Chapter 5

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together."

"Our rash faultsMake trivial price of serious things we have,Not knowing them until we know their grave:Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,Destroy our friends and after weep their dust."

Julius Cæsar.

Written.1601 (?)Produced.(?)Published, in the first folio, 1623.Source of the Plot.The Lives of Antonius, Brutus and Julius Cæsar in Sir Thomas North'sPlutarch.A tragedy of Julius Cæsar, now lost, was performed by Shakespeare's company in 1594. Shakespeare must have known this play.The Fable.Cassius, fearing that Julius Cæsar is about to extinguish all trace of Republican rule in Rome, persuades Brutus and others to plot a change. They decide to murder Cæsar.On the morning chosen for the murder, Cæsar is warned by many omens not to stir abroad. He is persuaded to ignore the omens. He goes to the Senate House, and is there killed. Mark Antony, his friend, obtains leave from the murderers to make a public oration over the corpse.In his speech he so inflames the populace against the murderers that they are compelled to leave Rome.Joining himself to Octavius, he takes the field against Brutus and Cassius, and helps to defeat them at Philippi.

Written.1601 (?)

Produced.(?)

Published, in the first folio, 1623.

Source of the Plot.The Lives of Antonius, Brutus and Julius Cæsar in Sir Thomas North'sPlutarch.

A tragedy of Julius Cæsar, now lost, was performed by Shakespeare's company in 1594. Shakespeare must have known this play.

The Fable.Cassius, fearing that Julius Cæsar is about to extinguish all trace of Republican rule in Rome, persuades Brutus and others to plot a change. They decide to murder Cæsar.

On the morning chosen for the murder, Cæsar is warned by many omens not to stir abroad. He is persuaded to ignore the omens. He goes to the Senate House, and is there killed. Mark Antony, his friend, obtains leave from the murderers to make a public oration over the corpse.

In his speech he so inflames the populace against the murderers that they are compelled to leave Rome.

Joining himself to Octavius, he takes the field against Brutus and Cassius, and helps to defeat them at Philippi.

Cassius is killed by his servant when he sees that all is lost. Brutus, seeing the battle go against him, kills himself.

The modern play climbs to its culmination by a series of interruptions or crises. The modern playwright tries to end his acts at an arresting or splendid moment, artfully delayed, and carefully prepared. He tries to end his play by a gradual knitting together of all the energies of his characters into a situation, happier or more haunting, than any that has preceded it in the course of the action. The art by which this is done, when it is done, is called dramatic construction. There are many kind of dramatic construction. Each age tends to form a new one. Each writer uses many. In art a subject can only be expressed in the form most fitting to it. In the art of the theatre a mistake in the choice of the form, or in the right handling of it when chosen leads infallibly to the irritation of the audience and the failure of the play. When a play is badly constructed the actors cannot so interpret the author's emotion that it willdominate the collective emotion in the audience.

It is often said, by those who ought to know better (it was said to Racine by Frenchmen), that dramatic construction cannot matter, if the passion or spirit with which the author writes, be abundant and sincere. The powder in a cartridge may be abundant and the bullet at the end may be sincerely meant, yet neither will do execution till they are put properly into the proper weapon, rightly aimed, and judgingly fired. So with passion in the arts. Without art, inspiration is breath and a feeding of the wind. In the theatre, inspiration without art is as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal.

It is sometimes maintained in print, by those saddened or maddened by bad modern performances of the plays, that Shakespeare "could not construct," that he is constantly "rambling," "chaotic," or "intolerable," and that he is only played to-day because of his "poetry." Those who maintain these things forget that an Elizabethan play wasconstructed for a theatre much unlike the modern theatre, and performed in a manner suited to that theatre, but less well suited to the theatre of our times. Shakespeare's plays were constructed closely and carefully to be effective on the Elizabethan stage. On that stage they were highly and nobly effective. On the modern stage, produced in the modern manner, they are less effective. There are many reasons why they should be less effective on the modern stage. During the last thirty years there has been a tendency towards naturalism in the theatre. Modern audiences have learned not to care for poetry on the stage unless it is made "natural" by realistic scenery. Modern audiences are accustomed to the modern forms of dramatic construction, which are unlike the Elizabethan forms. They know that modern playwrights put a strong scene at the end of an act and a great scene at the end of the play. They have learned to expect a play to be arranged in that manner, and to count as ill constructed the play not so arranged. As it is frequentlysaid that the last acts ofJulius Cæsarmake anti-climax and spoil the play, it is necessary to consider Shakespeare's constructive practice in this and in some other plays.

The Greek tragic poets ended the action of their plays in the modern manner, at the great scene, but, unlike us, they delayed the departure of the audience for some minutes more, generally by a chorus of men and women who expounded the moral value of the action in noble verse. The audience came away calmed. If a Greek had constructedJulius Cæsar, he would have ended the action at the murder. A chorus of senators would then have chanted something noble about the results of pride, the vanity of human glory, and the strangeness of the ways of the gods. A modern writer would have caused the curtain to fall at the murder, for to-day, when the brains are out the play dies and there an end. Shakespeare carries on his play for two acts after Cæsar is dead. InMacbethhe constructs the last half of his play in much the same manner.

In both plays he is considering the conception, the doing, and the results of a violent act. In both plays this act is the murder of the head of a State. In neither case is he deeply interested in the victim. Duncan, inMacbeth, is a generous gentleman; Cæsar, in this play, is a touchy man of affairs whose head is turned. Shakespeare's imagination broods on the fact that the killers were deluded into murder, Macbeth by an envious wife and the belief that Fate meant him to be king, Brutus by an envious friend and the belief that he was saving Rome. In both cases the killers show base personal ingratitude and treachery. In both plays, an avenging justice makes even the scales. The mind of the poet follows them from the moment when the guilty thought is prompted, through the agony and exultation of dreadful acts, to the unhappiness that dogs the treacherous, till Fate's just sword falls in vengeance. His imagination is most keenly stirred just as ours is, by the great event, the murder of the victim: but his subject is not the murder,nor yet the tragical end of a ruler. His subject in both plays is the working of Fate who prompts to murder, uses the murderer, and then destroys him. We are interested in crisis and in topic. The Elizabethans, with a wider vision, could not detach an act from its place in the pageant of history. In a modern play the heroine is put into an unpleasant position, or an evil is exposed, or our faults are made visible and laughable. The point of view is that of the sympathiser, reformer, and moralist looking on from the window near by. The field of vision is restricted and the object brought near. In this great play, as inMacbeth, Shakespeare strove to present a violent act and its consequences from the point of view of a great just spirit outside life.

The play is generally considered to be the earliest of the supreme plays. Little more can be said of it at this time than that it is supreme. There is a majesty in the conception that makes it like gathering and breaking storm. The cause of the murder is a great personal treachery inspired by an unselfishidea. Though it seems inevitable, it is a very little thing that makes it possible. Both Cæsar's murder and Brutus' downfall are almost prevented. A hand stretches out to save both of them. A little domestic treachery inspired by a selfish idea puts aside the interposing hand in both instances. Cæsar will not listen to his wife because he is sure of himself. Brutus will not answer his wife for the same reason. They go on to the magnificent hour which makes the one fine soul in the play a haunted and unhappy soul till he snatches at Death at Philippi.

The verse is calm, like the noble art that shapes the scenes. It is full of majesty. Lines occur in which single unusual words are charged with an incalculable power of meaning.

"Against the Capitol I met a lion,Who glazed upon me and went surly by."

"It is the bright day that brings forth the adder."

Shakespeare's intensest and most solemn thought, the Law that directed the creation of some of his greatest work, is spoken by Brutus—

"Between the acting of a dreadful thingAnd the first motion, all the interim isLike a phantasma or a hideous dream:The Genius and the mortal instrumentsAre then in council, and the state of man,Like to a little kingdom, suffers thenThe nature of an insurrection."

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

Written.1601-2.Published, in an imperfect form, 1603; more perfectly, 1604.Source of the Plot.A play upon the subject of Hamlet, now lost, seems to have been popular in London during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Some think that it was an early work of Shakespeare's. No evidence supports this theory. He probably knew the play, and may have acted in it.The story is told by Saxo Grammaticus in hisHistoria Danica. Francis de Belleforest printed a version of it in hisHistoires Tragiques. An English translation from de Belleforest, called theHystorie of Hamblet, was published (or perhaps reprinted) in London in 1608. Shakespeare seems to have known both de Belleforest and theHystorie.The Fable.Claudius, brother to the King of Denmark, conniving with Gertrude the Queen, poisons his brother, and seizes the throne. Soon afterwards he marries Gertrude. At this point the play begins.Hamlet, son of the murdered king, sick at heart at his mother's hasty re-marriage, and troubled by his love for Ophelia, returns to Denmark. The ghost of his fatherreveals the manner of the murder to him, and makes him swear to be revenged. The revelation so affects him that the murderers begin to fear him. He cannot bring himself to kill Claudius. In a play he shows them that he knows their guilt.While speaking with his mother, he discovers and kills a spy hidden behind the arras. The spy is Polonius, father of Laertes and of Ophelia.Claudius causes Hamlet to sail for England, on the pretext that the killing of Polonius has brought him into danger with the populace. He plans that Hamlet shall be killed on his arrival. Hamlet discovers the treacherous purpose and returns unhurt to Denmark.During Hamlet's absence at sea, Laertes learns how Polonius was killed and swears to be revenged on Hamlet. Hamlet's return gives him his opportunity.Claudius suggests that the revenge be taken at a fencing-bout. Laertes shall fence with Hamlet, using a poisoned foil. If this fails, Hamlet shall be given poisoned wine.In a scuffle during the fencing-bout the fencers change foils. Gertrude, by mistake, drinks the poisoned wine and dies. Laertes, hurt by the poisoned foil, dies. Hamlet, also hurt by the poisoned foil, kills Claudius and dies too.

Written.1601-2.

Published, in an imperfect form, 1603; more perfectly, 1604.

Source of the Plot.A play upon the subject of Hamlet, now lost, seems to have been popular in London during the last decades of the sixteenth century. Some think that it was an early work of Shakespeare's. No evidence supports this theory. He probably knew the play, and may have acted in it.

The story is told by Saxo Grammaticus in hisHistoria Danica. Francis de Belleforest printed a version of it in hisHistoires Tragiques. An English translation from de Belleforest, called theHystorie of Hamblet, was published (or perhaps reprinted) in London in 1608. Shakespeare seems to have known both de Belleforest and theHystorie.

The Fable.Claudius, brother to the King of Denmark, conniving with Gertrude the Queen, poisons his brother, and seizes the throne. Soon afterwards he marries Gertrude. At this point the play begins.

Hamlet, son of the murdered king, sick at heart at his mother's hasty re-marriage, and troubled by his love for Ophelia, returns to Denmark. The ghost of his fatherreveals the manner of the murder to him, and makes him swear to be revenged. The revelation so affects him that the murderers begin to fear him. He cannot bring himself to kill Claudius. In a play he shows them that he knows their guilt.

While speaking with his mother, he discovers and kills a spy hidden behind the arras. The spy is Polonius, father of Laertes and of Ophelia.

Claudius causes Hamlet to sail for England, on the pretext that the killing of Polonius has brought him into danger with the populace. He plans that Hamlet shall be killed on his arrival. Hamlet discovers the treacherous purpose and returns unhurt to Denmark.

During Hamlet's absence at sea, Laertes learns how Polonius was killed and swears to be revenged on Hamlet. Hamlet's return gives him his opportunity.

Claudius suggests that the revenge be taken at a fencing-bout. Laertes shall fence with Hamlet, using a poisoned foil. If this fails, Hamlet shall be given poisoned wine.

In a scuffle during the fencing-bout the fencers change foils. Gertrude, by mistake, drinks the poisoned wine and dies. Laertes, hurt by the poisoned foil, dies. Hamlet, also hurt by the poisoned foil, kills Claudius and dies too.

Hamletis the most baffling of the great plays. It is the tragedy of a man and an action continually baffled by wisdom. The man is too wise. The dual action, pressing in both cases to complete an event, cannot get past his wisdom into the world. The action in one case is a bad one. It is simplymurder. In the other, and more important case, it is, according to our scheme, also a bad one. It is revenge, or, at best, the taking of blood for blood. In the Shakespearean scheme it is not revenge, it is justice, and therefore neither good nor bad but necessary. The situation which causes the tragedy is one very common in Shakespeare's system. Life has been wrenched from her course. Wrenching is necessary to bring her back to her course or to keep her where she is. Hamlet is a man who understands too humanly to wish to wrench either this way or that, and too shrewdly to be himself wrenched by grosser instruments of Fate.

The action consists in the baffling of action. Mostly, it consists in the baffling of life's effort to get back to her course. All through the play there is the uneasiness of something trying to get done, something from outside life trying to get into life, but baffled always because the instrument chosen is, himself, a little outside life, as the wise must be. This baffling of the purpose of the deadleads to a baffling of the living, and, at last, to something like an arrest of life, a deadlock, in which each act, however violent, makes the obscuring of life's purpose greater.

The powers outside life send a poor ghost to Hamlet to prompt him to an act of justice. After baffled hours, often interrupted by cock-crow, he gives his message. Hamlet is charged with the double task of executing judgment and showing mercy. It is a charge given to many people (generally common people) in the system of the plays. It is given to two other men in this play. It is nothing more than the fulfilling of the kingly office, so bloodily seized by Claudius before the opening of the play. At this point, it may be well to consider the society in which the kingly office is to be exercised.

The society is created with Shakespeare's fullest power. It is not an image of the world in little, like the world of the late historical plays. It is an image of the world as intellect is made to feel it. It is a society governed by the enemies of intellect, by thesensual and the worldly, by deadly sinners and the philosophers of bread and cheese. The King is a drunken, incestuous murderer, who fears intellect. The Queen is a false woman, who cannot understand intellect. Polonius is a counsellor who suspects intellect. Ophelia is a doll without intellect. Laertes is a boor who destroys intellect. The courtiers are parasites who flourish on the decay of intellect. Fortinbras, bright and noble, marching to the drum to win a dunghill, gives a colour to the folly. The only friends of the wise man are Horatio, the schoolfellow, and the leader of a cry of players.

The task set by the dead is a simple one. All tasks are simple to the simple-minded. To the delicate and complex mind so much of life is bound up with every act that any violent act involves not only a large personal sacrifice of ideal, but a tearing-up by the roots of half the order of the world. Wisdom is founded upon justice; but justice, to the wise man, is more a scrupulous quality in the mind than the doing of expedient acts uponsinners. Hamlet is neither "weak" nor "unpractical," as so many call him. What he hesitates to do may be necessary, or even just, as the world goes, but it is a defilement of personal ideals, difficult for a wise mind to justify. It is so great a defilement, and a world so composed is so great a defilement, that death seems preferable to action and existence alike.

The play at this point presents a double image of action baffled by wisdom. Hamlet baffles the dealing of the justice of Fate, and also the death plotted for him by his uncle. His weapon, in both cases, is his justice, his precise scrupulousness of mind, the niceness of mental balance which gives to all that he says the double-edge of wisdom. It is the faculty, translated into the finer terms of thought, which the ghost seeks to make real with bloodshed. Justice, in her grosser as in her finer form, is concerned with the finding of the truth. The first half of the play, though it exposes and develops the fable, is a dual image of a search for truth,of a seeking for a certainty that would justify a violent act. The King is probing Hamlet's mind with gross human probes, to find out if he is mad. Hamlet is searching the King's mind with the finest of intellectual probes, to find out if he is guilty. The probe used by him, the fragment of a play within a play, is the work of a man with a knowledge of the impotence of intellect—

"Our wills and fates do so contrary runThat our devices still are overthrown"—

and a faith in the omnipotence of intellect—

"Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own."

To this man, five minutes after the lines have exposed the guilty man, comes a chance to kill his uncle. Hamlet "might do it pat" while he is at prayers. The knowledge that the sword will not reach the real man, since damnation comes from within, not from without, arrests his hand. Fate offers an instant for the doing of her purpose. Hamlet puts the instant by, with his bafflingslowness, made up of mercy and wisdom. Fate, or the something outside life which demands the King's blood, so that life may go back to her channel, is foiled. The action cannot bring itself to be. A wise human purpose is, for the moment, stronger than the eternal purpose of Nature, the roughly just.

It is a part of this play's ironic teaching that life must not be baffled; but that, when she has been wrenched from her course, she must either be wrenched back to it or kept violently in the channel to which she has been forced.

InMacbeth, a not dissimilar play, the life violently altered is kept in the strange channel by a succession of violent acts. InHamlet, when Hamlet's merciful wisdom has decided that the life violently altered shall not be wrenched back, his destroying wisdom decides that she shall not be kept in the strange channel. The King, just in his way, seeks to find out if Hamlet be sane. If Hamlet be sane, he must die. His death will securethe King's position. By his death life will be kept in the strange channel. Polonius, the King's agent, learns that Hamlet is sane and something more. Fate demands violence this way if she may not have it in the other. She offers an instant for the doing of her purpose. Hamlet puts the instant by with his baffling swiftness, which strikes on the instant, when the Queen's honour and his own life depend on it. The first bout in this play of the baffling of action falls to Hamlet. The second bout, in which the King's purpose is again baffled, by the sending of the two courtiers to their death in England, also falls to Hamlet. The bloody purpose from outside life and the bloody purpose from within life are both baffled and kept from being by the two extremes so perfectly balanced in the wise nature.

Extremes in the Shakespearean system are tragical things. In Shakespeare, the pathway of excess leads, not as with Blake, to the palace of wisdom, but to destruction. The two extremes in Hamlet, of slownessand swiftness, set up in life the counter forces which destroy extremes, so that life, the common thing, may continue to be common. The mercy of Hamlet leaves the King free to plot his death. The swiftness of Hamlet gives to the King a hand and sword to work his will.

In other plays, the working of extremes to the punishment dealt by life to all excess is simple and direct. In this play, nothing is simple and direct. Fate's direct workings are baffled by a mind too complex to be active on the common planes. The baffling of Fate's purpose leads to a condition in life like the "slack water" between tides. Laertes, when his father is killed, raises the town and comes raving to the presence to stab the killer. He is baffled by the King's wisdom. Ophelia, "incapable of her own distress," goes mad and drowns herself. The play seems to hesitate and stand still while the energies spilled in the baffling of Fate work and simmer and grow strong, till they combine with Fate in the preparationof an end that shall not be baffled. Even so, "the end men looked for cometh not." The end comes to both actions at once in the squalor of a chance-medley. Fate has her will at last. Life, who was so long baffled, only hesitated. She destroys the man who wrenched her from her course, and the man who would neither wrench her back nor let her stay, and the women who loved these men, and the men who loved them. Revenge and chance together restore life to her course, by a destruction of the lives too beastly, and of the lives too hasty, and of the lives too foolish, and of the life too wise, to be all together on earth at the same time.

It is difficult to praise the poetry ofHamlet. Nearly all the play is as familiar by often quotation as the New Testament. The great, wise, and wonderful beauty of the play is a part of the English mind for ever. It is difficult to live for a day anywhere in England (except in a theatre) without hearing or reading a part ofHamlet. Lines that are little quoted are the lines to quote here—

"this fell sergeant, death,Is strict in his arrest.""O proud death!What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,That thou so many princes, at a shot,So bloodily hast struck?"

"this fell sergeant, death,Is strict in his arrest."

"O proud death!What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,That thou so many princes, at a shot,So bloodily hast struck?"

The last speech, great as the speech at the end of Timon, and noble, like that, with a music beyond the art of voices, is constructed on a similar metrical basis.

"Let four captainsBear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;For he was likely, had he been put on,To have proved most royally: and, for his passage,The soldier's music and the rites of warSpeak loudly for him.Take up the bodies: such a sight as thisBecomes the field, but here shows much amiss.Go, bid the soldiers shoot."

Troilus and Cressida.

Written.(?)Produced.After publication.Published.1609.Source of the Plot.Geoffrey Chaucer's poem ofTroilus and Creseide. John Lydgate'sTroy Boke. William Caxton's translation of the French book of theRecuyels of Troy. George Chapman's translation of Homer'sIliad.Among many other possible sources may be mentioned a now lost play ofTroilus and Cressida(produced in 1599) by the poets Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle.The Fable.The scene is Troy. Cressida is a Trojan woman, whose father, Calchas, has gone over to the Greeks. She is beloved by the youth Troilus. Her uncle, Pandarus, seeks to bring her to accept Troilus. Hector, brother to Troilus, challenges a Greek champion to single combat.In the Greek camp there is much disaffection. Achilles, the chief Greek champion, conceiving himself wronged, makes a mock of the other leaders. To teach him his place the leaders plan that Ajax shall be chosen in his stead to take up Hector's challenge.Pandarus succeeds in bringing Cressida to love Troilus.Calchas, in the Greek camp, sends to Troy for Cressida. She is delivered over to the Greeks. Forgetting Troilus, she entangles one of the Greeks with her wiles.Ajax takes up Hector's challenge. They fight a friendly bout and then go to feast, where the moody Achilles insults Hector.The next day, Hector and Troilus come to the field, the one to avenge Achilles' insults, the other to kill the man who has won Cressida. Hector is cruelly and cowardly killed by Achilles. Troilus is left unhurt, cursing.

Written.(?)

Produced.After publication.

Published.1609.

Source of the Plot.Geoffrey Chaucer's poem ofTroilus and Creseide. John Lydgate'sTroy Boke. William Caxton's translation of the French book of theRecuyels of Troy. George Chapman's translation of Homer'sIliad.

Among many other possible sources may be mentioned a now lost play ofTroilus and Cressida(produced in 1599) by the poets Thomas Dekker and Henry Chettle.

The Fable.The scene is Troy. Cressida is a Trojan woman, whose father, Calchas, has gone over to the Greeks. She is beloved by the youth Troilus. Her uncle, Pandarus, seeks to bring her to accept Troilus. Hector, brother to Troilus, challenges a Greek champion to single combat.

In the Greek camp there is much disaffection. Achilles, the chief Greek champion, conceiving himself wronged, makes a mock of the other leaders. To teach him his place the leaders plan that Ajax shall be chosen in his stead to take up Hector's challenge.

Pandarus succeeds in bringing Cressida to love Troilus.

Calchas, in the Greek camp, sends to Troy for Cressida. She is delivered over to the Greeks. Forgetting Troilus, she entangles one of the Greeks with her wiles.

Ajax takes up Hector's challenge. They fight a friendly bout and then go to feast, where the moody Achilles insults Hector.

The next day, Hector and Troilus come to the field, the one to avenge Achilles' insults, the other to kill the man who has won Cressida. Hector is cruelly and cowardly killed by Achilles. Troilus is left unhurt, cursing.

Troilus and Cressidais the dialogue scenario of a play that was never finished. It seems to have been written before 1603, then laid aside, incomplete, until the mood that inspired it had died. Conflicting evidencemakes it doubtful whether it was acted during Shakespeare's life. It was published, under mysterious circumstances, a year or two before he retired to Stratford.

Two or three scenes are finished. The rest is indicated in the crudest dialogue, written so hastily that it is often undramatic and nearly always without wit or beauty. The finished scenes are among the grandest ever conceived by Shakespeare, but the grandeur is that of thought, not of action. They make it plain to us why the play was never completed. The subject is this: a light woman throwing over a boy. The setting, the Trojan war: a light woman overthrowing a city, is so much bigger than the subject that it overshadows it. Another subject arises in the circumstance of the Trojan war. Achilles, the man of action, without honour or imagination, sulks. The wise man, Ulysses, suggests that he be brought from his sulks by mockery. The result of this wise counsel is that Hector, the one bright and noble soul in the play, is killedcruelly and sullenly, by the boor thus mocked.

The two subjects and the setting are not and cannot be brought into unity. Shakespeare's mind wandered from his real subject to brood upon the obsession of Helen that betrayed Troy to the fire, and upon the tragical working of wisdom that brought about an end so foul. Other, and bigger, subjects for plays tempted him from the work. He put it aside before it was half alive. As it stands, it has neither life nor meaning. It oppresses the mind into making gloomy interpretation. Tragedy in its imperfect form cannot but be gloomy. It is nothing but the record of a fatal event. But Shakespearean tragedy is tragedy in its perfect form. It is an exultation of the soul over the husks of life and the winds that blow them. This play, had it ever been finished, would have been like the other tragedies of the great years. That it is not finished is our misfortune.

The finished scenes are full of wisdom—

"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,A great-sized monster of ingratitude:Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'dAs fast as they are made, forgot as soonAs done: perseverance, dear my lord,Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hangQuite out of fashion.""O, let not virtue seekRemuneration for the thing it was.""Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves.""And sometimes we are devils to ourselves."

"O, let not virtue seekRemuneration for the thing it was."

"Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves."

"And sometimes we are devils to ourselves."

Some have thought that this play was written by Shakespeare to ridicule the two poets, Ben Jonson (in the person of Ajax) and John Marston (in the person of Thersites). Those two poets were engaged, with others, in the years 1601-2, in what is called the War of the Theatres, that is, they wrote plays to criticise and mock each other. These plays are often scurrilous and seldom amusing.During the course of the war the two chief combatants came to blows.

It is sad that Shakespeare should be credited with the paltriness of lesser men. His view of his task is expressed inTimon of Athenswith the perfect golden clearness of supreme power—

"my free driftHalts not particularly, but moves itselfIn a wide sea of wax: no levell'd maliceInfects one comma in the course I hold;But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on,Leaving no tract behind."

He held that view throughout his creative life, as a great poet must. At the time during which this play was written his thought was more rigidly kept to the just survey of life than at any other period. Creative art has been so long inglorious that the practice and ideas of supreme poets have become incomprehensible to the many. This play is a great hint of something never, now, to be made clear. Those who count it a mark of Shakespeare's littleness expose their own.

Measure for Measure.

Written.1603-4 (?)Produced.(?)Published.1623.Source of the Plot.The story is founded on an event that is said to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, theHecatomithi, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play,The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his bookThe Heptameron of Civil Discourses.The Fable.The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life.Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella, pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to lust, Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses.The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo, to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so.He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused Claudio's death in spite of the submission.Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his Duchess.

Written.1603-4 (?)

Produced.(?)

Published.1623.

Source of the Plot.The story is founded on an event that is said to have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, theHecatomithi, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play,The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his bookThe Heptameron of Civil Discourses.

The Fable.The Duke of Vienna, going on a secret mission, leaves his power in the hands of Angelo, a man of strict life.

Angelo enforces old laws against incontinence. He arrests Claudio and sentences him to be beheaded. Claudio's sister, Isabella, pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Being moved to lust, Angelo tempts Isabella. He offers to spare Claudio if she will submit to him. Claudio begs her to save him thus. She refuses.

The Duke returns to Vienna disguised, hears Isabella's story, and resolves to entrap Angelo. He causes her to make an appointment to that end. He causes Mariana, a maid who has been jilted by Angelo, to personate Isabella, and keep the appointment. Mariana does so.

He contrives to check Angelo's treachery, that would have caused Claudio's death in spite of the submission.

Lastly he reveals himself, exposes Angelo's sin, compels him to marry Mariana, pardons Claudio, and makes Isabella his Duchess.

This play is now seldom performed. Itis one of the greatest works of the greatest English mind. It deals justly with the case of the man who sets up a lifeless sentimentality as a defence against a living natural impulse. The spirit of Angelo has avenged itself on Shakespeare by becoming the guardian spirit of the British theatre.

In this play Shakespeare seems to have brooded on the fact that the common prudential virtues are sometimes due, not to virtue, but to some starvation of the nature. Chastity may proceed from a meanness in the mind, from coldness of the emotions, or from cowardice, at least as often as from manly and cleanly thinking. Two kinds of chastity are set at clash here. The one springs from a fire in the personality that causes Isabella to think death better than contamination, and gives her that whiteness of generosity which fills nunneries with living sacrifice; the other comes from the niggardliness that makes Angelo jilt Mariana rather than take her without a dower. Both are obsessions; both exalt a part of lifeabove life itself. Like other obsessions, they come to grief in the presence of something real.

These two characters make the action. The play is concerned with the difficulty of doing justice in a world of animals swayed by rumour. The subject is one that occupied Shakespeare's mind throughout his creative life. Wisdom begins in justice. But how can man be just, without the understanding of God? Who is so faultless that he can sit in judgment on another? Who so wise that he can see into the heart, weigh the act with the temptation and strike the balance?

Sexual sin is the least of the sins in Dante. It is allied to love. It is an image of regeneration. No sin is so common, none is more glibly blamed. It is so easy to cry "treacherous," "base," and "immoral." But who, while the heart beats, can call himself safe from the temptation to this sin? It is mixed up with every generosity. It is a flood in the heart and a blinding wave overthe eyes. It is the thorn in the side under the cloak of the beauty of youth. In Shakespeare's vision it is a natural force, incident to youth, as April is incident to the year. The young men live as though life were oil, and youth a bonfire to be burnt. Life is always wasteful. Youth is life's test for manhood. The clown finds in the prison a great company of the tested and rejected, calling through the bars for alms. In spite of all this choice, another victim is picked by tragical chance. Lucio, a butterfly of the brothel, a dirtier soul than Claudio, is spared. Claudio is taken and condemned. The beautiful, vain, high-blooded youth, so quick with life and glad of the sun, is to lie in earth, at the bidding of one less full of April.

Angelo, the man whose want of sympathy condemns Claudio, is in the state of security that precedes so much Shakespearean tragedy. He has received the name of being more than human because (unlike his admirers) he has not shown himself to be considerably less. He has come through youth unsinged. Hehas not been betrayed by his "gross body's treason." Both he and those about him think that he is proof against temptation to sexual sin. Suddenly his security is swept away. He is betrayed by the subtler temptation that would mean nothing to a grosser man. He is moved by the sight of the beauty of a distressed woman's mind. The sight means nothing to Claudio, and less than nothing to Lucio. The happy animal nature of youthful man has a way of avoiding distressed women. The cleverer man, who has shut himself up in the half life of sentiment, cannot so escape. He is attacked suddenly by the unknown imprisoned side of him as well as by temptation. He falls, and, like all who fall, he falls not to one sin, but to a degradation of the entire man. The sins come linked. "Treason and murder ever kept together." When he is once involved with lust, treachery and murder follow. He is swiftly so stained that when the wise Duke shows him as he is, he shrinks from the picture, with a cry that he may beput out of the way by some swift merciful death so that the horror of the knowledge of himself may end, too.

The play is a marvellous piece of unflinching thought. Like all the greatest of the plays, it is so full of illustration of the main idea that it gives an illusion of an infinity like that of life. It is constructed closely and subtly for the stage. It is more full of the ingenuities of play-writing than any of the plays. The verse and the prose have that smoothness of happy ease which makes one think of Shakespeare not as a poet writing, but as a sun shining.

" ... It deserves with characters of brassA forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time."

The thought of the play is penetrating rather than impassioned. The poetry follows the thought. There are cold lines like Death laying a hand on the blood. The faultless lyric, "Take, O take those lips away" occurs. Some say Fletcher wrote it, some Bacon. "Love talks with better knowledge, andknowledge with dearer love." The music of the great manner rings—

"Merciful Heaven!Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous boltSplitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,Drest in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,His glassy essence, like an angry ape,Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,As make the angels weep."

The prose accompaniment to what is unrestrained in youth provides a cruel comedy.

Othello, the Moor of Venice.

Written.1604 (?)Published, in quarto, and in the first folio, 1623.Source of the Plot.The tale appears inThe Hecatomithiof G. B. Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare follows Cinthio in the main; but a few details suggest that he knew the story in an ampler version.The Fable.Iago, ensign to Othello, the Moor of Venice, is jealous of Cassio, his lieutenant. He plots to oust Cassio from the lieutenancy.Othello marries Desdemona, and sails with her to thewars in Cyprus. Iago resolves to make use of Desdemona to cause Cassio's downfall.He procures Cassio's discharge from the lieutenancy by involving him in a drunken brawl. Cassio beseeches Desdemona to intercede with Othello for him. Iago hints to Othello that she has good reason to wish Cassio to be restored. He suggests that Cassio is her lover. Partly by fortune, partly by craft, he succeeds in establishing in Othello's mind the conviction that Desdemona is guilty.Othello smothers Desdemona, learns, too late, that he has been deceived, and kills himself. Cassio's character is cleared. Iago is led away to torture.

Written.1604 (?)

Published, in quarto, and in the first folio, 1623.

Source of the Plot.The tale appears inThe Hecatomithiof G. B. Giraldi Cinthio. Shakespeare follows Cinthio in the main; but a few details suggest that he knew the story in an ampler version.

The Fable.Iago, ensign to Othello, the Moor of Venice, is jealous of Cassio, his lieutenant. He plots to oust Cassio from the lieutenancy.

Othello marries Desdemona, and sails with her to thewars in Cyprus. Iago resolves to make use of Desdemona to cause Cassio's downfall.

He procures Cassio's discharge from the lieutenancy by involving him in a drunken brawl. Cassio beseeches Desdemona to intercede with Othello for him. Iago hints to Othello that she has good reason to wish Cassio to be restored. He suggests that Cassio is her lover. Partly by fortune, partly by craft, he succeeds in establishing in Othello's mind the conviction that Desdemona is guilty.

Othello smothers Desdemona, learns, too late, that he has been deceived, and kills himself. Cassio's character is cleared. Iago is led away to torture.

A man's greatest works differ from his lesser works in degree, not in kind. They may be more perfect, but they express similar ideas. "A man grows, he does not become a different man." In this play ofOthellothe ideas are those that inspire nearly all the plays, that life seeks to preserve a balance, and that obsessions, which upset the balance, betray life to evil.

These ideas are in the earliest work of all, inVenus and Adonis. InOthellothey are expressed with the variety and power of the great period. The obsession chosen for illustration is that of jealous suspicion. It is displayed at work in a mean mind and in agenerous mind. The varying quality of its working makes the action of the play.

As inThe Merchant of Venice, the chief character is a man of intellect who has been warped out of humanity by the world's injustice. Iago is a man of fine natural intellect who has not been trained in the personal qualities that bring preferment. An educated man is advanced above him, as in life it happens. He broods over the injustice and schemes to be revenged. A groundless suspicion that the Moor has wronged him further, determines him to be revenged upon his employer as well as upon his supplanter. A weak intellect who comes to him for help serves him as a tool. He begins to persuade his employer that the supplanter and the newly-married wife are lovers.

He succeeds in this, through his natural adroitness, the working of chance, and the generosity of Othello, who has too much passion to be anything but blind under passionate influence like love or jealousy. The mean man's want of emotion keeps alwaysthe conduct of the vengeance precise and clear. Cassio is disgraced. Roderigo, having been fooled to the top of his bent, is killed. Desdemona is smothered. Othello is ruined.

That working of an invisible judge, which we call Chance, "life's justicer," lays the villainy bare at the instant of its perfection. Emilia, Iago's wife, a common nature, with no more intelligence than a want of illusion, enters a moment too late to stay the slaughter, but too soon for Iago's purpose. She is the one person in the play certain to be loyal to Desdemona. She is the one person in the play who, judging from her feelings, will judge rightly. The finest part of the play is that scene in which her passionate instinct sees through the web woven about Othello by an intellect that has put aside all that is passionate and instinctive.

The influence and importance of the little thing in the great event is marked in this scene as in half-a-dozen other scenes in the greater tragedies. We are all or may at any time become immensely important to the playof the world. Had Emilia come a minute sooner or a minute later the end of the play would have been very different. Desdemona would have lived to repent her marriage at leisure, or she would have gone to her grave branded.

Shakespeare brooded much upon all the tragedies of intellect. In this play, as inRichard IIIandThe Merchant of Venice, he brooded upon the power of a warped intellect to destroy generous life. When he created Iago he wrote in a cooler spirit than when he created the earlier characters. Iago is therefore much more perfectly a living being but much less passionately alive than the soul burnt out at Bosworth, or the soul flouted in the Duke's Court. He is drawn with a sharp and wiry line. Like all sinister men, he tells nothing of himself. We see only his intellect. What he is in himself is as mysterious as life. Life is clear, up to a point, but beyond that point it is always baffling. Shakespeare's task was to look at life clearly. Looking at it clearly he was as baffled by what he saw, as we, who onlysee by his aid. He found in Iago an image like life itself, a power and an activity, prompted by something secret and silent.

Much ink has been wasted about the "duration of time" in this play. The action of the play is one. It matters not if the time be divided into ten or fifty. In London and the University towns where writing is mostly practised, the play is seldom played. It is almost never played as Shakespeare meant it to be played. Those who write about it write after reading it. This is a reading age. Shakespeare's was an active age. That those who care most for his tragedies should be ignorant of the laws under which he worked is our misfortune and our fault and our disgrace.

The point is not insisted on; but some passages in the play suggest that when Shakespeare began to write it he was minded to make the action the falling of a judgment upon Desdemona for her treachery to her father. The treachery caused the old man's death. The too passionate and hasty things always bring death in these plays. Violent delightshave violent ends and bring violent ends to others.

The poetry ofOthellois nearly as well known as that ofHamlet. Many quotations from the play have passed into the speech of the people. A play of intrigue does not give the fullest opportunity for great poetry; but supreme things are spoken throughout the action. Othello's cry—

"It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wontAnd drives men mad,"

is one of the most perfect of all the perfect things in the tragedies.

King Lear.

Written.1605-6.Published.1608.Source of the Plot.The story of Lear is told in Holinshed'sChronicles, in a play by an unknown hand,The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of the second Book of Spenser'sFaerie Queene.The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney'sArcadia.The Fable.King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to assure himself of their love for him. The two elder women, Goneril and Regan, vow that they love him intensely; the youngest, Cordelia, can only tell him that she cares for him as a daughter should. He curses and casts off Cordelia, who is taken to wife by the King of France.Gloucester, deceived by his bastard Edmund, casts off Edgar his son.King Lear, thwarted and flouted by Goneril and Regan, goes mad, and wanders away with his Fool. Gloucester, trying to comfort him against the wishes of Goneril and Regan, is betrayed by his bastard Edmund, and blinded. He wanders away with Edgar, who has disguised himself as a madman.Regan's husband is killed. Seeking to take Edmund in his stead, she rouses the jealousy of Goneril, who has already made advances to him.Cordelia lands with French troops to repossess Lear of his kingdom. She finds Lear, and comforts him. In an engagement with the sisters' armies, she and Lear are captured.Edmund's baseness is exposed. He is attainted and struck down. Goneril poisons Regan, and kills herself. Edmund, before he dies, reveals that he has given order for Lear and Cordelia to be killed. His news comes too late to save Cordelia. She is brought in dead. Lear dies over her body.Albany, Goneril's husband, Kent, Lear's faithful servant, and Edgar, Edmund's slayer, are left to set the kingdom in order.

Written.1605-6.

Published.1608.

Source of the Plot.The story of Lear is told in Holinshed'sChronicles, in a play by an unknown hand,The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and in a few stanzas of the tenth canto of the second Book of Spenser'sFaerie Queene.

The character of Gloucester seems to have been suggested by the character of a blind king in Sir Philip Sidney'sArcadia.

The Fable.King Lear, in his old age, determines to give up his kingdom to his three daughters. Before he does so, he tries to assure himself of their love for him. The two elder women, Goneril and Regan, vow that they love him intensely; the youngest, Cordelia, can only tell him that she cares for him as a daughter should. He curses and casts off Cordelia, who is taken to wife by the King of France.

Gloucester, deceived by his bastard Edmund, casts off Edgar his son.

King Lear, thwarted and flouted by Goneril and Regan, goes mad, and wanders away with his Fool. Gloucester, trying to comfort him against the wishes of Goneril and Regan, is betrayed by his bastard Edmund, and blinded. He wanders away with Edgar, who has disguised himself as a madman.

Regan's husband is killed. Seeking to take Edmund in his stead, she rouses the jealousy of Goneril, who has already made advances to him.

Cordelia lands with French troops to repossess Lear of his kingdom. She finds Lear, and comforts him. In an engagement with the sisters' armies, she and Lear are captured.

Edmund's baseness is exposed. He is attainted and struck down. Goneril poisons Regan, and kills herself. Edmund, before he dies, reveals that he has given order for Lear and Cordelia to be killed. His news comes too late to save Cordelia. She is brought in dead. Lear dies over her body.

Albany, Goneril's husband, Kent, Lear's faithful servant, and Edgar, Edmund's slayer, are left to set the kingdom in order.

The play ofKing Learis based upon a fable and a fairy story. It illustrates themost terrible forms of treachery, that of child against father, and father against child. It is the most affecting and the grandest of the plays.

The evil which makes the action springs from two sources, both fatal. One is the blindness or fatuity in Lear, which makes him give away his strength and cast out Cordelia. The other, equally deadly, but more cruel in its results, springs from an unrepented treachery, done long before by Gloucester, when he broke his marriage vows to beget Edmund. Memory of the sweetness of that treachery gives to Gloucester a blindness to the boy's nature, just as a sweetness, or ease, in the treachery of giving up the cares of kingship (against oath and the kingdom's good) helps to blind Lear to the natures of his daughters.

The blindness in the one case is sentimental, in the other wilful. Being established, fate makes use of it. One of the chief lessons of the plays is that man is only safe when his mind is perfectly just and calm. Any injustice, trouble or hunger in the mind delivers man to powers who restore calmness and justice by means violent or gentle according to the strength of the disturbing obsession. This play begins at the moment when an established blindness in two men is about to become an instrument of fate for the violent opening of their eyes. The blindness in both cases is against the course of nature. It is unnatural that Lear should give his kingship to women, and that he should curse his youngest child. It is unnatural that Gloucester should make much of a bastard son whom he has hardly seen for nine years. It is deeply unnatural that both Lear and Gloucester should believe evil suddenly of the youngest, best beloved, and most faithful spirits in the play. As the blindness that causes the injustice is great and unnatural, so the working of fate to purge the eyes and restore the balance is violent and unnatural. Every person important to the action is thrust into an unnatural way of life. Goneril and Regan rule their father, commit the most ghastly and beastly cruelty, lustafter the same man, and die unnaturally (having betrayed each other), the one by her sister's hand, the other by her own. Lear is driven mad. The King of France is forced to war with his wife's sisters. Edmund betrays his half-brother to ruin and his father to blindness. Cornwall is stabbed by his servant. Edgar kills his half-brother. Gloucester, thrust out blind, dies when he finds that his wronged son loves him. Cordelia, fighting against her own blood, is betrayed to death by one who claims to love her sisters. The honest mild man, Albany, and the honest blunt man, Kent, survive the general ruin. Had Kent been a little milder and Albany a little blunter in the first act, before the fates were given strength, the ruin would not have been. All the unnatural treacherous evil comes to pass, because for a few fatal moments they were true to their natures.

The play is an excessive image of all that was most constant in Shakespeare's mind. Being an excessive image, it contains matter nowhere else given. It is all schemed andcontrolled with a power that he shows in no other play, not even inMacbethandHamlet. The ideas of the play occur in many of the plays. Many images, such as the blasted oak, water in fury, servants insolent and servile, old honest men and young girls faithful to death, occur in other plays. That which each play added to the thought of the world is expressed in the single figure of someone caught in a net. Macbeth is a ruthless man so caught. Hamlet is a wise man so caught. Othello is a passionate and Antony a glorious man so caught. All are caught and all are powerless, and all are superb tragic inventions. King Lear is a grander, ironic invention, who hurts far more than any of these because he is a horribly strong man who is powerless. He is so strong that he cannot die. He is so strong that he nearly breaks the net, before the folds kill him.

No image in the world is so fierce with imaginative energy. The stormy soul runs out storming in a night of the soul as mad as the elements. With him goes the inventionof the Fool, the horribly faithful fool, like conscience or worldly wisdom, to flick him mad with ironic comment and bitter song.

The verse is as great as the invention. It rises and falls with the passion like music with singing. All the scale of Shakespeare's art is used; the terrible spiritual manner of

Back to Index Next