More Pages from a Journal Part 22

'No, no; alack!

There's other work in hand: I see a thing Bitter to me as death: your life, good master, Must shuffle for itself.'

In the fifth act Posthumus believes his wife to be guilty, and yet breaks out into strains like these:

'So I'll die, For thee, O Imogen! even for whom my life Is every breath a death.

For Imogen's dear life take mine; and though 'Tis not so dear, yet 'tis a life; you coin'd it.'

Shakespeare surely ought to have made Posthumus revert to perfect faith. He ought to have borrowed something from his own Beatrice.

Posthumus wishes Imogen saved, because, if her life had been spared, she might have repented.

Iachimo is impossible, simple blackness, worse than Iago. He is unactable, for some motivation is necessary.

Shakespeare's genius is so immense that it overpowers us, and we must be on our guard lest it should twist our instinct for what is true and right. The errors of a fool are not dangerous, but those of a Shakespeare, Goethe, or Byron it is almost impossible to resist.

Twelfth Night.--The play is two plays in one without much connection. The Viola play is improbable. Why did Shakespeare omit that part of the story which tells us that Silla (Viola) had seen the Duke when he was s.h.i.+pwrecked on Cyprus where she lived, and had fallen in love with him? In the play, hearing of the Duke, she discloses a design to make her 'own occasion mellow.'

Malvolio shut up as mad -

Clown. 'What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?

Malvolio. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.

Clown. What thinkest thou of his opinion?

Malvolio. I think n.o.bly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.'

Malvolio was a gentleman, but he was more. Shakespeare may go a little too far with the yellow stockings and cross-gartering, but the liability to deception by a supposed profession of love is a divine weakness, not inconsistent with true n.o.bility of intellect and with sagacity. There is no reason to suppose he was often deceived in worldly matters. Maria is a bad sort of clever barmaid, and was not unwilling to marry the drunken Sir Toby. When I last saw Twelfth Night acted, the whole of the latter part of the fifth act was omitted, for the purpose, apparently, of strengthening the representation of Malvolio as a comic fool whose silly brain is turned by conceit. It was shocking, but the manager knew his audience.

Julius Caesar.--Casca is indignant that Caesar should be offered the crown, but he despises the applause of the mob when Caesar rejected it. 'The rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it; and for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.'

Brutus. 'Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.'

I cannot think Dr. Johnson, Mason, and Delius are right in supposing the Genius to be the power which watches over us for our protection, and that the mortal instruments are the pa.s.sions which rebel against it, and, as Johnson says, 'excite him to a deed of honour and danger.' The Genius and the mortal instruments are in council. The Genius is the president and the mortal instruments are subordinates.

The insurrection is their resistance because they cannot at once be brought to do what the Genius directs. There is no hint in what goes before of 'safety.' The mortal instruments suggest

'I know no personal cause to spurn at him.'

Blakeway agrees with this interpretation.

In both Plutarch and Shakespeare, Brutus refuses to kill Antony.

Brutus will go no further than justice demands. But this is not enough for success. Hence the ruin of the republican cause.

Steevens says that the apparition at Sardis 'could not be at once the shade of Caesar and the evil genius of Brutus.' But Shakespeare intended that it should be both. Brutus in the fifth scene of the fifth act thus replies to Volumnius:

'The ghost of Caesar hath appear'd to me Two several times by night: at Sardis, once; And, this last night, here in Philippi's fields.'

It is an instance of Steevens' prosaic temper that he could not see the fitness of the combination.

Brutus. And whether we shall meet again I know not.

Therefore our everlasting farewell take; For ever, and for ever, farewell, Ca.s.sius!

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile; If not, why then, this parting was well made.

Ca.s.sius. For ever, and for ever, farewell, Brutus!

If we do meet again, we'll smile indeed; If not, 'tis true, this parting was well made.

These verses are perhaps the n.o.blest in our language. Nothing ever has gone or could go beyond them. Shakespeare here justifies the claim on his behalf to be placed alone and unreachable. Observe the repet.i.tion by Ca.s.sius almost word for word. Swift must have had this pa.s.sage in his mind when in a letter to Pope, which I quote from memory, as I cannot lay my hand on it, he tells Pope that he will come over to England and see him if possible, but, if not, 'we must part, as all human creatures have parted.'

'Why, then, lead on. O! that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come!

But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known. Come, ho! away!'

These lines might easily be turned into commonplace, but what could be more pathetic or solemn?

The true drama of Julius Caesar is indicated by Plutarch. It is Caesar's triumph over innumerable difficulties, any one of which might have been fatal, the protection by his genius, the limitation of its power, the Dictators.h.i.+p--'Semideus,' his death. Shakespeare gives no reason, nor does Plutarch, why Brutus should have plotted to kill Caesar, excepting the fear of what might happen if he were to become absolute. Brutus is abstract.

'Such one he was (of him we boldly say), In whose rich soule all sovereigne powres did sute, In whom in peace the elements all lay So mixt, as none could soveraigntie impute; As all did govern, yet all did obey; His lively temper was so absolute, That 't seem'd, when heaven his modell first began, In him it show'd perfection in a man.'

This is Drayton's imitation of what Antony says of Brutus, and it is one which not only does not spoil the original, but is itself original.

Antony and Cleopatra.--It is not Antony's pa.s.sion for Cleopatra which ruins him. He has not the cohesion which obtains success. He is loose-bonded. Caesar is his complete foil and contrast. Caesar exists dramatically to explain Antony. Antony's challenge to single combat and the speeches he makes to his servants are characteristic.

The marriage to Octavia, more than his Egyptian slavery, shows his weakness. There is a line in Plutarch which I wish Shakespeare had used. 'But it was in the nature of Antonius to show his best qualities in difficulties, and in his misfortune he was as like as may be to a good man.'

Scenes 6 and 7, Act ii., the interview with Pompey, are in Plutarch, but it is not evident why they are in the drama. They do not advance the action. Shakespeare preserves also Antony's message to Octavius that if he was dissatisfied with the treatment of Thyreus he might hang or torture Antony's freedman Hipparchus--a detestable piece of brutality which might well have been omitted.

Cleopatra is quite apart from Shakespeare's other women. She is a most complicated and difficult study. Shakespeare takes over from Plutarch her wandering disguised through the streets at night with Antony; the voyage down the Cydnus; the hanging of the salt fish on Antony's hook; the flight at Actium; the fact that she was mistress of Julius Caesar and Cnaeus Pompey; the second betrayal of the fleet; her pet.i.tion to Octavius for her son; and her attempt to cheat Octavius in the account of her treasures. In addition Shakespeare makes her 'hop forty paces through the public street.'

What could have induced him to invent this story? She threatens Charmian with b.l.o.o.d.y teeth; lets Thyreus kiss her hand, arousing thereby Antony's rage. Thyreus tells her that Caesar knows she did not embrace Antony from love but from fear, and she replies:

'He is a G.o.d, and knows What is most right: mine honour was not yielded, But conquer'd merely.'