The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume III Part 4

Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his fathers voice, and yet, afterward, he speaks of "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns."

In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes so common that it ceases to be miraculous.

Types are puppets--controlled from without--characters act from within.

There is the same difference between characters and types that there is between springs and water-works, between ca.n.a.ls and rivers, between wooden soldiers and heroes.

In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we have to piece them out with the imagination.

One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a strange figure--it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age--but when the light gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on a chair.

The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as an individual.

I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said to myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both sides--consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is going to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would, and so great was my astonishment that I awoke.

It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare.

He did, when awake, what I did when asleep--that is, he threw off a character so perfect that it acted independently of him.

In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.

Iago had his reasons. In Caliban, nature was not destroyed--and Lady Macbeth certifies that the woman still was in her heart, by saying:

"Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it."

Shakespeare's characters act from within. They are centres of energy.

They are not pushed by unseen hands, or pulled by unseen strings. They have objects, desires. They are persons--real, living beings.

Few dramatists succeed in getting their characters loose from the canvas--their backs stick to the wall--they do not have free and independent action--they have no background, no unexpressed motives--no untold desires. They lack the complexity of the real.

Shakespeare makes the character true to itself. Christopher Sly, surrounded by the luxuries of a lord, true to his station, calls for a pot of the smallest ale.

Take one expression by Lady Macbeth. You remember that after the murder is discovered--after the alarm bell is rung--she appears upon the scene wanting to know what has happened. Macduff refuses to tell her, saying that the slightest word would murder as it fell. At this moment Banquo comes upon the scene and Macduff cries out to him:

"Our royal master's murdered."

What does Lady Macbeth then say? She in fact makes a confession of guilt. The weak point in the terrible tragedy is that Duncan was murdered in Macbeth's castle. So when Lady Macbeth hears what they suppose is news to her, she cries:

"What! In our house!"

Had she been innocent, her horror of the crime would have made her forget the place--the venue. Banquo sees through this, and sees through her.

Her expression was a light, by which he saw her guilt--and he answers:

"Too cruel anywhere."

No matter whether Shakespeare delineated clown or king, warrior or maiden--no matter whether his characters are taken from the gutter or the throne--each is a work of consummate art, and when he is unnatural, he is so splendid that the defect is forgotten.

When Romeo is told of the death of Juliet, and thereupon makes up his mind to die upon her grave, he gives a description of the shop where poison could be purchased. He goes into particulars and tells of the alligators stuffed, of the skins of ill-shaped fishes, of the beggarly account of empty boxes, of the remnants of pack-thread, and old cakes of roses--and while it is hardly possible to believe that under such circ.u.mstances a man would take the trouble to make an inventory of a strange kind of drug-store, yet the inventory is so perfect--the picture is so marvelously drawn--that we forget to think whether it is natural or not.

In making the frame of a great picture--of a great scene--Shakespeare was often careless, but the picture is perfect. In making the sides of the arch he was negligent, but when he placed the keystone, it burst into blossom. Of course there are many lines in Shakespeare that never should have been written. In other words, there are imperfections in his plays. But we must remember that Shakespeare furnished the torch that enables us to see these imperfections.

Shakespeare speaks through his characters, and we must not mistake what the characters say, for the opinion of Shakespeare. No one can believe that Shakespeare regarded life as "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." That was the opinion of a murderer, surrounded by avengers, and whose wife--partner in his crimes--troubled with thick-coming fancies--had gone down to her death.

Most actors and writers seem to suppose that the lines called "The Seven Ages" contain Shakespeare's view of human life. Nothing could be further from the truth. The lines were uttered by a cynic, in contempt and scorn of the human race.

Shakespeare did not put his characters in the livery and uniform of some weakness, peculiarity or pa.s.sion. He did not use names as tags or brands. He did not write under the picture, "This is a villain." His characters need no suggestive names to tell us what they are--we see them and we know them for ourselves.

It may be that in the greatest utterances of the greatest characters in the supreme moments, we have the real thoughts, opinions and convictions of Shakespeare.

Of all writers Shakespeare is the most impersonal. He speaks through others, and the others seem to speak for themselves. The didactic is lost in the dramatic. He does not use the stage as a pulpit to enforce some maxim. He is as reticent as Nature.

He idealizes the common and transfigures all he touches--but he does not preach. He was interested in men and things as they were. He did not seek to change them--but to portray. He was Natures mirror--and in that mirror Nature saw herself.

When I stood amid the great trees of California that lift their spreading capitals against the clouds, looking like Nature's columns to support the sky, I thought of the poetry of Shakespeare.

IX.

THAT a procession of men and women--statesmen and warriors--kings and clowns--issued from Shakespeare's brain! What women!

_Isabella_--in whose spotless life love and reason blended into perfect truth.

_Juliet_--within whose heart pa.s.sion and purity met like white and red within the bosom of a rose.

_Cordelia_--who chose to suffer loss, rather than show her wealth of love with those who gilded lies in hope of gain.

_Hermione_--"tender as infancy and grace"--who bore with perfect hope and faith the cross of shame, and who at last forgave with all her heart.

_Desdemona_--so innocent, so perfect, her love so pure, that she was incapable of suspecting that another could suspect, and who with dying words sought to hide her lover's crime--and with her last faint breath uttered a loving lie that burst into a perfumed lily between her pallid lips.

_Perdita_--"a violet dim, and sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes"--"The sweetest low-born la.s.s that ever ran on the green sward." And

_Helena_--who said:

"I know I love in vain, strive against hope-- Yet in this captious and intenable sieve I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to lose still, Thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his wors.h.i.+per, But knows of him no more."

_Miranda_--who told her love as gladly as a flower gives its bosom to the kisses of the sun. And _Cordelia_--whose kisses cured and whose tears restored. And stainless

_Imogen_--who cried: "What is it to be false?" And here is the description of the perfect woman:

"To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; To keep her constancy in plight and youth-- Outliving beauty's outward with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decays."

Shakespeare has done more for woman than all the other dramatists of the world.

For my part, I love the Clowns. I love _Launce_ and his dog Crabb, and _Gobbo_, whose conscience threw its arms around the neck of his heart, and _Touchstone_, with his lie seven times removed; and dear old _Dogberry_--a pretty piece of flesh, tedious as a king. And _Bottom_, the very paramour for a sweet voice, longing to take the part to tear a cat in; and _Autolycus_, the snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, sleeping out the thought for the life to come. And great _Sir John_, without conscience, and for that reason unblamed and enjoyed--and who at the end babbles of green fields, and is almost loved. And ancient _Pistol_, the world his oyster. And _Bardolph_, with the flea on his blazing nose, putting beholders in mind of a d.a.m.ned soul in h.e.l.l. And the poor _Pool_, who followed the mad king, and went "to bed at noon." And the clown who carried the worm of Nilus, whose "biting was immortal." And _Corin_, the shepherd--who described the perfect man: "I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat--get that I wear--owe no man aught--envy no man's happiness--glad of other men's good--content."

And mingling in this motley throng, Lear, within whose brain a tempest raged until the depths were stirred, and the intellectual wealth of a life was given back to memory?--and then by madness thrown to storm and night--and when I read the living lines I feel as though I looked upon the sea and saw it wrought by frenzied whirlwinds, until the buried treasures and the sunken wrecks of all the years were cast upon the sh.o.r.es.

And _Oth.e.l.lo_--who like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe.