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THINGS dramatic and things theatrical are often confounded together in the minds of English people, who, being for the most part neither the one nor the other, speak and write of them as if they were identical, instead of, as they are, so dissimilar that they are nearly opposite.
That which is dramatic in human nature is the passionate, emotional, humorous element, the simplest
portion of our composition, after our mere instincts, to which it is closely allied, and this has no
relation whatever, beyond its momentary excitement and gratification, to that which imitates it, and
is its theatrical reproduction; the dramatic is the real, of which the theatrical
is the false.
Both nations and individuals in whom the dramatic temperament strongly preponderates are rather
remarkable for a certain vivid simplicity of nature, which produces sincerity and vehemence of
emotion and expression, but is entirely without the consciousness which is never
absent from the theatrical element.
Children are always dramatic, but only theatrical when they become aware that they are objects of
admiring attention ; in which case the assuming and dissembling capacity of acting
develops itself comically and sadly enough in them.
The Italians, nationally and individually, are dramatic; the French, on the contrary, theatrical; we
English of the present day are neither the one nor the other, though our possession of the noblest
dramatic literature in the world proves how deeply at one time our national character was imbued
with elements which are now so latent as almost to be of doubtful existence; while, on the other
hand, our American progeny are, as a nation, devoid
The combination of the power of representing passion and emotion with that of imagining or conceiving it-that is, of the theatrical talent with the dramatic temperament —is essential to make a good actor; their combination in the highest possible degree alone makes a great one.
There is a specific comprehension of effect and the means of producing it, which, in some persons, is
a distinct capacity, and this forms business, goes sometimes absolutely against the dramatic
temperament, which is nevertheless essential to it.
Every day lessens the frequency of this specific combination among ourselves, for- the dramatic
temperament, always exceptional in England, is becoming daily more so under the various adverse
influences of a state of civilisation and society which fosters a genuine dislike to exhibitions of
emotion, and a cynical disbelief in the reality of it, both necessarily repressing, first, its
expression, and next, its existence. On the other hand, greater intellectual cultivation and a purer
and more elevated taste, are unfavourable to the existence of the true theatrical spirit; and
English actors of the present day are of the public, by being "nothing if not critical," and are not
of
When Mrs. Siddons, in her spectacles and mob-cap, read Macbeth or King
John, it was one of the grandest dramatic achievements that could be imagined, with the
least possible admixture of the theatrical element; the representation of the Duke's
Motto, with all its resources of scenic effect, is a striking and interesting theatrical
entertainment, with
Garrick was, I suppose, the most perfect actor that our stage has ever produced, equalling in tragedy and comedy the greatest performers of both ; but while his dramatic organisation enabled him to represent with exquisite power and pathos the principal characters of Shakespeare's noblest plays, his theatrical taste induced him to garble, desecrate, and disfigure the masterpieces of which he was so fine an interpreter, in order to produce or enhance those peculiar effects which constitute the chief merit and principal attraction of all theatrical exhibitions.
Mrs. Siddons could lay no claim to versatility—it was not in her nature; she was without mobility of
mind, countenance, or manner; and her dramatic organisation was in that respect inferior to
Garrick's; but out of a family of twenty-eight persons, all of whom made the stage their vocation,
she alone preeminently combined the qualities requisite to
Another member of that family—a foreigner by birth, and endowed with the most powerful and vivid
dramatic organisation—possessed in so small a degree the faculty of the stage, that the parts which
she represented successfully were few in number, and though among them there were some dramatic creations of extraordinary originality and beauty, she never rose to the highest
rank in her profession, nor could claim in any sense the title of a great theatrical artist.—This
was my mother. And I suppose no member of that large histrionic family was endowed to the same
degree with the natural dramatic temperament. The truth of her intonation, accent, and emphasis,
made her common speech as good as a play to hear, (oh, how much better than some we do hear!) and whereas I have seen the Shakespeare of my father, and the Shakespeare and
Milton of Mrs. Siddons, with every emphatic word underlined and accentuated, lest they should omit
the right true than she would a candle to have
walked by at noonday. She was an incomparable critic; and though the intrepid sincerity of her
nature made her strictures sometimes more accurate than acceptable, they were inestimable for the
fine tact for truth, which made her instinctively reject in nature and art whatever sinned against
it.
I do not know whether I shall be considered competent to pass a judgment on myself in this matter,
but I think I am. Inheriting from my father a theatrical descent of two generations and my mother's
vivid and versatile organisation, the stage itself, though it became from the force of circumstances
my career, was, partly from my nature, and partly from my education, so repugnant to me, that I
failed to accomplish any result at all, worthy of my many advantages. I imagine I disappointed alike
those who did and those who did not think me endowed with the talent of my family, and incurred,
towards
In my father and mother I have had frequent opportunities of observing in most marked contrast the
rapid intuitive perception of the dramatic instinct in an organisation where it preponderated, and
the laborious process of logical argument by which the same result, on a given question, was reached
by a mind of different constitution (my father's), and reached with much doubt and hesitation,
caused by the very application of analytical reasoning. The slow mental process might with time have achieved a right result in all such cases; but the dramatic instinct,
aided by a fine organisation, was unerring; and this leads me to observe, that there is no reason
whatever to expect that fine actors shall be necessarily profound commentators on the parts that
they sustain most successfully, but rather the contrary.
I trust I shall not be found wanting in due respect for the greatness that is gone from us, if I say
that Mrs. Siddons' analysis of the part of "Lady Macbeth" was to be found alone in
her representation of it; of the magnificence of which the "essay" she has left upon the character
gives not the faintest idea.
If that great actress had possessed the order of mind capable of conceiving and producing a philosophical analysis of any of the wonderful poetical creations which she so wonderfully embodied, she would surely never have been able to embody them as she did. For to whom are all things given ? and to whom were ever given, in such abundant measure, consenting and harmonious endowments of mind and body for the peculiar labour of her life?
The dramatic faculty, as I have said, lies in a power of apprehension quicker than the disintegrating
process of critical analysis, and when it is powerful, and the organisation fine, as with Mrs.
Siddons, perception rather than reflection reaches the aim proposed; and the
There is something anomalous in that which we call the dramatic art that has often arrested my attention and exercised my thoughts; the special gift and sole industry of so many of my kindred, and the only labour of my own life, it has been a subject of constant and curious speculation with me, combining as it does elements at once so congenial and so antagonistic to my nature.
Its most original process, that is, the conception of the character to be represented, is a mere
reception of the creation of another mind; and its mechanical part, that is, the representation of
the character thus apprehended, has no reference to the intrinsic, poetical, or dramatic merit of
the original creation, but merely to the accuracy and power of the actor's perception of it; thus
the character of "Lady Macbeth" is as majestic, awful, and poetical, whether it be
This same dramatic art has neither fixed ules, specific principles, indispensable rudiments, nor
fundamental laws; it has no basis in positive science, as music, painting, sculpture, ad'
architecture have; and differs from them U, in that the mere appearance of spontaneity, rhich 'is an
acknowledged assumption, is its alef merit. And yet— This younger of the sister
arts, Where all their charms combine—
requires in its professors the imagination of the
poet, the ear of the musician, the eye of the painter and sculptor, and over and above these, a
faculty peculiar to itself, inasmuch as the actor personally fulfils and embodies his conception;
his own voice is his cunningly modulated instrument; his own face the canvas whereon he portrays the
various expressions of his passion; his own frame the mould in which
MACBETH is pre-eminently the Drama of Con- science. It is the most wonderful history of temptation,
in its various agency upon the human soul, that is to be found in the universal range of imaginative
literature. Viewed in this aspect, the solemn march of the tragedy becomes awful, and its
development a personal appeal, of the profoundest nature, to every one who considers it with that
serious attention that its excellence as a work of art alone entitles :it to command. To every human
soul it tells the story of its own experience, rendered indeed Macbeth the grandest of all poetical
lessons, the most powerful of all purely fictitious moralities, the most solemn of all lay sermons
drawn from the text of human nature.
In a small pamphlet, written many years ago by Mr. John Kemble, upon the subject of the character of Macbeth, and which now survives as a mere curiosity of literature, he defends with considerable warmth the hero of the play from a charge of cowardice, brought against him either by Malone or Steevens in some of their strictures on the tragedy.
This charge appeared to me singular, as it would never have occurred to me that there could be two
opinions upon the subject of the personal prowess of the soldier; who comes before us heralded by
the martial title of Bellona's bridegroom, and wearing the garland of a double victory. But, in
treating his view of the question, Mr. Kemble dwells, with extreme and just admiration, upon the
skill with which Shakespeare has thrown all the other characters into a shadowy background, in order
to bring out with redoubled brilliancy the form of Macbeth when it is first presented to us. Banquo,
his fellow in fight and coadjutor in conquest, shares both the dangers and rewards of his
expedition; and yet it is the figure of Macbeth which stands out prominently in the van of the
battle so finely described by Rosse—it is he whom the king selects as heir to the dignities of the
treacherous Thane of Cawdor—it is to meet him that the withered ambassadresses of the powers of
darkness float through the lurid twilight of the battle day; and when the throb
Marshalled with triumphant strains of warlike melody; paged at the heels by his victorious soldiers; surrounded by their brave and noble leaders, himself the leader of them all; flushed with success and crowned with triumph —Macbeth stands before us; and the shaggy brown heath seems illuminated around him with the keen glitter of arms, the waving of bright banners, and broad tartan folds, and the light that emanates from, and surrounds as with a dazzling halo, the face and form of a heroic man in the hour of his success.
Wonderful indeed, in execution as in conception, is this brilliant image of warlike glory! But how
much more wonderful, in conception
When the unearthly forms and greeting of the witches have arrested the attention of the warriors, and
to the amazement excited in both of them is added, in the breast of one, the first shuddering thrill
of a guilty thought which betrays itself in the start with which he receives prophecies which to the
ear of Banquo seem only as "things that do sound so fair;" Macbeth has already accepted the first
inspiration of
The fair sound has conveyed no foul sense to his perception, but, incited rather by the fear and
bewilderment of his usually dauntless companion than by any misgiving of his own (which indeed his
calm and measured adjuration shows him to be free from), he turns to these mysterious oracles, and,
with that authority before which the devils of old trembled and dispossessed themselves of their
prey, he questions, and they reply. Mark the power— "In the name of
At that solemn appeal, does one not see hell's agents start and cower like the foul toad touched by
the celestial spear? How pales the glitter of the hero of the battle-field before the steadfast
shining of this honest man, when to his sacred summons the subject ministers of hell reply true
oracles, though uttered by lying lips—sincere homage, such as was rendered on the fields of
Palestine by the defeated powers of darkness, to the divine virtue that overthrew them-such as for
ever unwilling evil pays to the good which predominates over it, the everlasting subjection of hell
to heaven. Truth, are ye fantastical?""Hail, hail, hail —lesser than Macbeth, but greater,"
etc. And now the confused and troubled workings of Macbeth's mind pour themselves forth in rapid
questions, urging one upon another the evident obstacles which ctowd, faster than his his challenge, made, not in the name or spirit of
truth, but at the suggestion of the grasping devil which is fast growing into entire possession of
his heart, no answer is vouchsafed; the witches vanish, leaving the words of impotent and passionate
command to fall upon the empty air. The reply to his vehement questioning has already been made; he
has seen, at one glimpse, in the very darkest depths of his imagination, how the things foretold may be, and to that fatal answer alone
is he left by the silence of those whose mission to him is thenceforth fully accomplished. Twice
does he endeavour to draw from Banquo some comment other than that of mere astonishment upon the
fortunes thus foretold them :—
But the careless answers of Banquo uncon- "What! can the devil
speak true?"
proves at once that he had hitherto attached no importance to the prophecy
of the witches, and that, now that its partial fulfilment compelled him to do so, he unhesitatingly
pronounces the agency through which their foreknowledge had reached them to be evil. Most
significant indeed is the direct, rapid, unhesitating intuition by which the one mind instantly
repels the approach of evil, pronouncing it at once to be so, compared with the troubled, perplexed,
imperfect process, half mental, half moral, by which the other labours to strangle within himself
the pleadings of his better angel:—
The devil's own logic: the inference of
Having now not only determined the nature of the visitation they have received, but become
etc. Banquo is called upon by Macbeth directly for some expression of his own
opinion of these mysterious events, and the impression they have made on his mind. "Do you
not hope your children
etc.shall be kings,"
He answers with that solemn warning, almost approaching to a rebuke of the evil suggestion that he
now for the first time perceives invading his companion's mind:—
etc.
It is not a little remarkable that, having in the first instance expressed so strongly his "What! can the devil speak
true?"
Banquo, in the final deliberate expression of his opinion to Macbeth upon the
subject of the witches' prophecy, warns him against the semblance of truth, that combined with his
own treacherous infirmity, is strengthening the temptation by which his whole soul is being
searched:—
etc.
Although these two passages may appear at first to involve a contradiction almost, it seems to me
that both the sentiments—the brave, sudden denial of any kindred between the devil and truth, and
the subsequent admission of the awful mystery by which truth sometimes is permitted to be a
two-edged weapon in the armoury of hell—are eminently characteristic of the same mind. Obliged to
confess that the devil does speak true sometimes, Banquo,
Here, for the first time, Macbeth encounters the barrier of that uncompromising spirit, that
sovereignty of nature, which as he afterwards himself acknowledges "would
be feared,"
and which he does fear and hate accordingly, more and more savagely and
bitterly, till detestation of him as his natural superior, terror of him as the possible avenger of
blood, and envy of him as the future father of a line of kings, fill up the measure of his murderous
ill-will, and thrust him upon the determination of Banquo's assassination; and when, in the midst of
his royal banquet-hall, filled with hollow-hearted feasting and ominous revelry and splendour, his
con-
etc. that the dead lips appear to move, and the dead eyes are sadly fixed on him,
and the heavy locks, dripping with gore, are shaken in silent intolerable rebuke.
In the meeting with the kind-hearted old king, the loyal professions of the two generals are, as
might be expected, precisely in inverse ratio to their sincere devotion to Duncan. Banquo answers in
a few simple words the affectionate demonstration of his sovereign, while Macbeth, with his whole
mind churning round and round like some black whirlpool the murderous but yet unformed designs
In the very next scene, we have the invocation to darkness with which Lady Macbeth
etc. What can be finer than this peculiar use of the word fall; suggestive not
only of blackness, but of that funereal blackness in which death is folded up; an image conveying at
once absence of light and of life?—
etc.
The third of these murderous adjurations to the powers of nature for their complicity is uttered by
Macbeth in the scene preceding the banquet, when, having contrived the mode of Banquo's death, he
apostrophises the approaching night thus:—
etc. (what an exquisite grace and beauty there is in this wonderful line!)
Who but Shakespeare would thus have multiplied expressions of the very same idea with such wonderful
variety of power and beauty in each of them?—images at once so similar in their general character,
and so exquisitely different in their particular form. This last quoted passage precedes lines which
appear to me incomparable in harmony of sound and in the perfect beauty of their imagery: lines on
which the tongue dwells, which linger on the ear with a charm enhanced by the dark horror of the
speaker's purpose in uttering them, and which remind one of the fatal fascination of the Gorgon's
beauty, as it lies in its frame of writhing reptiles, terrible and lovely at once to the beholder:—
We see the violet-coloured sky, we feel the soft intermitting wind of evening, we
hear the "of the deed of fearful note"
about to desecrate the solemn repose of the
approaching night, gives to these harmonious and lovely lines a wonderful effect of mingled beauty
and terror. The combination of vowels in this line will not escape the ear of a nice observer of the
melody of our language: the "rooky wood" is a specimen of a happiness of a sound not so frequent
perhaps in Shakespeare as in Milton, who was a greater master of the melody of words.
To return to Banquo: in the scene where he and Macbeth are received with such overflowing
demonstrations of gratitude by Duncan, we have already observed he speaks but little; only once
indeed, when in answer to the king's exclamation, "Let me unfold thee, and hold
thee to my heart,"
he simply replies— "There if I grow, the harvest is your own."
But while Macbeth is
rapidly revolving in his mind the new difficulties thrown in the way of his ambition, and devising
new crimes to overleap lest he fall down upon them, we are left to imagine Banquo as dilating upon
his achievements to the king, and finding in his praise the eloquence that had failed him in the
professions of his own honest loyalty; for no sooner had Macbeth departed to announce the king's
approach to his wife, than Duncan answers to the words spoken aside to him by Banquo:—
This slight indication of the generous disposition that usually lives in holy alliance with integrity
and truth is a specimen of that infinite virtue which pervades all Shakespeare's works, the effect
of which is felt in the moral harmony of the whole, even by those who overlook the wonderful details
by which the general result is produced. Most fitting is it, too, that Banquo, should speak the
delicious lines by which the "the temple-haunting martlet,"
is an appropriate beauty of profound
significance. Here again are lines whose intrinsic exquisiteness is keenly enhanced by the impending
doom which hovers over the kind old king. With a heart overflowing with joy for the success of his
arms, and gratitude towards his victorious generals, Duncan stands inhaling the serene summer air,
receiving none but sensations of the most pleasurable exhilaration on the threshold of his
slaughter-house. The sunny breezy eminence before the hospitable castle gate of his devoted kinsman
and subject betrays no glimpse to his delighted spirits of the glimmering midnight chamber, where,
between his drunken grooms and his devil-driven assassin, with none to hear his stifled cries for
help but the female fiend who
Further on the explanation of these lines is found in the brief conversation that follows between
himself and Macbeth when he says: "I dreamed last night of the three weird sisters;"
and it is against a similar visitation of the powers of darkness during his helpless hours of
slumber that he prays to be defended before surrendering himself to the heavy summons that
"lies like lead upon him."
It is remarkable that Banquo, though his temptation
assails him from without in dreams of the infernal prophetesses, prays to be delivered not from
them, but from the "accursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose;"
referring,
and justly, his danger to the complicity with evil in his own nature—that noble nature of which
Macbeth speaks as sovereignly virtuous, but of which the mortal infirmity is thus confessed by him
who best knows its treacherous weakness.
Banquo next appears in the midst of the hideous uproar consequent upon Duncan's murder, when the
vaulted chambers of the castle ring with Macduff's cries to the dead man's sleeping sons—when every
door bursts open as with the sweeping of a whirlwind, and half-naked forms, and faces white with
sudden terror, lean from every gallery overlooking the great hall, into which pour, like the
in-rushing ridges of the tide, the scared and staring denizens of the upper chambers; while along
remote corridors echoes the sound of hurrying feet, and inarticulate cries of terror are prolonged
through dismal distant passages, and the flare of sudden torches flashes above and below, making the
intermediate darkness blacker; and the great stone fortress seems to reel from base to battlement
with the horror that has seized like a frenzy on all its inmates. From the midst of this appalling
tumult rises the calm voice of the man who remembers that he "stands in the great hand of
God,"
and thence confronts the furious elements of
Banquo stands in the hall of Macbeth's castle, in that sudden surprise of dreadful circumstances alone master of his soul, alone able to appeal to the All-seeing Judge of human events, alone able to advise the actions and guide the counsels of the passion-shaken men around him—a wonderful image of steadfastness in that tremendous chaos of universal dismay and doubt and terror.
This is the last individual and characteristic manifestation of the man. The inevitable conviction of
Macbeth's crime, and equally inevitable conviction of the probable truth of the promised royalty of
his own children, are the only two important utterances of his that succeed, and these are followed
so immediately by his own death that the regretful condemnation of the guilty man, once the object
of his affectionate admiration, cannot assume the bitterer character of personal detestation, or the
reluctant admission of the truth of the
IN a momentary absence of memory, a friend of mine once suggested to me the idea that Lady Macbeth's
exclamation in the sleeping scene—"The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she
now?"
—was a conscience-stricken reference to herself, and her own lost condition. Of course,
the hypothesis was immediately abandoned on the recollection that Macbeth never had been Thane of
Fife, and that it is Macduff's slaughtered mate Lady Macbeth is dreaming of,—the poor dame who, with
all her pretty chickens, was destroyed at one fell swoop by Macbeth's murderous cruelty.
The conversation that ensued led me to reflect on this mistaken suggestion of my friend
A very able article, published some years ago in the National Review, on the
character of Lady Macbeth, insists much upon an opinion that she died of remorse, as some palliation
of her crimes, and mitigation of our detestation of them. That she died of wickedness would be, I think, a juster verdict. Remorse is consciousness of guilt,—often,
indeed, no more akin to saving contrition than the faith of devils, who tremble and believe, is to
saving faith,— but still consciousness of guilt: and that I unrecognised pressure of her great guilt killed
her. I think her life was destroyed by sin as by a disease of which she was unconscious, and that
she died of a broken heart, while the impenetrable resolution of her will remained unbowed. The
spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak; the body can sin but so much, and survive; and other
deadly passions besides those of violence and sensuality can wear away its fine tissues, and
undermine its wonderful fabric. The woman's mortal frame succumbed to the tremendous weight of sin
and suffering which her immortal soul had power to sustain; and, having destroyed its temporal house
of earthly sojourn, that soul, unexhausted by its wickedness, went forth into its new abode of
eternity.
The nature of Lady Macbeth, even when prostrated in sleep before the Supreme Avenger, whom she keeps
at bay during her conscious hours by the exercise of her indomitable will and resolute power of
purpose, is incapable of undeplorable—"What's done cannot be undone:"
—and her slumbering eyes see no
more ghosts than her watchful waking ones believe in: "I tell you yet again, Banquo is
buried; he cannot come out of his grave."
Never, even in her dreams, does any gracious
sorrow smite from her stony heart the blessed brine of tears that wash away sin; never, even in her
dreams, do the avenging furies lash her through purgatorial flames that burn away guilt; and the
dreary but undismayed desolation in which her spirit abides for ever, is quite other than that
darkness, however deep, which the soul acknowledges, and whence it may yet behold the breaking of a
dawn shining far off from round the mercy-seat.
The nightmare of a butcher (could a butcher deserve to be so visited for the unhappy necessity of his
calling) is more akin to the hauntings which beset the woman who has strangled conscience and all
her brood of pleading angels, "blood,"
who, in the hour
of her atrocities, exclaims to her partner, when his appalled imagination reddens the whole ocean
with the bloody hand he seeks to cleanse, "A little water clears us of this deed!"
Therefore, blood — the feeling of blood, the sight of blood, the smell of blood — is the one ignoble
hideous retribution which has dominion over her. Intruding a moral element of which she is conscious
into Lady Macbeth's punishment is a capital error, because her punishment, in its very essence,
consists in her infinite distance from all such influences. Macbeth, to the very end, may weep and
wring his hands, and tear his hair and gnash his teeth, and bewail the lost estate of his soul,
though with him too the dreadful process is "wounded spirit,"
heavier to bear than all other conceivable sorrow;
and utters, in words bitterer than death, the doom of his own deserted, despised, dreaded, and
detested old age. He may be visited to the end by those noble pangs which bear witness to the
preeminent nobility of the nature he has desecrated, and suggest a re-ascension, even from the
bottom of that dread abyss into which he has fallen, but from the depths of which he yet beholds the
everlasting light which gives him consciousness of its darkness. But she may none
of this: she may but feel and see and smell blood; and wonder at the unquenched stream that she
still wades in—"Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in
him?"
—and fly, hunted through the nights by that "knocking at the door,"
which
I once read a pamphlet that made a very strong impression upon me, on the subject of the possible annihilation of the human soul as the consequence of sin. The author, supposing goodness to be nearness to God, and this to be the cause of vitality in the soul, suggested the idea of a gradual, voluntary departure from God, which should cause the gradual darkening and final utter extinction of the spirit. I confess that this theory of spiritual self-extinction through sin seemed to me a thousand times more appalling than the most terrific vision of everlasting torment.
Taking the view I do of Lady Macbeth's character, I cannot accept the idea (held, I believe, by her
great representative, Mrs. Siddons) that in the banquet scene the ghost of Banquo, which appears to
Macbeth, is seen at the same time by his wife, but that, in consequence of her greater command over
herself, she not only exhibits no sign of perceiving the
To this supposition I must again object that Lady Macbeth is no ghost-seer. She is not of the
temperament that admits of such impressions; she is incapable of supernatural terror in proportion
as she is incapable of spiritual influences; devils do not visibly tempt, nor angels visibly
minister to her; and, moreover, I hold that, as to have seen Banquo's ghost at the banqueting-table
would have been contrary to her nature, to have done so and persisted in her
fierce mocking of her husband's terror, would have been impossible to human nature. The hypothesis
makes Lady Macbeth a monster, and there is no such thing in all Shakespeare's plays. That she is
godless, and ruthless in the pursuit of the objects of her ambition,
Lady Macbeth was this; she possessed the qualities which generally characterise men, and not
women—energy, decision, daring, unscrupulousness; a deficiency of imagination, a great preponderance
of the positive and practical mental elements; a powerful and rapid appreciation of what each
exigency of circumstance demanded, and the coolness and resolution necessary for its immediate
execution. Lady Macbeth's character has more of the essentially manly nature in it than that of
Macbeth. The absence of imagination, together with a certain obtuseness of the nervous system, is
the condition that goes to produce that rare quality —physical courage—which she possessed in a
pre-eminent degree. This combination of deficiencies is seldom found in men, infinitely seldomer in
women: and its invariable result is she had
undertaken the murder of Banquo and Fleance, the latter would have been allowed to escape, and
impossible to conceive that she would have ordered the useless and impolitic slaughter of Macduff's
family and followers, after he had fled to England, from a mere rabid movement of impotent hatred
and apprehension. She was never made savage by remorse, or cruel by terror.
There is nothing that seems to me more false than the common estimate of cruelty, as connected with
the details of crime. Could the annals and statistics of murder be made to show the prevailing
temper under which the most atrocious crimes have been committed,
Lady Macbeth was of far too powerful an organisation to be liable to the frenzy of mingled emotions
by which her wretched husband is assailed; and when, in the very first hour of her miserable
exaltation, she perceives that the ashes of the Dead Sea are to be henceforth her daily bread, when
the crown is placed upon her brow, and she feels that the "golden round"
is lined
with red-hot iron, she accepts the dismal truth with one glance of steady recognition:—
She looks down the dreary vista of the coming years, and, having admitted that
"naught's had, all's spent,"
dismisses her fate, without further comment, from
consideration, and applies herself forthwith to encourage, cheer, and succour, with the support of
her superior strength, the finer yet feebler spirit of her husband.
In denying to Lady Macbeth all the peculiar sensibilities of her sex (for they are all included in
its pre-eminent characteristic—the maternal instinct—and there is no doubt that the illustration of
the quality of her resolution by the assertion that she would have dashed her baby's brains out, if
she had sworn to do it, is no mere figure of speech, but very certain earnest) Shakespeare has not
divested her of natural feeling to the degree of placing her without the pale of our common
humanity. Her husband shrank from the idea of her bearing women like herself, but
not "males,"
of possible. Thus the solitary positive
instance of her sensibility has nothing especially feminine about it. Her momentary relenting in the
act of stabbing Duncan, because he resembled her father as lie slept, is a touch of human tenderness
by which most men might be overcome, while the smearing her hands in the warm gore of the
slaughtered old man is an act of physical insensibility which not one woman out of a thousand would
have had nerve or stomach for.
That Shakespeare never imagined Banquo's ghost to be visible to Lady Macbeth in the banquet-hall
seems to me abundantly proved (however inferentially) by the mode in which he has represented such
apparitions as affecting all the men who in his dramas are subjected to this supreme test of
courage,—good men, whose minds are undisturbed by remorse; brave men, soldiers, prepared to face
danger in every shape
It is no infrequent exhibition of fear in a courageous boy to fly at and strike the object of his
dismay—a sort of instinctive method of ascertaining its nature, and so disarming its terrors; and
these men are represented by Shakespeare as thus expressing the utmost impulse of a fear, to the
intensity of which their "It harrows me with fear and wonder."
Bernardo says to him: "How now,
Horatio! you tremble and turn pale!"
and Horatio, describing the vision and its effect
upon himself and his companions, says to Hamlet—
etc. And it must be remembered that nothing in itself hideous or revolting
appeared to these men—nothing but the image of the dead King of Denmark, familiar to them in the
majestic sweetness of its countenance and bearing, and courteous and friendly in its gestures; and
yet it fills them with unutterable terror. When the same vision appears to Hamlet—a young man with
the noble spirit of a prince, a conscience void of all offence, and a heart yearning with aching
tenderness towards the father whose beloved image stands before him precisely as his eyes had looked
upon and loved it in life—how does he accost it?— distill'dAlmost to jelly with the act of fear,"
etc. The second time that Hamlet sees his father's ghost, when one might suppose
that something of the horror attendant upon such a visitation would have been dispelled by the
previous experience, his mother thus depicts the appearance that he presents to her— dead corse, again in complete steel,Making night hideous, and we fools of natureSo horribly to shake our dispositions,"
What a description of the mere physical revulsion with which living flesh and
blood shrinks from the cold simulacrum of life—so like and so utterly unlike—so familiar and yet so
horribly strange! The agony is physical—not of the soul; for
exclaims the undaunted spirit of the young "gracious
figure."
In "Julius Caesar," the emotion experienced by Brutus at the sight of Caesar's ghost is, if possible,
even more to the purpose. The spirit of the firm Roman, composed to peaceful meditation after his
tender and sweet reconciliation with his friend, and his exquisite kindness to his sleepy young
slave, is quietly directed to the subject of his study, when the ghost of Caesar appears to him,
darkening by its presence the light of the taper by which he reads, and to which Shakespeare,
according to the superstition of his day, imparts this sensitiveness to the preternatural influence.
Brutus, in questioning his awful visitor, loses none of his stoical steadfastness of soul, and yet
speaks of his blood running cold, and his hair staring with the horror of the
unearthly visitation.
Surely, having thus depicted the effect of such an experience on such men as Horatio, Hamlet, Brutus,
and Macbeth, Shakespeare can never have represented a woman, even though that woman was the bravest
of her sex, and almost of her kind, as subjected to a like ordeal and utterly unmoved by it. An
argument which appears to me conclusive on the point however, is, that in the sleeping scene Lady
Macbeth divulges nothing of the kind; and, even if it were possible to conceive her intrepidity
equal to absolute silence and self-command under the intense and mingled terrors of the banquet
scene with a perception of Banquo's apparition, it is altogether impossible to
imagine that the emotion she controlled then should not reveal itself in the hour of those
unconscious confessions when she involuntarily strips bare the festering plagues of her bosom to the
night, and to her appalled watchers, and in her ghastly slumbers, with the step and voice of some
horrible automaton, moved by no human volition, but a dire "knocking"
which reverberates still in the distracted chambers of her brain,
almost the last words she articulates are: "I tell you yet again, Banquo is buried; he cannot
come out of his grave."
Assuredly she never saw his ghost.
I am not inclined to agree, either, with the view which lends any special tenderness to Lady
Macbeth's demeanour towards her husband after the achievement of their bad eminence. She is not a
woman to waste words, any more than other means to ends; and, therefore, her refraining from all
reproaches at the disastrous close of their great festival is perfectly consistent with the
vehemence of her irony, so long as she could hope by its fierce stimulus to rouse Macbeth from the
delirium of "valour of her tongue,"
which she foresaw in the first
hour of receiving the written news of his advancement would be requisite, to "chas-
tise"
the irresolution of his spirit and the fluctuations of his purposes. She has her
end to gain by talking, and she talks till she does gain it; and in those moments of mortal agony,
when his terrors threaten with annihilation the fabric of their fortunes—that fearful fabric, based
on such infinite depths of guilt, cemented with such costly blood—when she sees him rushing upon
inevitable ruin, and losing every consciousness but that of his own crimes, she, like the rider
whose horse, maddened with fear, is imperilling his own and that rider's existence, drives the
rowels of her piercing irony into him, and with a hand of iron guides, and urges, and lifts him over the danger. But, except in those supreme instants, where her purpose is to
Her analysis of his character while still hiding in her hand his affectionate letter, her admonition
to him that his face betrays the secret disturbance of his mind, her advice that he will commit the
business of the King's murder to her management, her grave and almost kind solicitude at his moody
solitary brooding over the irretrievable past, and her compassionate suggestion at the close of the
banquet scene,— "You want the season of all natures-sleep,"
when she
must have seen the utter hopelessness of long concealing crimes which the miserable "illness"
with which hers is so terribly endowed, who would
"holily"
that which he would "highly,"
who would not "play
false,"
and yet would "wrongly win."
Nothing, indeed, can be more wonderfully perfect than Shakespeare's delineation of the evil nature of these two human souls—the evil strength of the one, and the evil weakness of the other.
The woman's wide-eyed, bold, collected leap into the abyss makes us gulp with terror; while we watch the man's blinking, shrinking, clinging, gradual slide into it, with a protracted agony akin to his own.
In admirable harmony with the conception of both characters is the absence in the case of Lady
Macbeth of all the grotesquely terrible supernatural machinery by which the imagination of Macbeth
is assailed and daunted. She "weak ministers"
of the great power of evil. The
metaphysical conception of the influence to which she dedicates herself is pure free-thinking
compared with the superstitions of her times; and we cannot imagine her sweeping into the murky
cavern, where the hellish juggleries of Hecate are played, and her phantasmagories revel round their
filthy cauldron, without feeling that these petty devils would shrink appalled away from the
presence of the awful woman who had made her bosom the throne of those "murdering
ministers"
who in their "sightless substance"
attend on "nature's
mischief."
Nor has Shakespeare failed to show how "present fears"
and "horrible imaginings"
which
Macbeth's half-allegiance to right cannot purchase for him. In one sense, good consciences—that is,
tender ones—may be said to be the only bad ones: the very worst alone are those that hold their
peace and cease from clamouring. In sin, as in all other things, thoroughness has its reward; and
the reward is blindness to fear, deafness to remorse, hardness to good, and moral insensibility to
moral torture—the deadly gangrene instead of the agony of cauterisation; a degradation below shame,
fear, and pain. This point Lady Macbeth reaches at once, while from the first scene of the play to
the last the wounded soul of Macbeth writhes and cries and groans over its own gradual
deterioration. Incessant returns upon himself and his own condition, betray a state of moral
disquietude which is as ill-boding an omen of the spiritual state as the morbid
Then the admission of the necessity for the treacherous cowardly assumption of
friendly hospitality, from which the brave man's nature and soldier's alike revolt: "False face must hide what the false heart doth know."
Then the
panic-stricken horror of the insisting :
The vertigo of inevitable retribution: why could not I pronounce Amen?
The utter misery of the question: "How is it with me, when ev'ry noise appals me?"
The intolerable
bitterness of the thought:
Later comes the consciousness of stony loss of fear and pity: filed my breast,eternal jewel given;
After this, the dreary wretchedness of his detested and despised old age confronts
him:
Most wonderful of all is it, after reviewing the successive steps of this dire
declension of the man's moral nature, to turn back to his first acknowledgment of that Divine
government, that Supreme Rule of Right, by which the deeds of men meet righteous retribution.
"
that unhesitating confession of faith in the
immutable justice and goodness of God with which he first opens the debate in his bosom, and
contrasts it with the desperate blasphemy which he utters in the hour of his soul's final overthrow,
when he proclaims life— man's life, the precious and mysterious object of God's moral government—
Here, even here, upon this bank and shoal of
The preservation of Macbeth's dignity in a degree sufficient to retain our sympathy, in spite of the
preponderance of his wife's nature over his, depends on the two facts of his undoubted heroism in
his relations with men, and his great tenderness for the woman whose evil will is made powerful over
his partly by his affection for her. It is remarkable that hardly one scene passes where they are
brought together in which he does not address to her some endearing appellation; and, from his first
written words to her whom he calls his "Dearest partner of greatness,"
to his
pathetic appeal "Oh, full of scorpions is my mind, dear
wife!"
and in this same scene there is a touch of essentially manly reverence for the
womanly nature of her who has so little of it, that deserves to be classed among Shakespeare's most
exquisite inspirations:—his refusing to pollute his wife's mind with the bloody horror of Banquo's
proposed murder. "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck!"
is a
conception full of the tenderest and deepest refinement, contrasting wonderfully with the hard,
unhesitating cruelty of her immediate sugggestion in reply to his:
At the end of the banquet scene he appeals to her for her opinion on the danger threatened by
Macduff's contumacious refusal of their invitation, and from first to last he so completely leans on
her for support and solace in their miserable partnership of guilt and woe, that when we hear the
ominous words: "My Lord, the Queen is dead!"
we see him stagger under
the blow which strikes from him the prop of that undaunted spirit in whose valour he found the
never-failing stimulus of his own.
In the final encounter between Macbeth and the appointed avenger of blood it appears to me that the
suggestion of his want of personal courage, put forward by some commentators on his character, is
most triumphantly refuted. "Angel"
1 whom Macbeth still has served, reveals to him the fact
of his untimely birth, he has been like one drunk-maddened by the poisonous inspirations of the
hellish oracles in which he has put his faith; and his furious excitement is the delirium of mingled
doubt and dread with which he clings, in spite of the gradual revelation of its falsehood, to the
juggling promise which pronounced him master of a charmed life. But no sooner is the mist of this
delusion swept from his mind, by the piercing blast of Macduff's interpretation of the promise, than
the heroic nature of the man once more proclaims itself. The fire of his spirit flames above the
"ashes of his chance;" the 1 Noteworthy,
in no small degree, is this word "Angel"
here used by Macduff. Who but
Shakespeare would not have written "Devil"?
But what a tremendous vision
of terrible splendour the word evokes! What a visible presence of gloomy glory—even as of the
great prince of pride, ambition, and rebellion—seems to rise in lurid majesty, and overshadow
the figure of the baffled votary of evil!"Yet will I try the
last."
One feeling only mingles with this expiring flash of resolute heroism, one most
pathetic reference to the human detestation from which in that supreme hour he shrinks as much as
from degradation—more than from death.
It is the last cry of the human soul, cut off from the love and reverence of
humanity; and with that he rushes out of the existence made intolerable by the hatred of his
kind.
THE Queen and Wolsey in Henry VIII are both types of pride, and yet there is an essential difference
in the pride which they each represent. Undoubtedly, the pride of birth and the mere pride of power
(whether that power be derived from wealth, intellect, or exaltation of station) are very different
things. Katharine represents the pure pride of birth, and Wolsey that of power. Pride of birth, the
noblest species of the vice, is not incompatible with considerable personal humility, and the proof
that Shakespeare thought so may be
Again, the pride of birth is comparatively a relative thing, and has, as it were, a scale or standard
by which it is graduated and moderated. The self-respect of those who entertain it naturally
involves their respect for those who claim in any degree, whether more or less than themselves, the
same distinction, whereas the pride of power is apt to lose all sense of comparison in its
overweening self-consciousness: it knows no scale of degree, for its boast is to break down or
overleap all such, and its measure is never the claims of others, but its "achieve greatness"
do not always, therefore,
encounter with perfect equanimity those who are "born great:"
it takes a spirit of
rather unusual natural nobility to do so, and the dignity which is not shaken by falling is as
nothing to the dignity which is not fluttered by rising. Wolsey, though he had made himself cardinal
and hoped to make himself pope, "Ego et Rex meus."
To the noble
Suffolk, the princely Buckingham, or the royal daughter of Spain, Katharine of Aragon, such a form
of speech would have seemed nothing short of an audacious act of treason, an offence against order,
duty, and majesty, a confounding of those all but sacred social laws by which they themselves were
upheld in their several high spheres of state. In the gross-minded, low-born "fellow of
Ipswich,"
whose vigorous intellect and powerful will had raised him to strange heights
of glory, it was the mere excess and intoxication of the sense of self-made greatness, which had
learned to look upon coronets and crowns, and the papal
On the other hand, though this species of pride is so much grosser and more vulgar and offensive, I
believe it will always be found more easily capable of cure and eradication than the other. The
circumstances once altered under which personal power was or could be successfully exercised,
consciousness of weakness and defeat almost inevitably ensues; uncertainty, self-distrust, and a
sense of insecurity are engendered by failure; a lowered estimate of capacity to achieve things not
unnaturally brings with it lessened value of the achievement. For we betake ourselves, as the fox of
ancient times has testified ever since his day, to underprize that which is beyond our reach,
however much we may have overprized while compassing or possessing it. After this lower-
The insertion of this historically true appeal in the description of Wolsey's last
hours seems to me purely "beggarly divorcement"
and death, the daughter of the king of
Spain, the wife of two kings of England, and felt herself bound, by all the religion and grew her pride; and with one dying hand stretched out
to receive the heavenly crown she was about to put on, with the other she imperiously commanded
homage to that earthly one which had been rudely snatched from her brows. Wolsey honoured himself in
his station: it was to him the palpable proof of his own great powers of achievement, and when he
lost it his confidence in himself must have been shaken to its foundations, and he may almost have
fallen into the hopelessness of self-contempt. With what a poisonous bitterness of absolute defeat
does he utter the words—
Henry VIII was the favourite play of Dr. Johnson, who does not appear to have
entertained the doubts of modern commentators as to its being the work of Shakespeare; and his "celestial harmony she goes to"
resounding in
her ears, upon the very threshold of heaven, she turns with such implacable resentment from the poor
servant whose "haste had made him unmannerly,"
and who forgot to approach her
kneeling:
In her most touching recommendation of her faithful women to the ambassador
Capucius she characteristically sums up their praise by saying they will deserve good husbands, even
—noble men.
But, to me, the most masterly touch of delineation by which Shakespeare has given this moral portrait
its greatest perfection is in the Queen's speech on Wolsey's character, when, first of all his sins,
she enumerates his "unbounded stomach,"
that made him "ever
and that wonderful line where she
says:
To her, the devout, the upright, the true in spirit, in deed and in word, Wolsey's
falsehood was aggravated by its perpetration before Henry VIII, and the sin against God's sovereign
majesty of truth assumed a deeper dye in Katharine of Aragon's judgment when committed in the royal
presence of the King and Queen of England.
In the great scene with the cardinals Shakespeare has followed Cavendish's Life of
Wolsey all but verbatim, even to the skein of sewingmaterials the good Queen had round her
neck. I wonder if his extreme admiration and commendation of Anne "the goodliest woman that ever lay by man;"
What romantic associations are suggested by the mere reading of the dramatis
personæ of this play! Brandon, Earl of Suffolk, is here,
And Surrey is here, the princely poet, the devoted lover, who, wandering beneath
the bright Italian skies, invoked the aid of magic, and conjured up, to cheat his longing senses,
the image of his English mistress, the fair Geraldine. How sweet a line there is in the Epilogue to
this play when Shakespeare commends the piece to "the merciful construction of good women,"
even for the sake of the image of one therein most faithfully portrayed !
Upon the whole, however, the play is heavy, and, though replete with fine passages and scenes of
great power, fails to awaken or keep alive any intense interest. The recurrence of three scenes, so
nearly resembling each other in subject, and even in some degree in treat- Henry VIII. and the supplementary compliment to
James are beyond a doubt to be attributed to Fletcher, with whose manner they are distinctly
stamped. To his stately pen may probably also be referred the eulogium on Wolsey spoken by Griffith,
and Wolsey's own famous farewell to all his greatness. The passages of the play which are put into
Readers, and which our schoolboys declaim, are of doubtful authorship perhaps;
but who, if not Shakespeare, wrote the scene living portion of the play, but Shakespeare?
Undoubtedly, there were giants in those days in the art of play-writing, but it is by their side
that we best measure the stature of him who was taller by the head and shoulders than all the rest,
in whose incomparable genius the dramatic intellect of that great mental epoch reached its climax. I
have read lately of comparisons between Henry VIII. and Tennyson's Queen Mary: to me this latter production appears no more like Shakespeare's writing than a
suit of his clothes would be like him: they would certainly remind any one who saw them of him who
had worn them. I am much mistaken if Alfred Tennyson himself would not be more apt than any one to
say (if it may unprofanely be said), "Why callest thou me Shakespeare ?"
IN 1849, the discovery by Mr. Payne Collier of a copy of the Works of Shakespeare, known as the folio of 1632, with manuscript notes and emendations of the same or nearly the same date, created a great and general interest in the world of letters.
The marginal notes were said to be in a handwriting not much later than the period when the volume
came from the press; and
The general satisfaction of the literary world in the treasure-trove was but little alloyed by the
occasional cautiously-expressed doubts of some
The cutting antithesis of "What
" in retort
to her husband's assertion, beast,"I dare do all that may become a
was tamely rendered by the lady, in obedience to Mr. Collier's folio, man,""What
—a change that any one possessed of poetical or dramatic
perception would have submitted to upon nothing short of the positive demonstration of the author's
having so written the passage.boast was it, then,"
Opinions were, indeed, divided as to the intrinsic merit of the emendations or alterations. Some of
the new readings were undoubted improvements, some were unimportant,
Again, it was observed by those conversant with the earlier editions, especially with the little read
or valued Oxford edition, that a vast number of the passages given as emendations in Mr. Collier's
folio were precisely the same in Hanmer's text. Indeed, it seems not a little remarkable that
neither Mr. Collier nor his opponents have thought it worth their while to state that nearly half,
and that undoubtedly the better half of the so-called new readings are to be found in the finely
printed, but little esteemed, text of the Oxford Shakespeare. If, indeed, these corrections now come
to us with the authority of a critic but little removed from Shakespeare's own time, it is
remarkable that Sir Thomas Hanmer's, or rather Mr. Theobald's, ingenuity fiat of Mr. Collier's folio
in so many instances. On the other hand, it may have been judged by others besides a learned editor
of Shakespeare from whom I once heard the remark, that the fact of the so-called new readings being
many of them in Rowe and Hanmer, and therefore well known to the subsequent editors of Shake-
speare, who nevertheless did not adopt them, proved that in their opinion they were of little value
and less authority. But, says Mr. Collier, inasmuch as they are in the folio of 1632, which I now
give to the world, they are of authority paramount to any other suggestion or correction that has
hitherto been made on the text of Shakespeare.
Thus stood the question in 1853. How stands it a few years later? After a slow, but gradual process
of growth and extension of doubt and questionings, more or less calculated to throw discredit on the
authority of the marginal notes in the folio,—the volume being subjected to the careful and
competent examination
The ink in which the annotations are made has been subjected to chemical analysis, and betrays, under the characters traced in it, others made in pencil, which are pronounced by some persons of a more modern date than the letters which have been traced over them.
Here at present the matter rests. Much angry debate has ensued between the various gentlemen
interested in the controversy, Mr. Collier not hesitating to suggest that pencilmarks in imitation
of his handwriting had been inserted in the volume, and a fly-leaf abstracted from it, while in the
custody of Messrs. Hamilton and Madden of the British Museum; while the replies of these gentlemen
would go towards establishing that the corrections are forgeries, and insinuating that they are for-
While the question of the antiquity and authority of these marginal notes remains thus undecided, it may not be amiss to apply to them the mere test of common sense in order to determine upon their intrinsic value, to the adequate estimate of which all thoughtful readers of Shakespeare must be to a certain degree competent.
The curious point, of whose they are, may test the science of decipherers of palimpsest manuscripts;
the more weighty one, of what they are worth, remains as it was from the first, a matter on which
every student of Shakespeare may arrive at some conclusion for himself. And, indeed, to this ground
of judgment Mr. Collier himself appeals, in his preface to the "Notes and Emendations," in no less
emphatic terms than the following:— "As Shakespeare was especially the poet of common life,
so he was emphatically the poet of common sense; and to, the verdict of
I take "The Tempest," the first play in Mr. Collier's volume of "Notes and Emendations," and, while bestowing my principal attention on the inherent worth of the several new readings, shall point out where they tally exactly with the text of the Oxford edition, because that circumstance has excited little attention in the midst of the other various elements of interest in the controversy, and also because I have it in my power to give from a copy of that edition in my possession some passages corrected by John and Charles Kemble, who brought to the study of the text considerable knowledge of it and no inconsiderable ability for poetical and dramatic criticism.
In the first scene of the first act of "The Tempest," Mr. Collier gives the line,— "Good Boatswain, have care,"—
adding, "It may be just worth remark,
that the colloquial expression is have a care, and a
In the copy of Hanmer in my possession, the a is also inserted in the margin, upon
the authority of one of the eminent actors above mentioned.
The manuscript corrector of the folio, 1632, has substituted heat for "cheek," which appears to me an alteration of no value whatever. Shakespeare was
more likely to have written cheek than heat; for elsewhere he
uses the expression, "Heaven's face,"
"the welkin's face,"
and, though irregular, the expression is poetical.
At Miranda's exclamation,— s to the word
"creature,"
making the plural substantive agree with her other exclamation of,
"Poor souls, they perished!"
Where Mr. Collier, upon the authority of his folio, substitutes prevision for
"
in the lines of Prospero,— provision"
I do not agree to the value of the change. It is very true that prevision means the foresight that his art gave him, but provision
implies the exercise of that foresight or prevision; it is therefore better,
because more comprehensive.
Mr. Collier's folio gives as an improvement upon Malone and Steeven's reading of the passage,—
the following:
Supposing the reading of the folio to be ingenious rather than authoritative, the
passage, as it stands in Hanmer, is decidedly better, because clearer:—
In the next passage, given as emended by the folio, we have what appears to me one bad and one
decidedly good alteration from the usual reading, which, in all the editions given hitherto, has
left the meaning barely perceptible through the confusion and obscurity of the expression.
The folio says,— lorded,unto truth by telling of it"He being thus
loaded.""lorded"
stands clearly enough here for made lord of, or, over, etc.; and though
the expression is unusual, it is less prosaic than the proposed word loaded. But
in the rest of the passage, the critic of the folio does immense service to the text, in reading
This change carries its own authority in its manifest good sense.to untruth by telling of it
Of the passage,—
Mr. Collier says that the iteration of the word "purpose,"
in the
fourth line, after its employment in the second, is a blemish, which his folio obviates by
substituting the word practice
Mr. Collier gives Rowe the credit of having altered "butt"
to boat,
and "have quit it"
to had quit it, in the lines—
Adding, that in both changes he is supported by the corrector of the folio, 1632.
Hanmer gives the passage exactly as the latter, and as Rowe does.butt not rigged,have quit it."
We now come to the stage-directions in the folio, to which Mr. Collier gives, I think, a most
exaggerated value. He says, that, where Prospero says,—
the words "Lay it down,"
are written over against the passage. Now
this really seems a very unnecessary direction, inasmuch as the next very clearly indicates that
Prospero lays "magic
garment"
—unless we are to suppose Miranda holding it over her arm till he resumes it.
But still less do I agree with Mr. Collier in thinking the direction, "Put on robe
again,"
at the passage beginning, "Now I arise,"
any extraordinary
accession to the business, as it is technically called, of the scene; for I do not think that his
resuming his magical robe was in any way necessary to account for the slumber which overcomes
Miranda, "in spite of her interest in her father's story,"
and which Mr. Collier says
the commentators have endeavoured to account for in various ways; but putting "
instead of because of her interest in her father's story,""
I feel none of the difficulty which beset the
commentators, and which Mr. Collier conjures by the stage-direction which makes Prospero resume his
magic robe at a certain moment in order to put his daughter to sleep. Worthy Dr. Johnson, who was
not among the puzzled commentators on this occasion, suggests, very agreeably to common sense, that
in spite of,""Experience proves that any violent agitation of the mind easily subsides in
slumber."
But Mr. Collier says the Doctor gives this very reasonable explanation of
Miranda's sleep only because he was not acquainted with the folio stage-direction about Prospero's
coat, and knew no better. Now we are acquainted with this important addition to the text, and yet
know no better than to agree with Dr. Johnson, that Miranda's slumbers were perfectly to be
accounted for without the coat. Mr. Collier does not seem to know that a deeper and heavier desire
to sleep follows upon the overstrained exercise of excited attention than on the weariness of a dull
and uninteresting appeal to it.
But let us consider Shakespeare's text, rather than the corrector's additions, for a moment. Within
reach of the wild wind and spray of the tempest, though sheltered from their fury, Miranda had
watched the sinking ship struggling with the mad elements, and heard when "rose from sea to
sky the wild
Amazement and pity had thrown
her into a paroxysm of grief, which is hardly allayed by her father's assurance, that
"there's no harm done."
After this terrible excitement follows the solemn
exordium to her father's story:—
The effort she calls upon her memory to make to recover the traces of her earliest
impressions of life—the strangeness of the events unfolded to her—the duration of the recital
itself, which is considerable—and, above all, the poignant personal interest of its details, are
quite sufficient to account for the sudden utter prostration of her overstrained faculties and
feelings, and the profound sleep that falls on the young girl. Perhaps Shakespeare knew this, though
his commentators, old and new, seem not to have done so; and without a professed faith, such as some
of us moderns indulge in, in the mysteries of magnetism, perhaps he believed enough in "I know thou canst not choose"
with which he concludes his observation on her
drowsiness, and his desire that she will not resist it. The magic gown may, indeed, have been
powerful; but hardly more so, I think, than the nervous exhaustion which, combined with the
authoritative will and eyes of her lord and father, bowed down the child's drooping eyelids in
profoundest sleep.
The strangest of all Mr. Collier's comments upon this passage, however, is that where he represents
Miranda as, up to a certain point of her father's story, remaining "standing eagerly
listening by his side."
This is not only gratuitous, but absolutely contrary to Shake-
speare's text—a greater authority, I presume, than even that of the annotated folio. Pros- pero's
words to his daughter, when first he begins the recital of their sea-sorrow, are:—
Does Mr. Collier's folio reject this reading of the first line? Or does he suppose
that Miranda remained standing, in spite of her father's command? Moreover, when he interrupts his
story with the words, "Now I arise,"
he adds, to his daughter, "Sit
still,"
which clearly indicates both that she was seated and that she was about to rise
(naturally enough) when her father did. We say "Sit
to a
person who is standing; and down""Sit
to a person seated who is
about to rise; and in all these minute particulars the simple text of Shakespeare, if attentively
followed, gives every necessary indication of his intention with regard to the attitudes and
movements of the persons on the stage in this scene; and the highly commended stage-directions of
the folio are here, therefore, perfectly superfluous.still"
The next alteration in the received text is a decided improvement. In speaking of the royal fleet
dispersed by the tempest, Ariel says:
for which Mr. Collier's folio substitutes:— are upon the Mediterranean flotefloat
Mr. Collier notices that the improvement of giving the lines,
to Prospero, instead of Miranda, dates as far back as Dryden and Davenant's
alteration of "The Tempest," from which he says Theobald and others copied it.
The corrected folio gives its authority to the lines of the song:—
which stands so in Hanmer, and, indeed, is the usually received arrangement of the
song.
This is the last corrected passage in the first act, in the course of which Mr. Collier gives us no
fewer than sixteen, altered, verbatim in the Oxford and
subsequent editions, and three only appear to be of any special value, tried by the standard of
common sense, to which it was agreed, on Mr. Collier's invitation, to refer them.
The line in Prospero's threat to Caliban:—
occasioned one of Mr. John Kemble's characteristic differences with the public,
who objected, perhaps not without reason, to hearing the word "aches" pronounced as a dissyllable,
although the line imperatively demands it; and Shakespeare shows that the word was not unusually so
pronounced, as he introduces it with the same quantity in the prose dialogue of "Much Ado about
Nothing," and makes it the vehicle of a pun which certainly argues that it was familiar to the
public ear as aches, make thee roar,"—aches and not akes. When Hero asks Beatrice, who
complains that she is sick, what she is sick for,—a hawk, ache,—an H. Indeed, much later than Shakespeare's day the word
was so pronounced; for Dean Swift, in the "City Shower," has the line,— "Old
aches throb, your hollow tooth will rage."
The opening of this play is connected with my earliest recollections. In looking down the
"dark backward and abysm of time,"
to the period when I was but six years old, my
memory conjures up a vision of a stately drawing-room on the ground-floor of a house, doubtless long
since swept from the face of the earth by the encroaching tide of new houses and streets that has
submerged every trace of suburban beauty, picturesqueness, or rural privacy in the neighbourhood of
London, converting it all by a hideous process of assimilation into more London, till London seems
almost more than England can carry.
But in those years, "long enough ago," to pot-pourri. Into this room, with its great crimson curtains and deep crimson
carpet, in which my feet seemed to me buried, as in woodland moss, I used to be brought for the
recompense of "having been very good," and there I used to find a lovely-looking lady, who was to me
the fitting divinity of this shrine of
I have since known that she was attached to the person of, and warmly personally attached to, the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales,—then only unfortunate; so that I can now guess at the drift of much sad and passionate talk with indignant lips and tearful eyes, of which the meaning was then of course incomprehensible to me, but which I can now partly interpret by the subsequent history of that ill-used and ill-conducted lady.
The face of my friend with the great Venetian name was like one of Giorgione's pictures, —of that
soft and mellow colourlessness that recalls the poet's line,—
or the Englishman's version of the same thought, "Her face,—oh, call it
fair, not pale!"
Over and over again, at my importunate beseeching, she told it,—sometimes standing before it, while I
held her hand and listened with upturned face, and eyes rounding with big tears of wonder and pity,
to a tale which shook my small soul with a sadness and strangeness far surpassing the interest of my
beloved tragedy, "The Babes in the Wood," though at this period of my existence it
has happened to me to interrupt with frantic cries of distress, and utterly refuse to hear, the end
of that lamentable ballad.
But the picture.—In the midst of a stormy sea, on which night seemed fast settling down,
There was something about the face and figure of the Prospero that suggested to me those of my
father; and this, perhaps, added to the poignancy with which the representation of his distress
affected my childish imagination. But the impression made by the picture, the story, and the place
where I heard the one and saw the other, is among the most vivid that my
THE Tempest is, as I have already said, my favourite of Shakespeare's Dramas. The
remoteness of the scene from all known localities allows a range to the imagination such as no other
of his plays affords—not even the Midsummer Night's Dream, where, though the dramatic personæ are half of them superhuman, the scene is laid in a wood "near
Athens;" and Theseus and Hypolita, if fabulous folk, are among the mythological acquaintance of our
earliest school days.
But the "uninhabited Island,"
lost in unknown seas, gives far other scope to the
wandering fancy. As the scene is removed from all places with which we hold acquaint-
But chiefly I delight in this play, because of the image which it presents to my mind of the glorious supremacy of the righteous human soul over all things by which it is surrounded. Prospero is to me the representative of wise and virtuous manhood, in its true relation to the combined elements of existence—the physical powers of the external world, and the varieties of character with which it comes into voluntary, accidental, or enforced contact.
Of the wonderful chain of being, of which Caliban is the densest and Ariel the most ethereal extreme, Prospero is the middle link. He—the wise and good man—is the ruling power, to whom the whole series is subject.
First, and lowest in the scale, comes the gross and uncouth but powerful savage, who represents both
the more ponderous and un-
Next follow the drunken, ribald, foolish retainers of the King of Naples, whose ignorance, knavery, and stupidity represent the coarser attributes of those great unenlightened masses, which in all communities threaten authority by their conjunction with brute force and savage ferocity; and only under the wholesome restraint of a wise discipline can be gradually admonished into the salutary subserviency necessary for their civilisation.
Ascending by degrees in the scale, the next group is that of the cunning, cruel, selfish, treacherous
worldlings—Princes and Potentates —the peers in outward circumstances of high birth and breeding of
the noble Prospero— whose villanous policy (not unaided by his own dereliction of his duties as a
governor in
From these, who represent the baser intellectual as the former do the baser sensual properties of
humanity, we approach by a most harmonious moral transition, through the agency of the skilfully
interposed figure of the kindly gentleman, Gonzalo, those charming types of youth and love,
Ferdinand and Miranda—the fervent chivalrous devotion of the youth, and the yielding simplicity and
sweetness of the girl, are lovely representations of those natural emotions of tender sentiment and
passionate desire which, watched and guided and guarded by the affectionate solici- tude and
paternal prudence of Prospero, are pruned of their lavish luxuriance and supported in their violent
weakness by the wise will that teaches forbearance and self-control as the only price at which these
exquisite flowers of existence may unfold their blossoms
Next in this wonderful gamut of being, governed by the sovereign soul of Prospero, come the shining figures of the Masque— beautiful bright apparitions, fitly indicating the air, the fire, and all the more smiling aspects and subtler forces of nature. These minister with prompt obedience to the magical behests of Science, and, when not toiling in appointed service for their great task-master, recreate and refresh his senses and, his spirit with the every-varying pageant of this beautiful Universe.
Last—highest of all—crowning with a fitful flame of lambent brightness this poetical pyramid of
existence, flickers and flashes the beautiful Demon, without whose exquisite com- panionship we
never think of the royal Magician with his grave countenance of command—Ariel seems to me to
represent the keenest perceiving intellect—apart from all moral conscious- ness and sense of
responsibility. His power
IN the second act we have the passage relating to the Princess Claribel's marriage to the King of
Tunis,—
Malone considers that the should bow."should of the old copy was merely an
elliptical she would, and gives the lines thus,—
a version which has been most generally adopted by subsequent editors. Mr.
Collier, however, proposes as an improvement on this, she'd bow;"—
which I cannot think at all less as"detrimental to the sense"
than he
finds Malone's correction. In Hanmer we have what appears to me a much better reading of the
passage, by the mere omission of the preposition "of" in the third line:—
This appears to me the best version of the lines given yet; and Pope thought so
too, for he adopted it.
The next emendation to which I object is in the speech of Antonio, beginning, "She that is
Queen of Tunis,"
the passage which in the old folio is printed thus:— that.
However, Mr. Collier's folio omits "that," and alters another member of the passage, substituting
the word for instead of from:—
a change which he pronounces an improvement. I scarcely think it so: "from whom"
clearly indicates the meaning of "coming from whom;" at any rate, the change is quite un-
important.for whom
The next emendation in the passage which Mr. Collier finds in his folio he rejects, saying the
original reading seems preferable, and this is,— us back to Naples,""measure
and strangely enough the Oxford edition has that
same alteration in the text; but inasmuch as the whole passage stands thus:— it back to Naples;"
and that the many cubits which intervene between Tunis and Naples are supposed to
utter the observation, "Measure
is obviously the more
appropriate reading of the line.us back"
The next change in the text which Mr. Collier produces seems again unimportant. He says Alonzo's
exclamation on waking and finding Sebastian and Antonio with their swords drawn has always been
given,—
and that upon the showing of his copy, the this ghastly looking?"this is a misprint
for thus,— "Wherefore thus ghastly looking?"
The crossing of the T in Gonzalo's assertion that "there was a noise that's verity"
(the old copy reads verily), a merit which Mr. Collier imputes to his corrector,
is to be found in Hanmer—Pope being the originator of the correction, which, though consisting
merely of the alteration of a letter, materially affects the sense.
In the soliloquy of Trinculo, which ends by his hiding under Caliban's gabardine, Mr. Collier's folio
says that the words, "I will here shroud till the
should be, dregs of the storm be
past,""I will here shroud till the
which he justifies upon the ground that Trinculo would perhaps have
thought it more desirable to avoid the drench or extreme violence of the storm than the mere dregs
or conclusion of it. But the dregs of anything are its thickest and heaviest part— the sediment, the
dirty residuum, deposited by liquid—and therefore, upon the whole, the least drench of the
storm be past,""foul bumbard"
(a barrel for holding liquor), the lees
or " dregs" of which are assuredly not the pleasantest part to receive upon one's head. This
emendation I therefore do not accept as such.
The next alteration of the text given is the omission of the syllable "ing " from the word trencher
in Caliban's song:— "Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish."
Theobald
and Dryden both wrote the passage as Mr. Collier's folio has it, "nor scrape
trencher."
Many of the subsequent editors, however, retain "trenchering," which may
perhaps be considered as a term for trenchers collectively, Caliban meaning by the trenchering of
the table all the trenchers used upon it. The omission is a decided improvement, I think, and is to
be found also in Hanmer.
The opening lines of the third act, spoken by Ferdinand while employed in log-bearing for the love of
Miranda, conclude with a passage about which there has been much discussion:—
This is the version given by the earliest folio of 1623;in the folio of 1632 again
the passage stands,— "Most busy least when I do it,"
which Mr. Collier
says is the usual reading of the passage. But Mr. Theobald's suggestion of reading it "Most busy
less" (i.e. least oppressed or absorbed with business) has been adopted by almost all subsequent
editors. Of this decided improvement on the original text Mr. Collier takes no notice, though it
involves but the change of one letter, but strongly commends the reading given in his corrected
folio, of— "Most busy—blest when I do it,"
which he says is undoubtedly
the right reading b for two centuries and a half. I cannot at all agree that
this alteration is superior to Theobald's; the sense is more obscure, and the line is rendered harsh
and ungraceful by the abrupt break in it; whereas in Theobald's version the line is smooth to the
tongue, and quite as intelligible to the comprehension: while Sir Thomas Hanmer gives a far bolder
departure from the text, and not satisfied with changing one letter, alters the word most into its direct opposite, least— "Least busy
when I do it;"
upon what authority, I know not. The passage of course has the same
meaning as Theobald's, but has not the merit of his near conformity to the text of the earliest
folio.
The next emendation is in Prospero's speech to Ferdinand, when he bestows Miranda upon him,—
which Mr. Collier's corrected folio reads a "
and all the modern editors so write the
passage. Mr. Collier, however, does not seem to accept the explanation which some commentators have
been satisfied with, that "third" in the old folio is simply an obsolete way of spelling thread, of
which Hawkins and Steevens both give examples.thread of my own life,"
The exquisite lines addressed by Isis to Ceres in the Masque have afforded infinite scope to the
various editors of Shakespeare, after whose lucubrations on them nothing more restorative can be
imagined than to read the passage itself, redolent as it is with all the freshest fragrance of
earth, air, and water. "Thy banks with pionied and twilled brims,"
reads the original folio, which Mr. Collier's emended copy corrects into "pioned and tilled
brims,"
pioned meaning, according, to him (and he can show Spencer for authority), dug,
or turned with a spade; the French words piochepiocher"With peonied and tulip'd brims,"—
a very violent
emendation of the text, to say nothing of the discord produced to the eye of the imagination by the
scarlet and yellow flames of this oriental flower blazing among the soft "cold nymphs chaste
crowns."
But to return to Mr. Collier's proposed emendation of "pioned and tilled," his folio version was given by Mr. Holt merely as a conjecture, and Steevens gives the line so corrected to him in one of his notes. Upon the whole, the pleasantest, and therefore the best emendation of the line, when all are equally uncertain, seems that which matches best with the tone and colouring of the rest of the picture, and the peonied and lilied banks betrimmed by spongy April, are better in this respect than anything else offered to Shakespeare's readers by the painful industry of his commentators.
Of the blessing pronounced upon Ferdinand and Miranda, all the lines were originally attributed to
Juno. Theobald, with nice poetical discrimination, gives the latter portion of them to Ceres, a
change in which Sir Thomas Han-
to "
a change
which Mr. Collier pronounces "important," but which seems to me anything but an improvement. It is
very true, that rain before the Rain come to you at the farthest,""very end of harvest"
would be unwelcome, but in that
sense the line ought to be—"Rain come to you at the earliest"—not at the farthest; i.e. may your very first rain not fall till the harvest is carried. But
I think the passage simply means that spring shall rapidly succeed autumn, leaving the dreary winter
out of the calendar, a blessing Shakespeare has borrowed "And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto
the sowing time."
From the same chapter he takes the words, "Earth's increase."
While observing upon
these biblical expressions, of which Caliban's picturesque
is one borrowed from Genesis, it cannot but seem to every thoughtful reader of
Shakespeare how absolutely pervaded his language is with the spirit and form of that most precious
treasure of our tongue, the English Bible. It has been a question how much of Greek—if any— how much
of Latin, and the modern French and Italian languages, our great dramatist pos- sessed; and little
proof can be found of his having anything but the most superficial acquaintance with any language
but his own; Paradise
Lost, whose learned author had assuredly the Bible in his heart, but so great a store of
Greek, Latin, and Italian lore in his head, that though the subject of his poem is purely biblical,
the style seldom, if ever, recalls that of the Bible; while in reading his noble Jewish tragedy of
the Samson, the Greek dramatists occur to us half a dozen times for once that we are reminded of the
wild story of the Israelitish hero and his Philistian persecutors as it stands in the book of
Judges.
And well it is for us and for him that our profane playwright knew his Bible as he did;— that book,
of which one of the most eminent
The copious inspiration Shakespeare drew from this source has made his plays the lay Bible of Englishmen; and it is curious enough that the ignorant among them misquote him for Holy Writ sometimes (but never Milton), seduced, like the worthy Judge in Texas, by the similitude of speech and spirit, into substituting the words of poetical for those of sacred inspiration.
The change of the word "wise" for "wife" in the lines
receives the sanction of Mr. Collier's folio. The passage is so printed by Hanmer,
Malone and the later editors all concur in the change, so that the authority of the folio corrector
seems hardly needed to recommend it.
In the folio's next emendation, namely, that of winding instead of windring brooks in the speech of Iris, the Oxford edition again has the identical
correction proposed by Mr. Collier's authority, and Steevens says that all the modern editors read
winding for windring, but himself proposes the word wand'ring, which I prefer, for, like winding, it
does but change one letter of the original text, but at the same time gives the line a fuller and
more musical sound, by the substitution of the vowel a for the vowel i in the word—a consideration by no means to be overlooked in verse, which is musical
speech,—and dramatic verse, which is written expressly to be spoken; of course "other things being
equal."
In going through the second and third acts of the Tempest with Mr. Collier's volume
of corrections, I find five only out of sixteen which appear to me of any peculiar value tested by
common sense; the rest I think are either indifferent or objectionable, and of the five which are
decided improvements, every one is found in Hanmer and other of the early editors.
Before closing my observations on the second and third Acts of the Tempest, I would
suggest to the reader's consideration the curious felicity of the scene when Ferdinand and Miranda
acknowledge their affection to each other. I mean in the harmonious contrast between a young prince,
bred in a Court, himself the centre of a sphere of the most artificial civilisation, and a girl not
only without any knowledge of the world and society, but even without previous knowledge of the
existence of any created man but her father and Caliban.
Brought up in all but utter solitude, under no influence but that of her wise and loving "Do you love me?"
that elicits her lover's passionate declaration) causes
her to "weep at what she's glad of,"
is so little comprehensible to herself, that she
shakes it off with something like self-reproach, as an involuntary disingenuousness: "Hence,
bashful
and then with that most pathetic and exquisite
invocation to cunning;""plain and holy innocence"
offers her life to her lover with the
perfect devotion and humility of the true womanly nature:— "tender of
affection,"
Ferdinand made acquaintance with a species of modesty to which assuredly
none of those ladies of the Court of Naples, "whom he had eyed with best regard,"
had
ever introduced him; and indeed to them Miranda's proceeding might very probably have appeared
highly unlady-like, as I have heard it pronounced more than once by—ladies. The young prince,
however, was probably himself surprised for a little while into a sphere of earnest sincerity, as
different from the artificial gallantry with which he had encountered the former objects of his
admiration as the severe manual labour he was undergoing for the sake of Miranda was different from
the inflated offers of service, and professions of slavery, which were the jargon of civilised
courtesy;—that species of language which Olivia reproves when she says
The transparent simplicity and sweet solem-
the
is love's true utterance, as free from sophistication as the girl's own guileless
challenge.
It is not a little edifying to reflect how different Prospero's treatment of these young people's
case would have been, if, instead of only the most extraordinary of conjurors, he had been the most
commonplace of scheming matrons of the present day. He, poor man, alarmed at the sudden conquest
Ferdinand makes of his child, and perceiving that he must "this swift business uneasy make,
lest two light winning make the prize light,"
can bethink himself of no better expedient
than reducing
But Prospero was after all a mere man, and knew no better than to bring up Miranda to
That Shakespeare, who indeed knew all things, knew very well the difference between, such a creature
as Miranda and a well-brought up young lady, is plain enough, when he makes poor Juliet, after her
passionate confession of love made to the stars, and overheard by Romeo, apologise to him with quite
pathetic mortification for not having been more "strange." She regrets extremely her unqualified
expressions of affection,—assures Romeo that nothing would have induced her to have spoken the
truth, if she had only known he heard her, and even offers, if it can be the least satisfac- tion to
him, and redeem what she may have lost in his esteem by her frankness, to "frown and be
perverse and say him nay,"
—and in short has evidently shocked her own conven- tional
prejudices quite as much as she fears she
To any one desirous of enhancing by comparison their appreciation of the Tempest, I
would recommend, not the perusal of, but a glance into, Dryden and D'Avenant's alteration of it,
"The Enchanted Island." This gross burlesque, perpetrated by a man of singular genius, who had
indeed "fallen on evil days," and ventured to lay unhallowed hands on Shakespeare's work, is the
finest comment by contrast that could be devised upon his divine poem. It was my misfortune, many
years ago,
ROMEO represents the sentiment, and Juliet the passion of
love.
The pathos is his, the power hers.
His first scene is mere rose-light before sunrising; the key-note to the after real
love and life is given in the lines,— "I fear too early," etc.
The
spirit of the balcony scene is that of joyful tenderness, and something of a sort of sweet 1 [These few notes were addressed as mere
suggestions to a gentleman studying the part of Romeo, who did me the honour to consult me upon
his rendering of the part. They are neither an analysis of the play nor of the character, but
mere hints for acting.—F. A. K.]
All the succeeding scenes are pervaded by the elastic spirit of joy and triumph of his secret
happiness. Mercutio's death is the sudden heavy thunder-cloud in the bright sky; his own duel with
Tybalt—the breaking of the lightning storm, and the falling of the bolt that strikes and shatters
his green tree of life. His furious burst of uncontrolled rage and hatred is followed by the utter
collapse of all passion, leaving only consciousness, but no discrimination of infinite trouble—a nightmare of indefinite abysmal misery.
The scene in the friar's cell is the sheer expression of the violence of
weakness—haggard bewilderment. Hunted for his life by the Capulets, hidden from the pursuit of
justice, palpitating with nervous anguish, apprehensive of instantaneous
revengeful murder, expectant of inevitable sentence of death, overwhelmed "Thou canst not speak of what
thou dost not feel."
Gradually, as the friar utters his concluding admonition, the vital
invincible hope of youth, and the anticipation of the "joy past joy,"
which beckon
him, rise triumphant above all the misery and culminate in the farewell.
In the parting scene in Juliet's room, she languid with passion, wan with woe, beneath his reiterated tender offering of his life to her, the throbbing of the natural desire to live,—here again his self-sacrifice is the sentiment, her selfishness the passion of love.
The opening of the fifth act is a gentle, tender, melancholy ecstasy, a blending of exquisite memories and hopes in a pervading atmosphere of sadness.
After the news of Juliet's death, one blasphemous outburst of mad agony follows,
and then the iron gloom of utter despair, the blackness of darkness, the absolute possession by misery of his whole being, through which his dwelling on
the details of the apothecary's existence, his one or two sobs of tenderness:—
his farewell to Balthasar, his warning to Paris, his recognition of him after
killing him,—all are lingering and broken touches of the sweet, tender, pathetic nature, choked with
the bitterness of his fate, and breaking through the settled, sullen, savage hardness of his
despair.
I am not careless, as I may have appeared to you, of the value of the text of Shakespeare; but, poet,
philosopher, and playwright as he was, your dealings with him are in the latter capacity only. You
need not be afraid of eliminating the two nobler elements of his works; omit what you will, that is
impossible.
Remember too, that his inspiration—and I use the word advisedly—did not protect him
from the errors of his time and place. As for occasional breaking of his lines, my excitement the
other evening made them more frequent than they really were; and a good musician should know how to
redeem a faulty line, in some measure, by his utterance.