ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

‘Ulysses.Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down,And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,But for these instances.The specialty of rule hath been neglected.. . . . .The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,Observe degree, priority, and place,Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,Office, and custom, in all line of order:And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,In noble eminence, enthron’d and spher’dAmidst the other, whose med’cinable eyeCorrects the ill aspects of planets evil,And posts, like the commandment of a king,Sans check, to good and bad. But, when the planets,In evil mixture to disorder wander,What plagues, and what portents? what mutinies?What raging of the sea? shaking of the earth?Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,Divert and crack, rend and deracinateThe unity and married calm of statesQuite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaken,(Which is the ladder to all high designs)The enterprize is sick! How could communities,Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,The primogenitive and due of birth,Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,(But by degree) stand in authentic place?Take but degree away, untune that string,And hark what discord follows! each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy. The bounded watersWould lift their bosoms higher than the shores,And make a sop of all this solid globe:Strength would be the lord of imbecility,And the rude son would strike his father dead:Force would be right; or rather right and wrong(Between whose endless jar Justice resides)Would lose their names, and so would Justice too.Then every thing includes itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite (an universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power)Must make perforce an universal prey,And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,This chaos, when degree is suffocate,Follows the choking:And this neglection of degree it is,That by a pace goes backward, in a purposeIt hath to climb. The general’s disdainedBy him one step below; he, by the next;That next, by him beneath: so every step,Exampled by the first pace that is sickOf his superior, grows to an envious feverOf pale and bloodless emulation;And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.’

‘Ulysses.Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down,And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,But for these instances.The specialty of rule hath been neglected.

‘Ulysses.Troy, yet upon her basis, had been down,

And the great Hector’s sword had lack’d a master,

But for these instances.

The specialty of rule hath been neglected.

. . . . .

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,Observe degree, priority, and place,Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,Office, and custom, in all line of order:And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,In noble eminence, enthron’d and spher’dAmidst the other, whose med’cinable eyeCorrects the ill aspects of planets evil,And posts, like the commandment of a king,Sans check, to good and bad. But, when the planets,In evil mixture to disorder wander,What plagues, and what portents? what mutinies?What raging of the sea? shaking of the earth?Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,Divert and crack, rend and deracinateThe unity and married calm of statesQuite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaken,(Which is the ladder to all high designs)The enterprize is sick! How could communities,Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,The primogenitive and due of birth,Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,(But by degree) stand in authentic place?Take but degree away, untune that string,And hark what discord follows! each thing meetsIn mere oppugnancy. The bounded watersWould lift their bosoms higher than the shores,And make a sop of all this solid globe:Strength would be the lord of imbecility,And the rude son would strike his father dead:Force would be right; or rather right and wrong(Between whose endless jar Justice resides)Would lose their names, and so would Justice too.Then every thing includes itself in power,Power into will, will into appetite;And appetite (an universal wolf,So doubly seconded with will and power)Must make perforce an universal prey,And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,This chaos, when degree is suffocate,Follows the choking:And this neglection of degree it is,That by a pace goes backward, in a purposeIt hath to climb. The general’s disdainedBy him one step below; he, by the next;That next, by him beneath: so every step,Exampled by the first pace that is sickOf his superior, grows to an envious feverOf pale and bloodless emulation;And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.’

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this center,

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order:

And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,

In noble eminence, enthron’d and spher’d

Amidst the other, whose med’cinable eye

Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,

And posts, like the commandment of a king,

Sans check, to good and bad. But, when the planets,

In evil mixture to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents? what mutinies?

What raging of the sea? shaking of the earth?

Commotion in the winds? frights, changes, horrors,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shaken,

(Which is the ladder to all high designs)

The enterprize is sick! How could communities,

Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,

The primogenitive and due of birth,

Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,

(But by degree) stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string,

And hark what discord follows! each thing meets

In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters

Would lift their bosoms higher than the shores,

And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength would be the lord of imbecility,

And the rude son would strike his father dead:

Force would be right; or rather right and wrong

(Between whose endless jar Justice resides)

Would lose their names, and so would Justice too.

Then every thing includes itself in power,

Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite (an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power)

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,

This chaos, when degree is suffocate,

Follows the choking:

And this neglection of degree it is,

That by a pace goes backward, in a purpose

It hath to climb. The general’s disdained

By him one step below; he, by the next;

That next, by him beneath: so every step,

Exampled by the first pace that is sick

Of his superior, grows to an envious fever

Of pale and bloodless emulation;

And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,

Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,

Troy in our weakness lives, not in her strength.’

It cannot be said of Shakespear, as was said of some one, that he was ‘without o’erflowing full.’ He was full, even to o’erflowing. He gave heaped measure, running over. This was his greatest fault. He was only in danger ‘of losing distinction in his thoughts’ (to borrow his own expression)

‘As doth a battle when they charge on heapsThe enemy flying.’

‘As doth a battle when they charge on heaps

The enemy flying.’

There is another passage, the speech of Ulysses to Achilles, shewing him the thankless nature of popularity, which has a still greater depth of moral observation and richness of illustration than the former. Itis long, but worth the quoting. The sometimes giving an entire argument from the unacted plays of our author may with one class of readers have almost the use of restoring a lost passage; and may serve to convince another class of critics, that the poet’s genius was not confined to the production of stage effect by preternatural means.—

‘Ulysses.Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion;A great-siz’d monster of ingratitudes:Those scraps are good deeds past,Which are devour’d as fast as they are made,Forgot as soon as done. Persev`rance, dear my lord,Keeps Honour bright: to have done, is to hangQuite out of fashion, like a rusty mailIn monumental mockery. Take the instant way;For Honour travels in a strait so narrow,Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path,For Emulation hath a thousand sons,That one by one pursue; if you give way,Or hedge aside from the direct forth right,Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,And leave you hindmost;——Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,Tho’ less than yours in past must o’ertop yours:For Time is like a fashionable host,That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand,And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,Grasps in the comer: the welcome ever smiles,And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seekRemuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit,High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,Love, friendship, charity, are subjects allTo envious and calumniating time:One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,Tho’ they are made and moulded of things past.The present eye praises the present object.Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;Since things in motion sooner catch the eye,Than what not stirs. The cry went out on thee,And still it might, and yet it may again,If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,And case thy reputation in thy tent.’

‘Ulysses.Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for Oblivion;

A great-siz’d monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past,

Which are devour’d as fast as they are made,

Forgot as soon as done. Persev`rance, dear my lord,

Keeps Honour bright: to have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;

For Honour travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast; keep then the path,

For Emulation hath a thousand sons,

That one by one pursue; if you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forth right,

Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,

And leave you hindmost;——

Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,

O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,

Tho’ less than yours in past must o’ertop yours:

For Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand,

And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: the welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was; for beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time:

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,

Tho’ they are made and moulded of things past.

The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye,

Than what not stirs. The cry went out on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,

And case thy reputation in thy tent.’

The throng of images in the above lines is prodigious; and though they sometimes jostle against one another, they every where raise andcarry on the feeling, which is intrinsically true and profound. The debates between the Trojan chiefs on the restoring of Helen are full of knowledge of human motives and character. Troilus enters well into the philosophy of war, when he says in answer to something that falls from Hector,

‘Why there you touch’d the life of our design:Were it not glory that we more affected,Than the performance of our heaving spleens,I would not wish a drop of Trojan bloodSpent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,She is a theme of honour and renown,A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds.’

‘Why there you touch’d the life of our design:

Were it not glory that we more affected,

Than the performance of our heaving spleens,

I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood

Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,

She is a theme of honour and renown,

A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds.’

The character of Hector, in a few slight indications which appear of it, is made very amiable. His death is sublime, and shews in a striking light the mixture of barbarity and heroism of the age. The threats of Achilles are fatal; they carry their own means of execution with them.

‘Come here about me, you my myrmidons,Mark what I say.—Attend me where I wheel:Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;And when I have the bloody Hector found,Empale him with your weapons round about,In fellest manner execute your arms.Follow me, sirs, and my proceeding eye.’

‘Come here about me, you my myrmidons,

Mark what I say.—Attend me where I wheel:

Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;

And when I have the bloody Hector found,

Empale him with your weapons round about,

In fellest manner execute your arms.

Follow me, sirs, and my proceeding eye.’

He then finds Hector and slays him, as if he had been hunting down a wild beast. There is something revolting as well as terrific in the ferocious coolness with which he singles out his prey: nor does the splendour of the achievement reconcile us to the cruelty of the means.

The characters of Cressida and Pandarus are very amusing and instructive. The disinterested willingness of Pandarus to serve his friend in an affair which lies next his heart is immediately brought forward. ‘Go thy way, Troilus, go thy way; had I a sister were a grace, or a daughter were a goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris, Paris is dirt to him, and I warrant Helen, to change, would give money to boot.’ This is the language he addresses to his niece: nor is she much behindhand in coming into the plot. Her head is as light and fluttering as her heart. ‘It is the prettiest villain, she fetches her breath so short as a new-ta’en sparrow.’ Both characters are originals, and quite different from what they are in Chaucer. In Chaucer, Cressida is represented as a grave, sober, considerate personage (a widow—he cannot tell her age, nor whether she has children or no) who has an alternate eye toher character, her interest, and her pleasure: Shakespear’s Cressida is a giddy girl, an unpractised jilt, who falls in love with Troilus, as she afterwards deserts him, from mere levity and thoughtlessness of temper. She may be wooed and won to any thing and from any thing, at a moment’s warning; the other knows very well what she would be at, and sticks to it, and is more governed by substantial reasons than by caprice or vanity. Pandarus again, in Chaucer’s story, is a friendly sort of go-between, tolerably busy, officious, and forward in bringing matters to bear: but in Shakespear he has ‘a stamp exclusive and professional’: he wears the badge of his trade; he is a regular knight of the game. The difference of the manner in which the subject is treated arises perhaps less from intention, than from the different genius of the two poets. There is nodouble entendrein the characters of Chaucer: they are either quite serious or quite comic. In Shakespear the ludicrous and ironical are constantly blended with the stately and the impassioned. We see Chaucer’s characters as they saw themselves, not as they appeared to others or might have appeared to the poet. He is as deeply implicated in the affairs of his personages as they could be themselves. He had to go a long journey with each of them, and became a kind of necessary confidant. There is little relief, or light and shade in his pictures. The conscious smile is not seen lurking under the brow of grief or impatience. Every thing with him is intense and continuous—a working out of what went before.—Shakespear never committed himself to his characters. He trifled, laughed, or wept with them as he chose. He has no prejudices for or against them; and it seems a matter of perfect indifference whether he shall be in jest or earnest. According to him ‘the web of our lives is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.’ His genius was dramatic, as Chaucer’s was historical. He saw both sides of a question, the different views taken of it according to the different interests of the parties concerned, and he was at once an actor and spectator in the scene. If any thing, he is too various and flexible: too full of transitions, of glancing lights, of salient points. If Chaucer followed up his subject too doggedly, perhaps Shakespear was too volatile and heedless. The Muse’s wing too often lifted him from off his feet. He made infinite excursions to the right and the left.

——‘He hath doneMad and fantastic execution,Engaging and redeeming of himselfWith such a careless force and forceless care,As if that luck in very spite of cunningBad him win all.’

——‘He hath done

Mad and fantastic execution,

Engaging and redeeming of himself

With such a careless force and forceless care,

As if that luck in very spite of cunning

Bad him win all.’

Chaucer attended chiefly to the real and natural, that is, to the involuntary and inevitable impressions on the mind in given circumstances; Shakespear exhibited also the possible and the fantastical,—not only what things are in themselves, but whatever they might seem to be, their different reflections, their endless combinations. He lent his fancy, wit, invention, to others, and borrowed their feelings in return. Chaucer excelled in the force of habitual sentiment; Shakespear added to it every variety of passion, every suggestion of thought or accident. Chaucer described external objects with the eye of a painter, or he might be said to have embodied them with the hand of a sculptor, every part is so thoroughly made out, and tangible:—Shakespear’s imagination threw over them a lustre

—‘Prouder than when blue Iris bends.’

Every thing in Chaucer has a downright reality. A simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon evidence. In Shakespear the commonest matter-of-fact has a romantic grace about it; or seems to float with the breath of imagination in a freer element. No one could have more depth of feeling or observation than Chaucer, but he wanted resources of invention to lay open the stores of nature or the human heart with the same radiant light that Shakespear has done. However fine or profound the thought, we know what is coming, whereas the effect of reading Shakespear is ‘like the eye of vassalage at unawares encountering majesty.’ Chaucer’s mind was consecutive, rather than discursive. He arrived at truth through a certain process; Shakespear saw every thing by intuition. Chaucer had a great variety of power, but he could do only one thing at once. He set himself to work on a particular subject. His ideas were kept separate, labelled, ticketed and parcelled out in a set form, in pews and compartments by themselves. They did not play into one another’s hands. They did not re-act upon one another, as the blower’s breath moulds the yielding glass. There is something hard and dry in them. What is the most wonderful thing in Shakespear’s faculties is their excessive sociability, and how they gossiped and compared notes together.

We must conclude this criticism; and we will do it with a quotation or two. One of the most beautiful passages in Chaucer’s tale is the description of Cresseide’s first avowal of her love.

‘And as the new abashed nightingale,That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,When that she heareth any herde’s tale,Or in the hedges any wight stirring,And, after, sicker doth her voice outring;Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,Opened her heart, and told him her intent.’

‘And as the new abashed nightingale,

That stinteth first when she beginneth sing,

When that she heareth any herde’s tale,

Or in the hedges any wight stirring,

And, after, sicker doth her voice outring;

Right so Cresseide, when that her dread stent,

Opened her heart, and told him her intent.’

See also the two next stanzas, and particularly that divine one beginning—

‘Her armes small, her back both straight and soft,’ etc.

Compare this with the following speech of Troilus to Cressida in the play:—

‘O, that I thought it could be in a woman;And if it can, I will presume in you,To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love,To keep her constancy in plight and youth,Out-living beauties outward, with a mindThat doth renew swifter than blood decays.Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,That my integrity and truth to youMight be affronted with the match and weightOf such a winnow’d purity in love;How were I then uplifted! But alas,I am as true as Truth’s simplicity,And simpler than the infancy of Truth.’

‘O, that I thought it could be in a woman;

And if it can, I will presume in you,

To feed for aye her lamp and flame of love,

To keep her constancy in plight and youth,

Out-living beauties outward, with a mind

That doth renew swifter than blood decays.

Or, that persuasion could but thus convince me,

That my integrity and truth to you

Might be affronted with the match and weight

Of such a winnow’d purity in love;

How were I then uplifted! But alas,

I am as true as Truth’s simplicity,

And simpler than the infancy of Truth.’

These passages may not seem very characteristic at first sight, though we think they are so. We will give two, that cannot be mistaken. Patroclus says to Achilles,

——‘Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton CupidShall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,And like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane,Be shook to air.’

——‘Rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid

Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,

And like a dew-drop from the lion’s mane,

Be shook to air.’

Troilus, addressing the God of Day on the approach of the morning that parts him from Cressida, says with much scorn,

‘What! proffer’st thou thy light here for to sell?Go sell it them thatsmallé selés grave.’

‘What! proffer’st thou thy light here for to sell?

Go sell it them thatsmallé selés grave.’

If nobody but Shakespear could have written the former, nobody but Chaucer would have thought of the latter.—Chaucer was the most literal of poets, as Richardson was of prose-writers.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

This is a very noble play. Though not in the first class of Shakespear’s productions, it stands next to them, and is, we think, the finest of his historical plays, that is, of those in which he made poetry the organ of history, and assumed a certain tone of character and sentiment, in conformity to known facts, instead of trusting to his observations of general nature or to the unlimited indulgence of his own fancy. What he has added to the actual story, is upon a par with it. His genius was, as it were, a match for history as well as nature, and could grapple at will with either. The play is full of that pervading comprehensive power by which the poet could always make himself master of time and circumstances. It presents a fine picture of Roman pride and Eastern magnificence: and in the struggle between the two, the empire of the world seems suspended, ‘like the swan’s down-feather,

‘That stands upon the swell at full of tide,And neither way inclines.’

‘That stands upon the swell at full of tide,

And neither way inclines.’

The characters breathe, move, and live. Shakespear does not stand reasoning on what his characters would do or say, but at oncebecomesthem, and speaks and acts for them. He does not present us with groups of stage-puppets or poetical machines making set speeches on human life, and acting from a calculation of problematical motives, but he brings living men and women on the scene, who speak and act from real feelings, according to the ebbs and flows of passion, without the least tincture of pedantry of logic or rhetoric. Nothing is made out by inference and analogy, by climax and antithesis, but every thing takes place just as it would have done in reality, according to the occasion.—The character of Cleopatra is a master-piece. What an extreme contrast it affords to Imogen! One would think it almost impossible for the same person to have drawn both. She is voluptuous, ostentatious, conscious, boastful of her charms, haughty, tyrannical, fickle. The luxurious pomp and gorgeous extravagance of the Egyptian queen are displayed in all their force and lustre, as well as the irregular grandeur of the soul of Mark Antony. Take only the first four lines that they speak as an example of the regal style of love-making.

‘Cleopatra.If it be love indeed, tell me how much?Antony.There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.Cleopatra.I’ll set a bourn how far to be belov’d.Antony.Then must thou needs find out new heav’n, new earth.’

‘Cleopatra.If it be love indeed, tell me how much?

Antony.There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.

Cleopatra.I’ll set a bourn how far to be belov’d.

Antony.Then must thou needs find out new heav’n, new earth.’

The rich and poetical description of her person beginning—

‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold,Purple the sails, and so perfumed, thatThe winds were love-sick’—

‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,

Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick’—

seems to prepare the way for, and almost to justify the subsequent infatuation of Antony when in the sea-fight at Actium, he leaves the battle, and ‘like a doating mallard’ follows her flying sails.

Few things in Shakespear (and we know of nothing in any other author like them) have more of that local truth of imagination and character than the passage in which Cleopatra is represented conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence—‘He’s speaking now, or murmuring—Where’s my serpent of old Nile?’ Or again, when she says to Antony, after the defeat at Actium, and his summoning up resolution to risk another fight—‘It is my birthday; I had thought to have held it poor; but since my lord is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.’ Perhaps the finest burst of all is Antony’s rage after his final defeat when he comes in, and surprises the messenger of Cæsar kissing her hand—

‘To let a fellow that will take rewards,And say God quit you, be familiar with,My play-fellow, your hand; this kingly seal,And plighter of high hearts.’

‘To let a fellow that will take rewards,

And say God quit you, be familiar with,

My play-fellow, your hand; this kingly seal,

And plighter of high hearts.’

It is no wonder that he orders him to be whipped; but his low condition is not the true reason: there is another feeling which lies deeper, though Antony’s pride would not let him shew it, except by his rage; he suspects the fellow to be Cæsar’s proxy.

Cleopatra’s whole character is the triumph of the voluptuous, of the love of pleasure and the power of giving it, over every other consideration. Octavia is a dull foil to her, and Fulvia a shrew and shrill-tongued. What a picture do those lines give of her—

‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stealHer infinite variety. Other women cloyThe appetites they feed, but she makes hungryWhere most she satisfies.’

‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom steal

Her infinite variety. Other women cloy

The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry

Where most she satisfies.’

What a spirit and fire in her conversation with Antony’s messenger who brings her the unwelcome news of his marriage with Octavia! How all the pride of beauty and of high rank breaks out in her promised reward to him—

——‘There’s gold, and hereMy bluest veins to kiss!’—

——‘There’s gold, and here

My bluest veins to kiss!’—

She had great and unpardonable faults, but the grandeur of her death almost redeems them. She learns from the depth of despair the strength of her affections. She keeps her queen-like state in the last disgrace, and her sense of the pleasurable in the last moments of her life. She tastes a luxury in death. After applying the asp, she says with fondness—

‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,That sucks the nurse asleep?As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.Oh Antony!’

‘Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,

That sucks the nurse asleep?

As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle.

Oh Antony!’

It is worth while to observe that Shakespear has contrasted the extreme magnificence of the descriptions in this play with pictures of extreme suffering and physical horror, not less striking—partly perhaps to place the effeminate character of Mark Antony in a more favourable light, and at the same time to preserve a certain balance of feeling in the mind. Cæsar says, hearing of his rival’s conduct at the court of Cleopatra,

——‘Antony,Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thou onceWert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew’stHirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heelDid famine follow, whom thou fought’st against,Though daintily brought up, with patience moreThan savages could suffer. Thou did’st drinkThe stale of horses, and the gilded puddleWhich beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deignThe roughest berry on the rudest hedge,Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,The barks of trees thou browsed’st. On the Alps,It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh,Which some did die to look on: and all this,It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheekSo much as lank’d not.’

——‘Antony,

Leave thy lascivious wassels. When thou once

Wert beaten from Mutina, where thou slew’st

Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel

Did famine follow, whom thou fought’st against,

Though daintily brought up, with patience more

Than savages could suffer. Thou did’st drink

The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle

Which beast would cough at. Thy palate then did deign

The roughest berry on the rudest hedge,

Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,

The barks of trees thou browsed’st. On the Alps,

It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh,

Which some did die to look on: and all this,

It wounds thine honour, that I speak it now,

Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek

So much as lank’d not.’

The passage after Antony’s defeat by Augustus, where he is made to say—

‘Yes, yes; he at Philippi keptHis sword e’en like a dancer; while I struckThe lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas IThat the mad Brutus ended’—

‘Yes, yes; he at Philippi kept

His sword e’en like a dancer; while I struck

The lean and wrinkled Cassius, and ’twas I

That the mad Brutus ended’—

is one of those fine retrospections which show us the winding and eventful march of human life. The jealous attention which has beenpaid to the unities both of time and place has taken away the principle of perspective in the drama, and all the interest which objects derive from distance, from contrast, from privation, from change of fortune, from long-cherished passion; and contrasts our view of life from a strange and romantic dream, long, obscure, and infinite, into a smartly contested, three hours’ inaugural disputation on its merits by the different candidates for theatrical applause.

The latter scenes ofAntony and Cleopatraare full of the changes of accident and passion. Success and defeat follow one another with startling rapidity. Fortune sits upon her wheel more blind and giddy than usual. This precarious state and the approaching dissolution of his greatness are strikingly displayed in the dialogue of Antony with Eros.

‘Antony.Eros, thou yet behold’st me?Eros.Ay, noble lord.Antony.Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,A towered citadel, a pendant rock,A forked mountain, or blue promontoryWith trees upon’t, that nod unto the worldAnd mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,They are black vesper’s pageants.Eros.Ay, my lord.Antony.That which is now a horse, even with a thoughtThe rack dislimns, and makes it indistinctAs water is in water.Eros.It does, my lord.Antony.My good knave, Eros, now thy captain isEven such a body,’ etc.

‘Antony.Eros, thou yet behold’st me?

Eros.Ay, noble lord.

Antony.Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,A towered citadel, a pendant rock,A forked mountain, or blue promontoryWith trees upon’t, that nod unto the worldAnd mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,They are black vesper’s pageants.

Antony.Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish,

A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion,

A towered citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world

And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs,

They are black vesper’s pageants.

Eros.Ay, my lord.

Antony.That which is now a horse, even with a thoughtThe rack dislimns, and makes it indistinctAs water is in water.

Antony.That which is now a horse, even with a thought

The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

As water is in water.

Eros.It does, my lord.

Antony.My good knave, Eros, now thy captain isEven such a body,’ etc.

Antony.My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is

Even such a body,’ etc.

This is, without doubt, one of the finest pieces of poetry in Shakespear. The splendour of the imagery, the semblance of reality, the lofty range of picturesque objects hanging over the world, their evanescent nature, the total uncertainty of what is left behind, are just like the mouldering schemes of human greatness. It is finer than Cleopatra’s passionate lamentation over his fallen grandeur, because it is more dim, unstable, unsubstantial. Antony’s headstrong presumption and infatuated determination to yield to Cleopatra’s wishes to fight by sea instead of land, meet a merited punishment; and the extravagance of his resolutions, increasing with the desperateness of his circumstances, is well commented upon by Œnobarbus.

——‘I see men’s judgments areA parcel of their fortunes, and things outwardDo draw the inward quality after themTo suffer all alike.’

——‘I see men’s judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them

To suffer all alike.’

The repentance of Œnobarbus after his treachery to his master is the most affecting part of the play. He cannot recover from the blow which Antony’s generosity gives him, and he dies broken-hearted, ‘a master-leaver and a fugitive.’

Shakespear’s genius has spread over the whole play a richness like the overflowing of the Nile.

This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after-years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gave the advice to the players, who thought ‘this goodly frame, the earth, a steril promontory, and this brave o’er-hanging firmament, the air, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours’; whom ‘man delighted not, nor woman neither’; he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralised on Yorick’s skull; the school-fellow of Rosencraus and Guildenstern at Wittenberg; the friend of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; he that was mad and sent to England; the slow avenger of his father’s death; who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years before we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as we do our own, because we have read them in Shakespear.

Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet’s brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader’s mind. It iswewho are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself ‘too much i’ th’ sun’; whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known ‘the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes’; he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes toa play as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock representation of them—this is the true Hamlet.

We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticise it any more than we should know how to describe our own faces. But we must make such observations as we can. It is the one of Shakespear’s plays that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser; and what makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He is not a common-place pedant. IfLearis distinguished by the greatest depth of passion,Hamletis the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied developement of character. Shakespear had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shewn more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: every thing is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is excited without effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters of course, the characters think and speak and act just as they might do, if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the passing scene—the gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It would have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and witnessed something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not only ‘the outward pageants and the signs of grief’; but ‘we have that within which passes shew.’ We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature; but Shakespear, together with his own comments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a very great advantage.

The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can well be: but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility—the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forcedfrom the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills Polonius, and again, where he alters the letters which Rosencraus and Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the King when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act ‘that has no relish of salvation in it.’

‘He kneels and prays,And now I’ll do’t, and so he goes to heaven,And so am I reveng’d:that would be scann’d.He kill’d my father, and for that,I, his sole son, send him to heaven.Why this is reward, not revenge.Up sword and know thou a more horrid time,When he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage.’

‘He kneels and prays,

And now I’ll do’t, and so he goes to heaven,

And so am I reveng’d:that would be scann’d.

He kill’d my father, and for that,

I, his sole son, send him to heaven.

Why this is reward, not revenge.

Up sword and know thou a more horrid time,

When he is drunk, asleep, or in a rage.’

He is the prince of philosophical speculators; and because he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish can form, he declines it altogether. So he scruples to trust the suggestions of the ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer proof of his uncle’s guilt, and then rests satisfied with this confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it.

‘How all occasions do inform against me,And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,If his chief good and market of his timeBe but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more.Sure he that made us with such large discourse,Looking before and after, gave us notThat capability and god-like reasonTo rust in us unus’d. Now whether it beBestial oblivion, or some craven scrupleOf thinking too precisely on th’ event,—A thought which quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom,And ever three parts coward;—I do not knowWhy yet I live to say, this thing’s to do;Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and meansTo do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me:Witness this army of such mass and charge,Led by a delicate and tender prince,Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d,Makes mouths at the invisible event,Exposing what is mortal and unsureTo all that fortune, death, and danger dare,Even for an egg-shell. ’Tis not to be greatNever to stir without great argument;But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand men,That for a fantasy and trick of fame,Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause,Which is not tomb enough and continentTo hide the slain?—O, from this time forth,My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.’

‘How all occasions do inform against me,

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast; no more.

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To rust in us unus’d. Now whether it be

Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on th’ event,—

A thought which quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom,

And ever three parts coward;—I do not know

Why yet I live to say, this thing’s to do;

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do it. Examples gross as earth exhort me:

Witness this army of such mass and charge,

Led by a delicate and tender prince,

Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d,

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure

To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,

Even for an egg-shell. ’Tis not to be great

Never to stir without great argument;

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw,

When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,

Excitements of my reason and my blood,

And let all sleep, while to my shame I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men,

That for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,

Which is not tomb enough and continent

To hide the slain?—O, from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.’

Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from any want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretext that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from his previous purposes.

The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules; amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of ‘that noble and liberal casuist’ (as Shakespear has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured Quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the ‘licence of the time,’ or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too muchtaken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him! Amidst the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When ‘his father’s spirit was in arms,’ it was not a time for the son to make love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken him years to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done much otherwise than he did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral,

‘I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothersCould not with all their quantity of loveMake up my sum.’

‘I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers

Could not with all their quantity of love

Make up my sum.’

Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the Queen’s apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing the flowers into the grave.

——‘Sweets to the sweet, farewell.I hop’d thou should’st have been my Hamlet’s wife:I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid,And not have strew’d thy grave.’

——‘Sweets to the sweet, farewell.

I hop’d thou should’st have been my Hamlet’s wife:

I thought thy bride-bed to have deck’d, sweet maid,

And not have strew’d thy grave.’

Shakespear was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of human character, and he here shews us the Queen, who was so criminal in some respects, not without sensibility and affection in other relations of life.—Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon faded! Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which nobody but Shakespear could have drawn in the way that he has done, and to the conception of which there is not even the smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads.[67]Her brother,Laertes, is a character we do not like so well: he is too hot and choleric, and somewhat rhodomontade. Polonius is a perfect character in its kind; nor is there any foundation for the objections which have been made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts very foolishly and talks very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in that. Again, that he talks wisely at one time and foolishly at another; that his advice to Laertes is very excellent, and his advice to the King and Queen on the subject of Hamlet’s madness very ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it; he gives the other as a mere courtier, a busy-body, and is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent. In short, Shakespear has been accused of inconsistency in this and other characters, only because he has kept up the distinction which there is in nature, between the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives. Polonius is not a fool, but he makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, comes under the head of impropriety of intention.

We do not like to see our author’s plays acted, and least of all,Hamlet. There is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself seems hardly capable of being acted. Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails in this character from a want of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is made up of undulating lines; it has the yielding flexibility of ‘a wave o’ th’ sea.’ Mr. Kemble plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and refined susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts which Mr. Kean introduces into the part. Mr. Kean’s Hamlet is as much too splenetic and rash as Mr. Kemble’s is too deliberate and formal. His manner is too strong and pointed. He throws a severity, approaching to virulence, into the common observations and answers. There is nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up in his reflections, and onlythinks aloud. There should therefore be no attempt to impress what he says upon others by a studied exaggeration of emphasis or manner; notalking athis hearers. There should be as much of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused into the part, and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit reluctantly upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most amiable of misanthropes.

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