William Shakespeare Part 2

"Our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together."

Shakespeare neither praises nor blames. His task is to see justly. It is we who conclude that treachery looks ugly beside its opposite.

Of the fine scenes in the play, sc. iv in Act II, where Valentine and Sir Thurio walk with Silvia, with whom they are both in love, is the liveliest. The two men bicker across the lady, as though the next word would bring blows. The demure pleasure of Silvia in being quarrelled for, is indicated most masterly in less than thirty words. Act III, sc.

i, where the Duke discovers Valentine's plot to escape with Silvia, is a pa.s.sage of n.o.ble dramatic power, doubly interesting because it shows the justice of Shakespeare's vision. Valentine, the constant friend and lover, is exposed in an act of treachery to his benefactor. The scenes in which the disguised Julia witnesses her lover's falseness, and the scene in which the play is brought to an end, are deeply and n.o.bly affecting. Theatre managers play Shakespeare as though he were an old fas.h.i.+on of the mind instead of the seer of the eternal in life. They should play this play as a vision of something that is eternally treacherous, bringing misery to the faithful, the n.o.ble, and the feeling. One of the n.o.blest things in the play is the forgiveness at the end. Pa.s.sion has taken Proteus into strange byways of treachery. He has been false to Julia, to Valentine, to the Duke, to Thurio, one falseness leading to another, till he is in a wood of the soul, tangled in sin. It only wants that he be false to Silvia, too. Pa.s.sion makes his eyes a little blinder for an instant. He adds that treachery to the others.

Power to see clearly is the only cure for pa.s.sion. Discovery gives that power. Valentine's words--

"Who should be trusted now, when one's right hand Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus, I am sorry I must never trust thee more, But count the world a stranger for thy sake.

The private wound is deepest...."

followed so soon by Julia's words--

"Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths, And entertained them deeply in her heart: How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root....

It is the lesser blot, modesty finds, Women to change their shapes, than men their minds"--

rouse Proteus to the confounding instant of self-recognition. His answer is like a voice from one of the later plays. It is in Shakespeare's grand manner. It does not read like a piece of revision done in the poet's maturity; but as though Shakespeare suddenly found his utterance in a moment of vision--

"Than men their minds! 'tis true. O heaven! Were man But constant, he were perfect: that one error Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins: Inconstancy falls off, ere it begins."

A word of excuse would brand him as base. He is ashamed and guilty; but not base. He cannot say more than that he is sorry, and this only to Valentine. Valentine accepts sorrow with the utterance of one of the religious ideas which seem to have been constantly in Shakespeare's mind.

"By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased."

His conduct towards Proteus after this forgiveness is so wise with delicate tact that the reader is reminded of Sh.e.l.ley's treatment of Hogg, in a similar case.

The suggestion of the character of Silvia has an austere beauty. The two gentlemen are limited by the play's needs. The figure of Valentine is the more complete of the two. He is an interesting study of one of those grave young men who, when tested by life, show themselves wise beyond their years. Among the minor characters, that of Eglamour, an image of constancy to a dead woman, is the most beautiful. He is one of the strange, many-sorrowed souls, vowed to an idea, to whom Shakespeare's characters so often turn when the world bears hard. The low comedy of Launce could hardly be lower; but his phrase "the other squirrel" (in Act IV, sc. iv) is a good stroke. The great mind is full of vitality on all the planes.

There is little superb verse in the play. The lyric, "Who is Silvia?"

shows a marvellous lyrical art, working without emotion to imitate an effect of music. The proverb, "make a virtue of necessity," occurs in Act IV, sc. ii. The fine lines--

"O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day"--

and the pretty speech of Julia in Act II, sc. vii--

"I'll be as patient as a gentle stream, And make a pastime of each weary step, Till the last step have brought me to my love; And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil, A blessed soul doth in Elysium"--

are memorable.

Man is so eager to know about Shakespeare that he is tempted to find personal confession in the plays. It is true that the art of a young man is too immature to be impersonal. In an achieved style we see the man; in all striving for style we see what hurts him. But in poetry, human experience is wrought to symbol, and symbol is many virtued, according to the imaginative energy that broods upon it. It is said that Shakespeare holds a mirror up to life. He who looks into a mirror closely generally sees nothing but himself.

_The Comedy of Errors._

_Written._ Before 1594.

_Published_, in the first folio, 1623.

_Source of the Plot._ The plot was taken from the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus. Whether Shakespeare read the play in Latin, or in a translation, or heard it from a friend, or saw it acted, is not known. All four are possible.

The sub-plot, in this case a duplication of the plot, was suggested by a part of the _Amphitruo_ of Plautus.

The play is brought on to the plane of human feeling by the character of aegeon. This character was suggested by a story in _Gli Suppositi_ (The Supposes) of Ariosto.

_The Fable._ Like all comedies of mistake, the _Comedy of Errors_ has an extremely complicated plot. The play consists of a number of ingeniously contrived situations in which either the Antipholus and the Dromio of Ephesus are mistaken for the Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse, or those of Syracuse are mistaken for those of Ephesus. The comedy of mistake is touched with beauty by the romantic addition of the restoration of old aegeon to his long-lost wife.

Poets are great or little according to the n.o.bleness of their endeavour to build a mansion for the soul. Shakespeare, like other poets, grew by continual, very difficult mental labour, by the deliberate and prolonged exercise of every mental weapon, and by the resolve to do not "the nearest thing," precious to human sheep, but the difficult, new and n.o.ble thing, glimmering beyond his mind, and brought to glow there by toil. We do not know when the play was written, nor why it was written.

If it were not written by special request, for reward, it must have been chosen either for the rest given by a subject external to the mind, or as a self-set exercise in the difficult mental labour of comic dramatic construction. Every playwright sees the comic opportunity of the _Menaechmi_ fable. A playwright not yet sure of his art sees and admires behind the comedy the firm, intricate mental outline that has kept the play alive for more than two thousand years.

The _Menaechmi_ of Plautus is a piece of very skilful theatrical craft.

It is almost heartless. In bringing it out of the Satanic kingdom of comedy into the charities of a larger system Shakespeare shows for the first time a real largeness of dramatic instinct. In his handling of the tricky ingenious plot he achieves (what, perhaps, he wrote the play to get) a dexterous, certain play of mind. He strikes the ringing note, time after time. It cannot be said that the verse, or the sense of character, or the invention is better than in the other early plays. It is not. The play is on a lower plane than any of his other works. It is the only Shakespearean play without a deep philosophical idea. If it be not a special commission, or an exercise in art, it is perhaps another instance of the price great men pay for being happy. It is certainly the fruit of a happier mood than that which bore the other early plays. It is also the first play that shows a fine, sustained power of dramatic construction.

It is so well constructed (for the simple Elizabethan theatre and the bustle of the Elizabethan speech) that any unspoiled mind is held by it, when it is acted as Shakespeare meant it to be acted. The closeness and firmness of the dramatic texture is the work of an acutely clear mind driven at white heat and mercilessly judged at each step. Those who do not understand the nature of dramatic art should read the ninety odd verses in which aegeon tells his story (in Act I, sc. i). They would do well to consider the power of mind that has told so much in so few words. They will find an instance of Shakespeare's happy use of stage trick, in the final scene, where, after the general recognition, Dromio of Syracuse again mistakes Antipholus of Ephesus for his master.

Rare poetical power is shown in the making of the play. Little beauty adorns the action. The speech of Adriana (in Act II, sc. ii) against the obsession of pa.s.sion that leads to treachery in marriage, is pa.s.sionate and profound. It is the most deeply felt speech in the early plays.

Adriana's husband is frequenting another woman who, having the charm that so often goes with worthlessness, has a power of attracting that is sometimes refused to the n.o.ble. Adriana beseeches him not to break the tie that binds them. Two souls that have been each other's are not to be torn apart without death to one of them. With that sympathy for the suffering mind which gives Shakespeare all his power--

("My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits")

he gives to her speech an unendurable reality. Reality, however obtained, is the only cure for an obsession. As far as words can teach in such a case Adriana's words teach the reality of her husband's sin.

"How dearly it would touch thee to the quick, Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious, And that this body, consecrate to thee, By ruffian l.u.s.t should be contaminate!

Wouldst them not spit at me and spurn at me, And hurl the name of husband in my face, And tear the stain'd skin off my harlot brow, And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring...?

My blood is mingled with the crime of l.u.s.t: For, if we two be one, and thou play false, I do digest the poison of thy flesh."

There is no other poetry of this intensity in the play.

It is interesting to compare Shakespeare's mind with Plautus's in the description of Epid.a.m.num. Plautus says--

"This is the home of the greatest lechers and drunkards.

"Very many tricksters and cheaters live in this city.

"Nowhere are wheedling wh.o.r.es more cunning at bilking people."

Shakespeare gives the horror a spiritual turn that adds much to the intensity of the farce.

"They say, this town is full of cozenage: As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, Soul-killing witches that deform the body, Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, And many such like liberties of sin."

The play is amusing. The plot is intricate. The interest of the piece is in the plot. When a plot engrosses the vitality of a dramatist's mind, his character-drawing dies; so here. It is sufficient to say that the character of aegeon is the best in the play

_t.i.tus Andronicus._

_Written._ (?)

_Published._ (?)

_Source of the Plot._ (?)