Shakespearean Tragedy Part 12

[Footnote 71: 'Frailty, thy name is woman!' he had exclaimed in the first soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (III. iv. 40):

Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there.]

[Footnote 72: There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horrible idea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother; that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemed simple and affectionate love might really have been something very different. The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and some lines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state of his mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such a suspicion. I do not suggest that he _believed_ in it, and in the Nunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocence is in conflict with it.

He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourable intentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea that Polonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as long as Hamlet was prosperous. But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stress on inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius.]

[Footnote 73: Many readers and critics imagine that Hamlet went straight to Ophelia's room after his interview with the Ghost. But we have just seen that on the contrary he tried to visit her and was repelled, and it is absolutely certain that a long interval separates the events of I. v.

and II. i. They think also, of course, that Hamlet's visit to Ophelia was the first announcement of his madness. But the text flatly contradicts that idea also. Hamlet has for some time appeared totally changed (II. ii. 1-10); the King is very uneasy at his 'transformation,'

and has sent for his school-fellows in order to discover its cause.

Polonius now, after Ophelia has told him of the interview, comes to announce his discovery, not of Hamlet's madness, but of its cause (II.

ii. 49). That, it would seem, was the effect Hamlet aimed at in his interview. I may add that Ophelia's description of his intent examination of her face suggests doubt rather as to her 'honesty' or sincerity than as to her strength of mind. I cannot believe that he ever dreamed of confiding his secret to her.]

[Footnote 74: If this _is_ an allusion to his own love, the adjective 'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The other calamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at all specially his own.]

[Footnote 75: It should be noticed that it was not apparently of long standing. See the words 'of late' in I. iii. 91, 99.]

[Footnote 76: This, I think, may be said on almost any sane view of Hamlet's love.]

[Footnote 77: Polonius says so, and it _may_ be true.]

[Footnote 78: I have heard an actress in this part utter such a cry as is described above, but there is absolutely nothing in the text to justify her rendering. Even the exclamation 'O, ho!' found in the Quartos at IV. v. 33, but omitted in the Folios and by almost all modern editors, coming as it does after the stanza, 'He is dead and gone, lady,' evidently expresses grief, not terror.]

[Footnote 79: In the remarks above I have not attempted, of course, a complete view of the character, which has often been well described; but I cannot forbear a reference to one point which I do not remember to have seen noticed. In the Nunnery-scene Ophelia's first words pathetically betray her own feeling:

Good my lord, How does your honour _for this many a day_?

She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggested to her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, in which she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, and to the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach.

So again do those most touching little speeches:

_Hamlet._ ... I did love you once.

_Ophelia._ Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

_Hamlet._ You should not have believed me ... I loved you not.

_Ophelia._ I was the more deceived.

Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, but that _she_ had repulsed _him_; and here, with his usual un.o.btrusive subtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may have accepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has driven Hamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannot repress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her own heart is unchanged.

I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help given them in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, still shake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day.' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to consider that Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,'

sing an old song containing the line,

If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men.]

[Footnote 80: _I.e._ the King will kill _her_ to make all sure.]

[Footnote 81: I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (IV.

vii. 12 f.) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone in speaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy (III. iii. 55).]

[Footnote 82: This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, he says, because if the King is killed praying he will _go to heaven_. On Hamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts _never to heaven go_.]

[Footnote 83: I am indebted to Werder in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 84: The attempt to explain this meeting as pre-arranged by Hamlet is scarcely worth mention.]

LECTURE V

OTh.e.l.lO

There is practically no doubt that _Oth.e.l.lo_ was the tragedy written next after _Hamlet_. Such external evidence as we possess points to this conclusion, and it is confirmed by similarities of style, diction and versification, and also by the fact that ideas and phrases of the earlier play are echoed in the later.[85] There is, further (not to speak of one curious point, to be considered when we come to Iago), a certain resemblance in the subjects. The heroes of the two plays are doubtless extremely unlike, so unlike that each could have dealt without much difficulty with the situation which proved fatal to the other; but still each is a man exceptionally n.o.ble and trustful, and each endures the shock of a terrible disillusionment. This theme is treated by Shakespeare for the first time in _Hamlet_, for the second in _Oth.e.l.lo_.

It recurs with modifications in _King Lear_, and it probably formed the attraction which drew Shakespeare to refas.h.i.+on in part another writer's tragedy of _Timon_. These four dramas may so far be grouped together in distinction from the remaining tragedies.

But in point of substance, and, in certain respects, in point of style, the unlikeness of _Oth.e.l.lo_ to _Hamlet_ is much greater than the likeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with its successors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of pa.s.sion, a description inapplicable to _Julius Caesar_ or _Hamlet_. And with this change goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There is in most of the later heroes something colossal, something which reminds us of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men, they are huge men; as it were, survivors of the heroic age living in a later and smaller world. We do not receive this impression from Romeo or Brutus or Hamlet, nor did it lie in Shakespeare's design to allow more than touches of this trait to Julius Caesar himself; but it is strongly marked in Lear and Coriola.n.u.s, and quite distinct in Macbeth and even in Antony. Oth.e.l.lo is the first of these men, a being essentially large and grand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of force which in repose ensures preeminence without an effort, and in commotion reminds us rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common human pa.s.sion.

1

What is the peculiarity of _Oth.e.l.lo_? What is the distinctive impression that it leaves? Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, I would answer, not even excepting _King Lear_, _Oth.e.l.lo_ is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with the profusion found in _King Lear_, but forming, as it were, the soul of a single character, and united with an intellectual superiority so great that he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, in itself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidents and the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe an atmosphere as fateful as that of _King Lear_, but more confined and oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous room. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is the activity of concentration rather than dilation.

I will not dwell now on aspects of the play which modify this impression, and I reserve for later discussion one of its princ.i.p.al sources, the character of Iago. But if we glance at some of its other sources, we shall find at the same time certain distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of _Oth.e.l.lo_.

(1) One of these has been already mentioned in our discussion of Shakespeare's technique. _Oth.e.l.lo_ is not only the most masterly of the tragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction is unusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. To this may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is very little relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago's humour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attend to him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, if asked whether there is a clown in _Oth.e.l.lo_, would answer No.

(2) In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than s.e.xual jealousy rising to the pitch of pa.s.sion; and there can hardly be any spectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great nature suffering the torment of this pa.s.sion, and driven by it to a crime which is also a hideous blunder. Such a pa.s.sion as ambition, however terrible its results, is not itself ign.o.ble; if we separate it in thought from the conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; it is not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we can watch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially s.e.xual jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. Such jealousy as Oth.e.l.lo's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also the most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painful than that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and loathing, the 'golden purity' of pa.s.sion split by poison into fragments, the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a b.e.s.t.i.a.l thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who was indeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great.

And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scene where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more painful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of this tragedy.[86]

(3) The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a third cause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all. I mean the suffering of Desdemona. This is, unless I mistake, the most nearly intolerable spectacle that Shakespeare offers us. For one thing, it is _mere_ suffering; and, _ceteris paribus_, that is much worse to witness than suffering that issues in action. Desdemona is helplessly pa.s.sive. She can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. I would not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that we _pity_ Oth.e.l.lo even more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigated distress. We are never wholly uninfluenced by the feeling that Oth.e.l.lo is a man contending with another man; but Desdemona's suffering is like that of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by the being he adores.

(4) Turning from the hero and heroine to the third princ.i.p.al character, we observe (what has often been pointed out) that the action and catastrophe of _Oth.e.l.lo_ depend largely on intrigue. We must not say more than this. We must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue as distinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago's plot is Iago's character in action; and it is built on his knowledge of Oth.e.l.lo's character, and could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains true that an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; for Oth.e.l.lo was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to engender such jealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position in the drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; the only approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund in the secondary plot of _King Lear_. Now in any novel or play, even if the persons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, a skilfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. And where, as in _Oth.e.l.lo_, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and antipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes the source of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhere else in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for so long a time as in the later Acts of _Oth.e.l.lo_.

(5) One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that _Oth.e.l.lo_ is less unlike a story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in further ways. In the other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, so that its general significance is perceived through a thin veil which separates the persons from ourselves and our own world. But _Oth.e.l.lo_ is a drama of modern life; when it first appeared it was a drama almost of contemporary life, for the date of the Turkish attack on Cyprus is 1570.

The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama to ourselves (if the phrase may be pardoned) is more immediate than it can be in _Hamlet_ or _Lear_. Besides this, their fortunes affect us as those of private individuals more than is possible in any of the later tragedies with the exception of _Timon_. I have not forgotten the Senate, nor Oth.e.l.lo's position, nor his service to the State;[87] but his deed and his death have not that influence on the interests of a nation or an empire which serves to idealise, and to remove far from our own sphere, the stories of Hamlet and Macbeth, of Coriola.n.u.s and Antony.

Indeed he is already superseded at Cyprus when his fate is consummated, and as we leave him no vision rises on us, as in other tragedies, of peace descending on a distracted land.

(6) The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to produce those feelings of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively narrow world, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in reading _Oth.e.l.lo_. In _Macbeth_ the fate which works itself out alike in the external conflict and in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and the imagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and by the appearance of supernatural agencies. These, as we have seen, produce in _Hamlet_ a somewhat similar effect, which is increased by the hero's acceptance of the accidents as a providential shaping of his end. _King Lear_ is undoubtedly the tragedy which comes nearest to _Oth.e.l.lo_ in the impression of darkness and fatefulness, and in the absence of direct indications of any guiding power.[88] But in _King Lear_, apart from other differences to be considered later, the conflict a.s.sumes proportions so vast that the imagination seems, as in _Paradise Lost_, to traverse s.p.a.ces wider than the earth. In reading _Oth.e.l.lo_ the mind is not thus distended. It is more bound down to the spectacle of n.o.ble beings caught in toils from which there is no escape; while the prominence of the intrigue diminishes the sense of the dependence of the catastrophe on character, and the part played by accident[89] in this catastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate. This influence of accident is keenly felt in _King Lear_ only once, and at the very end of the play. In _Oth.e.l.lo_, after the temptation has begun, it is incessant and terrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of Oth.e.l.lo and Ca.s.sio, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Oth.e.l.lo would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief at the moment most favourable to him,[90] Ca.s.s...o...b..unders into the presence of Oth.e.l.lo only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to complete Oth.e.l.lo's deception and incense his anger into fury. All this and much more seems to us quite natural, so potent is the art of the dramatist; but it confounds us with a feeling, such as we experience in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, that for these star-crossed mortals--both [Greek: dysdaimones]--there is no escape from fate, and even with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sides with villainy.[91] It is not surprising, therefore, that _Oth.e.l.lo_ should affect us as _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ never do, and as _King Lear_ does only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvellous that, before the tragedy is over, Shakespeare should have succeeded in toning down this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene.

But has he wholly succeeded? Or is there a justification for the fact--a fact it certainly is--that some readers, while acknowledging, of course, the immense power of _Oth.e.l.lo_, and even admitting that it is dramatically perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph, still regard it with a certain distaste, or, at any rate, hardly allow it a place in their minds beside _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_?

The distaste to which I refer is due chiefly to two causes. First, to many readers in our time, men as well as women, the subject of s.e.xual jealousy, treated with Elizabethan fulness and frankness, is not merely painful but so repulsive that not even the intense tragic emotions which the story generates can overcome this repulsion. But, while it is easy to understand a dislike of _Oth.e.l.lo_ thus caused, it does not seem necessary to discuss it, for it may fairly be called personal or subjective. It would become more than this, and would amount to a criticism of the play, only if those who feel it maintained that the fulness and frankness which are disagreeable to them are also needless from a dramatic point of view, or betray a design of appealing to unpoetic feelings in the audience. But I do not think that this is maintained, or that such a view would be plausible.

To some readers, again, parts of _Oth.e.l.lo_ appear shocking or even horrible. They think--if I may formulate their objection--that in these parts Shakespeare has sinned against the canons of art, by representing on the stage a violence or brutality the effect of which is unnecessarily painful and rather sensational than tragic. The pa.s.sages which thus give offence are probably those already referred to,--that where Oth.e.l.lo strikes Desdemona (IV. i. 251), that where he affects to treat her as an inmate of a house of ill-fame (IV. ii.), and finally the scene of her death.