The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 41

He will show how those dragon teeth and claws, that were just getting the steel into them, which would have armed that single will against the whole, and its _weal_, crumble for the lack of it; he will show us the new-fledged wings, with all their fresh gauds, collapsing and dissolving with that popular withdrawal. He will continue the process, till there is nothing left of all that gorgeous state pageant, which came in with the flourish of trumpets and the voice of the herald long and loud, and the echoing thunder of the commons, but a poor grub of a man, in his native conditions, a private citizen, denied even the common privilege of citizens.h.i.+p,--with only his wife and his mother and a friend or two, to cling to him,--turned out of the city gates, to seek his fortune.

But that is the moment in which the Poet ventures to bring out a little more fully, in the form of positive statement, that latent affirmation, that definition of the true n.o.bility which underlies all the play and glistens through it in many a fine, but hitherto, unnoticed point; that affirmation which all these negatives conclude in, that latent idea of the true personal greatness and its essential relation to the common-weal and the state, which is the predominant idea of the play, which shapes all the criticism and points all the satire of it. It is there that the true hero speaks out for a moment from the lips of that old military heroism, of a greatness which does not cease when the wings of state drop off from it, of an honour that takes no stain though all the human voices join to sully it,--the dignity that rises and soars and gains the point of immutability, when all the world would have it under foot. But in that n.o.bility men need training,--_scientific training_. The instinctive, unartistic human growth, or the empirical unscientific arts of culture, give but a vulgar counterfeit of it, or at best a poor, sickly, distorted, convulsive, unsatisfactory type of it, for 'being gentle, wounded,'--(and it is gentility and n.o.bility and the true aristocracy that we speak of here,)--'craves a n.o.bLE CUNNING;' so the old military chieftain tells us. It is a _cunning_ which his author does not put _him_ upon practising personally. Practically he represents another school of heroes. It is the _word_ of that higher heroism in which he was himself wanting, it is the criticism on his own part, it is the affirmation which all this grand historic negative is always pointing to, which the author borrows his lips to utter.

The result in this case, the overthrow of the military hero on his way to the chair of state, is occasioned by the _premature_ arrogance to which his pa.s.sionate nature impels him. For his fiery disposition refuses to obey the decision of his will, and overleaps in its pa.s.sion, all the barriers of that policy which his calmer moments had prescribed. The result is occasioned by his open display of his contempt for the people, before he had as yet mastered the organizations which would make that display, in an unenlightened age, perhaps, a safe one.

This point of time is much insisted on, and emphasized.

'Let them pull all about mine ears,' cries the hero, as he enters his own house, after his first encounter with the mult.i.tude in their wrath.

'Let them pull all about mine ears, present me _Death on the wheel_, or at wild horses' heels, Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock That the precipitation might down stretch Below the beam of sight, yet will I still-- _Be_ THUS _to them_.'

[For that is the sublime conclusion of these heroics.]

'You do the _n.o.bler_,' responds the Coryphaeus of that chorus of patricians who accompany him home, and who ought, of course, to be judges of n.o.bility. But there is another approbation wanted. Volumnia is there; but she listens in silence. 'I muse,' he continues--

'I muse my mother Does not approve me further--who was wont To call them woollen va.s.sals, _things created To buy and sell with groats_; to show bare heads In _congregations_, to YAWN, be STILL, AND WONDER, When one but of my _ordinance_ stood up To speak of PEACE or WAR. I talk of you [_to Volumnia_.]

Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me _False to my nature_? [_Softly_] Either say I _play_ The man I am.

_Vol_. O sir, sir, sir, I would have had you _put your power well on_, Ere you had worn it out.

_Cor_. Let go.

_Vol_. Lesser had been The _thwarting of your dispositions_, IF You had not shown them _how_ you were _disposed_ Ere they lacked _power_ to cross you.

_Cor_. Let them HANG!

_Vol_. _Ay, and_ BURN _too_!

For that was the '_disposition_' which these Commons, if they had waited but a little longer, might have 'lacked _power to cross_.' That was the disposition they had thwarted.

But then it is necessary to our purpose, as it was to the author's, to notice that the collision in this case is a _forced_ one. It grows by plot. The people are _put up to it_. For there are men in that commonwealth who are competent to instruct the Commons in the doctrine of the _common weal_, and who are carefully and perseveringly applying themselves to that task; though they are men who know how to bide their time, and they will wait till the soaring insolence of the hero is brought into open collision with that enlightened popular will.

They will wait till the military hero's quarrel with the commonwealth breaks out anew. For they know that it lies in the nature of things, and cannot but occur. The eclat of his victory, and the military pride of the nation, films it over for a time; but the quarrel is a radical one, and cannot be healed.

For this chief of soldiers, and would-be head and ruler of the state knows no _commonwealth_. His soul is not large enough to admit of that conception. The walls of ignorance, that he shuts himself up in, darken and narrow his world to the sphere of his own _microcosm_,-- and, therefore, there is a natural war between the world and him. The _state_ of universal subjection, on the part of others, to his single exclusive pa.s.sions and affections, the state in which the whole is sacrificed to the part, is the only state that will satisfy him. That is the peace he is disposed to conquer; that is the consummation with which he would _stay_; that is _his_ notion of _state_. When that consummation is attained, or when such an approximation to it as he judges to be within his reach, is attained, then, and not till then, he is for _conservation_;--_revolution then_ is sin; but, till then he will have change and overturning--he will fill the earth with rapine, and fire, and slaughter. But this is just the peace and war principle, which this man, who proposes a durable and solid peace, and the true state, a state constructed with reference to true definitions and axioms,--this is the peace and war principle which the man of science, on scientific grounds, objects to. 'He likes nor peace nor war' on those terms. The conclusions he has framed from those solid premises which he finds in the nature of things, makes him the leader of the opposition in both cases. In one way or another he will make war on that peace; he will kindle the revolutionary fires against that conservation. In one way or another, in one age or another, he will silence that war with all its pomp and circ.u.mstance, with all the din of its fifes, and drums, and trumpets. He will make over to the ignominy of ignorant and barbaric ages,--'for we call a nettle but a nettle,' he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early, instinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity, that triumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of Foreign States. He will undermine, in all the states, the ethics and religion of brute force, till men shall grow sick, at last, of the old, rusty, bygone trumpery of its insignia, and say, 'Take away those baubles.'

But the hero that we deal with here, is but the pure negation of that heroism which his author conceives of, aspires to, and will have, historical, which he defines as the pattern of man's nature in all men. This one knows no _common_-wealth; the wealth that is wealth in his eyes, is all his own; the weal that he conceives of, is the weal that is warm at his own heart only. At best he can go out of his particular only as far as the limits of his own hearthstone, or the limits of his clique or caste. And in his selfish pa.s.sion, when that demands it, he will sacrifice the nearest to him. As to the Commons, they are 'but things to buy and sell with groats,' a herd, a ma.s.s, a machine, to be informed with his single will, to be subordinated to his single wishes; in peace enduring the gnawings of hunger, that the garners their toil has filled may overflow for him,--enduring the badges of a degradation which blots out the essential humanity in them, to feed his pride;--in war offered up in droves, to win the garland of the war for him. That is the old hero's commonwealth. His small brain, his brutish head, could conceive no other. The ages in which he ruled the world with his instincts, with his fox-like cunning, with his wolfish fury, with his dog-like ravening,--those brute ages could know no other.

But it is the st.u.r.dy European race that the hero has to deal with here; and though, in the moment of victory, it is ready always to chain itself to the conqueror's car, and, in the exultation of conquest, and love for the conqueror, fastens on itself, with joy, the fetters of ages, this quarrel is always breaking out in it anew: it does not like being governed with the edge of the sword;--it is not fond of martial law as a permanent inst.i.tution.

Two very sagacious tribunes these old Romans happen to have on hand in this emergency: birds considerably too old to be caught with this chaff of victory and military virtue, which puts the populace into such a frenzy, and very learnedly they talk on this subject, with a slight tendency to anachronisms in their mode of expression, in language which sounds a little, at times, as if they might have had access to some more recent doc.u.ments, than the archives of mythical Rome could just then furnish to them.

But the reader should judge for himself of the correctness of this criticism.

Refusing to join in the military procession on its way to the Capitol, and stopping in the street for a little conference on the subject, when it has gone by, after that vivid complaint of the universal prostration to the military hero already quoted, the conference proceeds thus:--

_Sic_. On the sudden, I warrant him consul.

_Bru_. Then _our office_ may, _During his power_, go sleep.

_Sic_. He cannot temperately transport his honours From where he should begin, and end; but will Lose those that he hath won.

_Bru_. In _that_ there's comfort.

_Sic_. Doubt not, the commoners, _for whom we stand_.

But _they, upon their ancient malice_, will Forget, with the least cause, these _his new honours_; Which that he'll give them, make as little question As he is proud to do't.

_Bru_. I heard him swear, Were _he_ to stand for consul, never would he Appear i'the market-place, nor on him put The napless vesture of humility; Nor, showing (as the _manner is_) his wounds To the people, beg their stinking breaths.

_Sic_. _'Tis right_.

_Bru_. It was his word: O, he would miss it, rather Than _carry it, but by the suit o'the gentry to him_, And the _desire of the n.o.bles_.

_Sic_. _I wish no better_, Than have him hold _that_ purpose, and to put it In execution.

_Bru_. 'Tis most like he will.

_Sic_. It shall be to him then, as our good wills A sure destruction.

_Bru_. So it must fall out To him, or our authorities. For an end, We must suggest the people, in what hatred He still hath held them; that to his power he would _Have made them mules, silenced their pleaders_, and DISPROPERTIED THEIR FREEDOMS: [--note the expression--]

holding them, IN HUMAN ACTION AND CAPACITY, Of no more soul _nor fitness for_ THE WORLD Than CAMELS in their war; who have their provand _Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows For sinking under them_.

_Sic_. _This as you say, suggested At some time, when his soaring insolence Shall teach the people_ (which time shall not want) _If he be put upon't_; and that's as easy As to set dogs on sheep; will be HIS FIRE _To_ KINDLE THEIR DRY STUBBLE; AND THEIR BLAZE SHALL DARKEN HIM FOR EVER.

[There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased, The which observed a man may prophesy, With a near aim of the main chance of things, As yet not come to life, which in their seeds And weak beginnings, lie intreasured: Such things become the hatch and brood of time.--_Henry IV_.]

Coriola.n.u.s, elected by the Senate to the consuls.h.i.+p, proposes, in his arrogance, as we have already seen, to dispense with the usual form, which he understands to be a form merely, of asking the consent of the people, and exhibiting to them his claim to their suffrages. The tribunes have sternly withstood this proposition, and will hear of 'no jot' of encroachment upon the dignity and state of the Commons. After the flourish with which the election in the Senate Chamber concludes, and the withdrawal of the Senate, again they stop to discuss, confidentially, 'the situation.'

_Bru_. You _see_ how he intends to use the people.

_Sic_. May _they perceive his intent_; he will require them As if he did contemn what they requested Should be in their power to give.

_Bru_. Come, we'll inform them Of our proceedings here: on the market-place I know they do attend us.

And to the market-place we go; for it is there that the people are collecting in throngs; no bats or clubs in their hands now, but still full of their pa.s.sion of grat.i.tude and admiration for the hero's patriotic achievements, against the common foe; and, under the influence of that sentiment, wrought to its highest pitch by that action and reaction which is the incident of the common sentiment in 'the greater congregations,' or 'extensive wholes,' eager to sanction with their 'approbation,' the appointment of the Senate, though the graver sort appear to be, even then, haunted with some unpleasant reminiscences, and not without an occasional misgiving as to the wisdom of the proceeding. There is a little tone of the former meeting lurking here still.

_First Cit_. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him.

_Second Cit_. We may, Sir, if we will.

_Third Cit_. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do. Ingrat.i.tude is _monstrous_: and for the mult.i.tude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of the mult.i.tude,--

[There are scientific points here. This term 'monstrosity' is one of the radical terms in the science of nature; but, like many others, it is used in the popular sense, while the sweep and exact.i.tude of the scientific definition, or '_form_' is introduced into it.]

--of the which, we, being members, should bring ourselves to be monstrous members.

_First Cit_. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve: for once, when we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the _many_-headed mult.i.tude.