An Introduction to Shakespeare Part 14

+Sources+.--The plot was taken from Giraldi Cinthio's _Hecatommithi_ (seventh novel of the third decade). A French translation of the Italian was made in 1583-1584, and this Shakespeare may have used. We know of no English translation until {185} years after Shakespeare died. Many details are changed in the play, and the whole story is raised to a far n.o.bler plane. In the original the heroine is beaten to death with a stocking filled with sand; Oth.e.l.lo is tortured, but refuses to confess, and later is murdered by his wife's revengeful kinsmen. This crude, b.l.o.o.d.y, and long-drawn-out story is in striking contrast with the masterly ending of the tragedy.

+King Lear+.--As _Romeo and Juliet_ shows the tragedy of youth, so _Lear_ shows the tragedy of old age. King Lear has probably been a good and able man in his day; but now time has impaired his judgment, and he is made to suffer fearfully for those errors for which nature, and not he, is to blame. Duped by the hypocritical smoothness of his two elder daughters, he gives them all his lands and power; while his youngest daughter Cordelia, who truly loves him, is turned away because she is too honest to humor an old man's whim. The result is what might have been expected. Lear has put himself absolutely into the power of his two older daughters, who are the very incarnation of heartlessness and ingrat.i.tude. By their inhuman treatment he is driven out into the night and storm, exposing his white head to a tempest so fierce that even the wild beasts refuse to face it. As a result of exposure and mental suffering, his mind becomes unhinged. At last his daughter Cordelia finds him, gives him refuge, and nurses him back to reason and hope. But this momentary gleam of light only makes darker by contrast the end which closely follows, where Cordelia is killed by treachery and Lear dies broken-hearted.

The fate of Lear finds a parallel in that of {186} Gloucester in the underplot. Like his king, this n.o.bleman has proved an unwise father, favoring the treacherous child and disowning the true. He also is made to pay a fearful penalty for his mistakes, ending in his death. But he is represented as more justly punished, less excusable through the weaknesses of age; and for this reason his grief appeals to us as an intensifying reflection of Lear's misery rather than as a rival for that in our sympathy. The character of Edmund shows some likeness to that of Richard III; and a comparison of the two will show how Shakespeare has developed in the interval. Both are stern, able, and heartless; but Edmund unites to these more complex feelings known only to the close student of life. Weakness and pa.s.sion mingle in his love; superst.i.tion and some faint, abortive motion of conscience unite to torment him when dying.

There is a strangely lyric element about this great tragedy, an element of heart-broken emotion hovering on the edge of pa.s.sionate song. It is like a great chorus in which the victims of treachery and ingrat.i.tude blend their denouncing cries. The tremulous voice of Lear rises terrible above all the others; and to his helpless curses the plaintive satire of the fool answers like a mocking echo in halls of former enjoyment. Thunder and lightning are the fearful accompaniment of the song; and like faint antiphonal responses from the underplot come the voices of the wronged Edgar and the outraged Gloucester.

+Date+.--The date of _King Lear_ lies between 1603 and 1606. In 1603 appeared a book (Harsnett's _Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures_) from which Shakespeare afterward drew {187} the names of the devils in the pretended ravings of Edgar, together with similar details. In 1606, as we know from an entry in the Stationers'

Register, the play was performed at Whitehall at Christmas. A late edition of the old _King Leir_ (not Shakespeare's) was entered on the Register May 8, 1605; and it is very plausible that Shakespeare's tragedy was then having a successful run and that the old play was revived to take advantage of an occasion when its story was popular.

Hence the date usually given for the composition of _King Lear_ is 1604-5. A quarto, with a poor text, and carelessly printed, appeared in 1608; another, (bearing the a.s.sumed date of 1608) in 1619. The First Folio text is much the best. Three hundred lines lacking in it are made up for by a hundred lines absent from the quartos.

+Sources+.--The story of Lear in some form or another had appeared in many writers before Shakespeare. The sources from which he drew chiefly were probably the early accounts by Geoffrey of Moumouth, a composite poem called _The Mirrour for Magistrates_, Holinshed's _Chronicles_, Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, and lastly an old play of _King Leir_, supposed to be the one acted in 1594. This old play ended happily; Shakespeare first introduced the tragic ending. He also invented Lear's madness, the banishment and disguise of Kent, and the characters of Burgundy and the fool. The underplot he drew from the story of the blind king of Paphlagonia in _Arcadia_, a long, rambling novel of adventure by Sir Philip Sidney.

+Macbeth+.--Macbeth, one of the great Scottish n.o.bles of early times, is led, partly by his own ambition, partly by the instigation of evil supernatural powers, to murder King Duncan and usurp his place on the throne of Scotland. In this b.l.o.o.d.y task he is aided and encouraged by his wife, a woman of powerful character, whose conscience is temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as they {188} are, because we are made to feel that they are not naturally criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy.

It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid energy through unlawful channels which makes him a murderer, not the callous, animal indifference of the born criminal. Similarly, his wife is a woman of great executive ability, reaching out instinctively for a field large enough in which to make that ability gain its maximum of accomplishment. Nature meant her for a queen; and it is the instinctive effort to find her natural sphere of action,--an effort common to all humanity--which blinds her conscience at the fatal moment. Once entered on their career of evil, they find no chance for turning back. Suspicions are aroused, and Macbeth feels himself forced to guard himself from the effects of the first. The ghosts of his victims haunt his guilty conscience; his wife dies heart-broken with remorse which comes too late; and he himself is killed in battle by his own rebellious countrymen.

Between the characters of Macbeth and his wife the dramatist has drawn a subtle but vital distinction. Macbeth is an unprincipled but imaginative man, with a strong tincture of reverence and awe. Hitherto he has been restrained in the straight path of an upright life by his respect for conventions. When once that barrier is broken down, he has no purely moral check in his own nature to replace it, and rushes like a flood, with ever growing impetus, from, crime to crime. His {189} wife, on the other hand, has a conscience; and conscience, unlike awe for conventions, can be temporarily suppressed, but not destroyed. It reawakes when the first great crime is over, drives the unhappy queen from her sleepless couch night after night, and hounds her at last to death.

This is the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays in actual number of lines; and no other work of his reveals such condensation and lightning-like rapidity of movement. It is the tragedy of eager ambition, which allows a man no respite after the first fatal mistake, but hurries him on irresistibly through crime after crime to the final disaster. Over all, like a dark cloud above a landscape, hovers the presence of the supernatural beings who are training on the sinful but unfortunate monarch to his ruin.

+Authors.h.i.+p+.--The speeches of Hecate and the dialogue connected with them in III, v and IV, i, 39-47 are suspected by many to be the work of Thomas Middleton, a well-known contemporary playwright. They are unquestionably inferior to most of the play. Messrs. Clark and Wright have a.s.signed several other pa.s.sages to Middleton; but these are now generally regarded as Shakespeare's, and some of them are considered as by no means below his usual high level.

+Date+.--We find no copy of _Macbeth_ earlier than the First Folio. It was certainly written before 1610, however; for Dr. Simon Forman saw it acted that year and records the fact in his _Booke of Plaies_. The allusion to "two-fold b.a.l.l.s and treble sceptres" (IV, i, 121) shows that the play was written after 1603 when James I became king of both Scotland and England. So does the allusion to the habit of touching for the king's evil (IV, iii, 140-159),--a custom which James revived.

The reference to an equivocator in the porter's soliloquy (II, iii) may allude to Henry Garnet, who was tried in 1606 for complicity in the {190} famous Gunpowder Plot, and who is said to have upheld the doctrine of equivocation. The date of composition is usually placed 1605-6.

+Sources+.--The plot is borrowed from Holinshed's _Historie of Scotland_. Most of the material is taken from the part relating to the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth; but other incidents, such as the drugging of the grooms, are from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe, which is described in another part of Holinshed.

+Antony and Cleopatra+.--There is no other pa.s.sion in mankind which makes such fools of wise men, such weaklings of brave ones, as that of sinful love. For this very reason it is the most tragic of all human pa.s.sions; and from this comes the dramatic power of _Antony and Cleopatra_. The ruin of a contemptible man is never impressive; but the ruin of an imposing character like Antony's through the one weak spot in his powerful nature has all the somber impressiveness of a burning city or some other great disaster.

Like _Julius Caesar_, this play is founded on Roman history. It begins in Egypt with a picture of Antony fascinated by the Egyptian queen.

The urgent needs of the divided Roman world call him away to Italy.

Here, once free of Cleopatra's presence, he becomes his old self, a reveler, yet diplomatic and self-seeking. From motives of policy he marries Octavia, sister of Octavius Caesar, and for a brief s.p.a.ce seems a.s.sured of a brilliant future. But the old spell draws him back. He returns to Cleopatra, and Octavius in revenge for Octavia's wrongs makes war upon him. Cleopatra proves still Antony's evil genius. Her seduction has already drawn him into war; now her cowardice in the crisis of the battle decides the war {191} against him. From that point the fate of both is one headlong rush to inevitable ruin.

In the character of Cleopatra, Shakespeare has made a wonderful study of the fascination which beauty and charm exert, even when coupled with moral worthlessness. We do not love her, we do not pity her when she dies; but we feel that in spite of her idle love of power and pleasure, she has given life a richer meaning. We are fascinated by her as by some beautiful poison plant, the sight of which causes an aesthetic thrill, its touch, disease and death.

Powerful as is this play, and in many ways tragic, it by no means stirs our sympathies as do _Macbeth, King Lear_, and _Oth.e.l.lo_. Sin for Antony and Cleopatra is not at all the unmixed cup of woe which it proves for Macbeth and his lady. Here at the end the lovers pay the price of l.u.s.t and folly; but before paying that price, they have had its adequate equivalent in the voluptuous joy of life. Moreover, death loses half its terrors for Antony through the very military vigor of his character; and for Cleopatra, because of the cunning which renders it painless. What impresses us most is not the pathos of their fate, but rather the sublime folly with which, deliberately and open-eyed, they barter a world for the intoxicating joy of pa.s.sion. Impulsive as children, powerful as demiG.o.ds, they made nations their toys, and life and death a game. Prudence could not rob them of that heritage of delight which they considered their natural birthright, nor death, when it came, undo what they had already enjoyed. Folly on so superhuman a scale becomes, in the highest sense of the word, dramatic.

{192}

+Date+.--In May, 1608, there was entered in the Stationers' Register 'A Book called Antony and Cleopatra'; and this was probably the play under discussion. The internal evidence agrees with this; hence the date is usually set at 1607-8. In spite of the above entry, the book does not appear to have been printed at that time; and the first copy which has come down to us is that in the 1623 Folio.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare's one source appears to have been the _Life of Marcus Antonius_ in North's _Plutarch_; and he followed that very closely. The chief changes in the play consist in the omission of certain events which would have clogged the dramatic action.

+Coriola.n.u.s+.--Here follows the tragedy of overweening pride. The trouble with Coriola.n.u.s is not ambition, as is the case with Macbeth.

He cares little for crowns, office, or any outward honor.

Self-centered, self-sufficient, contemptuous of all mankind outside of his own immediate circle of friends, he dies at last because he refuses to recognize those ties of sympathy which should bind all men and all cla.s.ses of men together. He leads his countrymen to battle, and shows great courage at the siege of Corioli. On his return he becomes a candidate for consul. But to win this office, he must conciliate the common people whom he holds in contempt; and instead of conciliating them, he so exasperates them by his overbearing scorn that he is driven out of Rome. With the savage vindictiveness characteristic of insulted pride, he joins the enemies of his country, brings Rome to the edge of ruin, and spares her at last only at the entreaties of his mother.

Then he returns to Corioli to be killed there by treachery.

Men like Coriola.n.u.s are not lovable, either in real life or fiction; but, despite his faults, he commands {193} our admiration in his success, and our sympathy in his death. We must remember that ancient Rome had never heard our new doctrine of the freedom and equality of man; that the common people, as drawn by Shakespeare, were objects of contempt and just cause for exasperation. Again, we must remember that if Coriola.n.u.s had a high opinion of himself, he also labored hard to deserve it. He was full of the French spirit of _n.o.blesse oblige_.

Cruel, arrogant, harsh, he might be; but he was never cowardly, underhanded, or mean. He was a man whose ideals were better than his judgment, and whose prejudiced view of life made his character seem much worse than it was. The lives of such men are usually tragic.

+Date+.--The play was not printed until the appearance of the First Folio, and external evidence as to its date is almost worthless. On the strength of internal evidence, meter, style, etc., which mark it unquestionably as a late play, it is usually a.s.signed to 1609.

+Sources+.--Shakespeare's source was Plutarch's _Life of Coriola.n.u.s_ (North's translation). As in _Julius Caesar_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_, he followed Plutarch closely.

+Timon of Athens+.--As _Coriola.n.u.s_ was the tragedy of a man who is too self-centered, so _Timon_ is the tragedy of a man who is not self-centered enough. His good and bad traits alike, generosity and extravagance, friends.h.i.+p and vanity, combine to make him live and breathe in the att.i.tude of other men toward him. From this comes his unbounded prodigality by which in a few years he squanders an enormous fortune in giving pleasure to his friends. From this lack of self-poise, too, comes the tremendous reaction later, {194} when he learns that his imagined world of love and friends.h.i.+p and popular applause was a mirage of the desert, and finds himself poverty-stricken and alone, the dupe of sharpers, the laughing-stock of fools.

Yet in spite of his lack of balance, he is full of n.o.ble qualities.

Apemantus has the very thing which he lacks, yet Apemantus is contemptible beside him. The churlish philosopher is like some dingy little scow, which rides out the tempest because the small cargo which it has is all in its hold; Timon is like some splendid, but top-heavy, battles.h.i.+p, which turns turtle in the storm through lack of ballast.

There is something lionlike and magnificent, despite its unreason, in the way he accepts the inevitable, and later, after the discovery of the gold, spurns away both the chance of wealth and the human jackals whom it attracts. The same lordly scorn persists after him in the epitaph which he leaves behind:--

"Here lie I, Timon; who alive all living men did hate.

Pa.s.s by and curse thy fill, but pa.s.s, and stay not here thy gait."

Yet this very epitaph of the dead misanthrope shows the same lack of self-sufficiency which characterized the living Timon. He despises the opinion of men, but he must let them know that he despises it.

Coriola.n.u.s would have laughed at them from Elysium and scorned to write any epitaph.

No other Shakespearean play, with the exception of _Troilus and Cressida_, shows the human race in a light so contemptible as this.

Aside from Timon and his faithful steward, there is not one person in the play {195} who seems to have a single redeeming trait. All of the others are selfish, and most of them are treacherous and cowardly.

+Authors.h.i.+p+.--It is generally believed that some parts of the play are not by Shakespeare, although opinion is still somewhat divided as to what is and is not his. The scenes and parts of scenes in which Apemantus and some of the minor characters appear are most strongly suspected.

+Date+.--This play was not printed until the publication of the First Folio, and the only evidence which we have for its date is in the meter and style and in the fact that some of the speeches show a strong resemblance to certain ones in _King Lear_. The date most generally approved is 1607-8.

+Sources+.--The direct source was probably a short account of Timon in Plutarch's _Life of Marcus Antonius_. The same story also appears in Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, where Shakespeare may have read it.

Both of these accounts, however, contain but a small part of the material found in the play. Certain details missing in them, such as the discovery of the gold, etc., are found in _Timon or the Misanthrope_, a dialogue by Lucian, one of the later of the ancient Greek writers. As far as we know, Lucian had not been translated into English at this time; but there were copies of his works in Latin, French, and Italian. We cannot say whether Shakespeare had read them or not. In 1842 a play on Timon was printed from an old ma.n.u.script which is supposed to have been written about 1000. This contains a banquet scene, a faithful steward, and the finding of the gold. This has the appearance of an academic play rather than one meant for the public theaters, so it is probable that Shakespeare never heard of it; but it is barely possible that he knew it and used it as a source.

The most helpful book yet written on the period is: _Shakespearean Tragedy_, by A. C. Bradley (London, Macmillan, 1910 (1st ed. 1904)).

{196}

CHAPTER XIII

THE PLAYS OF THE FOURTH PERIOD--ROMANTIC TRAGI-COMEDY