FOOTNOTES:[3]French Gentleman in "All's Well that Ends Well," iv. 3.
FOOTNOTES:
[3]French Gentleman in "All's Well that Ends Well," iv. 3.
[3]French Gentleman in "All's Well that Ends Well," iv. 3.
DOGBERRY, MALVOLIO,TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (AJAX),BOTTOM, TOUCHSTONE.
DOGBERRY.
Theadvocates of the theory that Lord Bacon wrote Shakspeare's plays like to point to the coincidences of phrase between Dogberry's Charge to the Watch in "Much Ado about Nothing," and Bacon's "Office of Constables." They may be found in Judge Holmes's "Authorship of Shakspeare," 2d ed. pp. 324, 326, and are plainly Dogberry's misapplications of terms used in some municipal code or usage for constables which was common in Shakspeare's time. They may have been only transmitted in the form of oral instructions before being codified by Bacon, but at any rate they were well known and highly relished by Shakspeare as specimens of rural pomp in language. So that although the play was first acted in the autumn of 1599, and Bacon did not publish his manual until 1608, the force of referring the coincidences to Bacon is lost by considering that every village youth between Stratford and London must have often heard the petty constables, which were elected by the people, instructed in the phrases so comically misapplied by Dogberry.
And at first it seems as if Shakspeare intended by the introduction of Dogberry and his ineffective watch merely to interpolate a bit of comic business, by parodying the important phrases and impotent exploits of the suburban constable. But Dogberry's mission extendedfarther than that, and is intimately woven with delightful unconsciousness on his part into the fortunes of Hero.
Dogberry is not only immortal for that, but his name will never die so long as village communities in either hemisphere elect their guardians of the peace and clothe them in verbose terrors. If the town is unfortunately short of rascals, the officer will fear one in each bush, or extemporize one out of some unbelligerent starveling to show that the majestic instructions of his townsmen have not been wasted on him. This elaborate inefficiency is frequently selected by busy communities, because so few persons are there clumsy enough to be unemployed. Such a vagrom is easily comprehended. Dogberry has caught up the turns and idioms of sagacious speech, and seems to be blowing them up as lifebelts; so he goes bobbing helplessly around in the froth of his talk. "I leave an arrant knave with your worship; which, I beseech your worship, to correct yourself, for the example of others. I humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it." He ties his conversation in hopeless knots of absurdity; when pomp takes possession of a vacuous mind, it rattles like the jester's bladder of dried pease. Have not his fellow-citizens invested him? He will then lavish the selectest phrases. I heard a village politician once say with scorn in town-meeting, "Mr. Moderator, I know nothing about your technalities." Dogberry is the most original of Malaprops, says to the Prince's order that it shall be suffigance, and tells thewatch that salvation were a punishment too good for them, if they should have any allegiance in them. He has furnished mankind with that adroit phrase of conversational escape from compromise, "Comparisons are odorous." Where common men would suspect a person, Dogberry says the person is auspicious. His brain seems to be web-footed, and tumbles over itself in trying to reach swimming water; as when he says, "Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly." This is the precipitancy of a child's reasoning.
His own set do not discover by his malapropisms how futile he is, for their ears are accustomed to this misplacing of terms; which, indeed, is not uncommon among people of stronger native sense. Even the spelling-book and primer are not prophylactic against this failing, which seems to be owing to cerebral inability to keep words from gadding about with each other after they have once entered the mind: a laxness between notions and memory which results in verbal hybridity, as when a man, who was well informed enough, used to say, when the castors were passed, that he never took condignments with his food; and the Western lawyer said of a man that he could not tell a story without embezzlements. A suburban resident informed a friend that he lived in the vicissitude of General ——. We can only hope that Dr. Watts would have found it a "beautiful vicissitude." I have heard of a stout, cheerful, and polite Dogberry, who had arrived at the discretion offifty years when his parents died. Then, in reply to a friend who was practising condolence upon him, he said, "Yes, I'm a poor orphanless man!" The same person remarked of his nephew, that he hadn't decided on his profession yet, but was preponderating; and arguing against non-resistance with somebody, he said, "Why, sir, if a man should draw a pistol on me, do you think I'd put my life in his jeopardy?" A venerable clergyman, finding an inebriated person in the gutter, said, "My friend, how did you get there?" The man, with a twinkle of jest yet alive in him, replied, "I'm here,notwithstanding." This amused the clergyman, who tried to impart it to his family. "And what do you think the man replied to me?" Nobody could guess. "Well, said he to me, Nevertheless!" And there was a worthy old deacon, who, repeating Watts's hymn line for line after his clergyman, said, "Return, ye rancid sinners!" a condition for which Dogberry would say they ought to be condemned into everlasting redemption.
A very impracticable and contentious person was chosen to be a member of a committee. Somebody asked one of the other members, "Well, how did you find Mr. ——, when it came to business?" The reply was, "Oh, full of fight as ever,—a regularhorse de combat."
When the Boston fire was stopped at the new post-office, a man standing near was heard to say, "I'm glad they've got that fire under headway at last." In all such cases there is a moment supplied during which some sense is pretended, so that many malapropismsbelong to the race of bulls. At other times they contain the effect of a pun. A man who had lately moved into the country, and was planning some new buildings, informed a friend that he had already got a barn in imbroglio.
A friend called my attention to an article in a Bengal (E.I.) newspaper, which advised its readers "not to kill the calf that lays the golden egg." That is, as he remarked, "a happy combination of Æsop and the Prodigal Son."
So that Mrs. Malaprop's "allegory" basks beside all rivers, and is not the "pretty worm of Nilus" alone. Climate and race do not seem to set up distinctions in the universal breed. It skips in all pastures, with aboriginal characters unchanged. One would suppose that the Irish might be content with that happy cross between wit and witlessness which engenders bulls. But they, too, revenge themselves upon English oppressors of Home Rule by miscalling the language which they hate to use. I heard of an Irish domestic, who, descanting upon the manufacture of soft-soap, tried to describe the virtue of potash, saying with the solemnity of a sacrament, "It's con-se-cra-ted lie." What a pity that potash should not be the sole instance of that commodity!
The magistrate asked the tramp what his occupation was. "Plaze y're honor, I am a sort of pedlar, picking up iron and junk in this and the previous towns." This reminds me of an obfuscated person who was feeling around in vain to recover his carpet-bag in the horse-car, a search which finally enriched our literature when he mumbled, "It's damned seldom where my bag is."
The malapropisms of Shakspeare have a quality that is not strained. They would be so likely to occur that they seem to verify all prosody and syntax, and we sometimes prefer them to the correct word, especially when the mistake brings a faint flavor of wit. Launcelot Gobbo is tempted to run away from his service to Shylock, and says that "the most contagious fiend" bids him pack. When he meets his father, he says, "I will try confusions with him," which is made witty by the scene that follows, in which old Gobbo does not recognize his son. I once heard a fine lady of society generously revive Launcelot's vein when she said,aproposof some event, "however incredulous it may appear."
Dogberry has a pondering look and a fribbling emphasis. He rolls the plump phrases over and over like a quid, but ejects them with a kind of strenuous drivel. He makes pauses, as if discriminating the juiciest reflection, but really settles at random, like a pigeon whose brain has been vivisected; so he concludes that, if a man will not stand when he is bid to, he may go; and that, though a thief ought to be arrested, they that touch pitch will be defiled; and that, on the whole, it is better to let him show himself what he is, and steal out of your company.
Thus he attains to the merit of genius when it chips the egg and lets loose the struggling chick of the ordinary mind. He voices the perplexity of the watch, and lends to it the color of concession and sagacious compromise. It is exactly what old Verges thought but did not know how to incubate into definite expression. So all the people who sit upon political fences, and find the edge growing inconvenient, welcome the pad which postpones the necessity for a jump to either side.
Dogberry admires and cossets his own authority, but is too timid to enforce it save with poor old Verges, whose mental feebleness is an exact shadow of Dogberry's; and the latter manages to step upon himself in amusing unconsciousness. "An old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt, as, God help, I would desire they were." A good old man, sir; but he will gabble. All men are not alike, alas! So he goes on, dismissing himself, and slamming to the door without observing it.
But when the watch blunders by reason of idiocy into arresting Borachio, who was the agent in the plot against Hero, the innocent Conrade is found in his company, listening to his disclosures. He, too, is carried off and confronted with Dogberry before the whole "dissembly" of constables. Then and there Conrade calls him in set terms an ass.
Dogberry flickers up into a kind of lukewarmness, and does his little to resent it. "Dost thou not suspect my ears?" "Thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved." Then his speech seems to be handling a dustpan to gather up his good points with tremulous huffiness: I am a pretty piece of flesh, and know the law, go to; and a rich fellow, with leases, and two gowns, and every thing handsome about me. He was never called ass before; for Conrade was probably the first free-spoken prisoner entirely innocent of malapropisms that he had ever faced. He cannot compose his shallow fluster; for it is as deep as he is, and it even comes splashing into the pathos of the moment when the wrong done to Hero is discovered, who is not yet known to be still living. He wants the man punished who called him ass, not the man who was the slanderer of Hero. Standing round him are noble natures touched with sorrow and remorse; but for him Conrade is "the plaintiff, the offender," who did call him ass. Dead, shamed, ruined Hero, distracted lover, and tender father, retreat into a background upon which he scrawls himself an ass. For the ocean cannot be accommodated in a saucer, and some men should beware lest the spatter of a tear swamp and drown them. Here the comedy of Dogberry's character acquires a touch of humor; for so are we obliged to tolerate in our profoundest moments the trivialities of those who do not know or cannot contain our serious mood.
There is underlying humor in the fact that all this ignorance and inconsequence, this burlesquing of the detective's business, effects what the age and wisdom of Leonato, and the instinct of the lover Claudio, could not; namely, the discovery of Hero's innocence and of the plot to besmirch her chastity in the eyes of her lover. The wise men are taken in and the accident of folly undeceives them. Then it becomes no longer an accident, but the regimen of the world adopts and puts it to a use. Here comedy becomes humorous, because it is shown how the fortunes of the good and prudent areinvolved with all the vulgarities of the world, and justice itself, which is nothing if not critical, cannot make up its case withoutnon sequiturs.
When a stratagem compels the braggart Parolles in "All's Well that Ends Well" to show the white feather, he says adroitly, "Who cannot be crushed by a plot?" But absence of plot is quite as hostile to our luck, and goodness and beauty provide no immunity against it. Two soldiers, who had been sent to arrest the Duchess de Berri, rigorously searched for her a whole house over to no purpose; then, lighting a fire to warm their fingers, roasted her out from a hiding place behind the chimney. A Jacobite climbing into the hollow of an oak leaves his garter on a twig to make a silly advertisement of him. Major Andre meets two men who are not looking for him, and convinces them that he is the very man they ought to seek. Dogberry and his men are as apposite as the female toggery which trips up an escaping rebel; and through them Shakspeare delights to apprise us of a world in which knavery may be outwitted by fatuity.
MALVOLIO.
The humor in the play of "Twelfth Night" resides in the contriving to make one vice ridiculous by other vices which are also absurd. Not one of the comic characters, taken separately, provides the peculiar element of humor. It transpires during the impartialinterplay of the silliness of Aguecheek, the drunken techiness of Sir Toby, the spite of Fabian, the mischievousness of Maria, and the immeasurable conceit of Malvolio, who appeared not like a human being, but "as if he were his own statue erected by national subscription." All these vices betray themselves with such an infantile simplicity, and help each other to construct so delightful a plot, that we feel, with the clown, perfectly content to see "foolery walk about the orb like the sun." It is so difficult to discriminate between follies when they protect themselves by being so amusing, that we say with Viola,—
"I hate ingratitude more in a man,Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,Or any taint of vice, whose strong corruptionInhabits our frail blood."
We always have, as she did, some vice which we hate worse than others. The one that is damned is generally the only one which would put us to discomfort to practise. But humor can make for a time only those vices companionable which turn a man into his own worst enemy and raise no tragic threat against the State.
Malvolio, the steward of Olivia's household, is prized by that lady for his grave and punctilious disposition. He discharges his office carefully and in a tone of some superiority, for his mind is above his estate. At some time in his life he has read cultivated books, knows the theory of Pythagoras concerning the transmigration of the soul, but thinks more nobly of the soul and no wayapproves that opinion. His gentility, though a little rusted and obsolete, is like a Sunday suit which nobody thinks of rallying. He wears it well, and his mistress cannot afford to treat him exactly as a servant; in fact, she has occasionally dropped good-natured phrases which he has interpreted into a special partiality: for Quixotic conceits can riot about inside of his stiff demeanor. This proneness to fantasy increases the touchiness of a man of reserve. He can never take a joke, and his climate is too inclement to shelter humor. Souls must be at blood-heat, and brains must expand with it like a blossom, before humor will fructify. He wonders how Olivia can tolerate the clown. "I protest," he says, "I take these wise men, that crow so at these set kind of fools, to be no better than the fools' zanies." Olivia hits the difficulty when she replies, "Oh, you are sick of self-love, and taste with a distempered appetite." Perhaps he thinks nobly of the soul because he so profoundly respects his own, and carries it upon stilts over the heads of the servants and Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.
Imagine this saturnine and self-involved man obliged to consort daily with Sir Toby, who brings his hand to the buttery-bar before breakfast, and who hates going to bed "as an unfilled can," unless no more drink is forthcoming; an irascible fellow, too, and all the more tindery because continually dry. He has Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a boon companion, who says of himself that sometimes he has no more wit than a Christian, or than an ordinary man. When he is not in liquor he isfuddled with inanity, and chirps and skips about, deluding himself with the notion that Olivia will receive his addresses. Sir Toby, to borrow money of him, fosters the notion, and flatters his poor tricks. Then there is that picador of a clown, who plants in Malvolio's thin skin a perfect quickset of barbed quips, and sends him lowering around the mansion which these roisterers have turned into a tavern. The other servant, Fabian, has a grudge against him for interfering with a bear-baiting he was interested in; for Malvolio was one of those Puritans who frowned upon that sport, as Macaulay said, not because it worried the bear but because it amused the men. The steward was right when he informed this precious set that they were idle, shallow things, and he was not of their element. No doubt he is the best man of the lot. But he interrupts their carousing at midnight in such a sour and lofty way that we are entertained to hear their drunken chaffing, and we call to Maria for another stoup, though they have had too much already; but a fresh exposition of dryness always sets in when such a virtue as Malvolio's tries to wither us. However, he becomes the object of their animosity, and they work in his distemper to make him ridiculous.
There is no humor in seeing Malvolio fall so easily a prey to their device. When a man becomes the cause of his own mortification, it is simply comic. But the intrigue becomes humorous when his vice shows disgust at theirs, and theirs becomes indignant at his, and they are delighted to see it well ventilated. For so do werevenge ourselves upon each other, using not our strength which would be tragic, but our weaknesses. Then impartial justice is obliged to smile to see these counterplots of folly further its great plan. What economy it is to have individuals so contrived that they can baffle, mortify, and school each other without importing the constable! We are self-acting arrangements to relieve the universe from tax and keep its hilarity replenished. In this genial manner "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." Even if we do not lie in wait for each other, the knowledge of mutual frailties gives our whole life a sub-taste of humor; and that leaves respect upon the tongue.
Sebastian says to the clown: "I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else." Mankind makes the clown's answer: "Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great lubberly world will prove a cockney." No fear of that, my "corrupter of words;" so long as perfect discretion is unknown upon the earth, we are all cosmopolites of infirmity and speak the great language of smiles.
But the play does not let Malvolio drop softly on his feet. There is a faint grudge provoked by the ill-tempered quality of his conceit, and Shakspeare indicates this trait of our nature. The clown, who remembers how the steward used to twit Olivia's contentment at his sallies, and to deprecate it in a lofty way, now mimics his phrases and manner to sting him with a last fluttering dart. Malvolio's pride is already too deeply wounded,for he has indeed been "notoriously abused." There is no relenting in such a man on account of the fun, for that is a crime in the eyes of a Puritan, to be punished for God's sake. His temper acquires sombreness from his belief that total depravity is a good doctrine if you can only live up to it. But when this crime of fun is perpetrated against the anointed self-esteem of the Puritan himself, it is plain he will be revenged on the whole pack of them unless they proceed to make a sop of deference to touch his hurt with, and a pipe out of his own egotism for sounding a truce.
Shakspeare delighted to mark the transition of a virtue to a vice; that elusive moment, as of a point of passage from one species to another, discovered and put into a flash from the light of humor. Malvolio's grave and self-respecting temperament is an excellence. No decent man thinks meanly of himself, and the indecent ones cannot afford the disparagement. The pretence of it is a warning to us to expect mischief, a notice put up, "This is a private way; dangerous passing." Whatever gift a man has becomes a divine permission for self-consideration. Modesty is the humanity of a great mind, a vapor which the sun instinctively gathers to make itself tolerable. For instance, the profits of the Globe and Curtain Theatres helped Shakspeare to his orchards and house in Stratford, but his poverty in the matter of conceit furnished and made the New Place habitable. The neighbor gossips did not have his "greatness thrust upon them." Precisely because he was virtuous there were cakes and ale, and his jests, nodoubt, were spicy in the mouth too. This man who travailed in secret with his glorious brood had nothing in his manner to record
"Those daily, nightly drippings in the darkOf the heart's blood."
Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear were not known to be in town. These mighty shapes, silently content to wait till a world's worship matched them, forbore to bully the villagers. In time whole nations were mustered in, so that his manifold greatness could be met on an equal footing. But their gentle peer left posterity to beat the drum for this service.
But all men pardon that occasional frankness of egotism which is like lifting a window for clear light to pass through, so that we recognize that a commander is in the street.
Now, Malvolio's sobriety, his contempt for guzzling and roaring of catches, his measured deportment, his nice and cleanly ways are commendable results of his self-opinion, and cannot yield any advantage to low fellows for roughing him until the decent pace of his austerity becomes a strut. One of the characters in a late novel says, "When I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam-cocks, I stand dormant with wonder, and says no more." This tendency of Nature to a peacock is discovered in the very act, at the moment of production, by this lens of a smile with which we arm our eye. Malvolio is like the fanatical England of the Commonwealth, which was flouted and dishonored by the Aguecheeks and Belches of King Charles II., thoseinevitable conspirers against immoderate and arrogant sobriety. They are sure to come. "Nay, I'll come," says Fabian, "if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy." Yes, the niggard fellow shall "come by some notable shame." Says Sir Toby, "To anger him, we'll have the bear again;" which England did to her heart's content; but the discredit must be shared by the epoch which strove to strut in the sad conceit that gladness was the sin against the Holy Ghost.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA (AJAX).
It is evident that large portions of this play are not by Shakspeare's hand. It was first attributed to him and published in 1608. But there is an entry in Henslowe's Diary, April 7, 1599, of a sum money lent to "Mr. Dickers and Harey Cheatell, in earneste of their boocke called Troyeles and Creassedaye." This play of Dekker and Chettle was probably the original which Shakspeare adopted in order to improve. Mr. Fleay, however, attributes to Shakspeare a first form of this play as early as 1597. The improvements are as palpable as the original defects. The play did not receive the benefit of a thorough recasting, and was published under Shakspeare's name with large portions of the crude, absurd, and indecent original matter unchanged.
When Troilus says,—
"Helen must needs be fair,When with your blood you daily paint her thus;"
and when Ulysses replies to the complaint of Achilles that his deeds are forgotten,—
"Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,Wherein he puts alms for oblivion;A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'dAs fast as they are made, forgot as soonAs done. Perseverance, dear my lord,Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hangQuite out of fashion, like a rusty mailIn monumental mockery. Take the instant way;For honor 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 forthright,Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by,And leave you hindmost.For time is like a fashionable host,That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,And farewell goes out sighing,"—
we need no help in recognizing the pen of Shakspeare. This is the speech that holds embedded the world's household line,
"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
But we should need sore helping to discover a touch of nature's style in the lines of Troilus replying to the question, "Why stay we, then?"—
"To make a recordation to my soulOf every syllable that here was spoke.But if I tell how these two did co-act,Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,An esperance so obstinately strong,That doth invert th' attest of eyes and ears;As if those organs had deceptious functions,Created only to calumniate."
In the same fashion, the Prologue seems written by a pen whose feather was in a constant ruffling. It talks of "princes orgulous," a word nowhere used by Shakspeare, and one which he would have rallied: the six gates of Troy have
"Massy staplesAnd corresponsive and fulfilling bolts."
And Hector well earns the epithet which has sprung from his name when he cries,—
"Stand, stand, thou Greek! thou art a goodly mark:—No! wilt thou not?—I like thy armor well;I'll frush it, and unlock the rivets all,But I'll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide?Why then, fly on, I'll hunt thee for thy hide."
Numerous passages like this have the tone which unmistakably remands them to the original play.
But who can help feeling the joyous and tender mood of Shakspeare reproduced by the worshipping lines of Troilus to Cressida?—
"Oh that I thought it could be in a woman(As, 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,Outliving beauty's 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."
What a pure flame mounts up from each altar of these consecrated lines to show the detestable uncleanness of some scenes which are left over from the original play! When the wanton Cressida sweeps the chaste fire from those altars and leaves them standing cold in his heart, Shakspeare cries,—
"O Cressid!Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,And they'll seem glorious."
Some of the sentences spoken by Ulysses have become fixed in the English consciousness; the rings of robust reflection have grown around and appropriated them, so that the material is quotable in every market and is applied to modern conveniences. The famous speech that charges the Greek factions to their neglect of "degree, priority, and place,"—
"Oh, when degree is shaked,Which is the ladder to all high designs,The enterprise is sick!"—
contains a truth as applicable to a democracy as to that Shakspearian age which reared the defeaters of the Armada, and sent Drake and Hawkins round the world.
What cause, in want of time or other inconvenience, left this uncultivated play to be ascribed to Shakspeare is past conjecture. In many respects it is like the modern burlesque, and may be regarded as a remoteancestor of the rollicking English fun which brings out the latent absurdities in ancient and mediæval chivalry. There is, for instance, a play called "The Field of the Cloth of Gold," which makes ridiculous the pomp of the courts of Kings Henry VIII. and Francis I., and represents the famous tournament as a tilt upon hobby-horses ending in a milling match with bottle-holders and all the pugilistic cant. There are plenty of blond women who appear to be out of employment at present on purpose to lend a zest to this drollery, and everybody seems to welcome with democratic delight the slur upon obsolete solemnities, and the insinuation that the surviving ones are no more imposing. With all the devices of the modern theatre, such a play manages to be vastly more ludicrous than Troilus and Cressida, but it does not start with such a cutting motive, and it is in the matter of morality simply neutral. But the play attributed to Shakspeare is one prolonged assault upon the foibles and indecencies of greatness, upon the trivial pretexts that mar and vulgarize an epoch of heroism. The period of the Trojan war is borrowed, and the characters of Homer's Iliad, to throw into a salient light what was after all the real occasion of the famous siege. Paris went to Greece, as Troilus says,—
"And, for an old aunt, whom the Greeks held captive,He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshnessWrinkles Apollo's, and makes pale the morning.Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.Is she worth keeping? why, she is a pearl,Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships,And turn'd crown'd kings to merchants."
Several scholars dissatisfied with this reputed motive of the siege, and of Homer's Iliad, take refuge in a theory of light-worship, and of a conflict between the Orient and the Occident, the Dawn and the Dark, such as no doubt underlies many of the ancient myths whose names bear allusion to such phenomena. These commentators torture the names and incidents of the Iliad to clear it of the stigma of having no motive-power beyond the stealing of a light wife, and a re-delivery of her to a complacent husband who makes no inquiries. Ten years of siege and battle, of domestic broil and murder, of Odyssean adventures by sea and land, that Helen may be transferred, warm from the arms of Priam, back to the condoning embrace of Menelaus! Truly, when the ugly thing stands thus stripped of its Homeric mantle, we hurry to demand that it shall be decently clothed in travesty.
After the Prologue announces that expectation is "tickling skittish spirits on one and other side," the scene soon opens with the indecent Pandarus trifling with the famous epic names, as he taps them lightly with his battledore to keep up his little game, which is to get Troilus thoroughly involved with Cressida: "An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen's (well, go to), there were no more comparison between the women;" then the puppy says, "I will not dispraise your sister Cassandra's wit." Think of the jaunty go-between thus estimating the terrible prophetess of the Agamemnon, while he is only whetting Troilus's passion for Cressida, and devising means to bring them together.For this is meant to travesty the rape of Helen, which was the motive of the siege. The play begins by making incontinence a very important business, and thus ridiculous. As Thersites says, "All the argument is a cuckold, and war and lechery confound all."
Subsequently Cressida, at a wink from the Greek Diomedes, passes out of the keeping of her Trojan lover, thus making the politics as light as her love. And the scenes where Pandarus lickerishly plans the assignation, and rallies Cressida afterwards, are so purposely broad that every pretence of sentiment is emptied out of the play; the vulgarity becomes so conspicuous that the fighting itself is infected with it and runs into parody. The reader need only turn to the interjectional soliloquies of Thersites, which supply to every mock-heroic incident a very free translation, to perceive that there was an intention in the co-laborers upon this play to make all such famous court-manners and their quarrels seem ridiculous.
Thersites is Shakspeare himself in a cynic masquerade, that he may watch the whole game and be privy to the monstrous immorality. Achilles hangs back from fighting the Trojans, not in anger at the slight of Agamemnon, but rather because he has a secret understanding with one of Priam's daughters. Instead of maintaining consistent political attitudes, almost everybody is carrying on some private transaction of this kind, and the great heroes scramble like boys in a shower of comfits. Pandarus, the disgraceful old uncle of Cressida, who brought her and Troilus together in the same spiritwhich gave Helen to Paris, and back again coolly to her proper husband, is left at the close of the play to bewail the whole bad issue of the Homeric morals: "A goodly medicine for mine aching bones! O world, world, world! Thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a' work, and how ill requited!"
In the second scene, the heroes swagger across the stage one by one coming from the field, while Pandarus stands by and talks of each in a way to make of them diminutive patterns of militia colonels. Æneas, Antenor, Hector, Paris: "There's a brave man, niece;" "It does a man's heart good." That's Antenor, "And he's a man good enough;" but where is Troilus? "If he see me, you shall see him nod at me;" but see Hector, and, oh, "What hacks are on his helmet!—there be hacks!" His niece says, "Be those with swords?" "Swords? any thing:—an the devil come to him, it's all one, by God's lid;" but there's Troilus; look, niece, there's a man, "and his helm more hacked than Hector's." "Had I a sister were a Grace, or a daughter a Goddess, he should take his choice. Paris is dirt to him." Eh, Cressid, don't you take? So all these scenes pass with a mischievous innuendo pushed forward by the lackey sentences: "I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an eye to boot." Thus it runs on like a nautical melodrama, or the rattling chaff of "Tom and Jerry," a stream on which the moral disgust of Thersites swims in full view.
When Ajax appears, we are made aware in the firstplace, that he does not know his letters. He flies into a rage with Thersites because he refuses to read to him the proclamation of Hector's challenge, and they fling the vilest Billingsgate at each other, varied with fisticuffs. They try to outdo each other at a game of epithets. If one says, "Thou mongrel, beef-witted lord," the other says, "Toad-stool." "Porcupine," says one in a way to wither. "Scurvy-valiant ass," retorts the other. So in a later scene these phrases of invective remind us of Shakspeare: "Damnable box of envy;" "thou full dish of fool;" "thou idle, immaterial skein of sleeve silk;" "green sarcenet flap for a sore eye." This, flung at Patroclus, convinces us that the plain of Troy has shrunken to a dog-pit, and we give odds on Thersites. "To be a mule, a cat, a lizard, an owl, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus,—I would conspire against destiny. I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus."
There is a long scene in which the prominent Trojans discuss the policy of returning Helen and getting entirely out of the scrape. Hector says, "Let her go,—any ten Trojans' lives are as dear to us as she; she is not worth what she doth cost the holding." This profit-and-loss view of the case is despised by the rest, especially by Troilus, who is the only consistent person in the play, and who is nobly contrived to keep alive for us the tradition of honor and manhood. Now Cassandra enters to bully like a fish-woman, with arms akimbo:
"Our fire-brand brother, Paris, burns us all.Cry, Trojans, cry! A Helen, and a woe:Cry, cry! Troy burns, or else let Helen go."
Troilus flatly says that she is mad. Finally, Hector, though confessing that by every moral law Helen ought to be restored to her husband, thinks it better to hold on to her because she is a spur to valor, and their reputations depend upon preventing the Greeks from carrying their point. It is a discussion of shopkeepers who are aspiring to be actors and couch their speech in high-stepping hexameters.
Pandarus sings to Helen such a bit of frippery that we expect to see them both begin to hop from one foot to the other in the style of the burlesque, as they deliver the chorus of "Oh! oh! ha! ha! hey ho!"
There never was such deliberate absurdity as the fighting in this play. The original draught of it was certainly left untouched by Shakspeare, probably to keep the laugh sustained. It is all done in the vein of Bombastes. "Now, they are clapper-clawing one another," says Thersites; "I'll go look on." Diomedes enters, followed by Troilus, who bids him stand; for, if he took to the river Styx, Troilus would jump in after him. "Stand, forsooth," says Diomedes; "don't flatter yourself I was flying: no, my worthy Trojan, I was only extricating myself from the multitude to get at you,—so come on." They come on, and go off fighting. Pretty soon Diomedes enters with the horse of Troilus, under the pantomimic illusion that he has slain its master. He despatches the horse with a note toCressida, his new mistress, late the mistress of the late Troilus. But Troilus was no more dead than Falstaff was embowelled; he enters in a fine fume, looking up his horse. There is Ajax bellowing to come to close quarters with him, and Diomedes in the rear bawling in imitation of Ajax, but ironically, because he thinks that Troilus fell by his hand. It is a very unexpected accommodation when Troilus appears, and the three go out fighting. Not a drop of blood is spilt as yet, for these are pasteboard warriors with wind for blood. But now comes Hector meeting Achilles, who goes into a perilous bluster as if the Trojan's last moments had arrived in his person. "Have at thee, Hector." "Very well," says Hector, "why don't you begin?" "Well, no, on the whole, I won't," replies Achilles; "my arms are out of practice, luckily for you; you may go unscathed this time." No sooner has Hector gone, than Achilles slips off to collect a party of his Myrmidons whom he engages to waylay Hector and overcome him by force of numbers. They find him resting with his helmet off, and they butcher him; Achilles crying, "Here he is, that's your man!" Then a retreat is sounded on both sides, as if for fear that some one would get hurt. The whole play breaks up abruptly, and nothing is finished. It seems like a tale told by an idiot, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." The sincere lover, Troilus, meeting Pandarus somewhere amid these punchinello combats, invokes ignominy and shame upon the pander's life, and invites posterity to use his name as a designation of a vile profession. Thus we return upon thetrack of the play's motive, and feel competent to enjoy, without hindrance, the humor and irony which saturate the scenes. Let us notice the character of Ajax, which is scratched all over by Shakspeare's pen.
From Malvolio and Dogberry to the famous Ajax may seem a stride fit only for such a blundering giant to contemplate; but the apparent distance is due to the quantity of Ajax, and not to any distinction in his quality. Malvolio's conceit is Turveydropian and runs to deportment. Even when he grows flighty with the fancy of being Olivia's husband, he still meditates what his great air must be. "I will be point-de-vice the very man: to have the humor of state, and after a demure travel of regard, to ask for my kinsman, Toby. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control." Standing thus posed, if he should undertake to bow, Toby might believe he "saw creases come into the whites of his eyes."
Dogberry's consequence affects inconsequential phrases, and his days on earth are a series ofnon-sequiturs. Ajax has quite as good an opinion of himself as both these worthies, yet he says he knows not what pride is. "Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I do hate a proud man as I hate the engendering of toads." "Yet he loves himself," says Nestor. Ulysses and Nestor avail themselves of his monstrous sense of superiority to flatter him into fighting Hector in the place of Achilles. This is to pique Achilles and break up his lethargy. Ajax is "a maninto whom Nature hath so crowded humors, that his valor is crushed into folly." He sulks in his tent because he feels as valorous as Achilles, and must therefore sport the Achillean moods. He despises the strategy of Ulysses, calls it closet-war, because his ownforteis nothing but giving and taking knocks, and his want of thought feels superior to all thinking. You have to behave very gingerly with such a person; if your deference once turns its back, the offence is mortal, and you may make your will. And these people are outrageously touchy; before you have time to make all snug, their conceit has assumed a vortical movement threatening to suck up into its spout every thing in the way. Fire shots at it if you please, but they will not make it tumble. Your only tact is to tack and give it a wide berth. So we see that when Ajax fails to attract any notice he becomes abusive and violent; and he is constantly trying to get somebody to concede that he is a man of as pretty parts as any other Greek. Achilles, forsooth! Who set him up to feel so big, and a better man than I? "If I go to him, with my armed fist I'll pash him o'er the face." "Oh, no, you shall not go." "An a' be proud with me, I'll pheeze his pride." Of course, for of all our pretexts for hating each other there is none so apt as our mutual conceits. We can pardon villainy sooner, for that only affronts an abstract conscience. But a man's conceit is the particular cherished bunion for another man's foot to inadvertently outrage. A straight blow in the chest, hit out from the shoulder, is a signal to measure your strength with another man.But to measure your weakness with him makes you wince. How adroitly Ulysses "rubs the vein" of Ajax's pride! As soon as the first ripple of Ulysses's blarney reaches his feet, he begins to float like a bladder of rapture, and goes bobbing enormously into the net they have spread for him.
When the plot begins to affect him, Thersites observes that "he goes up and down the field asking for himself." As Douglas Jerrold would say: "He stalks as though Colossus had quitted Rhodes to head a company." "He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling, that he raves in saying nothing." Then he describes him as a veritable Malvolio in armor. Is he really in Olivia's garden, with Sir Toby and the rest on the watch? "Why, he stalks up and down like a peacock; a stride, and a stand; ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning; bites his lip with a politic regard,[4]as who should say, 'There were wit in this head, an't would out.' The man's undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck in the combat, he'll break't himself in vain-glory. He knows not me. I said, 'Good morrow, Ajax;' and he replies, 'Thanks, Agamemnon.' What think you of this man that takes me for the general? He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin."
Thersites does not allude to opinions which may be turned as easily as a jacket, but to the opinionative temper; nothing turns us so neatly inside out as our good opinion of ourselves. Shakspeare uses the word "opinion" occasionally in this sense; as in I Henry IV. iii. I, where Worcester criticises Hotspur's disposition:—
"Defect of manners, want of government,Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain."
So, whether in armor, in a swallow-tail, or in a surplice, our peacock vein expands around the world.
Then Thersites proposes to imitate the austere conceit of Ajax: "Let Patroclus make his demands to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax." This is done, and the freezing brevity of Thersites is exactly like Malvolio's in the height of his fantasy, when Sir Toby and the rest offer to converse with him.
BOTTOM.
When Malvolio is trying to break up the midnight revel, the mischievous Maria fleers at him with, "Go shake your ears." That is a performance for which Malvolio is still too distant from his congener. But self-sufficiency succeeds in preserving that structure in Bottom, who is so deep and rich with harmless vanity that he sprouts into the auricular appendages, and he shakes them in the most amiable, frisky way throughthe Dream of a Midsummer Night. But there is nothing sour about Bottom; he has none of the quality which Margaret Fuller was the first to call "aloofness." He is hale-fellow with all his mates who appreciate the small gifts which belong to him, and which he good-naturedly strives to render serviceable. Though he is a better fellow than Malvolio, he has all that precisian's ambition; for as the steward could be Olivia's husband as well as any other man,—forsooth, why not?—so Bottom thinks he can play all the parts, rises to their glittering bait, and would appropriate the whole interlude. He is one of those self-made men who occasionally discredit their own bringing up and help us to recover our respect for a liberal education. Like the man of whom Sydney Smith said that he was ready at any moment to undertake the command of the Channel Fleet or run a factory, they have elbowed their way into a conviction that they can fill all the offices from constable to President in a style to astonish men of disciplined intelligence. And they frequently succeed in doing that. Men who unfortunately enjoyed early advantages, and whose lives have perhaps been a protracted training in the virtue as well as wit which lifts state-craft above gambling, have the proper kind of admiration for these chevaliers of industry.
But a highly successful deficiency of education does not make Bottom arrogant. As Athenian dicast, foreman of an English jury, republican officer under investigation, his suavity would be unimpeachable. He isgood-tempered, and the first tap of flattery cracks his whole pretension; so that the crafty Quince manages to cast him for Pyramus, who was just such another sweet-faced and destructive lady's man.
Dogberry's malapropisms are inflations made by his vanity to float him into an appearance of sagacity, donkeys' hides blown up to take him across the stream of intercourse. But Bottom miscalls his words from sheer rusticity, and not from any effort to borrow the language of his superiors. The word "alleviate" which he has sometimes heard has been dribbling from brain-cell to cell, and so struggles unconsciously into "aggravate" at last. He uses genteel words which have stayed out of town so long as to be countrified; he has not picked them up, but they have blown into his mind and lodged there, like mallow-seeds. So we see that he is in most senses a born natural, proprietor by birth of the crest which at last he wears. But he is not all fool, for when he wakes out of his exposition of sleep and says he has had a dream, we notice that he is reluctant to expound it. He begins, "Methought I was,"—but a feeling of self-respect interrupts him; he tries it again, to say if he can that he had been wearing asses' ears, but his lips refuse that indignity and he gives it up, much to Shakspeare's credit.
A student of Shakspeare often finds himself wandering waterless and foodless in the sage-brush of æsthetic criticism. Heraud, in his book entitled "Shakspeare, his Inner Life," suggests that when Bottom "transmogrified" the text, "The eye of man hath not seen," &c., sothat the new gospel according to Bottom ran thus, "The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste," &c., Shakspeare intended to imply that the changing and translating of Bottom shadowed forth the manner in which we shall be transformed in the future life; "but to have done this directly would have been undramatic and otherwise objectionable." This affronts and takes advantage of Bottom's want of intelligence, who might well caution the critic: "Monsieur Cobweb! good Monsieur, get your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good Monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. And, good Monsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not: I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag." But this surfeiting freshet of the modern revival spreads all over Shakspeare's meadows of daisies and forget-me-nots.
Heraud's notion spoils the humor of Bottom's snarl of words which represents perplexity so profound that it must recur to Scripture for relief in expression.
I must notice here another pragmatic after-thought, although it has no connection with the character of Bottom. Heraud is so bent upon forcing a conscious Protestant motive upon Shakspeare that he spoils one of the best passages in the play of Cymbeline. When Imogen, in consequence of a note brought to her from her husband, Leonatus Posthumus, goes to Milford Haven with Pisanio, whom the husband has commissioned to kill her for supposed adultery, she first learnsthe object of the journey: this converts the beguiling note into something false, unlike her husband, inexplicable. She has thrust it into her bosom: there it lies. "Come, here's my heart," as she invites Pisanio to perform his duty. Then her hand comes into contact with the paper which she had put there. It shall not stand in the way: "The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus all turned to heresy?" That is, she has put the note in a place where it might divert the stroke which the spirit of the note intended:—
"Away, away,Corrupters of my faith! You shall no moreBe stomachers to my heart!"
The constant and innocent wife disdains even the slight chance that a bit of paper might turn or deaden the stroke despatched by a loyal husband. She is as loyal as he, but he knows it not: so it is better to die at once than live on thus misconceived. For what is life without the confidence of a loyal husband? The canon against self-slaughter is so divinely engraven in the conscience that it suspends her own hand. Therefore, since life is no longer of value and interest to her, let Pisanio finish. This is the drift of Imogen's speech.
But Heraud imputes to Shakspeare a theological motive in the use of the word "scriptures," as if he meant to include, by secondary allusion, the Bible; and he adds that Shakspeare, although "a critical reader of the Bible and an extreme Protestant," felt the danger of letting the Reformation lapse, by the abuse of reason, into heresies, the only preventive of which was theCatholic principle of authority watching over the use of the Bible.
The German commentators of Shakspeare have done some magnificent work, open occasionally to the English charge of over-subtlety. But no German can yet vie with this English straining to impute to the text an unnatural and ponderous motive. Bottom said that he could "see a voice," and went to the chink to spy if he could hear his Thisbe's face. But these modern observations are far more preternatural.
All the scenes of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," which depend upon the desire of the Athenian mechanicals to amuse their prince, are merely comical when taken alone. The characters thus constructed, by passing into the serious portions of the play, infect it with the element of humor; for the simple earnestness of all their clownishness fraternizes in no offensive way with the more poetical moods of high society, and we feel the charm that equalizes all mankind. The pomp of a court is concentrated at a fustian play that is poorly propertied with bush, lantern, and a fellow daubed with lime. Simpleness and duty tender this contrast, and it comes not amiss. Their crude parody of the fate of Pyramus and Thisbe, done in perfect good faith, is a claim that humble love may have its fortunes too, as well as that of the proud and over-conscious dames who have been roaming through the woods, sick with fancies. What a delightful raillery it is! Yes, we take the point: "The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."
It is also a suggestion of the subtlest humor when Titania summons her fairies to wait upon Bottom; for the fact is that the soul's airy and nimble fancies are constantly detailed to serve the donkeyism of this world. "Be kind and courteous to this gentleman." Divine gifts stick musk-roses in his sleek, smooth head. The world is a peg that keeps all spiritual being tethered. John Watt agonizes to teach thisvis inertiæto drag itself by the car-load; Palissy starves for twenty years to enamel its platter; Franklin charms its house against thunder; Raphael contributes halos to glorify its ignorance of divinity; all the poets gather for its beguilement, hop in its walk and gambol before it, scratch its head, bring honey-bags, and light its farthing dip at glow-worms' eyes. Bottom's want of insight is circled round by fulness of insight, his clumsiness by dexterity. In matter of eating, he really prefers provender: "good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow." But how shrewdly Bottom manages this holding of genius to his service! He knows how to send it to be oriented with the blossoms and the sweets, giving it the characteristic counsel not to fret itself too much in the action.
You see there is nothing sour and cynical about Bottom. His daily peck of oats, with plenty of munching-time, travels to the black cell where the drop of gall gets secreted into the ink of starving thinkers, and sings content to it on oaten straw. Bottom, full-ballasted, haltered to a brown-stone-fronted crib, with digestion always waiting upon appetite, tosses a tester to Shakspeare, who might, if the tradition be true, have held hishorse in the purlieus of the Curtain or Rose Theatre: perhaps he sublet the holding while he slipped in to show Bottom how he is a deadly earnest fool; and the boxes crow and clap their unconsciousness of being put into the poet's celestial stocks. All this time Shakspeare is divinely restrained from bitterness by the serenity which overlooks a scene. If, like the ostrich, he had been only the largest of the birds which do not fly, he might have wrangled for his rations of ten-penny nails and leather, established perennial indigestion in literature, and furnished plumes to jackdaws. But he flew closest to the sun, and competed with the dawn for a first taste of its sweet and fresh impartiality.
The humor in this play meddles even with love; for that, too, must be the sport of circumstance and superior power, yet always continue to be the deepest motive of mankind. The juice of love's flower dropped on the eyelids of these distempered lovers makes the caprices of passion show and shift; love in idleness becomes love in earnest, as Puck distils the drops of marriage or of mischief. Titania herself is possessed with that common illusion which marries gracious qualities to absurd companionship. Says Puck,—
"Those things do best please meThat befall preposterously."
But this is fleeting. Shakspeare soon breaks the spell in which some of his most delicate and sprightly verses have revelled. The whole play expresses humor on a revel, and brings into one human feeling the supernature, the caprice and gross mischance, the serious drift of life.
TOUCHSTONE.
When we pass from Jaques to Touchstone in "As You Like It," we have expelled that bitter drop which infused sadness into our vein, and the pulse resumes its hilarity. Jaques was not so well-tempered as the female celebrity of our day, who made it a rule, she said, when she heard any scandal of a friend, to hope for the best and believe the worst. Touchstone agrees substantially with Jaques in his views about court-fashions and social conventions, and says things quite as sharp; but he has the tone of genuine humor, and its good-nature never deserts him except when his legs do, as he takes that dispiriting journey into the forest of Arden. We should say that, for a man of his breeding, the clownish and ill-favored Audrey would overcome the most redoubtable temper; for we half believe with Jaques that his "loving voyage is but for two months victualled:" but he has no cynical suspicion. When he sees the sentimental plight of Rosalind, he merrily parodies it, and imagines an old flirtation of his with one Jane Smile; pretending to recollect that he wooed a peascod instead of her in her absence, from which he "took two cods, and, giving her them again, said with weeping tears, 'Wear these for my sake.'" Then he sums it all up with the tolerant reflection, "We, that are true lovers, run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly:" that is,Nature can be foolish in love, but the folly is mortal as all the things of Nature are, and will pass away leaving love behind. Therefore he'll have no jibes about it; and Rosalind justly replies, "Thou speak'st wiser than thou art 'ware of." In his quick answer to this, we detect the purpose of Shakspeare to keep the character ignorant of its ownnaïveté: "Nay, I shall ne'er be 'ware of mine own wit, till I break my shins against it." For humor is not so studiedly conscious of its own quality as irony and satire are. Jaques, meeting Orlando over ears deep in love, says ill-natured things to him, and invites him to a game of railing "against our mistress the world, and all our misery." The difference between his wit and Touchstone's is subtly indicated throughout the play, and is one of Shakspeare's most admirable studies in nature. Jaques marks the moment when the virtue of complete knowledge of the world passes into the vice of discontent. Touchstone expresses the gladness of being a member of this inevitable world, and of tolerating himself with the other fools. Thus all his strictures upon society have this superiority, that they cannot be suspected of hypocrisy and ill-will. Nothing is so depressing as the cynic's perpetual strain of undervaluing. It exhausts the heart like an air-bell; the feather of his irony no longer floats, but drops like lead to weigh us down with suspecting ourselves, and so dragging by that mood all the other people into a pitiful depreciation. We grow light again and rise buoyantly to the sunshiny surface when Touchstone implicates us sogood-humoredly in unwisdom, counting himself in, not to miss his taste of the impartiality we all require.
As his name indicates, he tests with a touch the metal of society, and shows dispassionately the color of spuriousness. His foolishness is his naturalness. He is a born simpleton in the sense of being unworldly, a fool "by heavenly compulsion." So he is continually in a state of organic contrast to conventionality. He hears the wrestling-match described, in which three men had their ribs broken. "What is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have lost?" "Why, this that I speak of." "Thus men may grow wiser every day! It is the first time that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies." The people in the fashion are the real wearers of motley, as Celia says: "Since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show." Touchstone is
"Wise enough to play the fool;And, to do that well, craves a kind of wit;He must observe their mood on whom he jests,The quality of persons, and the time;Not, like the haggard, check at every featherThat comes before his eye. This is a practiceAs full of labor as a wise man's art."
In these lines, Shakspeare provides us with the pass-key to the purpose of his court fools and clowns. In them the world's confidential moments speak, when it is off its guard or has no motive to dissimulate. And it is a benefit if men can discover their folly by having it wisely shown to them.
"The wise man's folly is anatomiz'dEven by the squandering glances of the fool."
Jaques accosts him in the forest,"Good-morrow, fool." Touchstone replies, "Call me not fool, till Heaven hath sent me fortune." For thus, indeed, like the wise men, he will have a social chance to show, as they do, what his folly is. Jaques relates how he heard Touchstone airing the solemn triviality of well-ordered circles. Taking out his dial,—
"Thus may we see, quoth he, how the world wags;'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;And, after one hour more, 'twill be eleven;And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot,And thereby hangs a tale."
What tale? Why, the everlasting tedious one of over-accredited common-place behavior. Only a Touchstone, with his sly appreciation, can lend any liveliness to that. No wonder Jaques exclaims, "Motley's the only wear." He sees that Touchstone "hath strange places crammed with observation," and is a man after his own mind. If the temper of Jaques only could have been invested in that motley, they that would be most galled with his folly, "they most must laugh." He is delighted to find that fools can be "so deep contemplative." The deepness of it rests on Touchstone's appreciation of the average shallowness, but there is nothing in his tone to stir that up to a feeble sputter of resentment. Something in the tone continually appeals to us, as he did to Audrey: "Doth my simple feature content you?" Yes, there is nothing scurrilous in thee, else thou hadst not taken up so comfortably with Audrey, who cannoteven wish that the gods had made her poetical. "Who calls?" says Corin. "Your betters, sir," replies Touchstone; for everybody is superior to somebody.
What a fine pretence he makes that good manners are essential to salvation, when he asks Corin, "Wast ever in court, shepherd?" Never at court! "Then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation." See the mock Grundy lift his hands, and cast upward the look of shocked superiority. It is done well enough to serve our social virtuosity for a whole epoch of its disdain.
And mark what good sense the fellow has; for, knowing that Audrey cannot appreciate his parts, he says: "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical." Audrey replies: "I do not know what poetical is. Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?" Honest and true! We see what has won the heart of this motley disparager of cant and shams.
We see it too in the scene where he brings his wife into the Duke's company, with such an air of self-possession mixed with a pleased sense that she is his best joke at the punctilio of fashionable life. "An ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own; a poor humor of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will." Not so poor a humor; for humor itself does that, and adopts into the human family theoutcasts who come between the wind and our nobility. "Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster." Then he amuses the Duke with a strain that runs into irony, because it has the semblance of being seriously meant, upon some other esteemed punctilios of the code of honor: he rallies the whole nicely graded scale of customs from the retort courteous to the lie direct, and nominates in order the degrees of the lie. But you may avoid even the lie direct with anIf. "If you said so, then I said so." How many a quarrel on the platform and in the parlor has been stifled by this bolster of anIf, and the parties quietly subside into a profounder dislike.
The kind of marriages which the French callde convenanceget a wholesome rebuke from him; and the vulgarity of its terms is not wanton but highly apposite, as it is a part of the intended satire. It strips the matrimonial arrangement of its rhetoric, when he tells the shepherd that it is another simple sin in him to bring the incompatible members of his flock together, "out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds." He really imparts to you the surmise that themariages de convenancewere appropriately derived by natural selection from the animal world.
In fine, the Duke characterizes Touchstone well when he says, "He uses his folly like a stalking-horse; and under the presentation of that he shoots his wit." So hunters, who are seriously concerned to obtain food, work along towardstheir game behind a mimicry of it. And such a hunter for the soul of goodness, stalking it underneath the obvious beguilement, is the Humor of Shakspeare:—
"In good earnest, and so God mend me."