 In this resemblance of his metaphor to that of Leontes is 
 the unconscious art of genius, and it confirms the parallel 
 I have drawn. 
 
 And now, how, in this sudden crisis, does Perdita appear ? 
 As Hermione would have done in girlhood ! I have already 
 marked some touches of this descent of character. There 
 are others of the same kind. When she refuses, in the 
 sheep-shearing scene, to plant streaked gillyvors in her 
 garden, because ' there is an art which in their piedness 
 shares with great creating Nature,' she thinks, like 
 Hermione, that to slip from the natural is to slip from 
 truth. But when Polixenes proves that the art itself is 
 nature, then, just as Hermione in the trial scene acknow- 
 ledged as an abstract truth a rough remark of Leontes — 
 ' That 's true enough, though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to 
 me' ; so here, Perdita's intellect, thinking of the argument, 
 answers, ' So it is.' But for all that, her instinctive love 
 of Nature's freedom to follow her own ways will have 
 nothing to do with that which her reason allows. Polix- 
 enes thinks he has won her over, because she confesses 
 the weight of his argument — 
 
 Polix. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors. 
 
 'I'll not put,' answers Perdita with a flash, 'the dibble 
 in the earth to set one slip of them.' When Hermione 
 was young, she would have said the same, and with the 
 same impetuosity. 
 
 Her passionate love, her soft tenderness do not affect 
 her intellect. Like Hermione, she is quite clear-eyed; 
 keen to divide the true from the false; quiet, through 
 good sense, in hours of confused trouble. In the midst 
 of the hurry of flight and of changing plans, Perdita, like 
 her mother — whose intellect, even in the deepest grief, 
 is always detached to meet with coolness the point at 
 
280 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 issue — can stay to correct a view of life put forward by 
 Camillo, who says — 
 
 Besides, you know 
 Prosperity 's the very bond of love, 
 Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together 
 Affliction alters. 
 
 Perdita sifts the true in it from the untrue, and answers 
 with a noble respect for the soul, resting on whose powers 
 she makes her judgment ; 
 
 One of these is true ; 
 I think affliction may subdue the cheek, 
 But not take in the mind. 
 
 'Yea, say you so?' replies Camillo, astonished at this 
 quiet, winnowing intelligence in a girl, now overwhelmed 
 with trouble ; 
 
 There shall not at your father's house these seven years 
 Be born another such. 
 
 And finally, when all is ready, Camillo and Florizel 
 both excited to depart, Perdita is quiet. She has made 
 up her mind as well as her heart. She sees that there 
 is no other way for her, and takes it, undelaying, 
 
 I see the play so lies 
 That I must bear a part. 
 
 So they fly away, and the fifth act opens in Leontes' 
 palace. Sixteen years have gone by since we last saw him, 
 years of sorrow ; and his repentance has kept him true to 
 his wife's memory. He loves her for herself, but more for 
 that he had wronged her. She has concealed herself from 
 him, hoping for the finding of her child, all these years. 
 It seems too severe a punishment for Leontes, accom- 
 panied, as it was, by Paulina's bitter tongue. One might 
 even call Hermione hard-hearted, but Shakespeare does 
 not always think that swift forgiveness is one of the 
 remarkable qualities of women. 
 
 Leontes has not yet forgiven himself. And his lords 
 
WINTER'S TALE 281 
 
 urge him to put aside his penitence and give the State 
 
 an heir. 
 
 Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil ; 
 With them forgive yourself. 
 
 Leontes listens, but his heart is with the past. It is well : 
 
 he is thus ready for the resurrection of his wife. Nay, 
 
 there is passion still in his love. Paulina, in her rough 
 
 way, thinking that he may yield to his counsellors, says 
 
 that he ' killed his wife.' His old, swiftly moved nature 
 
 breaks out, yet with a new gentleness. 
 
 Kill'd! 
 She I kill'd ! I did so ; but thou strik'st me 
 Sorely to say I did : it is as bitter 
 Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good row, 
 Say so but seldom. 
 
 That might only be the voice of penitence, even of 
 remorse; and Shakespeare does not think that Leontes 
 would be worthy of the recovery of his wife, or that it 
 would be fitting they should again come together, were 
 there no intensity of love in Leontes' soul. There- 
 fore when his lords beseech him to marry, and Paulina, 
 objecting, paints how he would feel with another woman, 
 if his wife's eyes, passing ghostlike before him, should 
 say, ' Remember mine ' ; Leontes' deep-seated and yearning 
 passion leaps to the surface ; 
 
 Stars, stars ! 
 
 And all eyes else dead coals. Fear thou no wife ; 
 
 I '11 have no wife, Paulina. 
 
 And Paulina, satisfied, hints at a coming happiness in 
 Shakespeare's preparing way. 
 
 At this point Florizel and Perdita enter with Camillo, 
 bearing in their hands the full horn of the future, the 
 full redemption of the past. Perdita is preceded by the 
 ravishment she creates among the court ; ' the most peer- 
 less piece of earth that e'er the sun shone bright on.' 
 Spring comes with her into the midst of grey autumn, 
 
282 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 love and rapture into the midst of weary sorrow. Leontes 
 cannot turn his eyes from her; the father is drawn by 
 nature to the child whom he knows not. 
 
 Then comes the revelation of Perdita's true birth. 
 All the characters are brought together. Polixenes has 
 pursued his flying son. The shepherds bring the bundle 
 which contains the proofs of the child's descent. The 
 broken friendship of the kings is again knit together. 
 And the lovers, following true love, have done it. Only 
 Hermione is not yet here ; and Paulina brings the crowd 
 to see her statue. The last scene is in the chapel, when 
 the statue comes to life. It is with exquisite art that, 
 seeing the image of her mother, Perdita is now touched. 
 She cannot speak, but Leontes describes her, while he 
 addresses the statue ; 
 
 0, royal piece ! 
 
 There's magic in thy majesty, which has 
 
 My evils conjur'd to remembrance, and 
 
 From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, 
 
 Standing like stone with thee. 
 
 But Perdita recovers, kneels, and speaks 
 
 And give me leave, 
 And do not say 'tis superstition 
 
 — how lovely is the common- sense of this, a touch which 
 recalls her mother's intelligence — 
 
 that 
 I kneel and then implore her blessing. Lady, 
 Dear queen, that ended when I but began, 
 Give me that hand of yours to kiss. 
 
 But the main interest is the meeting of Leontes and 
 Hermione, whom long ago evil passion parted. Leontes' 
 character, in its good, is carefully maintained. The im- 
 petuous cries and action, the feeling so strong in him that it 
 breaks its utterance, the rush ot successive emotions, so 
 that they trip up one another, are the same in him 
 as before. Hermione is also unchanged; stately, quiet, 
 
WINTER'S TALE 283 
 
 yet impassioned. She hangs in silence on Leontes' neck. 
 She only speaks when she turns to her daughter, for 
 motherhood, we remember, was always deep in her ; 
 
 Paul. Turn, good lady ; 
 
 Our Perdita is found. 
 
 Her. You gods, look down, 
 
 And from your sacred vials pour your graces 
 Upon my daughter's head ! Tell me, mine own, 
 "Where hast thou been preserv'd ? where liv'd 1 how found 
 Thy father's court ? 
 
 And in the phrase 'thy father's court' is contained the 
 pardon of Leontes. So all is at an end. The gods have 
 let evil die, and good live to cure its pain. The music, 
 that bids Hermione be stone no more, plays now the 
 sweet melodies of a new life. Nor is the calm of the 
 close, with its soft tune, out of harmony with the storm 
 of the beginning. The one has grown out of the other. 
 Jealousy divides, love unites — this is the only moral we 
 accept from A Winter's Tale. 
 
THE TEMPEST 
 
 The Tempest was one of the last, if not the last as some 
 think, of Shakespeare's dramas — of those, that is, entirely 
 written by himself. Even this is doubted, and the Mask 
 which Prospero shows to the lovers has sometimes been 
 allotted to another hand. The Epilogue is, of course, 
 rejected. By the time of James I. the Masque had become 
 an important affair, with elaborate scenery, dresses, 
 dances, and machinery, and it is possible (to afford time 
 for the representation of the Mask in this play) that the 
 original play was abridged by the actors, or that Shake- 
 speare deliberately made it brief. It is, save the Comedy 
 of Errors, the shortest of his comedies. Its source, if it 
 had one in a previous drama or a tale, has not been dis- 
 covered. Earnest searchers have found the origin of one 
 passage in Florio's translation of Montaigne, and some 
 suggestions for Prospero's invocation 
 
 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves. 
 
 in Ovid, but these are futile discoveries. The name of 
 Setebos, other names, and some details, were possibly 
 borrowed from Eden's History of Travayle, 1577 ; and a 
 book — The Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called 
 the lie of Divels — may have suggested to him his island 
 in the undiscovered seas, but Shakespeare needed no 
 suggestion of this kind from books. His books were 
 the people he met. It stands to reason that he had 
 many talks with the captains and sailors who adventured 
 
THE TEMPEST 285 
 
 their lives and fortunes in the Atlantic and Pacific, and 
 who brought back to England wonderful tales of remote 
 islands dwelt in by monsters and fit for a poet's imagi- 
 nation to play with; fit to shape into beauty for the 
 cultured folk, into sea-interest for the ' groundlings.' 
 
 The play opens on a ship at sea, in a roaring storm, 
 and amid the shouting of the sailors. I can well imagine 
 how the rude sailors who had worked through the gales of 
 the Spanish main, and who now stood in the pit to listen, 
 cheered and laughed as they heard the boatswain hurry 
 the mariners to their work, and send the passengers, 
 including the King, to their cabins — 'What care these 
 roarers for the name of king ? To cabin ; silence ! trouble 
 us not ! ' In the great tempests of life all men find 
 their place. 
 
 As to the island, it ought, of course, to be in the Mediter- 
 ranean, and commentators have wasted a great deal of 
 time in conjecturing whether it was Malta, Lampedusa, 
 Pantalaria, or Corcyra. It is in the Sea of the Imagina- 
 tion ; and its rocks and dells, its nooks where the wave 
 lies calm, nay, Prospero, Miranda, Caliban and Ariel, be- 
 long to that country which is seen only by the intel- 
 lectual eye, which is bodied forth from things unknown, 
 but which abides for ever as it was first created, unsubject 
 to the decay that winds and waters, frosts and fire work 
 on the islands of the earth. This island is immortal, 
 though no ship has cast anchor there ; 
 
 It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, 
 Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity. 
 
 When Prospero and Miranda left it for Milan, and Ariel 
 flitted from it to the freedom of the elements, it was 
 seen no more, save by the high spirit of imagination 
 who has eyes within. And Shakespeare made its 
 scenery quite clear, set in his allusive way; here and 
 
286 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 there touching in, throughout the play, its landscape 
 to form a background for his human story. The sea 
 breaks in foam on the strong-based promontories which 
 jut out on either side of the bays where the 'yellow 
 sands' curve inwards, on which Ariel and the sea- 
 nymphs dance. Within the cliffs that overhang, like 
 eyebrows over deep-set eyes, the incoming tides, are 
 deep nooks of calm water into one of which Ariel brings 
 the King's ship, and out of whose profound stillness 
 Prospero called Ariel at night to fetch dew from the ' still- 
 vexed Bermoothes.' Fresh brooks run down to the sea 
 among the knotty pines and mossy oaks which fledge the 
 ridges of the hills. In the scattered groves the grass is 
 lush and lusty, and green, fed by frequent freshes ; but 
 outside, beyond the wood of limes near Prospero's cell, 
 where the land is somewhat tilled, there are wide spaces 
 of forest land, full of sharp furzes, pricking gorse and 
 thorns, unwholesome fens and standing pools ; and further 
 still, in another part of the isle, desert and uninhabitable 
 land. Since Prospero landed, goblins, and all the tribes 
 of the elves, brought thither by his art, dwell in these 
 wild places. The wolf and the bear live among their 
 rocks, and for many years these frightened beasts heard 
 the cries of Ariel penned in a cloven pine. This is the 
 scenery of the play, and it is the scenery of elfin-land. * 
 
 Prospero is, beyond his humanity, half a supernatural 
 power, the god of the island ; the last image, and the most 
 beautiful, of those mediseval enchanters who, like Vergil 
 and Merlin, bowed to their will the powers of nature. 
 Under his magic spell (which equally controls the 
 souls of men and the elemental spirits) the natural 
 and the supernatural mingle with a perfect ease of inter- 
 change, only possible to consummate genius. There is 
 no shock when we pass from the conversation of Pros- 
 pero and Miranda to the conversation of Prospero and 
 
THE TEMPEST 287 
 
 Ariel. Ariel seems as natural and true a character as 
 Ferdinand ; Caliban is accepted as easily as Stephano. We 
 are quite as ready to believe the music in the air, and 
 the harpies who set out and carry away the tables in the 
 wood, and the hounds that hunt Trinculo, Stephano, and 
 Caliban, as we are to see Ferdinand changing eyes with 
 Miranda, or Antonio and Sebastian drawing their swords 
 to slay Alonzo. The magic mist broods over the whole 
 play, and touches every character; the island makes its 
 own subtle atmosphere. Prospero himself seems to feel 
 that. When Gonzalo and the rest, at the end, are too 
 confused to realise where they are, he bids them wait 
 a little and recover : 
 
 You do yet taste 
 
 Some subtilties o' the isle that will not let you 
 
 Believe things certain ; 
 
 and Gonzalo expresses the same thought: We all have 
 found ourselves, 
 
 when no man was his own. 
 
 No one is free from this magic in the air but Ferdinand 
 and Miranda. True, their ' changing eyes ' at first sight 
 is attributed by Prospero to the influence of Ariel, but 
 that was an old man's mistake. There was no necessity 
 for Ariel's help or interference. Love has its own magic, 
 of a more potent spell than any in the book of Prospero. 
 These lovers made their own enchantments, and earn, as 
 Shakespeare wishes us to feel, the wonder of Prospero. 
 The sweet encounter of their souls left far behind his 
 wizardry. Even the life of Ariel, fine spirit as he was, 
 was not so fine as theirs. No lover's talk in Shake- 
 speare's dramas is more beautiful than theirs in the 
 third act, where the innocent love of Miranda, who has 
 never seen a man but her father, is in contrast with 
 that of Ferdinand, who has seen many women and 
 flitted through momentary love of them; but who, on 
 
288 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 touching Miranda, is lifted out of his atmosphere of 
 light love, his half-cynical view of women, on to the level 
 of her frank and innocent passion, such as Eve might 
 have felt when first she looked into Adam's eyes. She 
 would free him from his log-bearing service, herself 
 would carry the wood ; but the Prince accepts a toil which, 
 under her pitiful eyes, is glorified by love into a delight. 
 And his ravishment is answered by her pure, tender, and 
 childlike admiration and passion, confessing that he is 
 all she desires, all she can conceive of beauty, princeli- 
 ness, and joy. It is the modest, natural meeting in ardent 
 love of sex and sex, tempered by their duty to honour, 
 morality, and the high traditions of their birth. 
 
 We may well observe the exquisite temperance of Shake- 
 speare in all these scenes where Ferdinand and Miranda 
 meet. The delicacy of fine character is not once over- 
 stepped in a situation which, in the hands of a poet 
 of less reverence for human nature, might have afforded 
 room for sensational language or coarse innuendo. When 
 Dryden took the subject he vilified it with high-flown 
 talk and vile immodesty. But when Miranda first sees 
 Ferdinand her surprise is absolutely natural and so is her 
 
 language : 
 
 What is't? A spirit ? 
 Lord, how it looks about ! Believe me, sir, 
 It carries a brave form : — but, 'tis a spirit. 
 
 I might call him 
 A thing divine ; for nothing natural 
 I ever saw so noble. 
 
 And when Prospero calls Ferdinand spy and traitor, she 
 replies, and with equal grace of feeling, intelligence, 
 intuition, and imagination ; 
 
 There 's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
 If the ill spirit have so fair a house, 
 Good things will strive to dwell with 't. 
 
 Temperate boldness, modest frankness, innocent admira- 
 
THE TEMPEST 289 
 
 tion ! Ferdinand speaks with less naturalness, but with 
 the same temperance of words. It would have been a 
 gross mistake in art if, after the loss of all his shipmates 
 and while he believed his father drowned, he had broken 
 into those hyperboles of love in which Romeo or Florizel 
 indulged. Ferdinand is quiet ; his passion moves through 
 sorrow's clouds. This modesty of language here is the 
 result of one of those intuitive judgments of the fitting 
 which make the characters in Shakespeare's work like the 
 work of nature herself. And the intuitive judgment is 
 itself a child of high imagination. 
 
 Were he not certain of his power to keep this golden 
 measure, he would not have assumed so difficult a task 
 as the representation of Miranda — a girl ready to love 
 but not knowing it even through the experience of others ; 
 ignorant of what men were, save of her father ; surprised 
 in a moment into the passion of love and in wonder 
 with it ! 
 
 Will the artist keep her natural ? Will she be womanly 
 without lowering the type of fine womanhood? Will 
 she also represent, in all her ways, the logical result 
 of the circumstances which precede her meeting with 
 Ferdinand ? Will everything be taken into account, not 
 by the laboured analysis of the artist, but by his pene- 
 trating imagination ? 
 
 An affirmative answers all these questions. The deli- 
 cacy of Shakespeare's touch bears him with divine ease 
 through this maze of difficulty. Miranda is at all points 
 in harmony with herself and her situation. She is a 
 princess in manner, yet has never known the court; 
 she is ignorant of life, yet well educated by a scholar; 
 she lives in a preternatural air, yet belongs heart and 
 soul to common humanity ; she loves with a complete 
 self-surrender, yet guards her modesty, the reserve of her 
 sex, and her moral dignity. 
 
 T 
 
290 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Prospero protects her, lest she should lose her natural 
 womanhood in any way, from contact with his magic. 
 She knows that he has power over the elements, but this 
 does not influence her soul. She is as natural as if she 
 had never touched the supernatural. Ariel, we observe, is 
 never brought into contact with her. She does not seem 
 to know of his existence. Caliban is natural to her ; not a 
 monster, but a base type of man whom she does not love 
 to look upon ; and her knowledge of him alone as human 
 outside of her father makes her naive surprise at seeing 
 Ferdinand all the more natural. 'Is it a spirit?' she 
 cries. 
 
 We meet her first on the shore after the tempest, which, 
 Coleridge says, 'prepares and initiates the excitement 
 required for the entire piece.' She has seen the ship- 
 wreck, and her pity and tenderness for the poor souls 
 open her heart to us : 
 
 ! I have suffer'd 
 With those that I saw suffer : a brave vessel, 
 Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her, 
 Dash'd all to pieces. O ! the cry did knock 
 Against my very heart ! Poor souls, they perish'd. 
 Had I been any god of power, I would 
 Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er 
 It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and 
 The fraughting souls within her. 
 
 A most delightful outbreak of girlish ignorance and logic : 
 
 she would overturn the earth and sea and all the world 
 
 to save a few whom she saw die. 
 
 This quick sympathy, this charming self-forgetfulness, 
 
 keeps her free from any introspection, and gives the girl 
 
 the attractiveness of childhood. All her life, as yet, is in 
 
 love of her father. When he tells her the tale of his exile 
 
 with her, her chief interest is in the thought of the trouble 
 
 she must have given him — 
 
 ! my heart bleeds 
 To think o' th' teen that I have turn'd you to, 
 
THE TEMPEST 291 
 
 Which is from my remembrance. . . . 
 
 Alack ! what trouble 
 "Was I then to you ! 
 
 To such an unself- conscious, outward-going nature, the 
 great emotions of life come swiftly. When she hears of 
 Gonzalo's kindness to her father gratitude flies, swift as a 
 swallow, from her heart ; 
 
 Would I might 
 But ever see that man ! 
 
 When Ferdinand appears Love becomes her master in 
 
 a moment; and the charming openness with which it 
 
 becomes apparent, while yet unconfessed, shows how it 
 
 has filled her life immediately from end to end. She 
 
 does not believe, when her father accuses Ferdinand and 
 
 is harsh to him, that ill can dwell in so fair a house. 
 
 ' 1 11 be his surety,' she declares. Under the sway of her 
 
 swift love she sets herself, even in this first interview, 
 
 against her father's opinion. There is that in her heart 
 
 now which is stronger than filial duty, which emancipates 
 
 her from the dominance of the ancient ties. But this 
 
 difference with Prospero is so sweetly spoken, so delicate 
 
 of disposition, so reverential yet so pressing, that she 
 
 loses nothing of the daughter in the lover. Even when 
 
 she comforts Ferdinand for her father's hardness she 
 
 defends her father ; 
 
 Be of comfort ; 
 My father 's of a better nature, sir, 
 Than he appears by speech : this is unwonted, 
 Which now came from him. 
 
 Miranda has no self-introspection in this scene, but that 
 comes, momentarily, with the fulness of love. In that 
 most charming and delicate of love-conversings, when she 
 and Ferdinand meet before Prospero's cell, and he is 
 carrying the logs in enforced service, she looks into 
 herself for the first time and realises her separate life. 
 Shakespeare just touches this. After she has professed 
 
292 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 her love, she turns in upon herself. ' Wherefore iveep 
 you ? ' says Ferdinand. 
 
 At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer 
 What I desire to give : and much less take 
 What I shall die to want. 
 
 But no sooner has she looked into her own heart, than 
 she turns from its inspection to the love she feels for 
 Ferdinand. There, she feels, she loses herself, and that is 
 her greatest joy, the very essence of her nature. 
 
 One touch more, at the end, brings the island maiden 
 before our eyes, her natural love of beauty, her delicate 
 wonder and joy, her ravishment with life ; and these are 
 all enhanced by the golden air of love in which she 
 moves. We fancy, as we hear her, what she will be in 
 the future ; what Milan and Naples will finally say to her 
 white soul, which believes only in good. ' O wonder ! ' 
 she cries, when she sees Alonzo and the rest of the lords 
 crowded round her father, 
 
 How many goodly creatures are there here ! 
 How beauteous mankind is ! brave new world, 
 That has such people in 't ! 
 
 Ferdinand is not unworthy of her. He comes into the 
 play in the most romantic, most dramatic fashion, and in 
 lovely poetry : Ariel in the air before him, leading him by 
 music, singing delicate songs, full of the spirit of Nature. 
 All the charms of magic beauty attend the destined 
 youth, enhance the coming lover. And his sorrow for his 
 father adds to his appearance a tender, human grace, 
 so attractive that Ariel, with his far-off sympathy with 
 humanity, enshrines it in song. Thus attended with 
 romance he breaks, like a vision, on Miranda — 
 
 Fer. Where should this music be 1 i' th' air or th' earth ? 
 It sounds no more ; — and, sure, it waits upon 
 Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank, 
 Weeping again the king my father's wrack, 
 This music crept by me upon the waters, 
 
THE TEMPEST 293 
 
 Allaying both their fury, and my passion, 
 "With its sweet air : thence have I folio w'd it, — 
 Or it hath drawn me rather, — but 'tis gone. 
 No, it begins again. 
 
 Ariel sings. 
 Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
 Of his bones are coral made : 
 Those are pearls that were his eyes : 
 
 Nothing of him that doth fade 
 But doth suffer a sea-change 
 Into something rich and strange. 
 Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell : 
 
 (Burthen) ding, dong. 
 Hark ! now I hear them, — ding, dong, bell. 
 Fer. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. 
 This is no mortal business, nor no sound 
 That the earth owes : — I hear it now above me. 
 
 So, through so romantic an entrance, should a true lover 
 come to see his mistress for the first time; so should 
 his mistress see him first ; so keen, so natural was Shake- 
 speare's dramatic instinct ! 
 
 At first he is rapt by the music which remembers his 
 father. Then he sees Miranda, and his speech, beginning 
 with mere admiration and the courtesy of a gentleman, 
 suddenly breaks off and flies into love — 
 
 Most sure, the goddess 
 On whom these airs attend ! — Vouchsafe, my prayer 
 May know if you remain upon this island ; 
 And that you will some good instruction give, 
 How I may bear me here ; my prime request, 
 Which I do last pronounce, is, — you wonder ! — 
 If you be maid or no ? 
 
 And, in the joy of it, he thinks light of all he has 
 lost; of his own weakness when Prospero enchants his 
 strength ; of his imprisonment and toil — 
 
 Might I but through my prison once a day 
 Behold this maid : all corners else o' the earth 
 Let liberty make use of ; space enough 
 Have I in such a prison. 
 
 A charming lover ! Ferdinand, however, is nothing 
 
294 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 more than the lover. When he thinks justly, as when 
 
 he says 
 
 There be some sports are painful, and their labour 
 Delight in them sets off ; some kinds of baseness 
 Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters 
 Point to rich ends. 
 
 his thoughts are those love has put into his head. He 
 had not the capacity for them before love opened his 
 soul. He boasts a little of his regard for several women ; 
 his has been a butterfly's life ; but now — ' Hear my soul 
 speak,' he cries. The rest is boyishness. He will be 
 a man hereafter, because he has met Miranda. He is 
 not yet. 
 
 Prospero's narration in the first act of the rebellion of 
 his brother, and how, banished, he and Miranda come to 
 the island, is a masterly preparation for the rest of the 
 play ; and it is dramatically varied by his appeals to his 
 daughter and her answers. It is a homelike scene. She 
 sleeps ; and Ariel appears. His petition for liberty sup- 
 plies, rather awkwardly, the motive for another narration ; 
 that of Ariel's relation to Prospero ; but the awkwardness 
 of the motive is forgotten in the poetic beauty of the tale. 
 The visit to Caliban supplies, less awkwardly, the history 
 of another portion of the past; and both narrations to- 
 gether set us clearly free for the future action of the play. 
 We now knoAv all the past. We see Prospero fully, as he 
 is ; with Ariel who loves him on one side, and Caliban who 
 hates him on the other — two creatures of the elements — 
 one of their happy, the other of their hateful, aspects. 
 Prospero is human enough to be interesting in spite of his 
 art. He loves his child. When he speaks to her his 
 words flow into the poetry of admiration. 
 
 The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, 
 And say what thou seest yond. 
 
 That is the way he tells Miranda to look at Ferdinand, 
 
THE TEMPEST 295 
 
 and the pride of a father's love is in the words. He has 
 the wisdom of one who has ruled a great state and 
 stored up experience of mankind. His warning to Ferdi- 
 nand about Miranda, not given in her hearing, is that 
 of a man of the world to a youth. Solitude, which, 
 when a man has had no sorrow or love, brutalises, teaches 
 tolerance and forgiveness to the man who has experienced 
 both. His love for his child has kept his heart green, and 
 his affections are fresh with the dew of tenderness. He 
 has his enemies in his power. He takes full advantage, 
 with strength and foresight, of his opportunity ; a strong, 
 stern man. But when the time comes to punish the 
 guilty, he forgives, after grave reproof; not excusing their 
 crime, but with severe blame attached to it. But, having 
 once forgiven, he forgets. He bids the past bury itself. 
 He will think of it no more. That is the temper of the 
 right forgiver. It is the temper of God Himself. And it 
 is one of the creatures of God, a creature of the elements, 
 not human, not moral in our sense, who leads Prospero to 
 a full forgiveness. When Ariel tells him of the distracted 
 suffering of the King and his followers, and adds that if 
 he saw them, his affections would become tender, Pros- 
 pero's noble spirit, passing away from vengeance, resolves 
 upon forgiveness. He speaks to Ariel ; 
 
 Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a 
 
 Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, 
 
 One of their kind, that relish all as sharply 
 
 Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art ? 
 
 Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick 
 
 Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury 
 
 Do I take part ; the rarer action is 
 
 In virtue than in vengeance ; they being penitent, 
 
 The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 
 
 Not a frown further. Go, release them, Ariel ; 
 
 My charms I '11 break, their senses I '11 restore, 
 
 And they shall be themselves. 
 
 There is no trace of the existence of Christianity in the 
 
296 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 play, but its main drift is to teach forgiveness; not, of 
 course, directly, but as art teaches, indirectly. This is 
 the note also of Cymbeline and of Winters Tale. If 
 Shakespeare in these plays, and especially in this play, 
 was taking his leave, as some have conjectured, of the 
 stage and the life of the city, it would seem that, having 
 passed perhaps through great trouble or wrong, through 
 anger, it may be through transient cynicism, (we can 
 conjecture much from the temper of the tragedies), 
 he now forgave the world and the gods his suffering; 
 and felt that in the forgiveness he reached fresh life, 
 new happiness, youth in his spirit, sympathy with love ; 
 such as we find in Florizel and Perdita, in Miranda and 
 Ferdinand. It is a way forgiveness has of making us 
 alive again, of lifting all sorrow away. It brings with it 
 the restoration of romance. It is well that the greatest 
 intellect, the finest imaginative soul that ever lived in 
 England, should have left this legacy to us as the result of 
 his experience — ' Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
 them that trespass against us.' And it is also well that 
 he should have taken pains to say that when we forgive 
 it should be absolute. The memory of the injury is to 
 perish from the lips, from the heart of the forgiver, for 
 ' the quality of mercy is not strained.' 
 
 Let us not burthen our remembrances 
 With a heaviness that 's gone. 
 
 That is the voice of Prospero. I would fain think it the 
 most inmost feeling of Shakespeare's heart when he 
 returned to Stratford, and, in too brief a time, departed to 
 find the great Forgiver. 
 
 Ariel, as I said, was with Prospero in this, and I turn to 
 this imagined creature, who, though an embodied part of 
 the Spirit of Nature, is yet not all apart from the human 
 soul. For he knows he has no human soul, and this 
 
THE TEMPEST 297 
 
 knowledge of his apartness proves him capable of con- 
 ceiving something of that from which he is apart. He 
 has his own affections, and were they human, he says, 
 they would feel with human pain. 
 
 Ariel is ' but air,' the free spirit of the air, subtle, change- 
 ful, in incessant motion, lively, all-penetrating like the 
 ether, having power in the air and water, in fire, and to 
 the depths of the earth. To-day, we might call him 
 electricity. But, though at many points the conception 
 of Ariel is not apart from that which physical science 
 has concerning the finest forms of matter, a scientific 
 correlation does not fit his spiritual nature. For here, 
 though he does wondrous work, he is a spirit of personal 
 gaiety and self-enjoyment, and loves to play; 'a quaint' 
 and ' tricksy spirit,' like, when he is most himself, the 
 light and fluttering airs of summer. Nor is he only a 
 spirit of the air. He is also a spirit of fine fire ; air and 
 fire together, they have but one life in him. He im- 
 personates them both. And as the ethereal forms of 
 matter vibrate between the molecules of the earth and 
 water, so Ariel can live in the seas, and the vapours of 
 the clouds, and in the depths of the earth. It is thus he 
 first appears ; 
 
 All hail, great master ! grave sir, hail ! I come 
 
 To answer thy best pleasure ; be 't to fly, 
 
 To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride 
 
 On the curl'd clouds : to thy strong bidding task 
 
 Ariel and all his quality. 
 
 He flames amazement in the King's ship, burns like 
 lightning here and there, sets the sea a-fire, is himself 
 the fire, makes the tempest, disperses the fleet, binds and 
 looses the winds, calms their rage, lives in the deep bays 
 of the shore, can run upon the sharp wind of the north, 
 and do business in the veins of the earth when it is baked 
 with frost. He can be at will a nymph of the sea, a 
 
298 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 harpy, any shape he pleases. He, like the air, is always 
 invisible, save to the scholar who has mastered him by 
 knowledge. If I were a manager, and put The Tempest on 
 the stage, Ariel should only be a voice, no one should 
 represent him. It is terrible to see him done by a 
 dancing girl in a boy's dress. This pervasiveness of his, 
 in and through all nature, extends to man ; he knows and 
 feels the thoughts of men as if he were the ethereal 
 element in which the cells of the brain are floating ; as 
 if, being this, he would feel what passions also moved and 
 dwelt in the silences of the soul. He knows the plots of 
 the conspirators before they are spoken ; he clings to their 
 conscience like a remorse. Prospero has no need to call 
 him by speech. ' Come with a thought,' he cries to Ariel, 
 who is going on his messages. ' Thy thoughts I cleave to,' 
 answers Ariel. He has also the quickness of Thought. 
 Before the eye can close he is round the earth and back 
 again ; 
 
 I drink the air before me, and return 
 
 Or e'er your pulse twice beat. 
 
 This relation of his to thought lifts him above the mere 
 presentation of any natural power. He is not human, but 
 he can relate himself to humanity. It seems as if some- 
 thing of Prospero's soul during their comradeship had 
 infiltrated into Ariel. And the relation, on account of 
 this, between him and Prospero is almost a relation of 
 affection. Prospero admires his charm and beauty, and 
 his gracious ways. ' Fine apparition ! ' he calls out when 
 he comes in as a nymph of the sea. My ' quaint Ariel ! ' 
 my ' dainty Ariel,' are the pleasant terms with which 
 his master describes him. When he comes as a harpy, 
 Prospero is delighted with the grace the harpy had, 
 devouring. Prospero recognises something more spiritual 
 in Ariel than his airy charm. He really sympathises with 
 Ariel's longing for liberty. Then also he recalls how, 
 
THE TEMPEST 299 
 
 when the witch Sycorax, having subdued Ariel, laid on 
 him gross and shameful commands, the fine nature of 
 Ariel refused to do them. ' Thou wast,' he says, ' a spirit 
 too delicate 
 
 To act her earthly and abhorr'd commands. 
 
 This exquisite refinement of nature is then, as it were, a 
 kind of conscience in him. When their one quarrel is 
 over, they are together like friend and friend, even with 
 the love of friendship. Ariel wishes to be loved ; 
 
 Ari. Do you love me, master ? no ? 
 Pros. Dearly, my delicate Ariel ! 
 
 And when Ariel sings his lively song of freedom, Prospero, 
 
 charmed, cries out in admiration 
 
 Why, that 's my dainty Ariel ! I shall miss thee ; 
 But yet thou shalt have freedom. 
 
 But far beyond any companionship of feeling with his 
 master is Ariel's longing for freedom, to have his own 
 control. Of course, being a spirit of the unchartered air, 
 he desires only to obey himself. It is a desire harm- 
 less in him, whose limits are set by law. But Prospero 
 is a foreign law, and however kindly it be exercised, it 
 is against Ariel's choice, independent of the law of his 
 being. Therefore this bird of the air must escape his 
 cage. All he does in it is toil : 'What? is there more toil?' 
 Outside is joy, the soft life of the summer breeze, for, 
 beyond Prospero's commands, Ariel makes no tempests, 
 no disturbance. He is delicate. Music is his expression ; 
 the tabor and pipe, thin sweet instruments, are his to 
 play. He sings, like the light wind through the trees and 
 over the grass of the moor and among the rocks, clear, 
 ringing, elfin notes. All he sings is poetry, all his speech 
 is song. The life he lives is the life of the elements, and 
 his songs are of their doings. Lamb's saying of his song, 
 ' Pull fathom five thy father lies,' that it is ' of the water 
 watery, and that its feeling seems to resolve itself into the 
 
300 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 element it contemplates/ illustrates this nature in him, 
 and itself is poised in the melody of ocean. His other 
 song — ' Come unto these yellow sands ' — is so evanescent, 
 so delicate, so rippling, that no criticism can touch it 
 without hurting it. It is of the shore, the moving sand, 
 and the sea. Only when, in the calm of twilight, we see 
 the long-curving edge of half- slumbering foam, when the 
 wave is nothing but the lift of the tide, and hear the 
 hushing murmur of it on the sand, as it leaves the fan- 
 tastic outline of the height it reached before its retreat — 
 do we understand the delicate playing of Ariel, the dance 
 he leads of sprites that foot it featly here and there. 
 
 Come unto these yellow sands, 
 
 And then take hands : 
 Curtsied when you have and kiss'd, — 
 
 The wild waves whist, — 
 Foot it featly here and there ; 
 And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. 
 
 More delicate, dainty, and ethereal is Ariel as the soft 
 
 summer wafts of air which come and go with fluttering 
 
 pleasure. They make the faint blossoms tremble where 
 
 the bee can enter, they rock the cowslip's bell, and stir 
 
 the fur on the bat's wing, when the owls call to the night. 
 
 Where the bee sucks, there suck I 
 In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 
 There I couch when owls do cry. 
 On the bat's back I do fly 
 After summer merrily : 
 
 This is Ariel's farewell to Prospero, this the life he hopes 
 to live in freedom. That is his true being ; aerial gentle- 
 ness, the spirit of the faint swift winds. The metre helps 
 the conception. The dactyls are like the pulse of wings. 
 
 Merrily, merrily shall I live now, 
 
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. 
 
 Thus Ariel passes into the elements. But Shakespeare, 
 mastered while he wrote by his shaping spirit of imagina- 
 tion, has made him more than elemental, has given him a 
 
THE TEMPEST 301 
 
 personality, touched with gleams of our humanity, as of 
 old he did, but not so fully, to Oberon. Only Ariel is 
 more elemental than Oberon, and, strange enough, also 
 more human. Prospcro has entered into him. Therefore 
 round him collects the greater interest. Oberon we may 
 meet in the woods by moonlight. Ariel is always with us, 
 like the air. We breathe his spirit every day. 
 
 Over against him is Caliban, much more human than 
 Ariel, begotten of a witch by an earth-demon ; half of his 
 gross father's quality, linked to the baser elements of the 
 earth ; half of his mother's wicked humanity. Evil as he 
 is, he is made capable, by Prospero's early education of 
 him, of, perhaps, a higher life in the future. Of this 
 Shakespeare, in his pity, gives us a few hints. 
 
 Apart from his human traits, Caliban represents the 
 gross, brutal, unwholesome elements of the earth, those 
 that are the curse and plague of men ; and these elements 
 are made more brutal because they are concentrated 
 into one who, himself a savage and descended from a 
 villainous hag, lives solely for his senses and appetites, 
 as deformed in mind as in body. When he is lifted be- 
 yond mere sense and appetite by the spirit of hate, he 
 tends to become an evil spirit of the earth, an elemental 
 demon. Then all his curses are of the earth earthy, and 
 of the destroying terrors of the earth. 
 
 As wicked clew as e'er my mother brush'd 
 With raven's feather from unwholesome fen 
 Drop on you both ! a south-west blow on ye, 
 And blister you all o'er ! 
 
 All the charms 
 Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you ! 
 
 The red plague rid you, 
 For learning me your language ! 
 
 All the infections that the sun sucks up 
 
 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him 
 
 By inch-meal a disease ! 
 
302 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 That is not only the witch- wickedness of his mother in 
 him ; it is also the deadliness of the earth. Shakespeare 
 just touches that much of the supernatural into him. 
 Otherwise, he is no more than the low- type savage, made 
 by his deformity a hater and envier of a higher race. 
 He has the instincts and nature-knowledge of the savage, 
 knows the whole island, all that his mother-earth pro- 
 duces, the freshets, springs, brine pits, the miry fens, the 
 berry-bearing shrubs, the apes that chatter to him, the 
 hedgehogs that prick his feet, the adders that sting 
 and hiss — 
 
 I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow ; 
 And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts ; 
 Show thee a jay's nest and instruct thee how 
 To snare the nimble marmozet ; I '11 bring thee 
 To clust'ring filberts, and sometimes I '11 get thee 
 Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me ? 
 
 Like the savage also who lives close to Nature, and 
 impersonates her doings, all he speaks, when he is excited, 
 is poetical. Shakespeare puts the most of what he says 
 into blank verse. Caliban only begins to lose his imagina- 
 tive elements when he associates with Stephano and 
 Trinculo, who would not have a poetical thought, if they 
 could live for a thousand years. Even the little education 
 which Prospero has given him has injured his imagination. 
 Otherwise, when his senses are pleased, and when he 
 hears the music Ariel is always making, his heart is 
 stirred, his sense of beauty touched. Shakespeare does 
 not leave this poor soul, cursed from his birth, without 
 our pity. Trinculo trembles with fear when Ariel's pipe 
 and tabor play. 'Be not afeard/ cries Caliban, and 
 Prospero himself could scarce speak in better verse, 
 
 Be not afeard : the isle is full of noises, 
 
 Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. 
 
 Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 
 
 Will hum about mine ears ; and sometime voices, 
 
 That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, 
 
THE TEMPEST 303 
 
 Will make iue sleep again : and then, in dreaming, 
 The clouds methought would open, and show riches 
 Ready to drop upon me ; that, when I wak'd, 
 I cried to dream again. 
 
 Thus ' music for a time doth change his nature.' One 
 feels that he is capable of redemption ; but Stephano and 
 Trinculo, deaf to sweet sounds, are in this life irredeem- 
 ably the same. And before the close of the play, Caliban 
 is on the way to conversion. He is far more intelligent 
 than Stephano, who is more intelligent than Trinculo. 
 Prospero has despaired of him, but Shakespeare does not. 
 Even when he is drunk, he goes straight to his purpose 
 of murder, and cares nothing for the shining garments 
 which enrapture his companions. ' Let it alone, thou fool; 
 it is but trash.' And when ho is punished, and Prospero 
 forgives him, he cries ; 
 
 I '11 be wise hereafter, 
 
 And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass 
 
 Was I, to take this drunkard for a god, 
 
 And worship this dull fool ! 
 
 Critical of others and of himself, we see his intellect 
 emerging. When he can argue thus, the part he plays 
 in Renan's philosophic drama does not seem impossible. 
 
 When Caliban is drunk, he is no longer the brute. 
 Curiously enough, one might argue that it was alcohol 
 that opened his mind ; Bacchus the Emancipator has to 
 do with him. When he is drunk for the first time, he 
 ceases to be only brutish clay. The spark of soul in him 
 begins to breathe and expand. Before alcohol paralyses, 
 it stings the brain-cells, kindles the fire in the soul, opens 
 ideal hopes, desires for abstract aims. In a savage like 
 Caliban these would be wild and unformed, and if 
 drunkenness deepened, would soon slip back into sensu- 
 ality and cruelty. But while the first stimulus lasted, 
 they would belong to the soul, and emerge in such 
 imaginative pleasure as Caliban felt in the music of the 
 
304 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 island. Then, being in a nature in which reason "was 
 undeveloped, they would further appear as whirling and 
 shapeless desires, which, in the circumstances of Caliban, 
 would be for liberty, such wild liberty as the uneducated 
 revolutionist cries for. It is the first idea of Caliban when 
 he is drunk, and what he says is strangely like the blind 
 shouting of the mob, who know not what they affirm or 
 what they deny : 
 
 'Ban, 'Ban, Ca— Caliban 
 Has a new master — Get a new man. 
 Freedom, high-day ! high-day, freedom ! freedom 1 
 high-day ! freedom ! 
 
 Ariel also desires freedom, and it is interesting to compare 
 his cry for it — the cry of a delicate spirit — with this 
 drunken howl of Caliban. But howl or not, the concep- 
 tion of freedom means the possibility of progress. 
 
 We cannot pass over Stephano and Trinculo. They are 
 the humorous reflection, on a lower level, of the King and 
 the nobles ; of what Alonzo and his nobles might be, if 
 they had been born as grooms and butlers. And their 
 conspiracy to slay Prospero, and be kings of the island, 
 is the ludicrous image of the conspiracy of Sebastian and 
 Antonio to slay Alonzo, even of the conspiracy in the past 
 which drove Prospero from his throne. That is Shake- 
 speare, fanciful and fantastic, doubling of his plot; his 
 addition of a lining of gaiety to the cloke of seriousness. 
 
 Stephano and Trinculo are Shakespeare's last study of 
 the drunkard. It is the habit to speak of them together, 
 but Shakespeare took pains to differentiate them. They 
 have quite distinct characters, though they belong to the 
 same type. They are set into contrast with Caliban ; 
 the savages of civilisation with the natural savage ; and 
 Caliban is the better man. They are quite useless on the 
 island ; the sweet sounds of it are nothing to them ; they 
 do not understand Caliban when he is poetical. Caliban 
 
THE TEMPEST 305 
 
 becomes an idcaliser when lie is drunk ; they lower every- 
 thing, when they are drunk, to their own level. Caliban's 
 mind develops under liquor; theirs is quite brutalised, save 
 that they have not lost the gross, natural humour of their 
 class. They are both amusing ; and curiously enough, but, 
 when one thinks of it, quite a piece of natural truth, 
 Trinculo, the jester, when he is drunk, is not so entertain- 
 ing as Stephano, the butler. Each, in drink, loses his 
 conventional habit. Caliban, drunk, loses his fear of 
 Prospero, and plans his master's murder with audacity, 
 even with ability. Trinculo's fears redouble. Stephano 
 is not afraid of anything, but his vulgarity of mind, when 
 he is drunk, rises into its perfect consummation. It 
 is almost ideal. His last speech in which — having been 
 pinched and cramped, and hunted with dogs — his courage 
 which endears him to us is still high and is heightened 
 by the liquor in him, is inimitably invented by Shake- 
 speare. He comes, in the stolen apparel, all bedraggled, 
 before the fine company, and is not a bit ashamed or 
 depressed. In his drunkenness, he is even for the first 
 time intelligent. 
 
 Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man take care for him- 
 self ; for all is but fortune. — Coragio ! bully- monster, Coragio ! 
 
 I take little interest in Antonio, Sebastian, Alonzo, and 
 the rest. The scene where they first talk together on the 
 island is the dullest in the play — so dull that I suspect 
 that Shakespeare is here satirising the stupidity which 
 passed for wit in court society. Even Gonzalo, the good 
 lord, a variation of Polonius, is not a stirring personage. 
 Shakespeare always mocks, with a certain gentleness, the 
 old diplomatist, the counsellor who has grown into a fossil 
 at the court. Gonzalo is good, but he has been made 
 unintelligent by his own prudence. We forgive, however, 
 his stupidity, because he has not lost his loving-kindness. 
 Where he is intelligent, he is so by affection, 
 u 
 
306 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Antonio, having once conspired, is quite ready to con- 
 spire again, and leads Sebastian to the slaying of Alonzo ; 
 as in the past he has himself slain, as he supposes, 
 Prospero. His nature, we see, has not been changed 
 during all these years. He is a traitor in grain. Sin has 
 multiplied from sin in him, and, when he is maddened 
 by Ariel, his conscience does not awaken. It has been 
 seared. What he feels is envy, hatred, and wrath. He 
 draws his sword to slay. But Alonzo, who had helped 
 Antonio to do the wrong to Prospero, now softened by the 
 loss of his son, shaken by his shipwreck — himself no 
 mocker, like Sebastian and Antonio, of goodness in Gon- 
 zalo — is awakened into repentance by the invisible voice 
 of Ariel which recalls his guilt. Few words have better 
 expressed the loud shout of conscience, roused to action 
 after a long sleep, than his cry ; 
 
 0, it is monstrous ! monstrous ! 
 Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ; 
 The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd 
 The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass. 
 Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded ; and 
 I '11 seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, 
 And with him there lie mudded. 
 
 So, he flies, distracted, over the island, with Sebastian 
 and Antonio. They are maddened, and are still evil ; he 
 is maddened but repentant ; and, because he is penitent, 
 Prospero is comforting in the end to him, but stern as a 
 judge to the others. Indeed, it was dramatically neces- 
 sary that Alonzo should not be hardened in his guilt, 
 otherwise there would not be easy room for his son to be 
 betrothed to Prospero's daughter. 
 
 And now we come to the conclusion. Prospero, by his 
 art, is almost supernatural, and has made the island, and 
 all that occurs in it, supernatural. He is removed, in this 
 
THE TEMPEST 307 
 
 way, from common humanity. He acts like a divine 
 Providence, moulding nature and human wills to his 
 purposed end. That end, being good, makes his action 
 good. But it would cease to be good, and all the previous 
 action would be stained, if the thought of vengeance on 
 the guilty which he has entertained so long should pass 
 beyond the stern doing of justice into personal revenge; 
 should bar forgiveness out of his heart. He would then 
 fulfil no longer the part of Providence which embodies law, 
 not the caprice of the passions. Therefore he forgives. 
 And his humanity is secured. We know he will be a noble 
 ruler when he returns to Milan, a man among men. 
 
 Irresponsible power, that terrible area of temptation, 
 has not injured his character, and, in that, he is one of 
 the noblest of Shakespeare's men. But he had great 
 allies. His little daughter kept him human; his love 
 for her, as she grew to womanhood, strengthened his 
 humanity. Yet, he is still isolated from men by his all- 
 potent art. He who can command at will the forces 
 of nature, who can see the thoughts of men by Ariel 
 who cleaves to them, is too divided from common 
 humanity to enter into the world, and wisely play his 
 part therein. He feels that himself. He is returning to 
 live with his fellow-men. He will, therefore, be only a man. 
 Therefore he makes the great renunciation ; he abjures 
 his magic. This is one of the wisest, one of the best 
 imagined thoughts in Shakespeare. Goethe, in the 
 Faust, was not capable of it. And the high nobility of 
 the act makes Prospero's expression of it most noble in 
 poetry ; 
 
 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
 And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him 
 When he comes back ; you demi-puppets, that 
 By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, 
 
308 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you, whose pastime 
 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms ; that rejoice 
 
 To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid, — 
 
 Weak masters though ye be — I have bedimm'd 
 
 The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, 
 
 And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault 
 
 Set roaring war : to the dread-rattling thunder 
 
 Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 
 With his own bolt : the strong-bas'd promontory 
 
 Have I made shake ; and by the spurs pluck'd up 
 
 The pine and cedar : graves at my command 
 
 Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth 
 
 By my so potent art. But this rough magic 
 
 I here abjure ; and, when I have requir'd 
 
 Some heavenly music, — which even now I do, — 
 
 To work mine end upon their senses that 
 
 This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, 
 
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 
 
 And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, 
 
 I'll drown my book. [Solemn music. 
 
 And so, the enchantment is over. Ariel has regained 
 his elemental freedom. Perhaps, he sleeps, every spring, 
 in the cowslip's bell, or we may catch his eyes, in summer 
 twilights, as the bats wheel by our seat under the trees. 
 All the nymphs who danced on the yellow sands, all the 
 goblins who pinched Caliban, have fled to their homes. 
 The music, the sweet sounds, that filled the air of the 
 island, are heard no more. The stormy sea that circled 
 round the overhanging cliffs, rolls now over an empty 
 space ; for the dim island, its haunted groves, its yellow 
 sands, its pines that plumed the ridges above the moor- 
 land, are all sunk, with Prospero's book, deeper than 
 plummet ever sounded. The isle came, enchanted, out 
 of space ; it has returned, like Ariel, to the elements. All 
 was illusion. Only humanity remains, housed in Milan 
 and in Naples; only love lasts, glowing in the heart of 
 Miranda and Ferdinand. These also, in their time, de- 
 parted, and only poetry is left — the eternal possession 
 of the soul, now and in the world beyond — the true 
 
THE TEMPEST 309 
 
 enchantment; and the writer of it, the true Prospero, 
 the true enchanter. 
 
 Indeed, it has been said that Shakespeare pictured 
 himself as Prospero, and said farewell in this play to that 
 dramatic poetry in which he had wrought so many en- 
 chantments, and seen, through Ariel, his familiar spirit of 
 imagination whom he now set free, into the secret of 
 Nature and the hearts of men. His magic staff he buried 
 now, and deeper than ever plummet sounded, he drowned 
 his book. 1 He had created a whole world, and now he 
 would rest from creation. * 
 
 The argument might be carried further. It might be 
 said that Shakespeare, looking back on the work he had 
 now laid aside, and on life's comedy and tragedy, expressed 
 his judgment of it in what he said to Ferdinand and 
 Miranda concerning the pageant he had shown them. 
 All we think so vital, the glory, love, and suffering of 
 the world, the cloud-capped philosophy and the solemn 
 temples of law and religion, the earth itself, and all the 
 human struggle on it, are illusion, the flitting in a dream 
 of the Soul of the world, itself a dream, to and fro through 
 empty space; and all its actors, like the spirits in the 
 masque, phantoms in the dream, drawn out of the visionary 
 imagination to make a show, and vanishing into the mist, 
 to leave not a rack behind. It was thus, some theorist 
 might say, that Shakespeare thought of all this world 
 
 1 Many years ago, Emile Montegut elaborated this theory in a long and 
 admirable article in, if I remember rightly, the Revue des deux Mondes. 
 It was so well done that it almost convinced the reader, at least for a time, 
 that it was a true theory. There can, however, be no certainty in any of 
 these theories. They are interesting as excursions into the unknowable, 
 but they remain guesses, and no more. One may, I think, argue from the 
 general temper of a play to the temper of the writer's mind when he wrote 
 it, especially when the same kind of temper, though in different moods, 
 prevails through a succession of plays, as in the great tragedies. But 
 Shakespeare was so impersonal in his art, that ouch argument has not 
 much weight. 
 
310 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 
 
 when he was near departure from it, and quote these 
 famous lines : 
 
 These our actors, 
 As I foretold you, were all spirits and 
 Are melted into air, into thin air : 
 And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind. "We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 This is a thought common to the race. It seems, so 
 common is it, to belong to the original texture of 
 humanity. In certain circumstances, varying as tempera- 
 ments vary, it is sure to slip into the mind. Most often 
 it slips out again : sometimes it stays ; and it is one of 
 the main thoughts of a religion held by many millions of 
 men. Shakespeare was sure to have felt it moving in his 
 mind, and to have known that it would move in the minds 
 of many of his characters, in forms varying with the 
 various characters. It is expressed again and again in 
 the plays. It is here expressed in lines of such uncommon 
 force and beauty that it ceases to seem common ; it is as 
 if no one felt it before Prospero shaped it. And it exactly 
 fits the temper of his mind at this instant of the play ; 
 naturally emerging from the scene and the circumstances. 
 But Prospero — and, indeed, Shakespeare, if we mix him 
 up with Prospero — was far too sane and too experienced 
 a character to imagine that life was illusion, or that we 
 were the stuff of dreams, or that sleep rounded our little 
 life. No one should quote the passage as an explanation 
 of Shakespeare's theory of life, only as far as 'rounded 
 with a sleep.' The rest is Prospero's (or Shakespeare's) 
 indication that his picture of the story of humanity arose 
 from the passing weakness of a vexed and weary brain. 
 
THE TEMPEST 311 
 
 The philosophy of illusion is the philosophy of tired 
 people. 
 
 Sir, I am vex'd : 
 
 Bear with my weakness ; my old brain is troubled. 
 
 Be not disturb'd with my infirmity. 
 
 If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell 
 
 And there repose : a turn or two I '11 walk, 
 
 To still my beating mind. 
 
 After all, he need not have taken the trouble to explain 
 to Ferdinand and Miranda that they were only alive in a 
 dream. The lovers knew better. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
(,6,3,6- H 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: Feb. 2009 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724) 779-2111