Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 27

Divine! The effect of innocence and the better genius!

Act iv. sc. 3.-

"_aemil._ Why, the wrong is but a wrong i' the world; and having the world for your labour, 'tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right."

Warburton's note.

What any other man, who had learning enough, might have quoted as a playful and witty ill.u.s.tration of his remarks against the Calvinistic _thesis_, Warburton gravely attributes to Shakespeare as intentional; and this, too, in the mouth of a lady's woman!

Act v. last scene. Oth.e.l.lo's speech:-

... "Of one, whose hand, Like the base _Indian_, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe," &c.

Theobald's note from Warburton.

Thus it is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make Oth.e.l.lo say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed Mariamne!-O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Oth.e.l.lo wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,-to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in the word "base," which is applied to the rude Indian, not in his own character, but as the momentary representative of Oth.e.l.lo's. "Indian"-for I retain the old reading-means American, a savage _in genere_.

Finally, let me repeat that Oth.e.l.lo does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago, such a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had believed Iago's honesty as Oth.e.l.lo did. We, the audience, know that Iago is a villain, from the beginning; but in considering the essence of the Shakespearian Oth.e.l.lo, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and under his circ.u.mstances. Then we shall immediately feel the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the n.o.ble Moor, and the wretched fis.h.i.+ng jealousies of Leontes, and the morbid suspiciousness of Leonatus, who is, in other respects, a fine character. Oth.e.l.lo had no life but in Desdemona:-the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?

_Extremum hunc_--. There are three powers:-Wit, which discovers partial likeness hidden in general diversity; subtlety, which discovers the diversity concealed in general apparent sameness;-and profundity, which discovers an essential unity under all the semblances of difference.

Give to a subtle man fancy, and he is a wit; to a deep man imagination, and he is a philosopher. Add, again, pleasurable sensibility in the threefold form of sympathy with the interesting in morals, the impressive in form, and the harmonious in sound,-and you have the poet.

But combine all,-wit, subtlety, and fancy, with profundity, imagination, and moral and physical susceptibility of the pleasurable,-and let the object of action be man universal; and we shall have-O, rash prophecy!

say, rather, we have-a SHAKESPEARE!

NOTES ON BEN JONSON.

It would be amusing to collect out of our dramatists from Elizabeth to Charles I. proofs of the manners of the times. One striking symptom of general coa.r.s.eness of manners, which may co-exist with great refinement of morals, as, alas! _vice versa_, is to be seen in the very frequent allusions to the olfactories with their most disgusting stimulants, and these, too, in the conversation of virtuous ladies. This would not appear so strange to one who had been on terms of familiarity with Sicilian and Italian women of rank: and bad as they may, too many of them, actually be, yet I doubt not that the extreme grossness of their language has impressed many an Englishman of the present era with far darker notions than the same language would have produced in the mind of one of Elizabeth's or James's courtiers. Those who have read Shakespeare only, complain of occasional grossness in his plays; but compare him with his contemporaries, and the inevitable conviction, is that of the exquisite purity of his imagination.

The observation I have prefixed to the _Volpone_ is the key to the faint interest which these n.o.ble efforts of intellectual power excite, with the exception of the fragment of the _Sad Shepherd_; because in that piece only is there any character with whom you can morally sympathise. On the other hand, _Measure for Measure_ is the only play of Shakespeare's in which there are not some one or more characters, generally many, whom you follow with affectionate feeling. For I confess that Isabella, of all Shakespeare's female characters, pleases me the least; and _Measure for Measure_ is, indeed, the only one of his genuine works, which is painful to me.

Let me not conclude this remark, however, without a thankful acknowledgment to the _manes_ of Ben Jonson, that the more I study his writings, I the more admire them; and the more my study of him resembles that of an ancient cla.s.sic, in the _minutiae_ of his rhythm, metre, choice of words, forms of connection, and so forth, the more numerous have the points of my admiration become. I may add, too, that both the study and the admiration cannot but be disinterested, for to expect therefrom any advantage to the present drama would be ignorance. The latter is utterly heterogeneous from the drama of the Shakespearian age, with a diverse object and contrary principle. The one was to present a model by imitation of real life, taking from real life all that in it which it ought to be, and supplying the rest;-the other is to copy what is, and as it is,-at best a tolerable but most frequently a blundering, copy. In the former the difference was an essential element; in the latter an involuntary defect.

We should think it strange, if a tale in dance were announced, and the actors did not dance at all;-and yet such is modern comedy.

Whalley's Preface.

"But Jonson was soon sensible, how inconsistent this medley of names and manners was in reason and nature; and with how little propriety it could ever have a place in a legitimate and just picture of real life."

But did Jonson reflect that the very essence of a play, the very language in which it is written, is a fiction to which all the parts must conform?

Surely, Greek manners in English should be a still grosser improbability than a Greek name transferred to English manners. Ben's _personae_ are too often not characters, but derangements;-the hopeless patients of a mad-doctor rather,-exhibitions of folly betraying itself in spite of exciting reason and prudence. He not poetically, but painfully exaggerates every trait; that is, not by the drollery of the circ.u.mstance, but by the excess of the originating feeling.

"But to this we might reply, that far from being thought to build his characters upon abstract ideas, he was really accused of representing particular persons then existing; and that even those characters which appear to be the most exaggerated, are said to have had their respective archetypes in nature and life."

This degrades Jonson into a libeller, instead of justifying him as a dramatic poet. _Non quod verum est, sed quod verisimile_, is the dramatist's rule. At all events, the poet who chooses transitory manners, ought to content himself with transitory praise. If his object be reputation, he ought not to expect fame. The utmost he can look forwards to, is to be quoted by, and to enliven the writings of, an antiquarian.

Pistol, Nym, and _id genus omne_, do not please us as characters, but are endured as fantastic creations, foils to the native wit of Falstaff.-I say wit emphatically; for this character so often extolled as the masterpiece of humour, neither contains, nor was meant to contain, any humour at all.

"Whalley's 'Life Of Jonson.' "

"It is to the honour of Jonson's judgment, that _the greatest poet of our nation_ had the same opinion of Donne's genius and wit; and hath preserved part of him from peris.h.i.+ng, by putting his thoughts and satire into modern verse."

_Videlicet_ Pope!-

"He said further to Drummond, Shakespeare wanted art, and sometimes sense; for in one of his plays he brought in a number of men, saying they had suffered s.h.i.+pwreck in Bohemia, where is no sea near by a hundred miles."

I have often thought Shakespeare justified in this seeming anachronism. In Pagan times a single name of a German kingdom might well be supposed to comprise a hundred miles more than at present. The truth is, these notes of Drummond's are more disgraceful to himself than to Jonson. It would be easy to conjecture how grossly Jonson must have been misunderstood, and what he had said in jest, as of Hippocrates, interpreted in earnest. But this is characteristic of a Scotchman; he has no notion of a jest, unless you tell him-"This is a joke!"-and still less of that finer shade of feeling, the half-and-half, in which Englishmen naturally delight.

"Every Man Out Of His Humour."

Epilogue.-

"The throat of war be stopt within her land, And _turtle-footed_ peace dance fairie rings About her court."

"Turtle-footed" is a pretty word, a very pretty word: pray, what does it mean? Doves, I presume, are not dancers; and the other sort of turtle, land or sea, green-fat or hawksbill, would, I should suppose, succeed better in slow minuets than in the brisk rondillo. In one sense, to be sure, pigeons and ring-doves could not dance but with _eclat_-_a claw_!

"Poetaster."

Introduction.-

"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wis.h.i.+ng thy golden splendour pitchy darkness."