THE MORAL SYSTEM OF
SHAKESPEARE
The
Moral System of Shakespeare
A POPULAR ILLUSTRATION OF
FICTION AS THE EXPERIMENTAL SIDE
OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (CAMB.), PH.D. (PENNA.)
PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE (IN ENGLISH) IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER IN LITERATURE (ENGLAND
AND AMERICA)
AUTHOR OF "THE ANCIENT CLASSICAL DRAMA," ETC., EDITOR OF
" THE MODERN READER'S BIBLE "
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1903
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up, electrotyped, and published May, 1903.
:. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co
Norwood, Mats., U.S.A.
PREFACE
THE purpose and scope of this work are fully set forth in the
introductory section. A preface is desirable only for explana
tions upon two points of detail.
My former book, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, originally
published (by the Clarendon Press, Oxford) in 1885, is now
(third edition, 1893) in extensive use amongst private readers
and in schools and universities. This present work illustrates
an entirely different view point of literary study. Necessarily,
however, two books treating the same author must have some
points in common. Where this is the case, I have usually in
the present work given the briefest treatment consistent with
clearness, the reader being referred by footnotes to the other
book for fuller discussion.
In what is intended primarily for the general reader I have
wished to exclude technical discussion from the text. Believing,
however, that precise analysis of structure is the best founda
tion for the fullest appreciation of literary beauty, I have added
an Appendix, which gives formal schemes of plot for each of
the Shakespearean plays. In these analyses I have broken
away altogether from the current schemes of plot analysis.
These, however able in detail, appear to me to be in method
no more than adaptations of Aristotle's principles to new matter ;
they are thus survivals of the Renaissance criticism, in which
all that might be newly created must be surveyed from the one
standpoint of Greek art. But Greek Drama and Shakespearean
Drama — of equal importance in universal literature — stand
nevertheless at opposite poles of dramatic structure ; the one
vi PREFACE
rests upon the severe simplicity of the unities, the other reaches
after free play and fulness, rejoicing to draw the most complex
material into artistic harmony. Accordingly, I have adopted a
method of dramatic analysis which allows dramatic movement
to fall into the second place, while the chief prominence is
given to the multiplication of stories which is the essence of the
Romantic Drama, and to the exquisite effects of balance and
symmetry which make its artistic glory. We moderns pay the
best tribute to the Founder of Criticism when we imitate, not his
results, but his spirit, and interrogate the new literary material,
as Aristotle interrogated his Greek Drama, for the principles
which best explain the literary product.
By this combination of general discussion in the text with
formal analysis in the Appendix I have tried to make what
may serve as a text-book of Shakespeare for students of literary
clubs or scholastic institutions. And I would say to the reader
who is conscious to himself of being no more than a pleasure
seeker in his reading, that he will consult best for his own
pleasure if he will give attention to the foundation interest of
dramatic structure, as enhancing beauties of effect which lie
more upon the surface.
RICHARD G. MOULTON.
April, 1903.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
WHAT is IMPLIED IN "THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE" . i
BOOK I
ROOT IDEAS OF SHAKESPEARE'S MORAL SYSTEM
CHAPTER
I. Heroism and Moral Balance: The first four Histories . . 13
II. Wrong and Retribution : The second four Histories 33
III. Innocence and Pathos : The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet . £46
IV. Wrong and Restoration : The Comedies of Winter 's Tale and
Cymbeline .......... 65
V. The Life Without and the Life Within : The Mask-Tragedy of
Henry the Eighth. 89
BOOK II
SHAKESPEARE'S WORLD IN ITS MORAL COMPLEXITY
VI. The Outer and Inner in Application to Roman Life . . . 1 1 1
VII. Moral Problems Dramatised 141
VIII. Comedy as Life in Equilibrium 158
IX. Tragedy as Equilibrium Overthrown 185
X. The Moral Significance of Humour 195
Vlll CONTENTS
BOOK III
THE FORCES OF LIFE IN SHAKESPEARE'S MORAL WORLD
CHAPTER
XI. Personality and its Dramatic Expression in Intrigue and Irony . 209
XII. The Momentum of Character and the Sway of Circumstance . 242
XIII. The Pendulum of History 269
XIV. Supernatural Agency in Shakespeare's Moral World . . .297
XV. Moral Accident and Overruling Providence . . . .311
APPENDIX
PLOT SCHEMES OF SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMAS 327
INDEX TO THE PLAYS -,*,-
GENERAL INDEX
376
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF
SHAKESPEARE
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS IMPLIED IN "THE MORAL SYSTEM OF
SHAKESPEARE "
THE title of this work, The Moral System of Shakespeare, is not
intended to suggest that the man Shakespeare had formed in his
mind a certain system of morals, which he proceeded to put into
his plays. Indeed, this book does not concern itself in any way
with the man Shakespeare ; if any of my readers inclines to the
view that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Lord Bacon,
or, for that matter, by Queen Elizabeth, he will find nothing in the
pages that follow to disturb his faith. ' Shakespeare ' is only used
as a convenient name for the whole body of thirty-six dramas
usually attributed to William Shakespeare, by whomsoever these
dramas may have been composed, in whatsoever way they may
have been put together. The contents of these thirty-six plays
make a world of their own, a world of personages, of incidents, of
story. It is surely possible to survey this imaginary world from
the same standpoint from which the moralist surveys the world of
reality : the result of such a survey, put together with some degree
of methodical order, will give us the moral system of the Shake
spearean Drama.
At the outset of our task a word of disclaimer must be said
against what may be called the Fallacy of Quotations. Nothing is
commoner than the attempt to convey the mind of Shakespeare
by passages from his plays. Yet this is obviously delusive. If we
2 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
were to select a large number of moral topics, if we were to arrange
these in alphabetical order from Atonement to Zeal, if under each
heading we were diligently to collect extracts from the thirty-six
dramas, pointed sayings and passionate outpourings, we should at
the end of our labour be no nearer than we were at the beginning
to the moral system of Shakespeare. For dramatic differs from
other literature in this, that quotations from a play can never
reveal either the mind of the author or the spirit of the drama.
" Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly iipward, as the Bible
says." But the Bible does not say so. The words are found in
the dramatic Book of Job as part of what is spoken by Eliphaz the
Temanite ; and the same Book of Job represents God as declaring
that Eliphaz has not said the thing that is right. Is the Bible to be
held responsible for the sentiment of one whom it represents God
as repudiating ? In one of Shakespeare's plays is found this senti
ment :
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
In another play appears this other saying —
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all !
For which of these contradictory sentiments is Shakespeare to be
held responsible ? He is responsible for neither. The first extract
represents nothing but the opinion of such a man as the imaginary
Richard ; the second gives us only the opinion of the imaginary
Hamlet. For every word in a play some imaginary speaker, and
only he, is responsible ; and thus in dramatic literature no amount
of quotations can give us the mind of the poet or the meaning
of the poem.
In what way then are we to seek the moral significance of the
Shakespearean Drama? In the first place, the principle must be
consistently followed that all the speeches of a play must be read
with regard to the character of the speaker, and to the circum
stances in which he speaks. But to this principle another may be
INTRODUCTION 3
added. The treatment of the subject in the present work assumes
as its basis the study of plot. Plot is the reduction of all the
details of a poem to a unity of design. It is in fiction what
providence is in the world of reality. As we contemplate the vast
universe we delight to believe that —
All are but parts of one stupendous whole :
the religious mind instinctively feels this ; science is occupied in
taking the phenomenal universe to pieces and tracing the parts of
which it is made up. So in the mimic world of a drama or story,
all are but parts of one artistic whole : the cultured mind has an
instinctive sense of such plot ; criticism takes the drama or story
to pieces and analyses the parts which have been moulded into a
unity. Every single play of Shakespeare will be a microcosm, of
which the author is the creator, and the plot is its providential
scheme. When analysis of the various plays has put together
results drawn from each, then we have a body of material suffi
cient for the study of underlying principles, and — so far as may
be — for the coordination of principles into something of a moral
system.
But is such work worth doing? it will be asked. Plays are a
form of human amusement ; in the case of Shakespeare, no doubt,
the enjoyment will be of an elevating character, still it will be in
the category of amusement. If we go beyond this, are we not in
danger of spoiling good sport in order to make doubtful philos
ophy?
The answer to this question will depend upon the meaning the
particular reader attaches to the word poetry. The tyranny of
words is great : the fact that the word prose has a double usage,
contrasting sometimes with poetry and sometimes with verse, has
brought it about that in many minds poetry has come to mean
verse, or, at least, poetry is conceived as only a mode of expres
sion. But poetry is also a mode of thought : its root significance
is creation. The philosopher and the poet are alike thinkers, but
they express their thinking in different forms ; the philosopher
4 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
thinks in abstract principles and arguments, the poet expresses his
thoughts in the concrete, in the illustrative examples he creates.
The two types meet in physical science. Now, the physicist is a
philosopher, conveying what he has observed of nature in laws and
inductions. At another time, in what he calls experiments, the
physicist creates : he contrives, at his arbitrary will, peculiar com
binations, which would not be brought into existence but for him,
and obedient nature exhibits what her working would do under
these conditions. In a similar way poetry and fiction are an experi
mental side to the philosophy of human life. History, biography,
psychology, ethics, correspond to the physicist's mere observation
of nature ; these studies limit the material they use to what hap
pens to have happened. Poetry and fiction use the same material
of human life without limiting it to what has chanced actually to
occur ; all that would naturally happen in the conditions contrived
makes the material of creative literature, which can thus give to
its treatment of human life all the range of crucial experiment.
I say boldly, that the study of human life will never hold its
own, in comparison with the study of physical nature, until we
recognise the true position of poetry and fiction in philosophy.
Our present confinement of moral studies to histories and abstract
ethics holds the humanities back in the elementary stage of obser
vation without experiment. More than this, the survey of life that
bounds itself by facts is not even the best kind of observation : it
is like the timid examination of nature by one who will use noth
ing but the naked eye. The life that is close around observers is
an eddying whirl of unrelated particulars ; what more is wanted
to make particulars into the general ideas we call truth is either
too far off to be seen, or so near as to be out of perspective. The
same difficulty in the observation of nature we meet by the use of
the telescope and the microscope ; it is true that when we look
through these we do not see things but the images of things, yet
it is only by aid of such images that we can get nature at the
proper distance for observation. The poetic mind is the lens pro
vided by nature for human life ; ' works of imagination ' are so
INTRODUCTION 5
called because they give us the ' images ' of human things, cleared
from the vagueness of too great distance, or the obscurity caused
by irrelevant details. The Shakespearean Drama constitutes a vast
body of such creative observations in human life, made through a
peerless instrument ; they invite arrangement and disposition into
general truths.
Objections felt in some quarters against the sort of study here
attempted will often be found to resolve themselves into miscon
ception of poetry and its creative function. Men of affairs often
make themselves merry at the expense of the scholarship that
brings elaborate discussion to bear upon what after all is purely
imaginative material. "If Shakespeare be not" — I quote in
substance a newspaper article — " the most muddled, unintelligi
ble and inchoate genius that ever handled a pen, why should he
need by way of explanation commentaries in volume far exceed
ing the whole volume of the plays ? " The writer of these words
has not seen that only an infinitesimally small portion of Shake
speare commentaries — and that, in my judgment, the portion
which could best be spared — is commentary on Shakespeare.
The vast proportion is comment upon human life itself, touched
as life is at myriad points by the creations of the Shakespearean
Drama. Discussion of human life is likely to go on gathering both
volume and value to the end of time.
Other objectors readily admit the general principle ; but, they
ask, is Shakespeare up to date in his psychology and ethics ?
Similarly, I imagine, many a tailor, visiting a public gallery of
paintings, is convinced in his heart that Vandyck was not up to
date in his fashions. For there is even in grave studies an ele
ment of fashion ; particular problems have prominence at particu
lar times, and the technical terms associated with them recur with
insistent emphasis ; the fascination of being up to date somewhat
disturbs perspective, and the psychology that does not run into
current moulds seems to be no psychology at all. But the im
portant point is that Shakespeare is not a psychologist, elementary
or advanced, in the sense in which the word is used by the
6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
objector ; Shakespeare's work is to project upon the screen of our
imagination pieces of human life, which it is for general psychology
and ethics to analyse. And if any student has a system of psy
chology and ethics which will not bear confronting with the life
revealed by Shakespeare, it might be well for him to doubt
whether his system may not be one-sided, rather than that the
insight of Shakespeare should be antiquated.
A more reasonable doubt is, how far such study of the dramas
can be reduced to a system. Indeed, I cannot help thinking that
the drawback to most of the existing commentaries on Shake
speare is that they lean towards over-systematisation ; with full
intention of inductive examination, investigators have nevertheless
approached their work with an unconscious bias towards neat
generalisations and rounded coordinations.1 For myself, I am
content to draw nothing more of system out of the world of
Shakespeare's creations than may be drawn from the world of real
life. None of us believe the world about us to be a mere chaos.
The sifted life that is held up for our observation by Shakespeare
will similarly show underlying principles ; every degree of success
in discovering and coordinating moral ideas in the Drama may
lay claim to the broad sense of the word system.
It remains to ask, how far we are to extend the range of the
word moral in treating the moral system of Shakespeare. In the
first place, we are open to consider all that touches character, the
ways of men, the aims, motives, impulses, whether of individuals
or classes : all that is covered by the Latin word mores. So far
as this goes we are on the same ground as the science of ethics.
But, though it would seem as if the Latin word morals and the
Greek word ethics were exact counterparts one of the other, yet in
usage and common thought the conception of morals extends
much beyond the science of ethics.
1 Professor Dowden's Mind and Art of Shakspere is an exception. I entirely
concur in the spirit of his remark (page 429) : " Let us not attenuate Shakspere
to a theory " : though my title may seem a contradiction. The question is simply
how far the word system is to be pressed.
INTRODUCTION 7
We think of a moral system as including, not only the aspect
which the individual shows to the universe, but also the aspect
which the course of events in the universe shows to the individual.
Varieties of character, and variations of fortune or fate, are ele
ments which must combine to give the idea of a moral order in
the world. It is here that the great questions of a moral system
arise. An influential school of commentators on drama, corre
sponding to a school that has always existed among thinkers on
real life, stand for the rigid connection of men's moral natures
with their fortunes : that a man's character determines his fate.
This they bring as an axiom to their analysis of drama, and insist
on discovering their axiom, as a self-evident principle, in every
story. They even quote Scripture for it : Whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap. But this last is another example
of the Fallacy of Quotations. The words appear in Scripture as a
gnome or proverb, which is the literary form devoted to express
ing partial truths ; it is misquotation to cite a proverb as if this
were intended for a universal truth. It is of course one of the
many tendencies observable in life that what is sown in conduct is
likely to be reaped ; such reaping of what has been sown always
strikes the beholder with profound moral impressiveness. But it
is only one tendency out of many : the facts of human life also
reveal men failing to reap what they have sown, or again being
forced to reap what others have sown. The same Bible which
gives us at one point the impressive proverb of sowing and reap
ing, gives us at another point the not less impressive parable of the
sower who goes forth to sow, and tells how some of his seed fell
by the wayside, and some into stony ground or among thorns :
warning us that what is sown is not always reaped. I touch on
this point only to insist that we must come to our study of Shake
speare with an open mind, and gather from each story as it pre
sents itself whatever shall appear as to the connection between
character and fate.
When we thus consider side by side the characters of men and
the course of events another branch of inquiry will naturally sug-
8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
gest itself. What, in the moral system of Shakespeare, appear to
be the forces behind life, determining its issues? Are the conse
quences of our actions regulated only by general laws, such as
those we recognise in the reaction of physical forces? While I
hold a ball in my hand, I may choose whether I will throw it to
the right or to the left ; but when once the ball has left my hand it
is seized upon by the law of gravitation and the laws of friction
and of projectile curve ; nothing but the play of such laws deter
mines where the ball will touch the ground. Is it so with the
actions of the moral life ? Or is it — as when Arthur threw away
Excalibur and a hand appeared from the lake to seize it — that
there is an external Will at times interfering with natural conse
quences of men's acts ? Or again, have we assumed too much in
saying that while in my hand the ball is in my control ? and is it
that unconscious forces from within us may have interfered even
with the actions we call voluntary? Such questions suggest that
the forces of life, so far as they find dramatic expression in Shake
spearean plot, make a natural part of his moral system.
One more principle must be indicated as defining the field of
the present inquiry. I have so far spoken as if there were no dif
ference between life as it is depicted in the drama and the life of
reality. And indeed the common idea that the two are identical
has been assisted by a certain image — attributed, by the usual
Fallacy of Quotations, to Shakespeare, but in reality carrying only
the authority of Hamlet — the description of the stage as " holding
up the mirror to nature." The comparison is apt enough for the
purpose of Hamlet's speech. But that the drama is not merely a
reflection of real life every reader may satisfy himself, by imagining
his own life and the life of his household on the day on which
he reads these lines reproduced — by phonograph and kinetograph
— without any flaw upon some stage : would this be drama? Ob
viously something would be lacking to make the reproduction of
real life into drama, something of the nature of sifting, selection,
adaptation. It appears then that drama is not a reflection, but an
arranged spectacle. Now a spectacle implies a spectator ; and the
INTRODUCTION 9
whole arrangement is contrived with regard to the spectator's
point of view. This standpoint of the spectator enters fundament
ally into all dramatic analysis. When we use such elementary
terms as ' tragic,' ' comic,' we assume in their use the spectator's
view point ; we call the experience of Malvolio comic, yet it would
be the reverse of comic to Malvolio. When Aristotle gives his
famous definition of tragedy, as purifying the emotions of pity
and terror by a healthy exercise of them, it is obviously the spec
tator's emotions with which his definition is concerned. Similarly
the present inquiry, besides plot, must give attention to dramatic
' tone ' — the technical expression for such differences as tragic,
:omic, humorous, and all their varieties and shadings. The moral
system of Shakespeare will be traced alike in plot, the course of
events appearing in the play, and in tone, the sympathetic response
of the spectator.
With these preliminary observations the chapters that follow may
be left to explain themselves. The inquiry falls into three natural
parts. In the first, particular dramas will be presented to illustrate
what may be recognised as root ideas in the moral system of
Shakespeare. Then the inquiry will widen, and survey the world
of Shakespeare's creation in its moral complexity. In the third
part will be considered the forces of life in Shakespeare's moral
world, so far as these express themselves in dramatic forms, from
personal will at one end of the scale to overruling providence at
the other end.
BOOK I
ROOT IDEAS OF SHAKESPEARE'S MORAL
SYSTEM
CHAPTER I : Heroism and Moral Balance : The first four Histories
CHAPTER II: Wrong and Retribution : The second four Histories
CHAPTER III: Innocence and Pathos: The Tragedy of Romeo and
Juliet
CHAPTER IV: Wrong and Restoration: The Comedies of Winter's
Tale and Cymbeline
CHAPTER V: The Life Without and the Life Within: The Mask-
Tragedy of Henry the Eighth
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE : THE FIRST FOUR
HISTORIES
WITHOUT doubt Henry of Monmouth is to be regarded as the
grand hero of the Shakespearean world. It is in approaching
this theme that the dramatist feels the limitations of dramatic form.
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars ; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment.
The historic materials limit what follows to a picture of war. But
wise counsellors of the King — not speaking in the presence,
which might suggest flattery, but in secret conference with one
another — indicate the universal genius of Henry.
Hear him but reason in divinity,
And all-admiring with an inward wish
You would desire the King were made a prelate :
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been all in all his study :
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music :
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter : that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences.1
l Henry the Fifth : I. i. 38.
13
14 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Thus the great dramatist must needs borrow from a sister art, and
narrative poems fill up the intervals between the acts, epic com
bining with drama to make a medium wide enough for the pres
entation of the complete hero.
Yet at first sight it might seem as if a great exception would
have to be made to the moral greatness of Henry. This kingly
figure has been, in his youth, the grief of his father's heart, the
prodigal son of court life ; affections holding a wing " quite from
the flight of all his ancestors " have kept him wasting his years in
the riotous living of low taverns and street brawls. But a closer
examination of Henry as he is seen developing through the series
of plays will put quite another face upon this matter. The truancy
of the prince is no more than the wider and fuller nature rebelling
against the limitations of worn-out ideals. Bolingbroke and those
about him belong to the past ; theirs is a life bounded by the nar
row horizon of feudalism. Their business is war, and their justice
is judicial combat ; the war moreover is a war of feudal parties for
feudal power. The divinity of kingship is a sentiment with them,
but only while it is on their side. Bolingbroke, while he is weak,
bends the knee before Richard ; when unexpected powers have
flocked to his standard he overturns Richard's throne and appro
priates the divine kingship to himself. The Percies have been his
chief backers in this ; the moment the new King turns against their
family they discover that Richard was a " sweet rose " and Boling
broke its "canker." Now Henry of Monmouth has been born
into a new era, when the one-sided structure of feudalism is to
break down, and society is to find a new equilibrium ; his youthful
freshness has caught the new interest of human nature itself, the
interest of life outside feudal conceptions. Responsibility and the
call to action have not yet come ; Henry can afford to stand aside,
and let the factions eat up one another. Meanwhile, what are
attractions to the men of the time have no zest for him : a mere
show of feudal life in mimic spectacle as a relief from feudal life in
dull earnest. When they tell the prince of the " Oxford triumphs "
that were to celebrate successful treason —
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 15
His answer was, he would unto the stews,
And from the common'st creature pluck a glove,
And wear it as a favour ; and with that
He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.1
All this is but the breath of change stirring, that is to mark a
new generation. But curiosity grows in time to be something
deeper ; slowly observers of Henry come to see that he is " ob
scuring his contemplation under the veil of wildness." 2
This is not an afterthought, put forward to excuse a life that
has been misspent. The first scene in which we view Henry sur
rounded by the Falstaff crew ends with a soliloquy.3
I know you all, and will a while uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness :
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
Meanwhile, it is not a case of a Haroun al Raschid viewing low
life under protection of night and disguise : Henry casts off all
his rank, and meets human nature on its own level. He matches
himself against the prince of humorists, and Falstaff can never
get the better of him. He goes on to " sound the base-string of
humility," and can out-trifle " a leash of drawers."
They take it already upon their salvation, that though I be
but Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy ; and tell
me flatly I am no proud Jack, like Falstaff, but a Corinthian,
a lad of mettle, a good boy, by the Lord, so they call me,
and when I am king of England I shall command all the
good lads in Eastcheap.4
1 Richard the Second : V. iii. 16. 3 / Henry the Fourth : I. ii. 219.
2 Henry the Fifth : I. i. 63. 4 / Henry the Fourth : II. iv. 9.
1 6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Nothing comes in sight but Henry will master it.
I am now of all humours that have showed themselves
humours since the old days of goodman Adam to the
pupil age of this present twelve o'clock at midnight.1
He is steady in his purpose of being in gay life without being of
it ; with easy superiority he sits loose to the actions of his com
rades, and if these have done damage he repays " with advantage." 2
Henry's claim is that " in everything the purpose must weigh with
the folly " ; 3 and it is a folly that never loses sight of wisdom.
Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the
spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.4
At last the wiser among the old generation begin to recognise in
the prince's life that there is more than appears on the surface.
Warwick. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite :
The prince but studies his companions
Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language,
'Tis needful that the most immodest word
Be look'd upon and learn'd ; which once attained,
Your highness knows, comes to no further use
But to be known and hated. So. like gross terms,
The prince will in the perfectness of time
Cast off his followers ; and their memory
Shall as a pattern or a measure live,
By which his grace must mete the lives of others,
Turning past evils to advantages.5
That a wider and more balanced nature is the explanation of
the prince's truancy is the more evident the more he is compared
with the men of his age. Henry's father is the last to understand
him. Bolingbroke's was a soul tuned to a single string; his serious-
1 / Henry the Fourth : II. iv. 104. 4 // Henry the Fourth : II. ii. 154.
2 / Henry the Fourth : II. iv. 599. 5 // Henry the Fourth : IV. iv. 67.
8 // Henry the Fourth : II. ii. 196.
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE I/
ness has been an ambition in which the dazzle of the crown has
blinded to all moral distinctions ; or if he is haunted with a sense
of guilt, he cherishes the purpose of a crusade to the Holy Land
for atonement. In the long scenes between father and son we
have simplicity in the chair of authority, seeking to mould to his
own narrowness a character he is unable to fathom. Bolingbroke
even goes so far as to hold up to his son the example of his own
youthful days.1 Now we know how Bolingbroke's young manhood
impressed contemporaries.
. . . His courtship to the common people ;
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy . . .
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee.2
But, with a naivete" worthy of Polonius explaining policy to his
servant, King Bolingbroke impresses on his son that all this famil
iarity had a treasonable purpose under it.
By being seldom seen, I could not stir
But like a comet I was wonder'd at ;
That men would tell their children, 'This is he1;
Others would say, ' Where, which is Bolingbroke'?
And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,
And dress'd myself in such humility
That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,
Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,
Even in the presence of the crowned King.
Against this as background the reader of the scene feels Henry's
pranks to be almost respectable. The prince receives all this
long-winded rebuking with filial deference ; and these scenes all
1 / Henry the Fourth: III. ii, from 39.
2 Richard the Second : I. iv. 24.
1 8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
end happily, for the charm of Henry's personal presence is as
irresistible to his father as to Falstaff. The last encounter of king
and prince is characteristic of the two natures.1 Bolingbroke,
dying, must needs have the golden crown by his bedside, to gaze
on to the last. Henry (believing his father dead) places the
crown on his own head ; little impressed as he has been by the
glitter of royalty, now that the crown has come to him by " lineal
honour," Henry will guard it against a world in arms, and walks
aside to realise the new sense of responsibility. Bolingbroke
shrieks at finding his crown gone, and can still see no explanation
but the vulgar hurry of a libertine for succession to means of free
license. The misunderstanding is easily removed, and then the
finally reconciled father gives his son his dying advice : — which is
to distract a kingdom with foreign wars as a preventive against
too close scrutiny of the royal title.
Or is it with the young men of the time that Henry is to be
compared ? There is Richard, king in esse and not in posse, prosti
tuting to his own lusts the divine kingship in which all believe.
Or there is Aumerle, faithful plotter for his hero Richard, until the
moment of personal danger sends him rushing to Bolingbroke with
abject prayers for pardon.2 There is above all John of Lancaster,
who has taken his elder brother's place in council. The Prince
of Wales, the moment he obeys the call to arms, becomes the
hero of the war ; without a spark of rivalry, nevertheless, Henry
extols Lancaster's prowess as beyond his own ; in the time of
victory he obtains the royal permission to release Douglas, and
turning over to his brother the office of freeing the prisoner
almost warms Lancaster to a sense of generosity. Later on an
independent command gives to this " demure boy " an oppor
tunity to show his true nature : Lancaster's fetch of policy proves
to be a solemn quibble under which he perpetrates an act of the
blackest treachery.3
1 // Henry the Fourth : IV. v.
2 Richard the Second: V. ii, iii.
3 / Henry the Fourth : V- iv, v ; // Henry the Fourth : IV. ii.
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 19
It is however Hotspur who is the ideal of youth to Bolingbroke
and his feudal generation :
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant ;
Who is sweet Fortune's minion and her pride :
. . . O that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call'd mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Yet viewed from any other standpoint than that of feudalism Hot
spur appears to be only a fighting animal, with riotous eloquence
to mouth his riotous thoughts. When he rouses his mighty spirit
against the King, it is his own fellow-conspirators who speak of
him as " drunk with choler," in a " mad heat " pouring forth " a
world of figures " ; to use his own words, he is " whipp'd and
scourged with rods, nettled and stung with pismires " at merely
hearing of " this vile politician, Bolingbroke." 1 Careless as to pos
session, he will nevertheless " cavil on the ninth part of a hair,"
if it be a question of bargaining.2 He can respect no type of life
but his own : he risks the alliance which is the only hope of his
cause in order to mock in Glendower a different tone of grandi
osity from his own fire-eating ; the ballad which is charming all
other ears is to Hotspur no better than the mewing of a cat ; it
seems to offend his Englishship that a Welshman should talk
Welsh.3 When one after another of the concerted movements
fails at the rendezvous Hotspur speaks as if this were encourag
ing, so great is his itch to fight ; it is his own comrades who de
nounce the imaginative madness which has brought the cause to
its ruin.4 Such mere battle passion seems as irresponsible a thing
as Henry's gayeties ; it is noteworthy that Percy's word as the sword
of his conqueror pierces him is this —
O, Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my youth.5
1 / Henry the Fourth : I. iii, whole scene.
2 / Henry the Fourth : III. 1.140. 3 7 Henry the Fourth : III. i, whole scene.
4 / Henry the Fourth : IV. i. 76-83, and whole scene; II Henry the Fourth:
I. iii. 26-33. 5 / Henry the Fourth : V. iv. 77.
2O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Both the rivals use the much abused word * honour.'
Hotspur. By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks.
At the climax of his career Percy expresses his conception of such
honour :
An if we live, we live to tread on kings ;
If die, brave death, when princes die with us!1
There comes a situation when the other Henry exclaims :
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
The honour he is coveting is the post of cruel danger :
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss ; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.2
How do the two Harries appear when the course of events brings
them across one another's path? They tell Hotspur of the prince
in arms against his cause : he pours contempt upon the " sword-
and-buckler Prince of Wales," and, but that the King loves him
not, he would have him poisoned with a pot of ale. Prince
Henry's generous praise of his rival is reported : Hotspur is un
moved, and can only conceive of the advancing general as a wild
libertine.3 Meanwhile the King has extolled Hotspur to his son,
and the easy prince at last takes fire.
Percy is but my factor, good my lord,
To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf;
1 7 Henry the Fourth : I. iii. 201 ; V. ii. 86.
2 Hrmy the Fifth : IV. iii. 20, 28.
8 / Henry the Fourth : IV. i, from 94 ; V. ii, from 46.
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 21
And I will call him to so strict account,
That he shall render every glory up,
Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,
Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.
Henry plunges into the war, moves straight to his rival, redeems
his boast to the letter ; and then makes so little of achievement
that he laughs while Falstaff appropriates the deed to himself.1
Or there is in the Dauphin another example of correct young
manhood. Like Hotspur, the Dauphin cannot conceive of any
type of life different from his own ; what has not been drawn to
its model must needs be "a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous
youth"; his seniors in vain seek to convince him by facts.2 It
is clear that the French prince has never known youth as a period
of freedom and moral choice ; his life has merely been passing
through stages of development of the feudal warrior. What ideal
ising power he possesses runs to the glorification of his horse.
Ca, ha! he bounds from the earth as if his entrails were
hairs ... he trots the air ; the earth sings when he touches
it ; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe
of Hermes. . . . He is pure air and fire; and the dull ele
ments of earth and water never appear in him, but only in
patient stillness while his rider mounts him. ... The man
hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the lodg
ing of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey : it is a
theme as fluent as the sea : turn the sands into eloquent
tongues, and my horse is argument for them all.
Yet, when the chivalrous magnificence of this prince is pricked
by the point of close observation, it seems to collapse into a
somewhat dubious courage, and this on the testimony of military
comrades.
Orleans. The Dauphin longs for morning.
Rambnres. He longs to eat the English.
1 / Henry the Fourth : III. ii. 147 ; V. iv. 161, and whole scene.
2 Henry the Fifth : II. iv. 30.
22 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Constable. I think he will eat all he kills.
Orleans. By the white hand of my lady, he's a gallant prince.
Constable. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.
Orleans. He is simply the most active gentleman in France.
Constable. Doing is activity ; and he will still be doing.
Orleans. He never did any harm, that I heard of.
Constable. Nor will do none to-morrow : he will keep that good
name still.
Orleans. I know him to be valiant.
Constable. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.
Orleans. What's he?
Constable. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he cared not
who knew it.1
These are the types of the old nobility with which Henry's
youth refused to be in tune. It is abundantly evident that all
these have taken up the strenuous life simply by reason of their
limitations ; this was all that they had in them to do. When the
call comes Henry proves the most strenuous of them all: he
keeps his warlike father from a faint-hearted retreat,2 and is as
easily superior to his military comrades as he has been to Falstaff
and Poins. But Henry has the larger nature, in which action is
balanced by repose, accepted ideals can reinforce themselves by
curiosity and fresh interest in the raw material of human nature.
To the successive generations of men youth ever comes as the
period of exploration, the wanderjahre during which new ingre
dients may be absorbed for crystallisation into a richer compound ;
nature's great barrier against a specialisation which would settle
into hereditary caste. In this sense Henry's is a natural youth.
But to say this is of course not to justify all that the prince does
in his adventurous nonage. The master temptation of the young
is the desire to see life for themselves ; like the hero of Ecclesi-
asfes, they will plunge into folly carrying their wisdom with them.
Henry himself does not come scathless through the ordeal ; on
his own principles the attack upon the Chief Justice is an outrage,
1 Henry the Fifth : III. vii, whole scene. 2 / Henry the Fourth : V. iv.
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 23
an outrage atoned for at the moment by submission, and after
wards by the promotion of his rebuker. But the 'wildness' of
the prince has been a symptom of moral vigour, and its issue has
been moral enrichment. Not for a moment has Henry been
under any spell of deception ; he has humorously recognised
that he must suppress deeper feelings which the best of his associ
ates were incapable of understanding.1 There is thus no miracle
in the ease with which he drops them.
Being awaked, I do despise my dream.2
But men are known by their dreams. When the new type of
king is on the throne it is found that his father's enemies " have
steeped their galls in honey";3 the wide human sympathies of
Henry have established his throne upon the broad basis of a
people's love.
The play of Henry the Fifth presents the moral hero in the
new life of responsibility. It is the same breadth and balance
of human nature that is the fundamental impression. The fate of
history makes the reign a single achievement of war. But with
Henry action must be balanced by council. What the first act
presents is a total contrast to all that the dying advice of Boling-
broke had forecast ; it is bishops and aged statesmen who are
urging on war, the King " in the very May-morn of his youth "
who is holding back with moral scruples and far-reaching policy.
The moral question is one of " the law of nature and of nations,"
as the world then understood them, and the learned Canterbury
is the legal adviser who must expound. But Henry makes the
most solemn of appeals for a disinterested judgment.
And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,
Or nicely charge your understanding soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
1 // Henry the Fourth : II. ii. 35-74. 8 Henry the Fifth : II. ii. 30.
2 // Henry the Fourth : V. v. 55.
24 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Suits not in native colours with the truth . . .
Under this conjuration speak, my lord ;
For we will hear, note and believe in heart
That what you speak is in your conscience wash'd
As pure as sin with baptism.
When in answer Canterbury has made his exposition of the Salic
law, the King still forces his council to look all round the question
to the furthest consequences of action. There comes at last a
point where deliberation may crystallise into decisive resolution.
Now are we well resolved ; and, by God's help,
And yours, the noble sinews of our power,
France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe,
Or break it all to pieces.
Not until now, when the rights of the question have been debated
in calmness to a settlement, does Henry admit the embassy from
the Dauphin. He listens to the studied insult with dignity ; in
answer, he first meets the jester on his own ground and outjests
him.
When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
Tell him, he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chaces.
The hint at the wildness of his youth Henry turns against the
Dauphin.
We never valued this poor seat of England . . .
But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,
Be like a king and show my sail of greatness
When I do rouse me in my throne of France.
But, his indignation excited at such playing with edge tools of war
and national devastation, Henry goes on to the thought that the
jest has turned tennis-balls to gun-stones :
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 25
For many a thousand widows
Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down . . .
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.
It is important, for the ideal character of the whole picture, that
this incident is held back to its proper place. Calm deliberation
has yielded to decisive resolution ; only then may the adversary's
insolence be used to carry forward resolution to the white heat of
passion.
For a moment there is an obstruction in the current of events,
and heroism is seen against a background of treason. What gives
dramatic impressiveness to the second act is this, that the evil is
just as broad and ideal as is the good against which it is arrayed :
the passage that follows reads as a counterpart to the bishops'
expatiation upon Henry's perfections.
Whatsoever cunning fiend it was
That wrought upon thee so preposterously
Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.
Show men dutiful?
Why, so didst thou : seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou : come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou : seem they religious ?
Why, so didst thou : or are they spare in diet.
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,
Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
Garnish'd and deck'd in modest complement,
Not working with the eye without the ear,
And but in purged judgment trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem :
And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;
For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like
Another fall of man.
26 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
From the third act the character of Henry is seen concentrated
in action : he who was so " modest in exception " can now be
" terrible in constant resolution." Here, as ever, the force of the
character seems to lie in its balance : the most opposite qualities
blend in unity of purpose.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility :
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger ;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage . . .
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height.
As the spirit of peace can be made a foil for the spirit of war, so in
Henry mercy lends wings to fury ; in the general conduct of wrar
Henry acts on the principle that " when lenity and cruelty play for
a kingdom the gentler gamester is the soonest winner," and for that
very reason on the eve of storm and assault he can hold over the
hesitating foe the inevitable horrors of the flesh'd soldier, in liberty
of bloody hand ranging with conscience wide as hell. The many-
sided nature of the King has drawn to him all types and orders of
men ; those descended from fathers of war-proof he bids dishonour
not their mothers, the good yeomen " whose limbs were made in
England " he calls upon to show the mettle of their pasture ; the
varied ranks around their leader stand " like greyhounds in the
slips straining upon the start." Where in preceding reigns history
has been war of factions, we have in the war of this play English,
Scotch, Welsh, Irish, all blending into a harmony of national
prowess and enthusiasm, Welsh Fluellen leading the hero worship
with his fantastic glorification of Alexander of Macedon and Harry
of Monmouth.1
But the fulness of Henry's character can be brought out only
by trouble. From the centre of the play we hear of pestilence
l Henry the Fifth : IV. vii.
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 2/
and famine : the famous night piece that ushers in the fourth act
presents the " poor condemned English," on the night before the
battle, sitting patiently like sacrifices by their camp fires, while
the overwhelming hosts of the enemy are staking to the throw of
the dice their captives of the morrow.
O now, who will behold
The royal captain of this ruin'd band
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,
Let him cry, ' Praise and glory on his head! '
For forth he goes and visits all his host,
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,
And calls them brothers, friends and countrymen.
Upon his royal face there is no note
How dread an army hath enrouncled him ;
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour
Unto the weary and all-watched night,
But freshly looks and overbears attaint
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty :
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
Through the whole of the terrible crisis the force of the army is
the spirit of its King, responsive to every note heard around him,
adequate to every call. He greets with dignity a group of his
nobles, pointing to the first streaks of dawn :
There is some soul of goodness in things evil . . .
For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers.
He turns to accost a venerable figure.
Henry. Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham :
A good soft pillow for that good white head
Were better than a churlish turf of France.
Erp. Not so, my liege : this lodging likes me better,
Since I may say, " Now lie I like a King."
With familiarity that charms the old man Henry borrows his cloak,
and in muffled disguise continues his passage through the host.
28 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
He has a bout of camp wit with the unsuspecting Pistol, and hears
his own praises in the old Eastcheap slang. He marks some
pedantic fussiness of Fluellen as he passes along, and sees beneath
it good qualities to be noted for the future. Then he gets into a
long chat with a company of English soldiers, and delights to keep
in play the irony of the discussion about the KING : how —
Though I speak it to you, I think the King is but a man, as I
am : the violet smells to him as it doth to me ; the element
shows to him as it doth to me.
how, one suggests, —
If the cause be not good, the King hath a heavy reckoning to
make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in
a battle, shall join together at the latter day. . . .
how, on the contrary, —
Every subject's duty is the King's ; but every subject's soul is
his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as
every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his con
science : and dying so, death is to him advantage ; or not
dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation
was gained.
The thrill that goes through the circle by the camp fire at these
last words changes to laughter and rough sarcasm, when Henry
slips for a moment into a royal tone that seems out of keeping
with his disguise ; in another moment the King, half angry and
half amused, finds himself shoved out of the circle, with a gage in
his hand which he has sworn to fight out after the battle. But,
left alone, he realises with acute anguish the weight of responsi
bility all are putting upon " the King " ; and how this King is but
a single human heart, hidden under the thin veil of ceremony. A
call to battle is heard, and self-consciousness for an instant becomes
an agony of penitence — not for his own sins, but for his father's,
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 29
which may be visited on him.1 In another moment he is with his
army. Westmoreland has just wished for one ten thousand of those
men who will be idle in England that day. Henry will have not
one more.
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart ; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse :
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
Before Henry has finished his picture of the coming battle, as a
privilege to be jealously guarded like a vested interest, the same
Westmoreland wishes that the King and he could fight the battle
all by themselves ; with laughing arithmetical confusion Henry says
he has unwished five thousand men.
At this point the arrival of the herald brings the spirit of the
enemy as a foil to the heroism of Henry.2 The tone of the French
army has throughout been the pride that goes before a fall. They
are sorry that the English numbers are so few, that there is not
work enough for all hands ; the superfluous lackeys of their host,
they declare, are enough to purge the field of such a hilding foe.
For our losses, his exchequer is too poor ; for the effusion of
our blood, the muster of his kingdom too faint a number; and
for our disgrace, his own person, kneeling at our feet, but a
weak and worthless satisfaction.3
What the herald who brings messages like this has to encounter is
a patient dignity flavoured with humour.
Henry. Bid them achieve me and then sell my bones.
Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus?
The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast lived, was kuTd with hunting him.
1 Henry the Fifth : IV. i. 309. 2 IV. iii. 79. 3 III. vi. 140.
30 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The brag of superior numbers is at best a poor thing : there is
something heroic in the braggartism of desperation.
We are but warriors for the working-day ;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field ;
There's not a piece of feather in our host —
Good argument, I hope, we will not fly —
And time hath worn us into slovenry :
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim ;
And my poor soldiers tell me, yet ere night
They'll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck
The gay new coats o'er the French soldiers' heads
And turn them out of service.
From inspection of host and reception of herald we glide insen
sibly into the scenes of the battle ; but, whatever phase of war may
be uppermost, Henry is the soul of it all. Now he is weeping
over the story of York and Suffolk, how they kissed one another's
gashes, as they died together, first fruits of the slaughter ; now he is
loudly proclaiming his Welsh birth to humour the valiant Fluellen ;
now he is holding back the rejoicings of his soldiers until victory is
more decisive.1 He responds without a moment's hesitation to the
most terrible demands that the accursed business of war can make :
once, when he orders retaliation2 for the slaughter of non-comba
tants ; once, when the weakness of inferior numbers obliges him to
threaten — happily, only to threaten — slaughter of prisoners in
order to dislodge a band of the enemy from an inaccessible posi
tion.3 With the rising spirits of unmistakable victory the army
becomes as skittish as a mob of schoolboys : Henry gives vent to
1 Henry the Fifth : IV. vi, etc.
2 So I understand the order at the end of IV. vi. French reinforcements, instead
of meeting the English, have joined the fugitives, and the two together have fallen
upon the non-combatants of the English camp. So the incident is understood by
Fluellen (IV. vii. i-io) : this great stickler for principle in martial law entirely ap
proves Henry's action. This explanation is also favoured by concluding lines of
IV. iv.
" IV. vii. 58.
HEROISM AND MORAL BALANCE 31
the feeling in his practical joke of handing his gage to the uncon
scious Fluellen to redeem, and getting his pomposity a box on the
ears from honest Bates, care being taken that no untoward conse
quences shall follow.1 In the midst of hilarity comes the French
herald, and the first precise news of the day's fortune : as the ter
rible slaughter of the enemy and the small English loss are made
known, high spirits give place to solemn awe : —
O God, thy arm was here !
Henry proclaims it death to boast of this victory, or to take from
God the praise that is his only.
It remains for the fifth act to display yet another side of Henry's
character; as action was at the commencement of the play balanced
by council, so at its close war becomes a foil to love. The scene
of wooing in broken English and broken French has always been
a popular favourite. One of its chief charms is that it brings out
the tact of the hero. Katherine is unmistakably the prize of war:
Henry, who has been exalted by the bishops as commanding every
kind of eloquence, chooses to woo her with the bluntness of the
soldier, veiling tenderness under rough simplicity.
If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my sad
dle with my armour on my back, under the correction of brag
ging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. . . .
And, while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and
uncoined constancy ; for he perforce must do thee right, be
cause he hath not the gift to woo in other places : for these
fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into
ladies' favours, they do always reason themselves out again.
... A good leg will fall ; a straight back will stoop ; a black
beard will turn white ; a curled pate will grow bald ; a fair face
will wither ; a full eye will wax hollow : but a good heart, Kate,
is the sun and the moon ; or rather the sun, and not the
moon ; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his
course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me ; and
take me, take a soldier ; take a soldier, take a King.
1 IV. vii. 178, and whole scene.
32 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The effect of the whole scene is that, at the close of the story,
conquest presents itself as a marriage of those two countries —
. . . whose very shores look pale
With envy of each other's happiness.
It was with something like a flourish of the dramatic trumpet
that we saw ushered in the protagonist of the Shakespearean stage.
The heroism of character that has been thus presented has been
found to consist, not in the grand passion of a Hotspur, plucking
honour from heights and depths ; nor in the unparalleled achieve
ments of mediaeval romance ; nor in the infinite patience of the
lives of the saints. Its foundation seems to be breadth of human
nature, with freshness to expand the horizon when responsibility
is not calling for action. Its chief note is a moral balance, that
will not allow action to overpower council, nor the spirit of war to
eclipse the spirit of peace ; that is responsive alike to dignity and
to humour, to pathos and to fun. It is the heroism of the full
soul, not consciously ambitious even of moral greatness, yet
adequate to every demand.
II
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION: THE SECOND FOUR HISTORIES
THE Shakespearean Drama contains a series of eight consecu
tive plays presenting English history ; the series divides into two
tetralogies, between which there is one curious parallel. Three
plays of the first tetralogy, as we have seen, cover the developing
period of a nature that, in the fourth play, rises to supreme hero
ism. Similarly, in the second tetralogy, the triple play of Henry
the Sixth gives us successive stages of an advance towards an
individuality which is presented, in the play that follows, as ideal
villany.
The parallel must however not be pressed ; for, whatever may
be the precise facts as to the authorship of the three parts of
Henry the Sixth, it is felt by many readers that they do not make a
continuous and consistent scheme like that of the other trilogy.
The contents of the plays are crude history, with elementary pas
sions and melodramatic incident : for the most part scenes of
factious turbulence, and civil wars in which father kills son, and
son father. The heroes are such as butcher Clifford, thundering
blood and death ; or his son, in cruelty seeking out his fame ; or
wind-changing Warwick, setter up and setter down of kings ; or the
" tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide " of Margaret, antipodal
to all that is good. Amongst these are plunged from their earliest
youth the " forward sons of York " : Richard is the most forward
of them all.1 There is that which marks him off from all the rest
of his handsome family. He is a " valiant crook-back prodigy,"
a "heap of wrath, foul indigested lump"2; the language is the
1 /// Henry the Sixth : I. i. 203.
2 // Henry the Sixth : V. i. 157 ; /// Henry the Sixth : I. iv. 75 ; etc.
» 33
34 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
bitter satire of enemies, but Richard's own soliloquies 1 are enough
to show that his physique is either an outward symbol of a dis
torted soul, or else an accident that contributes its share to the
prince's predisposition towards evil. In the earlier pictures of
Richard we can see, with much that is merely boyish, suggestions
of the strength and the moral distortion that are to combine later
into consummate villany. In warlike deeds he is early pronounced
by his father to have deserved best of the sons.2 In council we
have him struggling to be beforehand with his elders, and he
leaves them far behind in audacity of moral perversion.
York. I took an oath that he should quietly reign.
Edward. But for a kingdom any oath may be broken :
I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.
Richard. No ; God forbid your grace should be forsworn.
York. I shall be, if I claim by open war.
Richard. I'll prove the contrary, if you'll hear me speak.
York. Thou canst not, son ; it is impossible.
Richard. An oath is of no moment, being not took
Before a true and lawful magistrate,
That hath authority over him that swears :
Henry had none, but did usurp the place ;
Then, seeing 'twas he that made you to depose,
Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous.3
It is just here that we get our first glimpse of the master passion
beneath this boy's vigorous personality.
And, father, do but think
How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown ;
Within whose circuit is Elysium
And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.
Richard is dominated by ambition ; but at present it is within the
bounds of vehement partisanship, sympathy with the ambition of
his father. And in the earlier scenes Richard seems not devoid
1 /// Henry the Sixth : III. ii. 153; V. vi. 70; Richard the Third: I. i. 14; etc.
2 /// Heniy the Sixth. : I. i. 17. 3 /// Henry the Sixth : I. ii. 15.
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 35
of natural feelings ; though side by side with these are also sug
gestions of what will be the demonic levity of the fully developed
villain. He has freshness of soul enough to become enthusiastic
about a brilliant sunrise ; l but when the natural sun turns into the
miraculous omen of three suns, and his elder brother exclaims —
Whate'er it bodes, henceforward I will bear
Upon my target three fair-shining suns —
Richard instantly comes out with a pun at Edward's expense —
Nay, bear three daughters : by your leave I speak it.
You love the breeder better than the male.
There is room for bitter taunts as the brothers stand over the
fallen body of their father's torturer and their brother's murderer,
but with Richard the taunt can become a gibe :
What, not an oath ? nay, then the world goes hard
When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath.2
Richard seems to be sincere — though we cannot be sure — in his
hero-worship of Warwick and Northumberland,3 and when he
deems it prize enough to be his valiant father's son.4 Nay, there
even seems to be a point at which he is open to the touch of
popular superstition, and in the moment of being ennobled shrinks
from the ' ominous ' dukedom of Gloucester.5
The turning-point in the movement of the third play is found
where King Edward succumbs to the charms of Lady Grey, and
by a mesalliance alienates his strong supporters, and causes the
current of events to flow backward. This is a turning-point also
for Richard : a long soliloquy 6 reveals the changing character, the
constituent elements precipitating into a unity of unscrupulous
ambition. The new suggestion of royal offspring brings out, with
1 /// Henry the Sixth : II. i, from 25. * /// Henry the Sixth : II. i. 20.
2 /// Henry the Sixth : II. vi, from 31. 5 /// Henry the Sixth : II. vi. 107.
3 /// Henry^ the Sixth : II. i. 148, 186. G /// Henry the Sixth : III. ii, from 124.
36 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
a shock, the personal hopes that had been silently forming in the
breast of the remoter heir.
Would he were wasted, marrow, bones and all,
That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring,
To cross me from the golden time I look for !
This thought yields to the natural reflection on the number of
personages who already — without waiting for possibilities — stand
between Richard and his soul's desire ; until sovereignty seems
but a dream :
Like one that stands upon a promontory
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal with his eye,
And chides the sea that sunders him from thence.
With empty impatience he says to himself in reference to these
obstacles to his rise —
I'll cut the causes off,
Flattering me with impossibilities.
He turns to other alternatives : but the bitter thought of his
deformity comes to check aspirations after a life of pleasure.
I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,
And, while I live, to account this world but hell,
Until my mis-shaped trunk that bears this head
Be round impaled with a glorious crown.
But again Richard is plunged in despair at the many lives that
"stand between me and home." He struggles out of the tor
menting perplexity by a review of his resources — resources of his
own personal qualities : the passage may perhaps, in our contrast,
stand as counterpart to the bishops' laudation of the universal
powers of Henry the Fifth.
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry 'Content' to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 37
I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall ;
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
Til play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,
And like a Sinon take another Troy.
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown ?
Here then a clear stage in his development has been completely
attained by Richard : he is a man of one idea and one ambition,
consciously emancipated from all moral scruples.
In the latter half of the play, if there is a note of ambiguity in
Richard's action, it is the ambiguity of the part he has set him
self to play : he is hostile to the King, faithful to the crown, with
the faithfulness of the butcher to the sheep he means to eat.
Richard seconds, or even leads, in the discontent at the royal
marriage, until Clarence has reached the point of threatening
open rupture, when Richard draws back :
I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.1
The fruit of this ill-fated marriage becomes manifest in the revolt
of Warwick, Clarence deserting to him. Richard remains with
the King, "not for the love of Edward, but the crown."2 In the
rapidly changing events that succeed, Richard is the follower who
pushes his leader forward from point to point. In the tragedy
of young Prince Edward's assassination3 Richard has no greater
share than his brothers ; the difference is that these brothers have
exhausted their souls by this horror, Richard has but whetted his
appetite.
Q. Margaret. O, kill me too!
Gloucester. Marry, and shall. {Offers to kill her.
Held back by main force from this atrocity, the resources of
Gloucester have found him another.
i /// Henry the Sixth : IV. i. 83. 2 iy. i. 126. s V. v.
38 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Gloucester. Clarence, excuse me to the king my brother ;
I'll hence to London on a serious matter.
They all understand, but none dares follow to the assassination
of a king.
We thus reach the crowning incident of the trilogy, as it were
the graduating exercise of Richard's education in villany. He
has long been a man of one ambition ; but, so far as the path
of his ambition is concerned, the single quick stab in which Rich
ard has had so much practice would be all that is required.
Wherefore then the long protracted scene?1 The peaceful Henry
is no bad reader of men, and he catches exactly the spirit of the
incident with his question —
What scene of death hath Roscius now to act ?
There is now artistic appreciation of the villany, as well as ambi
tious purpose to indicate the crime. With Mephistophelean re
straint of passion the murderer gravely mocks his victim from
point to point ; when the helpless Henry in his outpouring has
passed from bitter taunts and descriptions of hideous deformity to
enumeration of the evils the monster is ordained to bring on his
country, the point has been reached for the dramatic coup :
Gloucester. I'll hear no more : die, prophet, in thy speech : [Stabs
him.
For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain'd.
Richard mocks the aspiring blood of Lancaster sinking into the
earth, and then with a superfluous stab starts a summary of the
whole situation.
Down, down to hell ; and say I sent thee thither :
I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
Indeed, 'tis true that Henry told me of;
For I have often heard my mother say
I came into the world with my legs forward :
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste,
And seek their ruin that usurpM our right ?
1 /// Henry the Sixth : V. vi.
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 39
The midwife wonder'd and the women cried
<O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!'
And so I was : which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so,
Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother ;
And this word < love,1 which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me : I am myself alone.
It is natural to place this soliloquy side by side with that of the
third act. In the one, Richard devoted himself to ambition, at
whatever cost of villanous action ; in the other, the villany is
embraced. In the third act there was enumeration, in the nature
of a claim, of qualities suitable to evil deeds ; in the fifth act the
claim has been vouched for by the dripping sword and murdered
King. In the third act Richard aspired : in the fifth act Richard
has attained.
We pass to the play which takes its name from Richard,1 and
almost the first words we hear are these :
I am determined to prove a villain.
As the opening of Henry the Fifth presented what seemed to
outside observers a sudden conversion, so these words mark the
end of development, and announce a character complete in its
kind. What exactly is the process that has been thus com
pleted? It is the common phenomenon of human nature by
which things that have been means to an end come in time to
be an end in themselves. A man takes up a laborious business,
with the distinct motive of providing a competence or even means
of luxury ; as the years go on, the business itself and the attraction
of wealth-making become uppermost ; worth his millions, the
1 The play of Richard the Third as a study of retribution has been worked out
at length in Chapters IV, V of my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. See above,
page v.
40 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
man continues to labour ; he enjoys of course such luxuries as
his means afford, but the business, not the luxury, has become
the motive. So Richard began with the commonplace motive of
ambition, learning for the sake of his ambition to do evil deeds ;
by the end of the trilogy the evil itself has come to be the attrac
tion ; he continues of course to remove obstacles barring him
from the crown, and to defend it when won, but evil itself, not
ambition, has become the master passion. The new play gives
us ideal villany in the sense that villany has itself become the
ideal. Richard has become an artist in evil : the natural emo
tions attending crime — whether of passionate longing, or horror
and remorse — have given place to artistic appreciation of master
pieces. And another element of the ideal is added : that of
success. The cumulative effect of successive victories surrounds
the hero with an air of irresistibility that makes him even more
irresistible.
A moral system, we have seen, involves the association of
character with fate ; when our conception of character is com
plete we naturally ask, What sort of fate is there meted out in
this play? Our first thought is of retribution. Retribution is a
fundamental idea in morals. It amounts almost to an instinct :
the smallest child feels a virtuous impulse to slap the table against
which it has stumbled. And in traditional philosophy wise men
have sought to make the whole moral government of the universe
synonymous with the judgment on the sinner. In the case before
us many readers of Shakespeare feel that the play is defective in
this very point. The fate of Richard is very much like the fate
of other men : where is there any retribution commensurate with
the ideal picture of wrong?
Such a feeling seems to betray a mistaken way of looking at
things, the mistake being equally one of morals and of dramatic
interpretation. In real life such a feeling has led, in past ages,
to the institution of judicial torture. Human life is so precious
(such has been the unconscious argument) that one who simply
murders another deserves death ; what then is to be done in the
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 41
case where to murder is added long contriving malice, with aggra
vations of cruel detail, or violations of gratitude and ties of kin
ship? Hence human justice has devised the stake and the
apparatus of torture, and outraged loyalty has demanded that
the slayer of a Cceur-de-Lion shall be flayed alive. Modern
enlightenment has discarded all such devices ; it has learned to
look away from the nice weighing of individual guilt and punish
ment to the field of morals as a whole, as the sphere in which
principle is to triumph. Now the dramatic equivalent for this
" field of morals as a whole " is plot. Each play is a microcosm,
and the providential government swaying in that microcosm is to
be found only when the complexity of the play has been analysed
into a unity of design. It is the failure to found dramatic inter
pretation upon the study of plot that has led to dissatisfaction
with Shakespeare's treatment of this story. When the play has
been fully analysed it will appear that, in this case, the whole
government of the universe is placed before us as a complex
scheme, of which the single underlying principle is retribution.
To begin with, the action and experience which make up the
story of the play are enveloped in the wider life of history, which
both fringes them round and links this to the other plays of the
series. The history is the Wars of the Roses : and this history
is presented by Shakespeare as retributive history. In the heart
of the drama Margaret's curses emphasise the thought that what
the various personages of this Yorkist story are suffering at one
another's hands is retribution upon the whole house of York for
their earlier cruelty to Lancastrians ; Richard's retort upon Mar
garet is a reminder that such cruelty to Lancastrians was itself
nemesis upon them for still earlier outrages upon Yorkists.1 Thus
history is made to take the form of the pendulum swing of retri
bution between one and the other of the sinful factions. Again,
a similar spirit is read into the experience of the crowd of inferior
personages who make the underplot of the play. Naturalists love
to dwell upon the chain of destruction that binds together the
1 Richard the Third: I. iii. 174, and whole scene.
42 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
grades of animal life : tiny humming-bird seized by tarantula,
tarantula gripped by lizard, lizard made victim of snake, snake
pounced upon by hawk, hawk yielding to eagle, which in turn is
brought down by the human rifle. A similar chain of retribution
is being forged when Clarence, deserter to the Yorkist house,
meets his death at the hands of the Yorkist King, and gives a
triumph to the Queen's kindred ; the Queen's kindred, through
the shock of Clarence's death, lose the King, their only protector,
and suffer the taunting gibes of Hastings ; Hastings, visited by
an exactly similar doom, is laughed at by Buckingham in his
security ; the secure Buckingham is cast off by a doom as taunt
ing as that of Hastings.1 These repeated strokes of doom, more
over, are not merely sentences of death : in each single case there
is a sudden recognition of the forgotten principles of justice, or
an appreciation of some bitter irony : 2 fate seems to move forward
with the rhythmic march of nemesis. Thus, apart even from the
case of Richard himself, the plot of the play is an intricate net
work of retribution in its varied aspects — a pendulum of nemesis,
a chain of retribution, a rhythm of retributive justice.
When our analysis enlarges to take in Richard, he is at once
recognised as the motive force of the play : all these multiplied
retributions are, directly or indirectly, forwarded in their course
by the agency of the hero. Unconsciously to himself, this
Richard, whose villany has been such an outrage upon our sense
of justice, has been chief factor in a scheme of retribution. In
the language of ancient prophecy, he is the Hammer of God :
brute force suffered to continue as a purifier of evil, until its work
is done, and it can itself be purified out of the world.
But what of Richard when he changes from the agent to the
victim of nemesis? It might have been so ordered that the earth
should open its mouth and swallow up the monster : in which case
1 Compare in Richard the Third: II. i. 131; II. ii. 62; III. iv. 15-95; HI- i,
from 157; III. ii. 114; IV. ii; V. i.
2 E.g. I. iv. 66; III. iii. 15; and especially V. i. 10-22. Compare generally my
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, pages 114-8.
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 43
there would have been a moment's pang, and all would have been
over. Or the resourceful brain of a sensational novelist might
have contrived some exquisite bodily torment to clutch Richard
in its fangs : and then the reader, in spite of himself, would have
felt the gates of his sympathy opening, and the hunchback villain
might have come out a hero, such as Shylock in his misfortunes
is to many readers of The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare's
treatment of the present case is very different. Richard is an
artist in evil, who plays with human life : accordingly Destiny
plays with Richard. Fate hides itself, until — long past the centre
of the poem — the crowned villain has attained an impregnable
sense of security ; then comes the first sign of change, and the
name of Richmond has only to be mentioned for memories to
flash upon Richard, how the destined avenger has been the theme
of prophecies which the victim never realised till too late.1 From
this point the play becomes a series of alternating rumours,
rumours of success as well as failure, in order that hope may
quicken sensitiveness to despair. Gradually the King is driven
from his magnificent imperturbability ; he loses temper, he makes
mistakes, he casts about for devices, he changes his mind, he
feverishly takes refuge in drink : in a word, he consciously re
cognises the stages of his descent to the commonplace.2 And
all this is but dramatic preparation, leading up to the climax of
retribution.
This climax is of course the Night Scene.3 Its force rests upon
the moral principle underlying the career of Richard : it is an
assertion of individual will against the order of the universe. All
ordinary restraints upon individual will — sympathy, inherited
affections, remorse — Richard has learned to cast off: his position
seems impregnable. But he has forgotten that there are condi
tions under which the will is unable to act ; and these are found,
not in some remote combination of unlikely circumstances, but
1 IV. ii. 88-122.
2 Compare such passages as IV. iv. 444-56 ; 509-18 ; V. iii. 1-8 ; 47-70.
3 V. iii, from 118. Compare also IV. i. 85.
44 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
in the most commonplace of everyday conditions — sleep. All
other powers may be in full activity when we slumber : the will is
entirely paralysed. Hence when Richard, in the weariness of the
night before the battle, drops asleep, he is held as in a vice by
Destiny, while outraged humanity asserts itself. In his helpless
ness he must see the rhythmic procession of his victims, counting
up the crimes that are to be remembered in the morrow's doom ;
still helpless, he must watch the ghostlike figures pass over to the
opposite camp, foreshadowing the desertion to the foe, whom they
bless as the coming victor. If the sleeping powers turn from
passive to active, it is but to take part against the helpless sleeper
in the play of Destiny upon its victim. Now he is fleeing from
the battle and his horse has failed him ; another horse secured,
he cannot mount for the streaming of his open wounds.1 Another
quick change of dream movement, and all around is shining with
the livid gleam of hell fire,2 and there goes up a groan —
Have mercy, Jesu !
It has broken the spell : but there is still to be traversed the
horrible stage of the gradual awakening from nightmare, and
the ghastly dialogue of the two selves is heard — the suppressed
self of inherited humanity, and the artificial callousness so pain
fully built up. In time his will recovers control : but meanwhile
Richard himself recognises the shattered nerves with which he is
to meet his final fall :
By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers.3
Thus the play of Richard the Third exhibits, in its most pro
nounced form, Shakespeare's treatment of Wrong and Retribution.
He has imagined for us an evil nature, set off to the eye by dis-
1 V. iii. 177.
2 So I interpret the words on waking, The lights burn blue.
8 V. iii. 216.
WRONG AND RETRIBUTION 45
torted shape, arising out of a past of historic turbulence, attaining,
in the present play, a depth of moral degeneration in which
villany is accepted as an ideal. Such ideal villany is projected
into a universe which, in this one drama, is presented as a com
plex providential order every element of which is some varied
phase of retribution.
Ill
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS: THE TRAGEDY OF
ROMEO AND JULIET
IN the preceding chapter we have been reviewing a drama the
plot of which presents the universe as an elaborate system of retri
bution. In turning from this to other stories we are not to expect
that in these the same aspect of the universe will be the one
emphasised. I believe that no mistake has done more to distort
Shakespeare criticism than the assumption on the part of so many
commentators that retribution is an invariable principle. Their
favourite maxims are that the deed returns upon the doer, that char
acter determines fate. But these specious principles need careful
examination. If the meaning be merely this, that the deed often
returns upon the doer, that character is one of the forces deter
mining fate, then these are profound truths. But if, as is usually
the case, there is the suggestion that such maxims embody inva
riable laws — that the deed always returns upon the doer, that char
acter and nothing but character determines the fate of individuals
— then the principles are false ; false alike to life itself and to the
reflection of life in poetry.
To take a crucial illustration. The Cordelia of Shakespeare is
recognised by all as a sweet and loving woman who devotes her
self to save her father. In the sequel she is defeated, imprisoned,
and cruelly hanged. Commentators who have assumed the inva
riability of nemesis feel bound to find in Cordelia's character some
flaw which will justify such an ending to her career. They suggest
that, however noble her aim, in the means employed she has
sinned against patriotism, by calling in the French — natural ene
mies of England, we are to understand — to rescue Lear from his
46
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 47
evil daughters : this sin against patriotism must be atoned for by
suffering and ignominy. I arn persuaded that no one who comes
to the play without a theory to support will so read the course of
the story. There is not a single detail of Shakespeare's poem to
which such a violation of patriotism can be attached ; those in the
story who are most patriotic are on Cordelia's side, and even Albany,
whose office obliges him to resist the French invasion, complains
that he cannot be valiant where his conscience is on the other
side.1 Cordelia no more sins against patriotism, in using the
French army to resist the wicked queens, than the authors of the
revolution of 1688 were unpatriotic, when they called in William
of Orange to deliver England from King James. How then is the
untoward fate of Cordelia to be explained ? The plot of the play
at this point is dominated, not by nemesis, but by another dramatic
motive ; it is not satisfying our sense of retribution, but exhibiting
the pathos that unlocks the sympathy of the spectator, and sheds
a beauty over suffering itself. Cordelia has devoted herself to her
father : fate mysteriously seconds her devotion, and leaves out
nothing, not even her life, to make the sacrifice complete.
It is obvious that to approach dramas with some antecedent
assumption as to principles invariably to be found in them is a vio
lation of the inductive criticism attempted in this work, which
frankly accepts the details of a poem as they stand in order to
evolve from these alone the underlying principles. But I would
for the moment waive this point in order to ask, What authority
have we for the assumption itself that retribution is an invariable
principle of providential government? In the drama of antiquity,
as all will concede, no such principle holds ; Greek tragedy is
never so tragic as where it exhibits the good man crushed by
external force of Destiny. But the contention is often made that
all this has been changed by modern religion, not any particular
theological system, but the whole spirit of modern religion, of
which the Bible is the embodiment ; that this has introduced such
conceptions of God and of man that Shakespeare and other
1 Lear: V, i. 23.
48 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
modern poets cannot give us a sense of poetic satisfaction unless
their dramatic world presents a providence wholly of retribution,
under which men face no power determining their individual fates
other than the destiny they have made by their individual charac
ters. To me it seems extraordinary that any such contention
should have been put forward in the name of biblical religion.
Not to mention other objections, such a plea flies in the face of
what, from the literary point of view, is the most impressive por
tion of the Bible itself — the Book of Job. Here we have a hero,
whom God himself accepts as perfect and upright, overwhelmed
by waves of calamity reducing him to penury and excruciating him
with disease. Men gather together to discuss the strange event.
The three Friends of Job take up exactly the position I am here
impugning — the invariable connection of suffering with sin, so
that the calamities of Job are proof positive of some unknown
guilt. Job tears their argument to tatters ; in the excitement of
debate he seems to recognise the impunity of the sinner as a
principle of providential government not less prominent than the
principle of retribution. Who is to decide between these opposite
views? In the epilogue to Job God is represented as declaring
that the three Friends have not said the thing that is right, as Job
has. And all the while the reader of the Book of Job has known
— from the opening story — that the calamities were sent from
heaven upon Job for reasons connected with his righteousness, and
not with his sin. Thus the biblical Book of Job is the strongest
of all pronouncements against the invariability of retribution, the
strongest of all assertions that, besides this, other principles are
recognised in the providential government of the universe.
The attempt to analyse all experience in terms of retribution is
false alike to real life and to life in the ideal. In the real life about
us a little child dies : how in this experience has character deter
mined fate? Not the character of the child, for there has been
no responsibility. There may be cases in which the death of a
child is retribution upon the carelessness or folly of parents ; but
will any one contend that this is always so? Yet the experience is
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 49
not meaningless : there is a certain beauty as we contemplate the
child life consummated in its own simplicity, before the weight of
coming maturity has effaced a single lineament of childhood's own
special grace. Nemesis has no application, but there is room for
pathos.
It is however zeal for the idealising of life that has given strength
to the contention that in poetry at all events character alone must
determine fate. But, in the spirit of the Book of Job, we may make
bold to say that such invariability of retribution lowers the concep
tion of human life ; the world becomes not less but more ideal
where the providential system of government gives room for prin
ciples other than retributive. Moral elevation implies moral choice.
But if the connection between character and fate were immutable
— if righteousness necessarily and inevitably brought reward, and
guilt necessarily and inevitably ended in ruin — then in so mechani
cal a life men would be forever choosing between prosperity and
adversity, while there would be no opportunity for the higher choice
between right and wrong. In Job, the Council in Heaven recog
nises that the unbroken prosperity of the patriarch has made it
impossible to say whether his life is a life of true piety or of inter
ested policy ; 1 it is only when unmerited calamities have over
whelmed him that Job can reveal his higher self with the cry,
" Though he slay me, I will trust him." The three children of the
Book of Daniel, confronting cruel persecution, believe indeed that
their God can deliver them from the tyrant ; but we feel them as
rising to a higher moral plane when they go on to face the other
alternative, "But if not, we will not bow down."2 It is the ex
ceptions to the universality of retribution that make the free atmos
phere in which alone the highest morality can develop.
Whether therefore we consider real life or life in the ideal,
whether we review ancient tragedy or the literature of the Bible,
we are led to the conclusion that a moral system revealed in
dramatic plot must be expected to exhibit nemesis as a single
aspect of providence, and not as its sole law. Now one of the
1 Job i. 9-10. 2 Daniel iii. 17-18.
£
50 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
principles underlying the exceptions to the universality of retribu
tion, one of the forces that will be found to come between individ
ual character and individual fate, is that which is expressed by the
term Accident. I know that to many of my readers this word will
be a stumblingblock ; those especially who are new to ethical studies
are apt to consider that their philosophical reputation will be com
promised if they consent to recognise the possibility of accidents.
But such a feeling rests upon a confusion between physics and
morals. In the physical world, which is founded upon universality
and the sum of things, we make it a preliminary axiom that every
event has a cause, known or yet to be discovered. But in the world
of morals, where individual responsibility comes in, it is obvious that
events must happen to individuals the causes of which are outside
individual control. To take the simplest example. A number of
persons, in the ordinary course of their daily life, enter a railway
train ; the train goes over an embankment into a river, and fifty
of the occupants meet a violent and painful death. We call this,
rightly, a ' railway accident.' It is true that, so far as the incident
is a part of the physical world, there have been ample causes for all
the effects : there has been careless service, or undermining waters,
and gravitation has done its proper work. But in the moral world
of each individual who has thus perished there has been no causa
tion ; nothing these persons have done has caused the disaster,
nothing left undone by them would have averted it; in the uni
verse of their individual lives the incident remains an effect without
a cause. A deed has here returned upon others than the doer ;
whatever we may call it in physics, the event must be pronounced
a moral accident.
The moral system of Shakespeare gives full recognition to acci
dent as well as retribution ; the interest of plot at one point is the
moral satisfaction of nemesis, where we watch the sinner found
out by his sin ; it changes at another point to the not less moral
sensation of pathos, our sympathy going out to the suffering which
is independent of wrong doing. A notable illustration of the lat
ter is the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In this play Shakespeare
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 51
engages our sympathies for two young and attractive lives, and
proceeds to bring down upon them wave after wave of calamity,
which come upon them not as the result of what Romeo and
Juliet have done, but from accident and circumstances not within
their control. Instead of wrong and retribution, we have in this
case innocence and pathos. Here however a misconception must
be avoided. To say that Romeo and Juliet are innocent is not
the same thing as to say that they are perfect. No one cares to
discuss whether these young souls had not their full share of orig
inal sin ; nor is it relevant to inquire whether two different per
sons in their situation might or might not have acted differently.
The essential point is that in the providential dispensations of
Shakespeare's story, the tragedy overwhelming the lovers is brought
about, not by error on their part, but by circumstances outside
their control, by what is to them external accident.
It is convenient to divide the course of the story into three
stages : there is the original entanglement of the secret marriage ;
there is the accession of entanglement in the banishment of Romeo ;
and there is the final tragedy of the fifth act. In each case we are
to see the essential events happening, not through the sin or error
of the hero or heroine, but through forces outside their personal
will.
It is, I suppose, an impertinence for grave analysis to pry into
the merry mystery of boy and girl love; otherwise, I would remark
that the mode in which Romeo and Juliet become attached to one
another brings us close to the domain of the accidental, ^ome
men walk into love with their eyes open, looking to the right and
to the left, and above all looking behind to see that their retreat
is open to the last moment. Others glide into love, yielding half
consciously to an attraction as fundamental as gravitation. Yet
others, by their phrase ' falling in love,' recognise suddenness and
shock ; an even higher degree of suddenness and shock is found
in the social phenomenon of ' love at first sight.' Of course such
love at first sight may, in some cases, be no more than the quick
ening, under favourable surroundings, of what would under other
52 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
circumstances have come about more gradually. But what are we
to say of the cases where the shock of a momentary meeting has
reversed for two human beings the whole direction in which each
of the lives has been tending?
In the natural course of events Romeo and Juliet would never
have met : they belong to families bitterly at feud, and Romeo,
moreover, is in love with a Rosaline, whose unrequiting coldness
drives him to desperation. Accident must intervene in order to
bring the two even to physical proximity. The Capulets are giv
ing a dance, and the head of the house hands his servant a list
of guests to be invited. The man does not tell his master that he
cannot read writing, but, outside the house, must ask the first per
sons he meets to decipher the paper for him. By accident,1 the
first persons he meets are a party of Montagues, Romeo amongst
them ; the name of Rosaline among those invited leads Romeo
to accept a suggestion of a surprise mask. Yet at the door of the
Capulet house — so does our story quiver with the accidental —
Romeo is all but backing out ; his heart is too heavy with Rosa
line's unkindness for his heels to make merry ; at last he goes for
ward for comradeship sake. Once inside, he is found risking his
life to inquire whose is the beauty that has smitten him.2
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheeks of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.
Juliet at first has not seen Romeo under his mask; the moment
he has accosted her, her words speak the shock of helpless
passion.3
If he be married,
My grave is like to be my wedding bed.
An instant's encounter has reversed the whole current of two
lives ; Juliet's words emphasise this sudden reversal.4
1 I. 5i. 34-106; compare I. iv. 3 I. v. 136.
2 I. v. 47. 4 I. v. 140.
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 53
My only love sprung from my only hate !
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.
Is it overstraining to say that such reciprocal passion has come
as an external shock into each separate life? Suppose the story
had been so ordered that, at this ball of the Capulets, a thunder
storm had intervened, and Romeo and Juliet by two successive
flashes had been instantly killed : would not every commentator
have recognised a story of most remarkable accident, in spite of
the existence of a science of electricity ? Not less accidental than
such lightning strokes has come the encounter which, in an instant
affording no room for choice, has changed Romeo and Juliet from
loathed hereditary foes into passionate lovers for life.
But love is one thing, marriage another ; it may be urged that,
while Romeo and Juliet have without their consent been caught in
the toils of passion, yet moral responsibility conies in with the fur
ther question, whether they shall yield to the passion or resist.
We have to ask then, what just cause or impediment there is why
these two lovers should not marry. Is it the impediment of
parental objection ? It might be a delicate matter to inquire how
far parental opposition is a final barrier to the marriage of chil
dren ; fortunately, Shakespeare has so moulded his story that this
difficult question is entirely eliminated. The Montague's voice is
recognised, and an attempt made to eject him from the Capulet
house ; the head of the house forbids this infraction of hospitable
honour, and in the altercation1 Juliet's father speaks thus of
Romeo :
He bears him like a portly gentleman ;
And, to say truth, Verona brags of him
To be a virtuous and well govern'd youth.
No higher testimonial could be given by any father to the worthi
ness of a suitor for his daughter's hand. It appears then that the
1 1. v. 56-90.
54 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
barrier to the union of the lovers is not parental authority, but the
unrighteous feud. And that this is a true reading of the situation
we may call for confirmation a witness from the story itself. The
Friar is not only a man of the highest character, but (according to
the religious ideas of the time) the keeper of the consciences of
Montagues and Capulets alike. That he understands the union of
Romeo and Juliet to be barred by no impediment but that of the
feud Father Laurence shows by his consenting secretly to perform
the wedding ceremony ; and he does it on the highest grounds,
in the hope that the union of the children may come to heal the
feud of the parents.1
Thus the first stage of the story is complete. A marriage that
must be hushed up may indeed be called a moral entanglement.
But in the present case it has been brought about by no error on
the part of Romeo and Juliet ; its secrecy is the necessary result
of a situation of affairs for which they are in no way respon
sible.
There is an accession of entanglement when, after the secret
marriage has been consummated, the husband is banished. Care
less readers of the play have spoken of Romeo as banished for
duelling. " Nothing could be more unjust ; it would be nearer the
truth to say that he is driven into exile for an attempt at peace
making.
This section of the story brings to the front two special per
sonalities. Mercutio is unconnected with the two warring fac
tions, and is kinsman to the prince. He is clearly a leading figure
in Verona society. He appears to be a man of exuberant vitality ;
brimming over with riotous fancies, speaking " more in a minute
than he will stand to in a month " ; restless for the cut and thrust
of wit, and the cut and thrust with weapon. His irrepressible
activity is kept within bounds of good humour — with one excep
tion : he has a chronic contempt for one who seems his artificial
anti-type, Tybalt, who takes current slang for wit, and makes
duelling an end in itself.
MI. iii. 90.
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 55
O, he is the courageous captain of complements. He fights as
you sing prick-song, keeps time, distance, and proportion ; rests
me his minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom : the
very butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist ; a gentle
man of the very first house, of the first and second cause : ah,
the immortal passado ! the pauto reverso! the hai! . . . The
pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes ; these new
tuners of accents ! x
Mercutio and Tybalt, with lesser persons, make up an atmosphere
of social recklessness, which enables us to measure how much of
moral resistance there is when Romeo refuses a challenge. The
circumstances are these. Tybalt, restrained from turning Romeo
out of Capulet's house, is the next day roaming over the city
to seek him : Mercutio has met Tybalt and is holding him in
check.2 By perverse fortune, at this moment Romeo comes upon
them ; Tybalt glides from Mercutio's sword point to accost the
Montague, and hurls at him in public the word ' villain.1 But the
husband of Juliet holds down his anger, and gives a dignified
answer. Mercutio is shocked that a gentleman wearing a sword
should not have drawn in a moment to avenge an insult ; yet,
good-humouredly, Mercutio with his ready weapon forces Tybalt
to encounter with himself instead of Romeo. At once Romeo
calls upon the bystanders to separate the two : he and Benvolio
strike down the weapons of the combatants. Thereupon Tybalt
by " an envious thrust " under the arm of Romeo gives a mortal
wound to Mercutio. Romeo has seen a friend, interfering to save
him, murdered 3 before his eyes ; he sees Tybalt furious for more
blood and in triumph. Then he does draw his sword; he is un
happily too successful; Tybalt falls, and Romeo is subject to the
doom of banishment.
In what has our hero done wrong? It is true that our wiser
1 II. iv. 19. 2 III. i. 38, and whole scene.
3 The word is justified by a comparison of III. i. 173 with line 108 of the same
scene, and the stage direction at line 94. Compare also Romeo's words in lines
114-6.
56 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
modern life has provided for such a contingency by its institution
of the police. But, when we are dealing with general conceptions
of right and wrong, it is to be remembered that moral indignation
is part of the whole duty of man. The prince who condemns
Romeo accepts the description of his offence as no more than
"concluding but what the law should end, the life of Tybalt."1
Romeo is banished, not on account of the quality of his act, but
because of the arbitrary decree against street fighting drawn from
the prince by feuds of Montague and Capulet. This second stage
of the entanglement may be thus summed up : accident has brought
Romeo into a situation, in which his self-restraint, and attempt at
peacemaking, have subjected him to a doom instituted on account
of that factious violence which Romeo has just been resisting.
The final phase of the movement is ushered in by the suit of
Count Paris for the hand of Juliet. The offer is at once accepted
by her father, and — such is the strange entanglement of events —
the death of Tybalt has made it possible for Capulet to dispense
with ceremony, and appoint a quiet wedding for a date within the
week of the proposal.2 There is no time to concert measures with
Romeo. What is Juliet to do? Will it be suggested that she
might confess all to her parents, relying on the fact that a mar
riage is a thing which cannot be undone? But we must remember
the type of parent in the case. When Juliet shows the first sign
of resistance to the idea of wedding within a day or two a man who
has never asked her for her love, her mother in a moment takes
fire, and the father no less quickly catches the heat.3
Capulet. Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife.
How! will she none ? doth she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud ?
Juliet's answer is a model of respect tempering firmness :
Juliet. Proud can I never be of what I hate ;
But thankful even for hate, that is meant love.
1 III. i. 191. 2 III. iv. 23. 8 III. v. 37, and whole scene.
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 57
The father's temper explodes.
Capulet. Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,
But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
To go with Paris to Saint Peter's Church,
Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. —
Foul language follows, until even Lady Capulet and the Nurse
have to interpose. Is confidence possible with parents like these ?
Lady Capulet was for having Romeo poisoned over in Mantua,
merely on account of Tybalt's death ; * had it become known that
a union with that hated Montague stood between Juliet and a great
match, would Romeo's life have been worth an hour's purchase?
Juliet sees no escape from the entanglement but death. She is
ready to die, but, with pious self-control, seeks the sanction of the
Church. This brings out the Friar's magnificent scheme. Friar
Laurence is not only a strong, calm soul in the midst of a world
of the passionate ; not only a leading ecclesiastic of the city with
Capulets and Montagues alike for his penitents ; he further repre
sents the mystic science of the primitive time, and knows how, by
herbal draughts he can compound, to reduce vigorous youth to the
appearance of a corpse ready for the sepulchre, draughts com
pounded with such precision that at the end of two and forty
hours Juliet shall awake as from pleasant sleep to perfect health.
And the daring experiment fulfils itself to the exact minute.2
But if we admire the scheme of the Friar, what shall we say of
the heroism of Juliet who carries it out? Unlike the patient of real
life, whom nature prepares by wasting pain for a welcome release,
Juliet must in full flush of strong life go through the bitterness of
death.3 She bids an ordinary ' Good Night ' to her mother and
nurse, and in low whisper adds :
God knows when we shall meet again.
1 III. v. 89.
2 IV. i. 105, and whole speech ; compare V. iii. 257, and whole speech.
8 Compare the whole scene : IV. iii. The abrupt transitions of thought in Juliet's
soliloquy must be carefully studied, as indications of changes in the scene she
imagines.
58 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
She finds herself — perhaps for the first time in her young life —
alone at night ; she can hardly restrain herself from calling the
nurse back. But the dread deed needs solitude. Juliet draws
from its secret place the Friar's gift, and marks the transparent
phial with its colourless liquid ; innocent looking as water, can it,
she wonders, produce such strange effects, and will she not awake
with morning, to be dragged to the altar ? That at least must never
be ; and Juliet, taking some stiletto-like ornament of a girl's dress,
lays it ready, a last resort by which she will be faithful to her mar
riage vow. She looks at the phial again, and the opposite thought
strikes her : what if it is poison ? The idea gains probability ;
none but the Friar and herself know of the secret marriage, and if
she were out of the way — but she checks herself, and knows the
Friar for a holy man. At last the phial is uncorked, and Juliet
catches a whiff of strange odour. Scientists have noted that nothing
is more powerful in exciting trains of mental association than the
sense of smell. As the sickly fumes pervade the atmosphere of
the chamber Juliet's brain begins to take fire. She catches the
awful thought of awaking too soon ; she realises the strangling
sensation of the stifling vault, all the terrors of the tomb around
her, the unearthly shrieks from which passers-by will flee in horror ;
she fancies herself unable to move without disturbing the dust of
dead ancestors, ready to dash her brains out with what comes
nearest and finding this the bone of some forefather. Not ances
tors alone ; her quickened mind play recollects Tybalt newly borne
to the family vault ; she seems to see the white shroud, and hor
rible curiosity would peer through to the festering corpse beneath.
But the tumult of imaginative associations is working itself out to
the natural climax of a Romeo approaching to the rescue. At
this point the trains of association clash : the white shroud seems
to rise, as Tybalt seeks the man who spitted him upon his rapier's
point. Wildly Juliet essays to save her lover, and feels herself
held back by some strong bar ; in vague confusion she leaps to the
thought that life is the bar holding her from this scene of the
sepulchre, and that the phial is the way of escape.
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 59
Stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.
She puts the phial to her lips, and falls insensible.
The magnificent scheme of the Friar, the heroism of Juliet in
executing it, all is rendered useless by the accidental detention
of Friar John.1 This is the hinge of accident on which the whole
issue turns. As part of Friar Laurence's scheme, a messenger
must apprise Romeo of what is being done. The careful mes
senger knows that travellers may miscarry, and Friar John seeks
another friar of his order to accompany him for greater security.
They are starting, when the door of the house is suddenly barred
by the searchers of the town ; the house is declared infected by
the plague, and none may leave it. The messenger is helpless,
and meanwhile the false news 2 is borne to Romeo. His view of
life is not ours ; long before this Romeo had announced his simple
creed :
Do thou but close our hands with holy words :
Then love-devouring death do what he dare ;
It is enough I may but call her mine.3
With the news of Juliet's death there is nothing left in life for
Romeo. The Apothecary — evil counterpart to the Friar, with
mystic drugs that kill instead of mystic drugs that heal — finds
the means. Romeo hastens to the sepulchre of the Capulets to
join his love-in her death.
It is night,4 that which was to have been the bridal night of
Paris ; he has come with floral offerings to the tomb of the Capu
lets. The pious obsequies are interrupted, and a torch is seen
cleaving the dark : some cursed robber or insulter of the dead,
Paris thinks. The thought is confirmed as Romeo, dismissing his
page, seeks to put him on a false scent, and speaks of descending
to the bed of death and taking a precious ring from a dead finger.
Paris can see the figure advance, the torch planted in the ground,
1 V. ii. 5 ; compare V. iii. 251. 3 II. vi. 6.
2 V. i. i. 4 V. iii, whole scene.
60 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the mattock raised against the very sepulchre of Juliet ; more than
this, he recognises the face of a Montague. He leaps from his
concealment to arrest the felon in the act. It is in vain that
Romeo seeks to restrain him, and bids him not tempt a desper
ate man : by the flickering torchlight swords cross, and again
Romeo's sword is unhappily successful ; Paris lies bleeding to
death, with his last breath begging to be laid in the tomb with
Juliet. Then Romeo recalls dim recollections of another suitor ;
he obeys the dying request, and taking up the body he bears it
into the sepulchre. But lo ! he seems to see, not a sepulchre,
rather a glorious lantern l lit up with the loveliness of Juliet.
Romeo had been steeling his heart to endure the dread sight of
death's defacement ; on the contrary, what he finds is fulness of
the beauty he loves so well. For the forty- two hours are almost
expired, and the returning tide of health is nearing its flood point ;
the pallor of death has passed away, and beauty's ensign is crim
son in lips and cheek. Romeo hangs over the body enamoured ;
the wonder fills him that death himself should turn amorous, and
keep Juliet in the dark grave as his paramour. Each moment
the returning tide of life is gathering fulness : the eyelids are
lying as light as snowflakes on the longed-for eyes ; the lips seem
as if at any moment they might part and let the fragrant breath
come through. The agony of love is more than Romeo can bear,
and there is but one way to possess all this beauty.
O true apothecary !
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
Then the forty-two hours have expired ; the returning tide of life
has reached its flood point. As with a dreamer on the verge of
waking, Juliet's consciousness is of some place where she ought
to be, and that she is there ; sound of approaching footsteps and
a familiar voice strengthen the impression ; she opens her eyes, and
all is true.
O comfortable friar ! where is my lord ?
1 Romeo's own word: V. iii. 84.
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 6 1
A moment later she has taken in the whole scene. In vain the
Friar seeks to get her away, for the watch is heard approaching.
Juliet can only feel bitterly that her lover has left her behind.
0 churl ! drunk all, and left no friendly drop
To help me after?
But there is his dagger, and with this she can find a way of follow
ing. So the three lie side by side, — Paris, Romeo, Juliet, — and
the triple tragedy has all been brought about by that accidental
detention of Friar John.
The plot of this play has fully unfolded itself; what has been
its dominant motive? In the dim background of the story, for
those who care to look for it, may be seen a providence of retri
bution : evil has brought forth evil, where the feud of the parents
has caused the death of the children. This retribution is seen
balanced by its opposite, for the heroism of Juliet is a good that
but brings forth evil. But in the foreground, at every turn of the
movement, we see emphasised the strange work of providence by
which accident mocks the best concerted schemes of man ; pity,
not terror, is the emotion of the poem. It is accident which has
brought Romeo and Juliet together, and they have loved without
sin ; accident has converted Romeo's self-restraint into the entan
glement of exile from his bride ; the smallest of accidents has
been sufficient to turn deep wisdom and devoted heroism into
a tragedy that engulfs three innocent lives.
There are certain passages of the play into which have been
read suggestions of folly and its penalty, but which in truth are
entirely in tune with the prevailing impression of irresistible cir
cumstance. When Juliet says1 —
1 have no joy of this contract to-night :
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden ;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, ' It lightens ' : —
ill.ii. 117.
62 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
and Romeo answers —
I am afeard,
Being in night, all this is but a dream,
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial : —
the two are not making confession of faulty rashness : it is only
the common thought of new-born love, that it is too good to be
true. Similarly, when the Friar says to Romeo1 —
These violent delights have violent ends . . .
Therefore love moderately ; —
he is not blaming, but fearing : his own action shows that this is the
sense. The Friar justly rebukes the desperate fury of Romeo at
the sentence of banishment ; 2 but this fault of Romeo does not
affect the movement of events, for he does not act upon his fury,
but on the contrary lays it aside, and submits to the counsel of his
spiritual adviser — the counsel which eventually turns to his ruin.
On the other hand, it may be said that in this more than in any
other play Shakespeare comes near to being a commentator on him
self, and to giving us his own authority for the true interpretation.
In the prologue it is the author who speaks : this opening of the
plot exhibits, not sin and its consequences, but a suggestion of
entangling circumstance ; when he speaks of the " fatal loins " of
the parents, the " star-cross'd lovers," and their " misadventured
piteous overthrows," Shakespeare is using the language of destiny
and pathos. For what is spoken in the scenes the speakers alone
are responsible ; yet a succession of striking passages has the effect
of carrying on the suggestion of the prologue — dramatic fore-
shadowings, unconscious finger- pointings to the final tragedy, just
like the shocks of omen that in ancient drama brought out the
irony of fate. Romeo on the threshold of the Capulet mansion
has such a foreshadowing.
My mind misgives
Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels, and expire the term
1 II. vi. 9. 2 III. iii, from 24.
INNOCENCE AND PATHOS 63
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He, that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail ! l
The feeling recurs just as the encounter with swords is entering its
last phase.
This day's black fate on more days doth depend.2
A shock of ill-omen visits Juliet, as she watches Romeo descend
the rope ladder to go into exile.
0 God ! I have an ill-divining soul !
Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.3
In ominous phrase Lady Capulet's petulance expresses itself when
her daughter resists the suit of Paris :
1 would the fool were married to her grave ! 4
Strangely ironic is the language in which Juliet begs for time.
Delay this marriage for a month, a week ;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.5
And there is both irony and weird omen in the unnatural elation
with which Romeo is awaiting the messenger of doom :
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand . . .
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead —
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave 'to think ! —
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips,
That I revived, and was an emperor.6
In passages like these Destiny itself seems to be speaking through
the lips of the dramatis personse. In their more ordinary speech
the personages of the play reiterate the one idea of fortune and
1 I. iv. 106. 8 in. v. 54. 6 ni. v. 202.
2lII.i.i24. MIL v. 141. GV. i. i.
64 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
fate. Romeo after the fall of Tybalt feels that he is " fortune's
fool." l The Friar takes the same view : 2
Romeo, come forth ; come forth, thou fearful man :
Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity :
he sees in the banished husband a prodigy of ill luck,3 misfortune
has fallen in love with him. Juliet feels the same burden of
hostile fate :
Alack, alack, that heaven should practice stratagems
Upon so soft a subject as myself ! *
Romeo recognises the slain Paris as " one writ with me in sour
misfortune's book " ; his last fatal act is a struggle " to shake the
yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh."5 The
wisdom of the Friar receives the detention of the messenger
as " unhappy fortune " ; in the final issue of events he tremblingly
feels how " an unkind hour is guilty of this lamentable chance,"
how " a greater power than we can contradict hath thwarted our
intents." 6 The note struck by the prologue rings in the final
couplet of the poem : no moral lesson is read, but the word pathos
is found in its simple English equivalent —
For never was a story of more WOE
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
Mil. i. 141. 2 III. iii. i.
8 Many commentators, and even Schmidt's Lexicon, understand fearful as timid,
But the context seems decisive for the other sense — terrible to contemplate.
4 III. v. 211. 6 V. iii. 82, in.
6 V. ii. 17 ; V. iii. 145 ; V. iii. 153.
IV
WRONG AND RESTORATION: THE COMEDIES OF WINTER'S
TALE AND CYMBELINE
THE present work treats dramatic plot as a revelation of moral
providence ; the successive plays are microcosms, and some as
pect of the universe appears for each as a binding force in which
the many-sided characters and incidents find their harmony. In
one play we have thus seen innocence and pathos, in another
wrong and retribution. But the evil of life admits of yet another
treatment : wrong may find its restoration. Redemption, the
profoundest of moral principles, is also an ideal of the poet. But
poetry is not the same thing as theology. Its mission is not to
unfold a plan of salvation ; but it gives recognition to the work of
restoration in human life, and clothes this with artistic beauty,
especially giving to it those touches of balance and symmetry
which make up so large a part of poetical idealisation. Two
dramas suggest themselves as special studies of Wrong and Res
toration — Winter's Tale and Cymbeline. To the analyst the two
have much in common. In the bare anatomy of plot the plays
are bound together by their sixfold basis of structure ; in each
Shakespeare has borrowed from ancient literature the device of
the oracle, not an external force governing events, but the empha
sis by supernatural revelation of a result otherwise accomplished.
The very difference of the two poems gives the link of contrast.
Winter's Talc presents wrong and restoration in the simplest form ;
in Cymbeline similar elements of story are seen highly elaborated
into what is perhaps the most compkx of Shakespearean dramas.
In Winter's Tale the whole wrong is comprehended in the
passion of Leontes. Not only is this a single thing, but — to do
F 65
66 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
it justice — in the scale of guilt we must rank it low. There are
wrongs which are infinitely bad when looked at in themselves, but
which impress us differently if we consider them as revelations of
the wrong-doer. This is especially true of jealousy. In another
of Shakespeare's plays we have two notable types of this passion
side by side : lago's jealousy is the natural outcome of a nature
wholly depraved ; on the other hand, it is the transparent guile-
lessness of Othello that makes it possible for lago to work him
up to his frenzy of suspicion. The jealousy of Leontes is of this
latter type. If we inquire as to the general character of the
Sicilian King, apart from the one crisis of his life, three powerful
witnesses speak for its depth and truth. The tale tells of an ideal
friendship, like the friendship of David and Jonathan, or Damon
and Pythias : such friendships can subsist only between true
natures. In the same direction point the wifely devotion of so
high-souled a wife as Hermione, and the passionate attachment
of the counsellor who in the past has had the close intercourse
of confidential adviser, an attachment bringing Camillo back to
Sicily after injury and years of exile.1 The outburst of jealousy
in the play is not villany, but moral disease ; it is a fever fit, and
moral fevers, like physical, make the greatest ravages in the strong
est constitutions. It is noticeable that the person of the play who
has the best opportunity for observing Leontes uses the language
of disease. At the first symptom of the King's morbid imagina
tion Camillo cries :
Good my lord, be cured
Of this diseased opinion, and betimes ;
For His most dangerous.2
When Camillo feels the case hopeless, and has to open the matter
to Polixenes his speech is similar :
There is a sickness
Which puts some of us in distemper, but
I cannot name the disease ; and it is caught
Of you that yet are well.8
1 IV. ii. 1-32 ; IV. iv, from 519. 2 I. ii. 296. 3 I. ii. 384.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 6/
Polixenes thinks of using reason to his friend ; Camillo knows
better.
Swear his thought over
By each particular star in heaven and
By all their influences, you may as well
Forbid the sea for to obey the moon,
As or by oath remove or counsel shake
The fabric of his folly.1
Of course, we are responsible for our moral, as for our physical,
health. The sin of Leontes has been the unguarded heart which
has allowed jealousy to enter. But once the morbid passion has
passed beyond a certain point, it is as vain to denounce the further
outrages of Leontes as it would be to parse the ravings of delirium.
The origin of the wrong is outside the field of view ; Bohemia's
long visit has been a period of incubation for the poison germs,
and the first we see of Leontes is as when by the stethoscope a
heart disease has suddenly been revealed in an advanced stage.
At the beginning of the scene2 Leontes is still struggling against
what he feels to be unworthy ; like the honourable man he is, he
makes such suspicions a reason for urging a longer visit ; nay,
he calls upon his queen to second the invitation. But when the
responsive eloquence of Hermione has proved successful, the
bitterness of the husband's heart comes to the surface in words :
Leant. At my request he would not.
Leontes recovers himself, and turns to his wife with the most
graceful of speeches.
Leant. Hermione, my dearest, thou never spokest
To better purpose.
Her. Never?
Leant. Never, but once . . . when
Three crabbed months had sour'd themselves to death
Ere I could make thee open thy white hand,
And clap thyself my love.
1 1. ii. 424. 2 I. ii.
68 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
But the effort is too much for Leontes : l he has tremor cordis, his
heart dances but not for joy. He must turn aside and play with
his little son. Yet he can reason2 with his 'affection' — the
Shakespearean word for ' passion ' :
With what's unreal thou coactive art,
And fellow'st nothing —
but this restraining thought suggests its opposite :
then 'tis very credent
Thou mayst co-join with something ; and thou dost.
The King would be alone, and bids the Queen take charge of her
guest.
I am angling now,
Though you perceive me not how I give line.
The passion of jealousy, indulged, now rushes with full flood.3
Go, play, boy, play : thy mother plays, and I
Play too ; but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave.
We can see clearly the psychology of jealousy in such cases as
Leontes and Othello : the thing imagined is so abhorrent to a
pure soul, that the very shame of it inflames the imagination, and
suspicions become realities too strong for the discrimination of
judgment. Leontes no longer hesitates to confide his thought
to the clear-sighted Camillo ; the thought now spoken in all its
details, for the purpose of convincing the horrified friend, con
vinces beyond recovery the diseased thinker.4 Camillo sees that
he must affect to enter into the plot against Polixenes in order to
save him. Of course, when the two have fled from Sicily, this
comes as full confirmation ; all that is seen around Leontes is one
great conspiracy.5 It is in vain that the King is encountered by
the injured innocence of the stately Hermione, by the blank
1 I. ii, from 108. 8 I. ii. 187.
2 I. ii. 138-46. * I. ii, from 267. 6 II. i. 47, and whole scene.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 69
amazement of the courtiers, which Antigonus expresses with a
blunt force that makes its coarseness pardonable : jealousy is
a flame that converts obstacles into fresh fuel, and to Leontes
the lords are so many blind fools, the queen's guilt has put on
its natural hypocrisy.1 The little son's illness is announced : it
becomes fresh evidence.
To see his nobleness !
Conceiving the dishonour of his mother,
He straight declined.2
The new-born infant is laid before the King —
. . . the whole matter
And copy of the father, eye, nose, lip,
The trick of 's frown, his forehead, nay, the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek ; his smiles :
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger3 —
but all this hardens the morbid heart, and Leontes cries to com
mit the brat and its adulterous dam to the flames. All this while
Leontes is conscious of honesty and justice. His second thought
of having the babe carried by Antigonus to some lonely spot in
Bohemia, "some place when chance may nurse or end it," is
meant by the King, and understood by the court, as an appeal to
providence.4 And — to convince others, not himself — the King
has sent to the infallible oracle : 5
Let us be clear'd
Of being tyrannous, since we so openly
Proceed in justice, which shall have due course,
Even to the guilt or the purgation.
But when the thunderbolt of the oracle falls,6 even this cannot
stop the headlong course of jealous frenzy :
There is no truth at all i' the oracle :
The sessions shall proceed.
1 II. i, from 126. 2 II. iii. 12. 8 II. iii. 98, and whole scene.
4 II. iii, from 154; compare line 183, and III. iii. 41-6.
6 II. i. 180, 189; III. ii. 4. e III. ii, from 133.
70 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The fever has reached the full crisis, when a shock must kill or
cure. The shock conies in the announcement, at that very in
stant, of the boy's death.
Apollo's angry ; and the heavens themselves
Do strike at my injustice.
The shock repeats itself: for the news seems mortal to the
fainting queen. Leontes has in a moment recovered his full
sanity : but it is the crushed helplessness that succeeds when the
fever crisis has passed.
Thou canst not speak too much ; I have deserved
All tongues to talk their bitterest. . . . Prithee, bring me
To the dead bodies of my queen and son :
One grave shall be for both ; upon them shall
The causes of their death appear, unto
Our shame perpetual. Once a day Til visit
The chapel where they lie, and tears shed there
Shall be my recreation : so long as nature
Will bear up with this exercise, so long
I daily vow to use it.
The oracle thus brought to the trial of the queen is the motive
centre of the play, in which all the lines of plot meet.1
Hermione is chaste ;
Polixenes blameless ;
Camillo a true subject ;
Leontes a jealous tyrant ;
His innocent babe truly begotten ;
And the king shall live without an heir,
If that which is lost be not found.
The first part of the oracle, clear as a flash of lightning, has laid
bare at a single stroke the whole wrong of Leontes. It is a six
fold woe he has incurred. He has lost the wife he adores ; he
has lost the friend of his bosom ; he has lost his pretty son and
l See below, Appendix, page 350.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 71
his new-born daughter; he has lost the minister Camillo, with
whom he had taken lifelong counsel : and he has lost the loyal
servant, Antigonus, who so unwillingly has gone to execute a cruel
doom. But in its latter clauses the oracle is the dim revelation,
which can be read only by the light of fulfilment. Latent in its
mystic phrase is the sixfold restoration : the wife is to be received
as from the tomb, the friend to be again embraced in Sicilia ; the
lost babe will reappear a lovely daughter ; the lost son will be
replaced by a son-in-law who is the image of Polixenes as known
in his youth. Camillo will return, unable to live without his king ;
and if Antigonus himself has been caught in the doom of which
he is minister, it is his widow, the faithful Paulina, to whom has
been committed the chief ministry of restoration.
The play divides at its centre : the work of wrong is balanced
by the working out of restoration. An interval of time, indicated
by a chorus, allows the babe to grow up into a girl of sixteen ;
the scene shifts from Sicilia to Bohemia. But these are small
points in comparison with the total change of spirit which the great
master of plot suddenly brings over his drama : in a moment we
find ourselves in a new world. A change from verse to prose
appropriately ushers in the passage from high life, with grand pas
sions and court intrigues, to the remote recesses of the country,
and the rude pastoral manners in which poetry has always sought
its golden age. It is a region of homely shepherds and their still
more clownish sons ; with storms when you cannot thrust a bodkin's
point betwixt sea and sky, or sunny days in the sweet of the year,
that set the red blood in winter's pale, while the thrush and jay,
or lark with tirra-lyra chant, make summer songs. It is a life of
naive simplicity ; its cares are to follow grumblingly the scared
sheep, when some " boiled brains of nineteen and two-and- twenty "
insist on hunting in bad weather ; or to cast up items of groceries
for the feast, not without the aid of counters. For great events
we hear of sheep-shearing times and their busy hospitality : with
the old wife as both dame and servant, welcoming all, serving all,
" her face o' fire with labour and the thing she took to quench it " ;
72 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
with Mopsa and Dorcas dancing, or watching the gallimaufry of
gambols some newly come Satyrs are exhibiting, one of whom, by
his own report, has danced before the King, while the worst
"jumps twelve foot and a half by the squier " ; with disguised
royalties invited in as passers-by, and listening to the songs, or the
catches of the three-man song-men, or the puritan singing psalms
to hornpipes. The poetry of this life is the language of flowers :
how for the reverend visitors there are rosemary and rue, which
keep seeming and savour all the winter long ; how for middle life
there are summer growths of hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,
and marigold that goes to bed with the sun and with him rises
weeping ; how spring and youth have their own daffodils, that
come before the swallow dares and take the winds of March
with beauty, or dim violets, or pale primroses that maid-like die
unmarried ; the old poetic feud of natural and artificial makes its
appearance, and critic Perdita rules out the carnations and pied
gillyvors as nature's bastards.1 So too the rustic world has its
own type of the marvellous — marvels of ballads : one to a very
doleful tune, how a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty
money-bags at a burthen ; another ballad of a fish that appeared
forty thousand fathom above water, and sang against the hard
hearts of maids :
Dorcas. Is it true too, think you ?
Autolycus. Five justices' hands at it, and witnesses more than my
pack will hold.
If commerce is to appear at all in this idyllic life, it must come
dancing in.
Lawn as white as driven snow ;
Cyprus black as e'er was crow ;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses ;
Masks for faces and for noses ;
Bugle bracelet, necklace amber ;
Perfume for a lady's chamber ;
1 Compare the whole passage (IV. iv. 79-103), as a most important pronounce
ment on critical questions in an unexpected context.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 73
Golden quoifs and stomachers,
For my lads to give their dears ;
Pins and poking-sticks of steel,
What maids lack from head to heel :
Come, buy of me, come ; come buy, come buy.
Even evil, the inseparable attendant of human life, is seen in a
softened form. It has flown over many knavish professions and
settled into ' roguery ' : the word is used in the spirit in which it
is applied to the nursery, and the name of the rogue Autolycus
takes us back to Homer, to the primeval simplicity that saw a god
in Mercury, snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. This Autolycus is
no highwayman in dread of the gallows ; his revenue is the silly
cheat, and for the life to come he sleeps out the thought of it. His
delicacy refuses offered charity from the passer-by who has come
to his rescue, and, weeping thanks, he leans on his shoulder to
pick his pocket, and warn him against one Autolycus.1 His merry
frauds make Honesty a fool, and Trust, his sworn brother, a very
simple gentleman : 2 under the spell of pastoral poetry they come
to us as no more than the necessary shading for the bright picture
of contented simplicity.
Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a :
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.
In these surroundings of rustic simplicity, the healing peace of
nature for the distractions of social life, events are slowly preparing
the restoration which is to crown the plot. The foundling grows
into the lovely Perdita, a shepherdess in outward guise, while her
foster father — mysteriously to the neighbours — is grown from
very nothing to an unspeakable estate. The presence of Perdita
transforms a sheep-shearing feast into an assembly of petty gods,
herself a Flora, peering in April's front. So thinks the son of
Polixenes : for the time-honoured machinery of a falcon's flight3
1 IV. iii, from 31. * IV. iv. 606. 3 IV. iv. 14.
74 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
across her father's ground has brought the shepherd maiden a
prince for a lover, and in the midst of lowly life he has found his
perfection.
What you do
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'ld have you do it ever : when you sing,
Fid have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Pray so ; and, for the ordering your affairs,
To sing them too : when you dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that ; move still, still so,
And own no other function : each your doing,
So singular in each particular,
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.1
The obscuring his princely highness in a swain's wearing carries
back the thoughts of Florizel to the old world, which was ruled by
gods that scrupled not at lower transformations to win a beauty no
rarer than his love. Nay, the providence of the present seems an
accomplice in the innocent intrigue, as we mark the pleasant irony 2
by which the prince takes the hand of the disguised visitor, to
make him a reverend witness of the vows he pours forth, the un
conscious son protesting in his father's ear that he will wait for no
father's consent to so precious an alliance. The explosion of
royal wrath comes as a harmless thunder, terrifying only the aston
ished shepherds and clowns, while roguery delights to mock them
from horror to horror.3
The curses [that shepherd] shall have, the tortures he shall
feel, will break the back of man, the heart of monster. . . .
Those that are germane to him, though removed fifty times,
shall all come under the hangman. . . . He has a son, who
shall be flayed alive ; then 'nointed over with honey, set on
the head of a wasp's nest ; then stand till he be three
quarters and a dram dead ; then recovered again with aqua-
1 IV. iv. 136. 2 IV. iv, from 371. 8 IV. iv. 431 ; and again from 699.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 75
vitae or some other hot infusion ; then, raw as he is, and in
the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set
against a brick-wall, the sun looking with a southward eye
upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to
death. But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose
miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital?
Out of this hubbub of rustic confusion Camillo snatches the con
trivance,1 which shall restore himself to his loved Sicilia, and which,
pregnant with more of restoration than he knows, shall make him
preserver of father as of son, healer for Sicilia's royal house as
well as Bohemia's. The process of disentanglement gathers force,
and the roguery of the story is drawn in to play a part : though
he is not naturally honest, Autolycus is so sometimes by chance.2
With the flying lovers and the pursuing king the scene shifts again
back to Sicilia. In rapid play of incident each knot of the en
tanglement is duly untied ; each woe relieved gives space to feel
those that are left ; passions of penitence, surprise, joyful reunion,
interchange as wonder succeeds to wonder. The simple clowns
in their terrible trouble become important personages in court
excitements ; discomfited roguery has no worse penance than
to behave humbly to the rustic victims, who receive apologies
graciously.
We must be gentle, now we are gentlemen.3
At last the movement of the plot has gone the full round of the
arch, and the dignity of the opening scenes is paralleled as Leontes,
with only the one great woe of his life unhealed, kneels in peni
tence before the wondrous statue, and sees it descend and grow
before his eyes into warm life and forgiving love. And if Paulina
is still left in lonely sorrow for her mate irremediably lost, a com
forter is at hand in Camillo ; the autumn idyl that unites these
two — the main contrivers of the disentanglement — is the final
note in the restoration, and the oracle of lost and found stands
complete.
1 IV. iv, from 519. 2 iy. iv. 637-98 ; 732. 8 V. ii. 164.
76 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
We saw the wrong of Leontes as moral disease : in what
followed disease has found healing. In the physiological world
healing is in the main a process of Nature, though time and human
skill may assist. So here, we seemed to move a step nearer to
Nature as we passed from the specialised life of the court to
pastoral simplicity. When the time enlarged to take in a new
generation, and sombre pictures of middle life gave place to the
ever fresh wonder of young love, we could realise how the successive
generations of mankind have their part in the healing force of
Nature, the flooding tide of humanity washing away evil left by the
ebb. Nor has human aid been wanting to this process of healing,
skill and patience meeting in Camillo and Paulina. But there is
more than this. Poetry is not merely dramatised philosophy ; its
function is to create, but always such creations as appeal to a spec
tator's sympathy. Fiction is crowded with sympathetic pictures
of revenge, of intrigue, of ambitions. Yet nothing in the whole
world is more beautiful in itself than redemption : in this play
Shakespeare does poetic service in choosing redemption for his
theme, and in presenting it with just the beauty of setting that is
harmonious with it, down to the last touch of perfect balance
by which the sixfold loss so strangely culminates in a sixfold
restoration.
Turning to Cymbeline, we find the same interest of plot, with
the addition of complexity : tangled wrong here works dramati
cally to harmonious restoration. The regular arch has been used
to illustrate the movement of some of Shakespeare's tragedies,
where a career seems to rise to a central climax and as gradually
decline ; for the plays of this chapter the movement is the arch
reversed, and the varied interests sink downward to a lowest depth,
from which they gradually rise to the level of restoration. As in
Winter's Tale, Shakespeare uses the supernatural light of the
oracle to read into clearness the intricate workings of provi
dence.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 77
The wrong presented is no longer a single thing, like the jeal
ousy of Leontes, but manifold, and emanating from different indi
viduals. Here, as elsewhere, the poet's treatment suggests a scale
of graded wrong, from less to more. We have Blind Wrong : in
jury done by one who acts innocently, according to the best light
he possesses. Then we find what may be called Perverse Wrong :
plainly and even grievously evil, yet founded on a perverted sense
of right. Finally, we have conscious and unmitigated Villany,
yet even here with a difference between the villany that is crafty,
and the crime that is not less villanous than stupid. Six separate
wrongs, illustrating degrees of this moral scale, make the sixfold
complication : the different characters, by natural reaction and the
working of events, pass down the arch of movement and up to
what is possible of restoration.
Cymbeline himself illustrates blind wrong, alike in regard to
Belarius and to Posthumus. Belarius tells his own story.1
My body's mark'd
With Roman swords, an'd my report was once
First with the best of note : Cymbeline loved me ;
And when a soldier was the theme, my name
Was not far off: . . .
. . . Two villains whose false oaths prevail'd
Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline
I was confederate with the Romans ; so
Followed my banishment.
Similarly, in Posthumus the King banishes an innocent man ; but
the play enables us to see the clever Queen manufacturing the evi
dence which is to deceive her husband, as part of her elaborate
plot to secure the succession for her son.2 It is impossible for one
placed so high as a King to search out for himself at first hand all
the affairs in which he has to judge ; he must act on evidence sup
plied to him, and Cymbeline acts for the best. But what is the
sequel ? At first we see the deed returning most remarkably on
the doer ; the rebound of Cymbeline's innocent injuries robs him
1 III. iii. 55. 2 I. i. 103 ; III. v. 60-5.
78 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
of his two sons, and then of his daughter. Yet, as the ways of
providence gradually unfold and bring the climax, those whom the
King has injured are led, in the mere passion of battle, to a miracle
of heroism : Belarius and his foster children are " the old man and
his sons," taken for angels, who make a Thermopylae of a narrow
lane, and turn Roman victory into defeat ; while the " fourth man
in a silly habit who gave the affront with them " was the banished
Fosthumus.1 All unconsciously to himself, without intention on
their part, the innocent injurer has been delivered by his victims
in the supreme crisis.
Analysis is more difficult when we come to that wrong which is
founded on a perversion of right. Three of the trains of interest
making up the plot of the play must be referred to this heading.
The first is comparatively easy. The story of Belarius is a simple
story of retaliation.2
O Cymbeline ! heaven and my conscience knows
Thou didst unjustly banish me : whereon,
At three and two years old, I stole these babes,
Thinking to bar thee of succession, as
Thou refVst me of my lands. . . .
Having received the punishment before
For that which I did then : beaten for loyalty
Excited me to treason.
Revenge, as all moralists will recognise, is merely the high motive
of justice in distorted form. It is interesting to watch this story
of retaliation working out. To speak of the hard life of exile in
savage wilderness to which Belarius has doomed himself seems a
small point ; the real interest is that not only does the avenger, as
we have seen, rescue the object of his vengeance, but he rescues
him unwittingly. It is against his will and striving that the old
warrior is brought to the battle-field,3 where martial ardour over
powers him ; and the force dragging him thither is the youthful
excitement of the stolen boys, whom Belarius loves as his own, and
1 V. iii, whole scene. 8 IV. iv, whole scene.
2 III. iii. 99; compare V. v, from 336.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 79
in whom the inborn nobility which he has sought to obscure is
suddenly asserting itself.
The wrong of Posthumus is the commonest of moral perversions :
the false sense of honour that dares not refuse a challenge, what
ever be the moral cost implied in its acceptance. It is the per
version which is the product of social narrowness and artificiality ;
the duellist dreads the sentiment immediately surrounding him in
the coterie that has dubbed itself " men of honour," and forgets the
great world with its balanced judgments and eternal principles of
right. At the opening of the play 1 disinterested courtiers exhaust
superlatives in their characterisation of Posthumus as the perfect
man ; even lachimo, in describing the circumstances of the fatal
dispute, speaks a like language.
The good Posthumus, —
What should I say ? he was too good to be
Where ill men were ; and was the best of all
Amongst the rarest of good ones, — sitting sadly,
Hearing us praise our loves of Italy. . . . This Posthumus
Most like a noble lord in love and one
That had a royal lover, took his hint,
And, not dispraising whom we praised, — therein
He was as calm as virtue — he began
His mistress' picture.2
Up to this point Posthumus is innocent, and moreover has depth
of nature to appreciate the perfection and purity of Imogen. But
when the challenge is made that even this purity may be conquered,
Posthumus surrenders to the lower standard of morals around him,
where virtue can be made a thing of wager and there is not capac
ity deep enough to take in perfection. In such an atmosphere,
zeal to demonstrate to the world his wife's purity, and then punish
with the sword the self-confessed slanderer, blinds Posthumus to
the crime he is committing : that to the loyal wife who implicitly
trusts him he is commending as his noble and valued friend the
man who comes expressly to assail her.3 The evil thus started
1 I. i. 17, etc. 2 V. v. 157. 3 Compare the letter: I. vi. 22.
80 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
on its downward career we can watch round its circle of movement.
When the false story is told to Posthumus, his unnaturally inflated
confidence undergoes sudden collapse ; while impartial bystanders
cry for more evidence, the one most concerned leaps to belief,
and with passionate paradox embraces the vilest conceptions of
womankind and sexual honour.1 He soon descends to lower crime,
and despatches to his servant Pisanio the letter that is subornation
to murder. This murder being supposed to be accomplished,
in the latter half of the action Posthumus is seen the prey of bitter
remorse. While he still credits the false news, he feels that Imogen
is even yet better than himself.2
Gods ! if you
Should have ta'en vengeance on my faults, I never
Had lived to put on this : so had you saved
The noble Imogen to repent, and struck
Me, wretch more worth your vengeance. But, alack,
You snatch some hence for little faults ; that's love,
To have them fall no more : you some permit
To second ills with ills, each elder worse.
The remorse expresses itself in action : Posthumus has been
brought with the nobles of his exiled home to the invasion of
Britain ; he changes his appearance with the disguise of a Briton
peasant, that he may at least find his death fighting on the side of
Imogen's people.3 As we have seen, instead of death he is led to
prodigies of valour which save Imogen's country and father.
Posthumus cannot yet forgive himself; he puts on the guise of a
Roman again, courting capture and death.4 Imprisoned, he has
leisure for further remorse : 5
Most welcome, bondage ! for thou art a way,
I think, to liberty . . . my conscience, thou art fetter'd
More than my shanks and wrists : you good gods, give
The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then, free for ever !
1 II. iv, whole scene, especially 113, 130; II. v.
2 V. i. 3 v. i. 21. * V. in. 75. s V. iv.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 8 1
From expectation of immediate execution Posthumus passes into
the scene of the denouement ; 1 with its continued shiftings the
various sides of the story are in his hearing made clear ; until
— as if it were a single stroke symbolising the plot as a whole
— Posthumus, by a petulant blow struck at the page who is
the disguised Imogen,2 shatters the complex entanglement, and
brings the discovery in which the whole confusion is harmo
nised.
Of lachimo the wrong would seem too foul to find any pallia
tion. Yet even here, in the first inception, we can see perversion
of right. There is a sort of spurious zeal for truth in the scepti
cism that sets itself against enthusiastic faith, and seeks by some
test of fact to convict it as pretentious boasting. But such scepti
cism easily passes into a cynical antagonism to the ideal itself;
and so it is in the present case.3
I make my wager rather against your confidence than her
reputation ; and, to bar your offence herein too, I durst
attempt it against any lady in the world.
In such a spirit as this lachimo opens his 4 intrigue against
Imogen. In a moment there comes a sudden reaction : 5 in the
shame of repulse from a purity he had not had capacity to imagine
lachimo is carried from cynicism to the passion of revenge. His
device for procuring the secrets of the bedchamber is revenge as
against Imogen : but what is it in reference to Posthumus ? There
is honour among thieves, and the idlest man of pleasure has a vir
tuous horror of cheating at cards ; judged by his own shallow
standards lachimo is descending to the deepest depth when he
manufactures false evidence with which to win a wager he has
lost. The after part of the play exhibits lachimo covered with
shame ; and shame — to our surprise — begets remorse/ revealing
a better nature that had been buried but not lost. Brought with
1 V. iv, from 152. 3 I. iv, whole s~cne.
2 V. v, from 227. 4 I. vi, from 32.
5 I. vi : compare 156, 180-210; and II. ii, from n. 6 V. ii. i.
G
82 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the other Roman nobles to the British war, lachimo in his first
onset finds himself discomfited by a peasant.
The heaviness and guilt within my bosom
Takes off my manhood : I have belied a lady,
The princess of this country, and the air on't
Revengingly enfeebles me ; or could this carl,
A very drudge of nature's, have subdued me
In my profession ?
He is drawn onward in the tangled perplexities of the plot,
until, at a word of challenge, the cynic pours forth an enthusiasm
of confession, in which the perfectness of the two against whom
he has sinned is made clear by the fulness of his self-humiliation.1
Besides blind wrong and perverted right the story gives us vil-
lany unrelieved ; two types of it, the crafty villany of the queen
and the stupid villany of Cloten.
That such a crafty devil as is his mother
Should yield the world this ass ! a woman that
Bears all down with her brain ; and this her son
Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart,
And leave eighteen.2
There is no need to dwell upon the crimes of poison and slander
by which the queen is intriguing to make a way for her son Cloten
to the crown ; she becomes dramatically interesting by her rela
tion to the reaction of the plot. After all the intrigues have pros
pered, at the very last all is lost through the mysterious absence
of him for whose sake the crimes were perpetrated ; 3 under the
strain of this mocking fate villany turns against itself.4
Cymbeline. How ended she?
Cornelius. With horror, madly dying, like her life ;
Which, being cruel to the world, concluded
Most cruel to herself.
1 V. v, from 141. 3 IV. iii. 2-9.
2 II. i-57. < V. v. 23-68 and 244-60.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 83
The long train of crimes confessed by the queen follows, and the
doctor concludes :
Cornelius. But, failing of her end by his strange absence,
Grew shameless-desperate ; open'd, in despite
Of heaven and men, her purposes ; repented
The evils she hatch'd were not effected ; so
Despairing died.
There seems to me to be a fine psychological touch in the shame
less-desperate : successful wickedness, mocked at the last moment,
flies through petulance to suicide ; the craft of lifelong conceal
ment, impotent to hurt, can at least shock by venting its own
shamelessness. And, in the general working out of events, this
confession of guilt takes obstacles out of the way of the growing
disentanglement. It is the same with Cloten and his gross pur
poses. The final stroke in his revenge is to adopt the very dress
of Posthumus with which to assail and ruin Imogen ; x in the
strange turns of circumstance his headless trunk is recognised by
this dress,2 is wept over and tenderly buried by Imogen herself:
this pious office, done unconsciously to her intending destroyer,
brings Imogen in contact with Lucius and the Roman hosts, and
so draws her into the current of events which in the end will bring
back to her all she has lost. In both the threads of villany that
run through the story, we see the irony of death making discom
fited villany a link in the chain of restoration.
Thus complex is the plot of Cymbeline. Instead of some simple
outburst of passion, far-reaching in its consequences, we here have
varied types of evil, from unconscious injury to gross crime made
still fouler by folly. Six distinct personalities are centres of wrong,
each sufficient for a complete plot : in the providential working
of events we see blind wrong blindly restored ; retaliation of evil
unconsciously led to retaliation of good for evil ; perverted right
— like diseases that must become worse before they can become
better — by sudden reaction growing to conscious wrong, and then
1 III. v, from 124. 2 IV. ii. 308.
84 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
led in the course of nature and circumstance to suffering and
redemption ; while that which is too evil to be itself restored is
overruled into a means of restoration for others.
But in Shakespeare symmetry goes hand in hand with com
plexity. The sixfold wrong has a sixfold victim : the separate
trains of evil are drawn into a unity by the way in which they one
and all strike at Imogen. Through the error of Cymbeline
Imogen has lost her husband, through the retaliation of Belarius
she has lost her brothers ; Posthumus's sin robs her of her love,
and the crime of lachimo robs her of her reputation ; by the
queen her life is threatened, and the villany of Cloten threatens
her honour. In the sequel all these are saved or restored, and
Imogen appears a motive centre for the whole of this many-sided
plot : in her the lines of complication meet,1 and her sufferings
are foremost among the forces of resolution.
The forces that make for restoration in the play of Cymbeline
also appear sixfold ; in fact they are not different from what we
may trace in Winter's Tale, or in human life as a whole, but the
complexity of the plot presents them more clearly to our analysis.
We mark the suffering innocence of Hermione in the one play and
Imogen in the other, wifely dignity and sweetness maintaining
loyalty under the bitterest wrongs ; not only do these sufferings
work healing remorse in the injurers, but we see clearly the wan
derings of the outcast Imogen make links in the chain of events
which is slowly bringing back happiness. Suffering guilt appears in
Leontes, in Posthumus and lachimo ; we have already noted how
actions in which Posthumus and lachimo are expressing remorse
lead up to changes of fortune. To suffering fidelity is clearly com
mitted a ministry of restoration : Paulina's bold stand saves her
queen, but loses for herself a loved husband ; Pisanio, distracted
between claims of master and mistress, maintains fidelity at the
cost of being threatened by the poison of the Queen and the sword
of Cloten, and even by the suspicions of Imogen herself.2 In both
1 See below, Appendix, page 351.
2 I.v. 78; III. v.83; V.v.238.
WRONG AND RESTORATION 85
plays is exhibited what may be called honest intrigue. Camillo
twice contrives an underhand policy ; the physician Cornelius
undermines the mining of the royal poisoner, supplying drugs
which kill only in appearance :
She is fool'd
With a most false effect ; and I the truer
So to be false with her.1
In such cases the weapons of wrong are turned against itself, and
there is conscious cooperation with the forces of restoration.
Notably in this play appears Nature as a healing force. In
Winter's Tale we have seen this conception developed to a
prominence that cast other forces of restoration into the shade ;
like fresh air substituted for a confined room came the passage, at
the centre of the plot, from city to country life. By a similar
effect, at the exact centre of the play of Cymbeline, as first note of
the change from complication to resolution, we have the cave of
Belarius amid its Welsh mountains, and the contrast between coun
try and court.2
Stoop, boys : this gate
Instructs you how to adore the heavens, and bows you
To a morning's holy office : the gates of monarchs
Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through
And keep their impious turbans on, without
Good morrow to the sun . . .
Now for our mountain sport : up to yond hill !
Your legs are young : I'll tread these flats. Consider,
When you above perceive me like a crow,
That it is place which lessens and sets off:
And you may then revolve what tales I have told you
Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war. . . .
. . . O, this life
Is nobler than attending for a check,
Richer than doing nothing for a bauble,
Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk.
1 1. v. 42. 2 in. iii.
86 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
In all the sequel, though as a single thread intertwining with
others, we find this interest of open-air life maintained ; side by
side with scenes of camp and court we get the primitive simplicity
of outdoor life, the cave and forest, joys of hunting, rustic feasts
and rural obsequies ; the spirit of the Welsh mountains is seen to
mould the events that are leading up to the climax. Nature
again is seen in the mystic sympathy that draws the boys of the
cave to the slim page their guest, so that one of them says : l
. . . The bier at door,
And a demand who is't shall die, I'll say
' My father, not this youth ' -
and the supposed father must secretly recognise that the boy speaks
more naturally than he can know. Above all, the force of Nature is
manifested in the secret reversion to strain of the royal boys,
brought up in a rustic life yet reaching after greatness, their
princely nerves straining to act the deeds they hear of.
O thou goddess,
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys ! They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet,
Not wagging his sweet head ; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafed, as the rudest wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine
And make him stoop to the vale. Tis wonder
That an invisible instinct should frame them
To royalty unlearn'd, honour untaught,
Civility not seen from other, valour
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop
As if it had been sow'd.2
We have already seen how it is this boyish excitement for the war
that is in the air, and its chances for great deeds, which brings to
the scene of the crisis the heroes who are to revolutionise the
course of events.
l IV. ii. 22. 2 iv. ii. 169.
WRONG AND RESTORATION
Suffering innocence, suffering guilt, suffering fidelity, honest
intrigue, the healing power of Nature — these are forces of resto
ration in the story of Cymbeline ; a sixth that mingles with the
rest and binds them together is the force of an overruling provi
dence. We recognise a moral government of the world as we
note each case of perverted right, as if by natural law, work
through suffering to its redemption. There is a suggestion of
providence in the strange irony by which triumphant villany falls
confounded at the last, and in its fall becomes an instrument of
restoration. Again, we may fasten our attention upon a single
device of the plot, the casket of poison. We see this prepared for
the guilty Queen by the deceiving physician,1 dropped by her in
the path of Pisanio,2 given innocently by Pisanio to Imogen as a
charm against the weariness of her journey ; 3 Imogen eats from
it 4 and is taken for dead, is buried in the grave of Cloten, awakes5
and recognises the headless body as Posthumus, procures its fitting
burial with the aid of the soldiers of Lucius,6 and is thus brought
into the Roman host and into the course of events which are
moving to the climax : as we trace this single point along the line
of movement we see it as a link binding successive accidents into
a chain of providential design. The oracle was to antiquity the
revelation of providence, and two oracles illuminate the present
plot : the soothsayer's vision 7 — of the Roman eagle winged from
spongy south to west and lost in the sunbeams — has the tra
ditional ambiguity, which gives different interpretations according
to the prospect of events and their issue ; the other oracular
message is seen at the close to have predicted correctly with the
aid of an etymological quibble which reads tender air as mollis aer,
so as mulier, so as woman? The mask introduced into the play
of Cymbeline is simply a dramatisation of providence, Jove and
the gods descending to read the meaning of dark dispensations.
It may be a question how much of this mask is genuine. But as
1 I- v. 33.
2 I. v. 60, etc.
3 III. iv. 190.
* IV. ii. 38.
6 IV. ii, from 291.
° IV. ii, from 353.
7 IV. ii. 346 ; V. v. 467.
8 V. v, from 426.
88 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
it stands it unites with other parts of the play in that which, more
than anything else, emphasises the providence underlying the whole
plot — the emergence from time to time of great principles of
moral government. When to Pisanio the drift of events is at its
darkest he is made to appeal to a higher power :
The heavens still must work.
And again,
All other doubts by time let them be clear'd :
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer'd.1
The deity of the mask gives comfort against the " mortal acci
dents " that have befallen Posthumus :
Whom best I love I cross ; to make my gift,
The more delay'd, delighted. . . .
He shall be lord of lady Imogen,
And happier much by his affliction made.2
And in the sorest strait to which Imogen is brought in her wander
ings words are spoken to her which may well stand as foundation
principle of the whole plot :
Some falls are means the happier to arise.8
1 IV. iii. 41, 45. 2 V. iv. 101.
V
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN: THE MASK-
TRAGEDY OF HENRY THE EIGHTH
THE play of Henry the Eighth stands unique among the Shake
spearean dramas in regard to its literary form. It is not one of
the series of histories ; it has no resemblance to comedy ; the
term tragedy does not fully express it. In exact classification it
is historic tragedy interwoven with court mask. And justice must
be done to both the constituent elements before the richness of
the poem can fully be appreciated.
The mask or pageant — I am not aware that the line of
demarcation between the two has ever been drawn precisely —
played a much more prominent part in Elizabethan life than
would appear from the traces left in permanent literature. The
terms cover a great variety of productions, from the extemporised
procession greeting a royal personage or a returning hero, to the
exquisite masks of Ben Jonson, with their complex structure — of
opening, disclosure of the music, disclosure of the maskers, dances,
revels, close, and interrupting antimasks — all the fine arts cooperat
ing in a single spectacle. The common element in these various
kinds of composition is the dance or procession of persons in
costume, the movement being not less symbolic than the costume.
One further point is essential : the mask or pageant is always a
glorification of some personage or some cause ; either the tribute
is paid by the general character of the spectacle, or — as so often
in Ben Jonson's masks — a compliment is sprung upon us as a sur
prise, ingeniously fitted into some detail of the action. A modern
charade presents successive scenes, each embodying a syllable of a
particular word : to guess the key word is not more necessary to
9O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the charade than to emphasise the compliment is essential to the
mask.
In this way the play of Henry the Eighth is in part a court mask,
paying honour to Queen Elizabeth1 through her mother Anne
Bullen. Three out of the five acts are crowned with elaborate
spectacles, presenting with pageantry and splendour successive
stages in the rise of Anne : her first meeting with Henry, her
coronation as queen of England, and — what for the immediate
purpose must be regarded as a still higher climax — the christening
of her babe Elizabeth. But at this point a difficulty arises. As a
matter of common historic knowledge, the elevation of Anne
Bullen was at the expense of Queen Katherine, the reigning con
sort being divorced and relegated to obscurity in order to make
way for her maid of honour. Now Katherine was the mother of
the late Queen Mary ; and matters of this kind must be delicately
handled in court spectacles.
To meet this difficulty the author (or authors) of the play have
fallen back upon an idea which enters deeply into human life, and
is one of the root ideas in the moral system of Shakespeare. It is
difficult to express this conception by any term not open to objec
tion ; I am here calling it the antithesis of the Outer and the Inner
life. The life without is the common life, into which each individual
enters with other individuals, having his share in general aims and
activities ; it is life in the objective. The life within is the subjec
tive attitude to things : each individual is himself a microcosm, all
that appears in the universe is regarded from the point of view of
his own personality. The distinction is not simply that between
outer actions and inner motives ; of actions and motives alike it
may be asked whether they have their reference to the common
world without or to the individual life within. To take a simple
illustration. We have before us a painted picture, say, of St. George
and the Dragon ; we see the figure of a knight in armour riding,
1 In the eulogistic climax (V. v, from 40) James I is associated with Elizabeth ;
but this savours of a revision with a view to performance during his reign ; there is
no other connection of the King with the language or structure of the play.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 91
lance in rest, against a monster. But the visible picture may per
haps admit of more than one interpretation. St. George may be
a simple warrior, in the ordinary course of a warrior's life facing a
danger that has arisen. Or, we may imagine that this St. George,
like the hero of Scott's Fair Maid of Perth, has been born into
the ranks of chivalry with the physical constitution of a coward;
that by supreme moral resolution he has determined to force him
self to do all that other warriors do, and he has sought out the
dragon as a desperate danger that will furnish stern discipline for
his shrinking nerves. The one interpretation makes the picture
an incident of the world without, the other an incident of the
world within.
This conception of the Outer and Inner life — or, as it has some
times been called, this antithesis of Doing and Being 1 — has appli
cation all over the field of morals. It enters into the analysis of
individual character. One man may be great in doing, supreme
in power and resource as regards the activities of external life,
while in the sphere of being and introspective consciousness he
may show nothing but bewilderment and lack of insight : such is
Macbeth. Another, like Hamlet, may be at home in self-analysis
and all that belongs to the roots of action, and yet show only un
certainty and hesitation when he comes to act. Or the distinction
of the two lives may appear in another way. We talk of success
and failure, of the rise and fall of historical personages. But what
is success in the external life may be failure in the life within : a
position of external pomp and dignity may be obtained by a moral
sacrifice which plunges the world of being into ruin. Or to the
eyes of all without there may be a fall : the life within is conscious
of a rise and an expansion in spiritual dignity. It is in the latter
form that the application of the antithesis may be made to the play
of Henry the Eighth. The necessities of the story involve the deg-
1 Compare an admirable discourse by James Martineau in his Endeavours after
the Christian Life, page 354. The antithesis is applied to the play of Macbeth in
my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Chapter VII; compare also Chapter VIII
of the same work.
92 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
radation of Queen Katherine ; historic fact makes it possible to
present this as a fall only in the outer life, while in the life within
there is elevation and rising dignity. Thus to the pageants pre
senting the career of Anne Bullen there are added two of which
Katherine is the centre ; the one displays the deposition of a queen
from her splendid station, the other is a vision of angels, betoken
ing with spiritual splendour the elevation of Katherine as a saint.
The elements of the play, so far as it is a mask, are now com
plete. What the reader of Henry the Eighth may easily under
estimate, while he is merely reading, gains its full proportion to
the whole when adequate stage setting makes appeal to the eye.
Each of the five acts culminates in some pageant ; 1 the three acts
visibly presenting steps in the rise of Anne — the first meeting, the
coronation, the christening — are separated by the two in which
spectacular effect suggests the fall of Katherine, a fall which is the
elevation of a saint.2
The first act ends with the revels of York Place.3 We have a
brief glimpse of court ladies and free-tongued noblemen making
merry at the banquet, Cardinal Wolsey encouraging them from
under the canopy of state ; to the sound of drums and trumpets a
troop of maskers interrupt — shepherds from afar, who have left
their flocks to gaze on English beauties ; with the readiness of
court functions the banquet-hall is transformed into a ballroom,
and the revels proceed gayly ; at the proper moment for the com
pliment the Cardinal is impressed with the thought that one of
these maskers is more worthy than himself of the seat of honour ;
the King unmasks, banters the churchman at the fair company he
keeps, and eagerly inquires the name of the lady with whose charms
he has been smitten ; all resolve to make a night of it. The whole
design of the festivity has been to bring together the King and the
lowly beauty who has just come to court. In the second act pomp
and pageantry are put to the strangest of uses — to adorn proceed-
1 The coronation pageant, which serves as crowning spectacle to Act III, comes
at the commencement of Act IV.
3 See below. Appendix, page 369. 3 I . iv.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 93
ings of a divorce court.1 Bands of music usher in processions,
each more dignified than the preceding ; the bewildered eye must
take in gowned doctors acting as secretaries, archbishop and at
tendant bishops arranging themselves as in consistory, officers and
nobles bearing aloft symbols — of purse and great seal and cardi
nal's hat, of silver cross to suggest the spiritual, silver mace the
temporal functions of the court, and silver pillars to symbolise the
cardinal judges as pillars of the church ; nobles and personages of
the court make up the crowd ; the scarlet majesty of Rome sits to
judge, and for the parties to the suit the proud crier can summon
into court a crowned king and queen. Yet the whole is under
stood to be no more than the spectacular setting proper for the
deposition of an innocent queen from her high estate. In the
third act Anne has risen to the throne, and this is followed by
the pageant of coronation,2 for which state ceremony reserves its
supreme efforts of emblematic spectacle. We see the procession
of ermined judges, white-robed choristers, musicians ; Mayor of
London with the quaint symbols of the city, Garter in his gilt cop
per crown and the mystic devices of heraldry ; nobles with sceptres
and demi-coronals and wands of office, each in gorgeous vestments
reserved for this one occasion ; under a canopy, which is the privi
lege of the Cinque-ports to carry, walks the exquisite Queen in
richest adornments, bishops attending, and a proud duchess bear
ing her train : all that the stage can afford of pomp is concentrated
on the spectacle, and when its limits have been reached the effect
is carried on by narrative describing the scene within the abbey.
In the fourth act we have returned to Katherine, and pageantry
becomes supernatural vision ; 3 the dark sick chamber is illuminated
with mystic light, and white-robed angels with faces of gold move
in rhythmic dance around the sleeper, holding crowns of triumph
over her head, and bowing low as they mutely proclaim the eleva
tion of a saint to heaven. The fifth act has for climax the christen
ing of the Queen's babe.4 But here, lest we might tire with the
monotony of pomp, a variation is happily contrived. There is all
i II. iv. 2 IV. i. 8 IV. ii. 4 V. iv and v.
94 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
that is required of sounding trumpets, heralds, civic functionaries,
and marshals, duchess godmother under canopy borne by four
nobles, and ladies filling up the crowd. But the procession of
state is threatened with being jostled out of all order by the
crowds that fill the palace yard : knaves from the kitchen, red-
nosed artisans, apprentices from the Strand rallying to the cry of
' clubs,' files of boys ready to shower pebbles, and every other type
of city life, all pressing on till the gates are giving way, and the
sweating porter with his men see no way to keep the crowd back
unless they sweep them down with cannon. With this touch is
prettily suggested the overpowering popularity of the new-born
Elizabeth.
But the play is historic tragedy as well as mask : the interweav
ing of the two constituent elements is a triumph of structural
skill. The effect of the mask just described, we have seen, rests
upon the contrast of outer and inner life, bringing out how that
which is a fall in the external world may be a rise in the sphere
of the spiritual. The same idea binds together the different parts
of the tragic matter. Four historical personages in succession be
come centres of interest, and for each there is tragedy in its sim
plest sense — the fall from an exalted position.1
Think ye see
The very persons of our noble story
As they were living ; think you see them great,
And follow'd with the general throng and sweat
Of thousand friends ; then in a moment, see
How soon this mightiness meets misery.2
But in each case the treatment brings out the contrast of external
world and individual life ; in each case we see, on the one side of
the turning-point, external power and splendour ; on the other side
a humiliation, which nevertheless appears as exaltation in spiritual
dignity and beauty.
The first of the four personages is Buckingham. In the open-
1 See below, on the meaning of tragedy, pages 187-188.
2 Prologue, line 25.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN
95
ing scene Buckingham appears in a position of exalted rank and
social power : he voices the old nobility of England, scorning the
upstart favourite. Not pride of birth alone, but supreme wisdom
and unsurpassed eloquence have made him " the great duke."
The conversation turns upon the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and
Buckingham bitterly inveighs against the presumptuous insolence
that has lavished upon spectacles empty of results treasures dearly
bought, and has disposed the too servile nobles according to the
individual pleasure of a parvenu. Where others tremble before
the mighty cardinal, Buckingham faces him with disdain for dis
dain ; brother nobles speak words of caution, but Buckingham
blurts out in plain language what others think ; he will expose to
the King what he calls " a kind of puppy to the old dam treason,"
the way in which the holy wolf or fox has imperilled the costly
French alliance in order to intrigue secretly with the emperor,
thus buying and selling the royal honour. But before he can
move a step, Buckingham feels the hand of arrest on his shoul
der : as the names of accusers are spoken the whole secret plot is
visible to him at a glance, and he knows the end from the beginning.
I am the shadow of poor Buckingham.
We are to see the ruined hero a second time1 when all is ac
complished. We hear described by eye-witness the scenes of
the trial : how, pleading " not guilty," Buckingham alleged many
sharp reasons to defeat the law — in vain ; how he demanded to
be confronted with the witnesses, and found himself unable to fling
their accusations from him ; how his peers found him guilty of high
treason, and he spoke much and learnedly for life, but all in vain.
When he was brought again to the bar, to hear
His knell rung out, his judgement, he was stirr'd
With such an agony, he sweat extremely,
And something spoke in choler, ill, and hasty :
But he fell to himself again, and sweetly
In all the rest show'd a most noble patience.
96 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
It is the last two lines that convey the crisis of the incident : in
the shock of ruin a character emerges, as if from under eclipse,
a character of patient dignity, fairness to foes and tenderness to
friends. The fallen nobleman is seen in the procession of death,
the axe's edge turned towards him.
All good people,
You that have thus far come to pity me,
Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me.
I have this day received a traitor's judgement,
And by that name must die : yet, heaven bear witness,
And if I have a conscience, let it sink me,
Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful !
The law I bear no malice for my death ;
'T has done, upon the premises, but justice :
But those that sought it I could wish more Christians.
We have the calm rectitude that will be just to itself, but no less
just to its foes. No false humility shall sue for the king's mercy,
yet injury has no effect upon loyalty.
My vows and prayers
Yet are the king's, and, till my soul forsake,
Shall cry for blessings on him : may he live
Longer than I have time to tell his years !
Ever beloved and loving may his rule be !
And when old time shall lead him to his end,
Goodness and he fill up one monument !
The victim feels an exaltation beyond that of his triumphant
enemies.
Yet I am richer than my base accusers,
That never knew what truth meant : I now seal it ;
And with that blood will make 'em one day groan for't.
Yet Buckingham is no stoic, dying in stern independence : the
tenderness that is in him yearns for supporting friendship.
You few that loved me,
And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham,
His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 97
Is only bitter to him, only dying,
Go with me, like good angels, to my end ;
And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me,
Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,
And lift my soul to heaven.
As we view the scene we forget to moralise about arbitrary tyranny
and resistance to oppression : what engrosses us is a transforming
revolution in a great personality.
The second of the four centres of interest is Queen Katherine.
Her name has become forever associated with spotless wifehood
and injured dignity. Yet in the earlier scenes she appears before
us in a position of lofty exaltation and external power. When she
enters the council chamber as a suitor,1 the King, secretly conscious
of failing faith, raises her from her knees with what is more than
ceremony.
Half your suit
Never name to us ; you have half our power :
The other moiety, ere you ask, is given ;
Repeat your will and take it.
Katherine is a mouthpiece for the oppression of the people
caused by the Cardinal's exactions, under which the back is sacrifice
to the load, and cold hearts freeze allegiance : Henry is indignant,
and then and there the Cardinal is ordered to recall his unlawful
act. Still more impressive appears the lofty position of Katherine
in the incident of the divorce court.2 The whole power of the
kingdom, in alliance with Rome that claims kingship over kings,
is concentrated upon an attempt to undo her. Where her part in
the programme begins, she thrusts aside the role assigned her, and
kneeling before the King and the husband speaks the language
of simple directness, urges the plea of spotless reputation and con
jugal bliss blessed by offspring, appeals to the famous king-craft
that contrived the alliance : the fickle Henry for a moment is en
tirely won. The Cardinal in alarm interposing, she turns upon
him with untempered indignation.
1 1. ii. 2 ii. iv.
98 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
I do believe,
Induced by potent circumstances, that
You are mine enemy, and make my challenge
You shall not be my judge : for it is you
Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me :
Which God's dew quench! Therefore I say again,
I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul
Refuse you for my judge ; . . . and here
Before you all appeal unto the Pope.
Katherine sweeps with dignity out of the court, and refuses to
return : in a single moment the elaborate plot has fallen discon
certed.
This is the highest point of exaltation for Katherine ; her
humiliation is not a sudden catastrophe, but rather a slow thrust
ing down step by step.1 Like some noble thing standing at bay,
the Queen is driven from point to point by irresistible force.
Advanced in life, with faded beauty, all the fellowship she can
hold with the King being her obedience, how can she prevail
against a passion excited by a youthful beauty? how can one
woman's wit stand against consummate craft acting upon a royal
power longing to be convinced ? Katherine can but wrap herself
in her virtue, fold after fold, as she withdraws herself into the
depths of the inner life. To the last there is no compromising the
queenly dignity she claims by sacred right of marriage ; 2 she does
not cease to unmask the " cardinal vices " that would hypocritically
pass for " cardinal virtues." 3 But she is alone against a world.
Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where no pity,
No friends, no hope ; no kindred weep for me ;
Almost no grave allow'd me : like the lily,
That once was mistress of the field and flourish'd,
I'll hang my head and perish.4
She subdues herself to counsel with her foes;5 she invokes the
old love to seek protection for the fortunes of her child and her
1 Compare III. i, and IV. ii. 8 III. i. 103.
2 E.g. IV. ii, from 100. 4 III. i. 149. e III. i. 181.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 99
poor attendants ; l she welcomes even the faithful chronicler recall
ing the forgotten virtues of the Cardinal who has ruined her.2 Her
unstained self has become the whole world in which she now lives
and moves.
Good Griffith,
Cause the musicians play me that sad note
I named my knell, whilst I sit meditating
On that celestial harmony I go to.
But the world within extends to a region which the stage can touch
only in symbol ; and in unearthly light of vision glory we see the
discrowned queen prepared for coronation beyond the grave.
It is however VVolsey in whom the interest of the history mainly
centres. There is no need to dwell upon the unparalleled exalta
tion and power of the famous Cardinal during the first half of the
story : how the commons groan under his exactions ; the nobles
hate yet dare not speak, or if they resist are crushed ; how France
and Spain bid against one another for the influence of the minister,
and are both used to make capital for his own private designs upon
the papacy. In the change of fortune that comes at the height
of Wolsey's greatness both nemesis and accident concur. The
scruples of conscience about the legality of the marriage with
Katherine are of course only the cover to the real bait with which
the Cardinal is angling for the King.
Chamberlain. It seems the marriage with his brother's wife
Has crept too near his conscience.
S^lffolk. No, his conscience
Has crept too near another lady.3
The churchman and cardinal is using the beauty of a young girl to
turn the King's thoughts from an elderly wife, and dispose him to a
second marriage; Wolsey will have the chance of negotiating with
some great power for a royal alliance, and will know how to snatch
his own advantage out of diplomatic bargaining.4 But the engineer
1 IV. ii, from 127. » II. ii. 17.
2 IV. ii. 69. * III. ii. 85-90, 94-104.
100 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
is hoist with his own petard : Henry is not only smitten with Anne's
beauty, but will marry herself and no one else. Wolsey has just
realised, in profound meditation, how his scheme has recoiled upon
himself; lost in thought he stands some time before he is aware
of the King's presence ; he plunges into apologies, but, with the
famous frown, the King thrusts papers into his hand.1
Read o'er this ;
And after, this : and then to breakfast with
What appetite you have.
In a moment Wolsey seizes the situation : 2 by unthinkable accident
he has handed to the King, in a bundle of various state papers, his
own private note of his ill-gotten wealth, and worse still, his plan
of counterworking against the King's darling project of the divorce.
For a moment the fallen minister makes a fight,3 as malignant
courtiers crowd around to triumph over him.
Surrey. Now, if you can blush and cry ' guilty,1 cardinal,
You'll show a little honesty.
Wolsey. Speak on, Sir ;
I dare your worst objections : if I blush,
It is to see a nobleman want manners.
But, left alone, Wolsey realises that all is over.4
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes ; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him ;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride
1 III. ii. 85-203. 8 III. ii. 228-349.
2 III. ii, from 204. 4 III. ii. 350.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN IOI
At length broke under me and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye :
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars on women have :
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
I feel my heart new opened: the shock of ruin that has quenched
for Wolsey the glory of external state has rekindled the life within.
Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.
I know myself now ; and I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me,
I humbly thank his grace ; and from these shoulders,
These ruin'd pillars, out of pity, taken
A load would sink a navy, too much honour.1
From servants weeping to leave so noble and true a master,2 from foes
seeking to do him bare justice,3 we have the other side of Wolsey's
character, forgotten by men in the glare of his meteor-like rise : how
from lowly birth he had climbed to honour, full of sweetness to his
friends, and for his country catching the new spiritual richness of
the times, and using wealth to found those treasuries of wisdom that
are to make Christendom speak his virtue forever. From all this
he has been diverted by the temptations of ambitious opportunities
such as perhaps never came to a subject before : now he returns to
his better self, and sees things in their true proportions.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition ;
By that sin fell the angels ; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee ;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
iIII. ii. 377. 2 III. ii. 422. 3 IV. ii.
102 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not :
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's ; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,
Thou falPst a blessed martyr.1
Men pour cheap sarcasm on the late repentance, that would atone
with easy contrition for the evil which has missed its prize. But
thus to speak is to misread the relations of the Outer and the
Inner life. In the great life of England Wolsey is the ambitious
self-seeker justly overthrown ; no words of his can buy back a
place for him, and he knows his destiny to be forgotten, and "sleep
in dull cold marble, where no mention of him" is to be heard.
But the spiritual world — as the Parable of the Labourers teaches
us — has no material divisions of time or scale of retributive
balance, no barrier against him who enters at the eleventh hour.
From greatness of soul Wolsey had been diverted by temporal
aims : to greatness of soul he returns.
His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him ;
For then, and not till then, he felt himself,
And found the blessedness of being little :
And, to add greater honours to his age
Than man could give him, he died fearing God.2
Yet a fourth personage enters into the plot of the play —
Cranmer. Here the fall is only threatened ; the averting of ruin
has the effect of reversing the usual order, and we see Cranmer
first patient in humiliation, afterwards exalted and triumphant.3
The reader must not allow himself to be disturbed by any different
conception of Archbishop Cranmer to which he may have been
led by his study of history ; undoubtedly the Cranmer of this play
is the " good old man," the marvel of more than human meekness
and forgiveness of injuries ; the common voice says, " Do my
Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, and he is your friend forever." 4
His part in the matter of the divorce has made the archbishop
Ull.ii. 440. 2iv. 11.64. 8V. i, ii.iii, v. * V. Hi. 177.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 103
the king's hand and tongue. But Henry, swelling with con
sciousness of the divine right of kings which was the religion of
the age, is nevertheless unconsciously swayed to right and left
by whatever influence gets his ear ; the feud of Catholic and
Protestant is in an acute stage, and Gardiner, successor to the
leadership of Wolsey, holds Cranmer an arch-heretic, a pestilence
infecting the land, a rank weed to be rooted out. The King sends
for the archbishop,1 and regretfully explains the grievous com
plaints he has heard, putting as his own thought what others have
instilled into his mind, that so high-placed a personage as the
Archbishop of Canterbury must be sent to the Tower before
accusers will venture to come forward. To Henry's surprise this
calls forth no resentment.
I humbly thank your highness ;
And am right glad to catch this good occasion
Most thoroughly to be winnow'd, where my chaff
And corn shall fly asunder : for, I know,
There's none stands under more calumnious tongues
Than I myself, poor man . . .
The good I stand on is my truth and honesty :
If they shall fail, I, with mine enemies,
Will triumph o'er my person ; which I weigh not,
Being of those virtues vacant.
In vain the King dwells on the dangers that threaten his former
friend : Cranmer understands, but protests innocence, winning
Henry entirely.
Look, the good man weeps !
He's honest, on mine honour.
The King gives the archbishop a signet ring, which in the last
resort he may use as token of appeal from council to the royal
judgment. Later on we see Canterbury — in dignity the first
subject of the land — kept outside the door of the council-
chamber amid grooms and lackeys ; 2 when admitted,3 he is
IV. i, from 80. 2y. ii. 3y. iii.
104 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
denied his seat at the council, and bitterly denounced by his
fellow-councillors, as a spreader of pernicious heresies. The
accused maintains his unvarying self-restraint.
Love and meekness, lord,
Become a churchman better than ambition :
Win straying souls with modesty again,
Cast none away.
Only when he is about to be sent to the Tower does Cranmer
produce the ring and make his appeal. As if he had been listen
ing at the keyhole Henry suddenly bursts in at the exact moment,
frowning the well known frown.1
Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest
He, that dares most, but wag his finger at thee.
The ready flatteries of Gardiner and others are too thin to hide
the offences of the councillors.
Surrey. May it please your grace, —
King. No, sir, it does not please me.
I had thought I had had men of some understanding
And wisdom of my council ; but I find none.
Was it discretion, lords, to let this man,
This good man, — few of you deserve that title, —
This honest man, wait like a lousy footboy
At chamber-door ? and one as great as you are ?
After being rated like schoolboys the lords of the council are
compelled to embrace Canterbury with hypocritical fervour. Then
Henry lets out the great news — that has had something to do with
his merciful change of mind — the birth of a babe to his lovely
queen ; she is immediately to be baptized, and Canterbury shall
stand godfather. The humility of Cranmer shrinks from the
honour, but the King insists with a good-humoured jest —
Come, come, my lord, you'ld spare your spoons !
1 V. iii. 114.
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN IO5
So the action passes on to its crowning pageant — the christen
ing of the babe Elizabeth, with Cranmer as chief figure in the
ceremony. A yet higher point of exaltation is reached by him.
Old age is prophetic, and, the religious ceremony concluded,
Cranmer is seized with a sudden inspiration,1 beholding in vision
the greatness reserved for the babe just made a Christian : he
bursts into an "oracle of comfort." She shall be
A pattern to all princes living with her,
And all that shall succeed : Saba was never
More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue
Than this pure soul shall be : all princely graces,
That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,
With all the virtues that attend the good,
Shall still be doubled on her : truth shall nurse her,
Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her:
She shall be loved and fear'd : her own shall bless her ;
Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,
And hang their heads with sorrow : good grows with her:
In her days every man shall eat in safety,
Under his own vine, what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours :
God shall be truly known ; and those about her
From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,
And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.
Nor shall this peace sleep with her : but, as when
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new create another heir
As great in admiration as herself;
So shall she leave her blessedness to one,
When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness,
Who from the sacred ashes of her honour
Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,
And so stand fix'd.
In this long outpouring we have the compliment essential to every
court pageant, and so the Mask-Tragedy of Henry the Eighth is
ready for the fall of the curtain.
1 V. v, from 15.
106 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The antithesis of the outer and the inner life, so notably empha
sised in this play of Henry the Eighth, makes the last of what I
am treating as the root ideas in the moral system of the Shake
spearean drama. The world created by Shakespeare is profoundly
ethical ; no interest underlying it is greater than the interest of
human character. In some cases the harmony in a single design
of all that appears, which is the plot of the play and mirrors the
providence of the actual world, seems to have for its dominant
purpose nothing more than the display of some type of character ;
what happens in Henry the Fifth is not a rise or fall of the hero,
but serves to display a perfect heroism ; if there is development,
it is the development of the moon through its phases, not varia
tion of the thing, but variation of the light that allows it to be
seen. Or, the field of view extends to exhibit alike human char
acter and the world of providential government in which it moves.
In one play the microcosm of providence is viewed on its side of
retribution ; the deed is seen forever returning rhythmically upon
the doer, no fate appears that has not been forged by character.
In another play the plot opens up the strange work of providence
which we call accident, the providence by which character is mys
teriously denied its natural fate ; the emotions of the spectator
are turned into another channel than retribution, and pure sym
pathy finds its discipline. Yet again, we turn to behold the provi
dence of mercy ; the forces which make for restoration, alike in
character and in fate, are displayed at their work, and skilful
fashioning of plot is permitted to clothe with beauty the lofty
idea of redemption. But more than all this is required. There
are two spheres, not one, in which providence may be displayed,
the life without and the life within ; and that which is ruin in the
one may be recognised as triumph in the other. This last of the
root ideas of Shakespeare seems to harmonise all the rest. In
the light of this distinction between outer and inner life there is a
sense in which it becomes true that the deed always returns upon
the doer : he who has done an unjust deed has so far become
unjust in himself, however in the world without his injustice may
THE LIFE WITHOUT AND THE LIFE WITHIN 107
bring him glory and security. And though, in the world of the
external, the long career of righteousness has ended in ruin and
shame, it is not the less true that the character has wrought out
its natural fate, for the inner life knows the righteousness as itself
the highest prosperity.
BOOK II
SHAKESPEARE'S WORLD IN ITS MORAL
COMPLEXITY
CHAPTER VI : The Outer and Inner in Application to Roman Life
CHAPTER VII : Moral Problems Dramatised
CHAPTER VIII : Comedy as Life in Equilibrium
CHAPTER IX : Tragedy as Equilibrium Overthrown
CHAPTER X : The Moral Significance of Humour
VI
THE OUTER AND INNER IN APPLICATION TO ROMAN LIFE
WE have seen that among the root ideas in the moral system of
Shakespeare is to be reckoned the antithesis of the outer and the
inner life, interest in the common world and in the life of person
ality. In the preceding chapter we have traced a very simple
application of this idea, in a region of human life where the per
sonages affected do not differ greatly from one another, nor from
us who study them. If the field of view be extended, to take in
a wider variety and greater complexity of humanity, the antithesis
of inner and outer may be expected to appear in diverse and more
difficult forms. I desire in the present chapter to apply it to the
Roman life of antiquity, as presented in the three plays of Corio-
lanus, Julius Cczsar, Antony and Cleopatra.
A wide gulf of difference, both in thought and feeling, separates
what we call modern times from antiquity ; the difference is often
overlooked, and, as it appears to me, modern readers are led into
serious misinterpretations of ancient character and action. The
difficulty of the discussion is increased by the fact that the same
terms are applied to ancient and to modern life, but the words are
used in different senses. Thus in reference to any age we may
speak of subordinating the individual to the state. But a modern
writer means by ' the state ' the sum of the individuals composing
it ; his subordination of the individual puts in another form the
principle of seeking the greatest good of the greatest number. An
ancient thinker, on the contrary, might understand ' the state ' as
an entity in itself: the abstract thing, government. We should
to-day assume as a matter of course, that any government must
exist in the interest of the people governed ; the ancienC philoso-
112 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
pher might reverse the proposition, and tacitly assume that those
who were being governed existed for the sake of the government.
Such an attitude of mind is well illustrated in Plato's ideal repub
lic, which abolishes, not only private property, but even marriage,
because children born without family ties will be more completely
at the service of the state. Again, ancient and modern statesmen
have alike exalted ' liberty ' : but the word is used by the two in
opposite senses. With us, liberty means the freedom of the indi
vidual, so far as may be, from state control. In ancient politics
liberty meant the freedom of the state from being controlled by
individuals. An example of the latter conception is the Athenian
institution of ostracism, which was not banishment inflicted as a
punishment by judicial process, but an authoritative request to
retire from the country; the citizen voting to ostracise Aristides
" because he did not like to hear him called the Just," illustrates
the spirit of the institution, that the state has a right to be free from
a personal influence, even when that influence is wholly good.
This difference of political conceptions is part of a wider differ
ence between ancient and modern thought, running on the same
dividing line of the community and the individual. A man of
to-day may feel that he has got down to the bed rock of practical
philosophy in proclaiming the rights of man ; to the ancient mind
the rights of society were still more fundamental. Hence the ab
surdity of such visionary theorising as Rousseau's social contract :
in the sober light of history it appears that the society which it is
desired to explain was anterior to the conception of individual
rights assumed for its origin. Property, again, reflects the differ
ence between ancient and modern thinking : what seems so sim
ple to us, the idea of a man's owning a piece of land, was a late
conception in ancient life, slowly elaborated from the original idea
that land belonged to the community. In the field of literature
also confusion has arisen from intruding the modern idea of indi
viduality into the social activities of antiquity. The modern mind
associates a particular ' author ' with a particular piece of litera
ture, and protects by copyright laws the author's ' property ' in what
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 113
he produces ; it is slow to grasp the totally different conditions of
oral poetry, when production was a function of the minstrel order
as a whole, without connection between individual poet and indi
vidual poem ; when ' Homer ' would be a name, not for a man,
but for a mass of floating ballads, the product of many poets
through many generations, subsequently worked up by a single
mind into our Iliad or Odyssey. Even in the sphere of religion
we may trace the difference between the earlier and the later atti
tude of mind. In the religious development comprised within
the limits of the Bible we see first a national religion, God in
covenant with Israel ; at a much later stage comes into promi
nence another conception, and Jeremiah speaks of the new cove
nant written on the hearts of individual worshippers.
In these diverse conceptions of life, centering respectively
around the state and the individual, we have the antithesis of the
life without and the life within reappearing in a different form.
In the simplicity of ancient life man differed little from man, or
men fell into well marked classes ; the earliest institutions rested
on the idea of these classifications, or of society as a whole. But
with advancing civilisation came increasing variation between the
characters of different persons ; consciousness of difference from
others must give emphasis to the sense of individuality as a
whole ; quickened sense of individuality in a man's self carries
with it sympathy with and insight into individuality in others.
Thus with the progress of time individuality comes to assert itself
as a rival ideal to the ideal of the state. This makes an interest
ing basis on which to analyse the three Roman plays of Shake
speare : they stand for us as representing three different points
along the line of political evolution, in which the pure ideal of the
state and the life without is gradually yielding before the growing
prominence of the inner life and the claims of individuals.
The play of Coriolanus is pitched at an early point in the line
of historical development : the only ideal here is the ideal of the
state, the common life to which all actions must have their refer-
i
114 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
ence, while the claims of individuality have just begun to appear
as a disturbing force. Thus in relation to this story the antithesis
of the outer and inner life becomes the antithesis between pure
political principle and that concession to the individual which we
call compromise.
On the surface of the story we have contests of parties, patri
cians and plebeians. But these are not, like the Whig and Tory,
Democrat and Republican, of modern times, organisations con
tending for different plans of reaching a common good. For both
patricians and plebeians there is but one ideal, that of service to
the state ; and to this ideal the patrician party is wholly devoted,
as typified by such leaders as Titus Lartius — ready to lean on
one crutch and fight the enemy with the other 1 — or the incom
parable Coriolanus. It is true that at one excited point of the
conflict a representative of the plebeians — as if with a sudden
insight into the thought of future ages — cries out 2 :
What is the city but the people?
But in the action of the play this comes only as a wild extrava
gance, and no representation of the motives actually at work.
The plebeians as they appear in this drama have no ideal of their
own to set up, but are defaulters to the conception of duty recog
nised by all. They " cannot rule, nor ever will be ruled " ; their
" affections are a sick man's appetite, who desires most that which
would increase his evil." What their scornful opponents say of
them harmonises with what their actions show in the story, as we
see the mob stealing away at the first word of war, and even those
who are equal to fighting the Volscians diverted from valour by
the first chance of petty spoil.3 This single political virtue to
which part of the people are untrue is the very point of the famous
Fable of the Belly and Members, with which Menenius strikes the
key-note of the whole play.4 The belly and the members are not
coordinate limbs of the body ; the drift of the parable is that
1 1. i. 246. 8 Compare III. i. 40; I. i. 181 ; I. i. 255, stage direction ; I. v.
2 III. i. 199. * i. j( from g2.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 115
the belly is the state, and the members, so far as they are not serv
ing the belly, are disturbers of the general health of the physical
or political body.
Men. Your most grave belly was deliberate,
Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer'd :
' True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he,
' That I receive the general food at first,
Which you do live upon ; and fit it is,
Because I am the store-house and the shop
Of the whole body : but, if you do remember,
I send it through the rivers of your blood,
Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain ;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and most inferior veins
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live : and though that all at once,
You, my good friends,' — this says the belly, mark me, —
First Cit. Ay, sir ; well, well.
Men. 'Though all at once cannot
See what I deliver out to each,
Yet I can make my audit up, that all
From me do back receive the flour of all,
And leave me but the bran.' What say you to't?
First Cit. It was an answer : how apply you this?
Men. The senators of Rome are this good belly,
And you the mutinous members : for examine
Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly
Touching the weal o' the common, you shall find
No public benefit which you receive
But it proceeds or comes from them to you
And no way from yourselves. What do you think,
You, the great toe of this assembly?
First Cit. I the great toe! why the great toe?
Men. For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest,
Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost.
What then is the position of the plebeian party in the conflict?
They have no political ideal to set up ; what they put forward is
Il6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
individuality reduced to its lowest terms — the bare right to exist.
It is precisely the story of the petty defaulter and the grand minis
ter of France : the defaulter makes his plea, // faut vivre-; to
which the chancellor answers loftily, Monsieur, je n'en vois pas la
necessite. So the plebeian mob :
They said they were an-hungry ; sigh'd forth proverbs,
That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,
That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only. x
The claims of the individual life are not exalted into an ideal ;
they have come in as a disturbing force to the common ideal of
the state and its service. The exact situation is that, at the open
ing of the action, the patricians have compromised with this dis
turbing claim of the individual ; they have ordered distributions of
corn as gratuities and not for service done ; 2 worse than this, they
have created tribunes of the people,3 a perpetual mouthpiece for
popular claims, and thus a disturbing force to the old single ideal of
the state has been admitted within the constitution itself. Nothing
but conflict can ensue ; and at the height of the conflict the speech
of Coriolanus — continued amid interruptions from both sides 4 —
brings out clearly how this is a conflict between pure political princi
ple, as Rome had understood it, and compromising recognition of
popular demands.
O good, but most unwise patricians ! why,
You grave but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer,
That with his peremptory ' shall,' being but
The horn and noise o1 the monster's, wants not spirit
To say he'll turn your current in a ditch,
And make your channel his ? . . . My soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter 'twixt the gap of both and take
1 1. i. 209. 3 1. i. 219.
2 III. i, from 120. 4 III. i. 91-171.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 1/
The one by the other. . . . They know the corn
Was not our recompense, resting well assured
They ne'er did service for't : being press'd to the war,
Even when the navel of the state was touch'd,
They would not thread the gates. This kind of service
Did not deserve corn gratis : being i' the war,
Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show'd
Most valour, spoke not for them: the accusation
Which they have often made against the senate,
All cause unborn, could never be the motive
Of our so frank donation. Well, what then ?
How shall this bisson multitude digest
The senate's courtesy? Let deeds express
What's like to be their words : ' We did request it ;
We are the greater poll, and in true fear
They gave us our demands.' Therefore, beseech you, —
You, that will be less fearful than discreet ;
That love the fundamental part of state
More than you doubt the change on't ; that prefer
A noble life before a long, and wish
To jump a body with a dangerous physic
That's sure of death without it, — at once pluck out
The multitudinous tongue ; let them not lick
The sweet which is their poison. . . . In a rebellion,
When what's not meet, but what must be, was law,
Then were they chosen : in a better hour,
Let what is meet be said it must be meet,
And throw their power i' the dust.
Around this central idea of principle in conflict with compromise
the characters of the drama naturally arrange themselves. Corio-
lanus himself embodies absolute devotion to principle, the one ideal
of service to the state. Panegyric relates prodigies of valour, mar
vels of self-exposure against odds, which have made Coriolanus the
grand hero of the age.1 Yet this is not the fire-eating battle passion
of a Hotspur ; Coriolanus hates praise, and would rather have his
wounds to heal again than hear how he got them.2
1 E.g. II. ii, from 86. an. jj. 73| 79.
Il8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
I have done
As you have done ; that's what I can : induced
As you have been ; that's for my country :
He that has but effected his good will
Hath overta'en mine act.1
Still less can this warrior tolerate reward.
He covets less
Than misery itself would give ; rewards
His deeds with doing them, and is content
To spend the time to end it.2
The deeds are not actuated by personal ambition : Coriolanus has
to be pushed forward by the patricians to office, and " would rather
be their servant in his own way than sway with them in theirs."3
From first to last no personal motive can be detected in Coriolanus :
he is actuated solely by the passion for service. Hence the injus
tice of the common interpretation, which in this drama sees pride
and its fall. The mistake is an easy one, for ' proud ' is the epithet
for Coriolanus that is heard throughout the story, and even in his
own mother's mouth.
Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
But owe thy pride thyself.4
Moreover, what we see of outward demeanour in Coriolanus is
just the flash of scorn and mocking taunt with which pride ex
presses itself. Yet, if we force ourselves to do justice to this hero,
we must acquit him of the charge of pride. Scorn is the expression
of righteous indignation, as well as of personal haughtiness ; the
honest workman, of the type of Adam Bede, has nothing but scorn
for the feckless makeshift throwing down his work the moment the
bell rings ; and this on a larger scale makes the magnificent war
rior in his attitude to the plebeians who claim feed and shirk duty.
The mother of Coriolanus, we shall see, has an ideal different from
1 1. ix. 15. s if. j. 219.
2II.il. 130. * III. ii. 129.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 1 19
that of her son ; moreover, she is infected with the spirit of com
promise around her, and fails to appreciate the pure stand for
principle. Apart from this contempt for half service, where is the
pride of Coriolanus to be found ? It is not personal pride : for this
hero of the battlefield cordially and without a moment's hesitation
places himself under command of an inferior ; his enemies the
tribunes note this, and wonder how "his insolence can brook to
be commanded under Cominius." l It is not the aristocratic pride
that contemns the people as such : this is suggested by an incident
in which the people can be seen apart from the plebeian defaulters.2
Cor. The gods begin to mock me. I, that now
Refused most princely gifts, am bound to beg
Of my lord general.
Com. Take't ; 'tis yours. What is't ?
Cor. I sometime lay here in Corioli
At a poor man's house ; he used me kindly :
He cried to me ; I saw him prisoner :
But then Aufidius was within my view,
And wrath overwhelm' d my pity : I request you
To give my poor host freedom.
The " noble carelessness " whether the populace love or hate
him, the bitter contempt he pours out, are in Coriolanus but the
expression of the whole-souled devotion to principle, as against
the universal tendency to temporise which he sees around him.3
His ideal may be the opposite of our modern humanity ; but jus-
1 1. i. 265. a i. ix. 79.
8 The nearest approach to aristocratic contempt is the gibe (in II. iii. 67) : " Bid
them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean." But this is directed, not against
the people, but against the insincere flattery of the people which is being urged on
Coriolanus. The conversation of the two officers (in II. ii) is very much to the
point. The first officer puts the common view that " to affect the malice and dis
pleasure of the people is as bad as ... to flatter them for their love " ; the second
officer points out that Coriolanus does neither, but fixes his regards always upon
" the country," that is, the state. And at the end the first officer seems to be
convinced.
I2O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
tice forces us to recognise the purest type of a soul in which all
personal aims have been merged in the thought of service.
His nature is too noble for the world :
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth :
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent.1
It is Coriolanus alone who typifies purity of principle : all the
other personages in some form or other exhibit the spirit of
compromise. The tribunes, as we have seen, simply give expres
sion to the compromising claims of the individual ; their office has
been created in a moment of panic, by a patrician party who shrink
from carrying their political ideal to its logical conclusion. Aufid-
ius up to a certain point keeps step with Coriolanus : each in his
respective state is the absolute devotee of public service, and each
recognises the perfection of the other.2 But at last the honour
of Aufidius begins to be obscured.
Mine emulation
Hath not that honour in't it had ; for where
I thought to crush him in an equal force,
True sword to sword, 111 potch at him some way,
Or wrath or craft may get him.8
Personal rivalry has here come in as a disturbing force to principle ;
and, although for a while Aufidius's honour flames up to its full
brightness when Coriolanus surrenders to him, and he delights to
exalt his former rival to the command over himself,4 yet Aufidius
proves unequal to the strain, and yields to the base envy which
plots against a personality acknowledged to be the great bulwark
of the Volscian state.5 Even Volumnia must be referred to the
same side of the antithesis. In the earlier part of the play not
only does the mother of Coriolanus seem the equal of her heroic
son, but she is put forward as the fount from which has flowed his
public virtue. But as the crisis manifests itself, and the career
1 III. i. 255.
2 E.g. I. i. 232-40; I. iii. 34; I. viii ; IV. v, from 108.
8 I. x. 12. 4 IV. v. 142, 207. 5 IV. vii.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 121
and even safety of Coriolanus are at stake, Volumnia begins to
draw apart from the pure principle of her son, and speaks the
language of compromise, bidding him dissemble, and introduce
into Rome itself the arts with which he fights Rome's foes.1
If it be honour in your wars to seem
The same you are not, which, for your best ends,
You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse,
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honour, as in war, since that to both
It stands in like request ? ... It lies you on to speak
To the people ; not by your own instruction,
Nor by the matter which your heart prompts you,
But with such words that are but rooted in
Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables
Of no allowance to your bosom's truth.
Now, this no more dishonours you at all
Than to take in a town with gentle words,
Which else would put you to your fortune and
The hazard of much blood.
I would dissemble with my nature, where
My fortunes and my friends at stake required
I should do so in honour.
The compromising spirit so clearly described underlies Volumnia's
action in the final crisis. The sympathies of the modern reader
are with her, for she represents the modern ideal of patriotism.
But, once the ancient point of view has been caught, it must be
admitted that from this standpoint even patriotism is a compromise
with principle ; it is not pure devotion to the ideal of government,
but devotion to that particular government with which the individ
ual has been connected by the accident of birth. Coriolanus, as
a servant of the Volscian state, exhibits the same absolute fidelity
to the public service at all personal cost which once he had cher
ished for Rome. Volumnia on her knees before the conqueror
appears as a force disturbing faithful service by motives of senti
ment and passion.
1 III. ii, from 41.
122 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The action of the play, no less than the character-drawing, is
founded on this antithesis of principle and compromise, the state
and the individual. The entanglement of the plot lies essentially
in the opening situation, and not until the fifth act in the conduct
of the hero. In the earlier part all the action serves to display the
grandeur of the principal figure ; it is not simply service, but mag
nificent achievement, at the price of infinite self-devotion, with
Coriolanus rejecting all reward, and resisting the honours all are
thrusting upon him, up to the point where further resistance would
be exalting his personal feeling against the public voice.1 The
patricians insist upon office for their hero : again he resists and
prefers to be servant only of the state, once more pushing his
resistance to the furthest point to which the individual may
oppose the public will.2 But just here appears the entanglement
which the compromising spirit of the time has admitted into the
constitution of Rome ; popular claims have won recognition in
election to office, and the candidate's gown is the outward symbol
of two incompatible things in conflict, the patrician ideal of the
state and the temporising courtship of individual plebeians. It
may be urged that Coriolanus plays his part as candidate badly ;
the tribunes point out " with what contempt he wore the humble
weed." But what else could be expected from the situation
created against his will for Coriolanus ? Principle itself has been
arrayed in the garment of compromise.
Why in this woolvish toge should I stand here,
To beg of Hob and Dick, that do appear,
Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to't:
What custom wills, in all things should we do't,
The dust on antique time would lie unswept,
And mountainous error be too highly heap'd
For truth to o'er-peer. Rather than fool it so,
Let the high office and the honour go
To one that would do thus.3
1 1. ix. 53-60. 2 ii. j. 218; II. ii, from 139; III. ii.
3 II. iii. 122.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 123
The latent conflict works itself out to a sharp crisis : Coriolanus,
as we have seen, makes one more stand for pure principle, and
would sweep away at a stroke all that has allowed popular claims
to interfere with the ideal of the state and the public service. It
has become a question of brute force : the hero of the patricians is
worsted and receives sentence of banishment. At this height of the
struggle1 comes the magnificent stroke with which Shakespeare, in
a single flash, presents the whole issue, as Coriolanus hurls against
the hubbub of Rome's confusion the answering taunt —
i BANISH YOU !
Not Rome, but Rome in the hands of the tribunes, is thus ad
dressed : the state has committed political suicide, self-surrendered
to the forces that disintegrate it, before Coriolanus abandons it.
The principle at stake is not patriotism, which roots the individual
to the soil where he has grown ; dismissed from the state it has so
gloriously served, the life of service is free to transfer itself to
another. Coriolanus becomes a Volscian, and, with no popular
turbulence to interfere, leads the Volscian armies to victory.
This may be called revenge, but it is no less service ; and the
service is as flawless as in the old days.
Cor. Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs
Are servanted to others : though I owe
My revenge properly, my remission lies
In Volscian breasts.2
A second crisis of the action is made where mother, wife, and
child kneel in behalf of Rome before the conqueror.3 The whole
force of kinship and patriotism is concentrated in one motive.
But, from the ancient standpoint, kinship and patriotism are an
exalted form of individuality : the two sides of the antithesis, the
state and the individual, are seen in full conflict. The situation
has been created which is so dear to the ancient drama — two
1 III. iii, from 120. 2 V. ii. 88, and whole scene. 8 V. iii.
124 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
opposing moral forces meet in the same personage : the tragic
sequel is that the personage is crushed. Volumnia does not see
this, and speaks of reconciliation.1
Vol. If it were so that our request did tend
To save the Romans, thereby to destroy
The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us,
As poisonous of your honour : no ; our suit
Is, that you reconcile them.
But her son sees more clearly, and realises the bitter irony of the
situation.2
Cor. {After holding her by the hand, silent) O mother, mother !
What have you done ? Behold, the heavens do ope,
The gods look down, and this unnatural scene
They laugh at. O my mother, mother ! O !
You have won a happy victory to Rome ;
But, for your son, — believe it, O, believe it,
Most dangerously you have with him prevailed,
If not most mortal to him. But let it come.
Coriolanus understands that a point has been reached where he
must make a final choice between principle and compromise : the
embodiment of principle chooses compromise, but he knows he is
choosing ruin for himself.
There is yet another turning-point before the action of the play
is complete. Coriolanus leading the Volscian army away from
Rome gives scope for nemesis : the devotee of principle has sur
rendered to compromise, and the ruin that follows comes as retri
bution. But all the while there is by the side of the hero another
personality, in which there has been a far worse surrender of
honour ; Aufidius has yielded to personal rivalry and base envy,
and, by slander and secret plotting, at last strikes down Coriolanus
on his return.3 Instantly, to the spectator of the story, nemesis
has given place to pathos ; the hero falls a wronged man, and his
l V. iii. 132. 2 v. iii. 182. 8 V. vi.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 125
error is forgotten in the thought of his heroism. Even Aufidius
has a pang of compunction :
My rage is gone,
And I am struck with sorrow.1
And it is a lord of the Volscians who speaks the fitting epitaph
for the supreme representative of old Roman honour :
Mourn you for him : let him be regarded
As the most noble corse that ever herald
Did follow to his urn.2
When we come to the play of Julius Ccesar, we are met with
the difficulty that Shakespeare has here drawn the characters with
such subtlety, and so delicately balanced the motives, that various
impressions are left ; different readers find themselves at the close
partisans of Caesar or Brutus. I have elsewhere analysed the
drama at length ;3 in the present chapter I must be content with
stating results. For myself, I am unable to see any personal or
corrupt motive either in Caesar or in his great opponent. Brutus,
at immense cost to himself, slays the friend he loves in order, as
he thinks, to save the country he loves better. And Caesar is
seeking absolute power — which the constitution of Rome recog
nised to some extent in its dictatorship — simply with the view of
doing for Rome itself the service of organisation he had done
outside for the Roman empire. The immediate point is to survey
the drama from the standpoint of the outer and the inner life.
The conflict between the pure ideal of the state and the grow
ing force of individuality, which the drama of Coriolanus exhibited
in its first beginnings, is presented by Julius Ccesar in a late
stage of development. Generations of time have separated the
age of the one story from that of the other, and all the while the
silent progress of human nature has carried with it the expansion
1 V. vi. 148. 2 V. vi. 143.
3 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: Chapters VIII and IX.
126 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
of the individual life; the two sides of the antithesis are now to meet
on equal terms. Rome is still a republic, and the republican ideal
is a mighty force. But alike those who cherish this ideal, and those
who oppose it, have been secretly moulded by the growth of indi
vidual character.
The multitude, swayed hither and thither by every orator, are
still the expression of individuality in its lowest form ; but with a
difference — they are all-powerful. The question that seemed a
paradox in Coriolanus —
What is the city, but the people ? —
has now won an affirmative answer : all look to the people as the
source of rule. The magnificent Caesar can obtain his dominion
only if he wins the popular voice ; to the mob the cause of the
conspirators must appeal for its justification.
The leading personages of the story are interesting for the bal
ance in each of the outer and inner life. Especially peculiar is
the position of Caesar himself. Advancing individuality implies
increasing differentiation ; among the infinite possible forms that
personality may take, we may expect to find at last an individu
ality taking the form of service, of entire devotion to the ideal of
the state. So it is with the Caesar of this play. He is Coriolanus
on a larger moral scale : there is here not the simple valour which
found complete expression in a Volscian war, but an all-round per
sonality, with infinite resources of intellect and loftiness of moral
power, the whole concentrated in the government of men and the
founding of empire for Rome. But this Caesar has no inner life :
that is to say, when he is seen apart from service to the state he
exhibits, not wrongness, but weakness. His foes read him as
"superstitious"; he dreads — to his own surprise — the subtle-
souled Cassius ; on the subtle-souled Antony he leans for support.
And, when the great ruler of men seeks to adapt himself to the
individualities of a mob, he finds himself bewildered, vacillating,
and without resource. Brutus, who inherits from his family high-
souled devotion to the state, has no less a strong development of his
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 12?
individuality ; it is seen in his devotion to philosophy and music,
in his sympathy with the delicate spirit of Portia, and his deep
friendship for Caesar. But the inner life is held down in Brutus
by sheer force of stoicism, the religion that professes to crush out
personality ; by such self- suppression he is calm before the raging
mob, and insists to Cassius upon minutiae of business all the while
that he is concealing the blow of bereavement that has taken from
him his Portia. Cassius again is a strange mixture. At first it
would seem as if this machine politician and conspirator was
wholly summed up in the life without, in devotion to the republi
can cause. But when we inquire what exactly is the cause Cassius
is serving, we find this to be, not public life as it appears out
wardly, but a fanatic's idealised equality, an abstract impossi
bility, such equality as can exist only in an individual's dreaming.
He sounds the names1 ' Csesar,' 'Brutus,' and insists that the per
sonalities must be as mechanically equal as the sounds; all the
difference between man and man made by genius and achieve
ment he ignores ; paradoxically, his individuality shows itself in a
theory that objects to individuality even when it has taken the
form of service to the state. In Antony, finally, as in the rest,
individual character has been strongly developed, and he can thus
play with the individualities that make up a mob. But he is also,
in the present drama, a zealous servant of the state; for at this
juncture, his personal interests and the deliverance of Rome from
the conspirators move in one and the same path.
The action of the play, no less than the characters, turns upon
the antithesis between the state and the individual. The exact
issue is seen where Brutus in his deep ponderings pronounces
Caesar an innocent man, yet resolves to slay him for the possi
bilities that might be.2 Justice to the innocent is the supreme
claim of the individual : it is here sacrificed to policy, a claim of
the state. The irony of events brings a sequel, in which this
1 1. ii. 142.
2 II. i : the use of the word affections in contrast with reason (line 20) just points
to the antithesis of private and public motives.
128 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
policy of the conspiracy is brought to its ruin by the force of out
raged individuality, and Brutus, ere he dies, recognises that Julius
Caesar is mighty after his death.1 In the moment of triumph the
conspirators made their claim to be —
The men that gave their country LIBEETY.
Their conception of 'liberty' was to free Rome from a Julius
Caesar, seeking power for Rome's sake : the issue of their action
was to deliver Rome to an Antony and an Octavius, seeking power
only for themselves.
Not a long course of years, but a sudden revolution, separates
the third play of the trilogy from the second. Mob rule as an
expression of unbridled individuality has been allowed the free
play which has led naturally to its own ruin.
This common body,
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion.2
The irresistible advance of popular claims has eventuated in
empire ; the end of the conflict between the state and the indi
vidual is that an individual has now become the state. It might
seem, indeed, that in the present case there were two individuali
ties, or at first three : the Roman world is in the hands of a trium
virate. But this is only appearance. Lepidus is never anything
but a figurehead.3 Octavius Caesar is a power, destined in the
final issue to be a dominant power ; but at the opening of the
play Caesar is no power as against Antony. Caesar loses hearts
where he gets money;4 on the testimony of the common enemy
Antony's soldiership " is twice the other twain " ; 5 history is in the
drama of Shakespeare so moulded as to imply that the empire of
the world is Antony's, if he chooses to grasp it.
1 V. iii. 94. 2 Antony and Cleopatra, I. iv. 44.
8 II. i. 16; II. vii; III. v. Compare Julius Casar : IV. i, from 12,
* Antony and Cleopatra, II. i. 13. & II. i. 34.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED I2Q
But why this "if"? What should hold back Antony from the
universal dominion which it is his to command? We have seen,
in the play of Julius Cczsar, how the two sides of Antony's nature
are there in harmony. He has a complex individuality in touch
with every element of human nature ; but he brings this individu
ality of his into public life, and, in the storms of revolution, this is
the means by which he conquers all hearts and wins supremacy.
But in the present play a new force has emerged, which touches
the individual nature of Antony, and sways it in a direction away
from the public career inviting him. This force is Cleopatra.
Even Shakespeare's power of painting human nature has ex
hibited no greater feat than his Cleopatra. We cannot sketch her
character, for character is just what she has not. Cleopatra is not
a woman, but a bundle of all womanly qualities tied together by
the string of pure caprice. She does not appear as a human soul,
but as a " great fairy," an enchantress ; it is her " magic " that
has ruined Antony.1 She is addressed as one —
Whom every thing becomes, to chide, to laugh,
To weep ; whose every passion fully strives
To make itself, in thee, fair and admired!2
The humorist of the play sees in her something elemental.
Antony. She is cunning past man's thought.
Enobarbus. Alack, sir, no ; her passions are made of nothing
but the finest part of pure love : we cannot call her winds and
waters sighs and tears ; they are greater storms and tempests
than almanacs can report : this cannot be cunning in her ; if
it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.3
Whatever charms of person or arts of wooing other women may
have, Cleopatra has them all : but as readily can she use their
opposites.
I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street ;
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
1 IV. viii. 12; I. ii. 132; III. x. 19. 2 I. i. 49. > I. ji. jtjo.
K
I3O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth. . . .
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety : other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies : for vilest things
Become themselves in her.1
She can enter into every passing mood of Antony, breathing out
naval heroism when he inclines to fight by sea ; 2 or, at will, Cleo
patra can entice by mocking.
If you find him sad,
Say I am dancing ; if in mirth, report
That I am sudden sick.8
She can sail close to the wind, and irritate the compunction An
tony feels for the noble wife he has forsaken.
Why should I think you can be mine and true,
Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,
Who have been false to Fulvia?4
Arbitrary individuality is incarnate in Cleopatra : and this is just
what has conquered Antony. He himself amongst men had been
the myriad-sided. His oration, in which he could catch every
fluctuating passion of the mob, and draw them all into whatever
harmony he chose, was like the virtuoso exhibiting the powers of
his instrument ; but when Cleopatra comes in, it is as if the instru
ment were to play the virtuoso. The great soul, that can sway
men's passions in any direction he pleases, is himself adrift in a
sea of feminine passions, that knows no shore of a responsible
soul.
Thus the antithesis of the world without and the world within,
instead of disappearing, has in the third play of the trilogy come
back in a new form. The rivalry of the state and the individual
is now to be seen within the personality of Antony himself: it is
1 II. ii. 233. 2 III. vii, from 29. 8 I. iii. 3. * I. iii. 27.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 131
the conflict, for Antony, between his public and his private life.
This one individual, if only he chooses to give himself to public
affairs, has world empire in his grasp. But it is also possible for
Antony to find his world elsewhere.
Ant. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay : our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man : the nobleness of life
Is to do thus ; when such a mutual pair \Embracing.
And such a twain can do't, in which I bind,
On pain of punishment, the world to weet
We stand up peerless.1
For this competing public and private life of Antony there is an
external measure in the movement of the play : Antony conjoin
ing himself with Caesar is the life rising to public duty; Antony
inclining to Cleopatra is the life falling to private passion.
The action of the drama, viewed from this standpoint, falls into
five well-marked stages.2
i. A portion of the poem displays the opening situation : An
tony, under the spell of Cleopatra, is neglecting public for private
life. His colleagues in Rome are merely waiting ; and this is the
situation as they see it.3
From Alexandria
This is the news : he fishes, drinks and wastes
The lamps of night in revel : is not more manlike
Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy
More womanly than he : hardly gave audience, or
Vouchsafed to think he had partners Let us grant, it is not
Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,
To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit
And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,
il. i.33-
2 Of course these stages cannot be separated into acts and scenes. Thus, An
tony in Egypt passes in I. ii from the first to the second stage; while in I. iv they
are in Rome still discussing the opening situation.
3 I. iv.
132 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
To reel the streets at noon and stand the buffet
With knaves that smell of sweat : . . . yet must Antony
No way excuse his soils, when we do bear
So great weight in his lightness. If he filPd
His vacancy with his voluptuousness,
Full surfeits, and the dryness of his bones,
Call on him for't : but to confound such time
That drums him from his sport, and speaks as loud
As his own state and ours, — 'tis to be chid
As we rate boys, who, being mature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,
And so rebel to judgement.
Meanwhile, with no power to check, piracy is infesting the seas
and making inroads upon land ; Parthian conquests are extending
further and further westwards ; Pompey is coming into view as a
new centre for the popular turbulence to gather about. Messen
gers bring tidings to Antony ! ; and at last he brings himself to
realise the situation.
O, then we bring forth weeds
When our quick minds lie still ; and our ills told us
Is as our earing . . .
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage . . .
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch.2
2. The shock of Fulvia's death3 makes the point at which the
rise of Antony begins. In the midst of his mirth "a Roman
thought has struck him," and his mind opens to take in all that
he is letting slip. Cleopatra in vain brings her whole armoury to
bear ; taunts and tenderness, despair and defiance, succeed one
another in quick turns of paradox ; she can only end by blessing
Antony's departure, and will unpeople Egypt, if necessary, to fol
low him up with messengers.4 Pompey and his allies are just
1 1. ii, from 92. 8 I. ii. 121.
2 I. ii. 113. * I. iii, v.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 133
gloating over the certainty that Egyptian seductions will main
tain the disunion through which they are strong, when tidings are
brought that Antony is every hour expected in Rome.1 His ar
rival has changed the whole situation. Where Antony and Caesar
are together, Antony seems to prevail by sheer weight of person
ality ; Caesar, lately the representative of morality rebuking disso
luteness, sinks into the second place, and all his sharp complaints
have the effect of drawing out a moral nature loftier than his own.2
All seems now to depend upon binding these two powers to
gether ; and the sagacity of Agrippa has found a link in Octavia,
sister of Caesar, whom the widower Antony may now take to wife.
This policy effected, the empire of the world seems to fall into
order again : adequate powers are despatched against the Par
thian foe,3 Pompey and his allies exchange enmity for submission ;
all seems to settle into peace and hospitable revels.4 Only the
humorist of the story looks ahead far enough to see other possi
bilities in this marriage of Octavia and Antony.
He will to his Egyptian dish again : then shall the sighs of
Octavia blow the fire up in Caesar ; and, as I said before,
that which is the strength of their amity shall prove the
immediate author of their variance.5
3. The fulfilment of this prophecy is the fall of Antony. Even
when the contract was newly made, the arrival of the Soothsayer
from Cleopatra brought in for a moment the atmosphere of Egypt,
and Antony recognised the hollowness of the reconciliation :
Though I make this marriage for my peace,
I' the East my pleasure lies.8
When Antony and Cassar are separated by distance, the divergence
increases apace. The unhappy Octavia, who must " pray for both
parts," seeks from her husband the task of reconciler.7
i II. i. « II. iii. 40. 5 ii. vi. 134. 1 III. iv.
Ml.ii. « II. vi, vii; III. i. 6 n. iii. 39.
134
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak,
Your reconciler! Wars 'twixt you twain would be
As if the world should cleave, and that slain men
Should solder up the rift.
Antony's assent to her mission is only his way of casting her off:
when Octavia arrives in Rome all the world knows her shame.1
Meanwhile the whole east under Antony stands arrayed against
Caesar and the west ; to the amazement of Antony, Caesar ad
vances stage after stage with a celerity passing all belief, and the
critical 2 battle is close at hand. Just here is seen that which
makes the fall of Antony a distinct stage of the action. In the
opening situation Antony was simply neglecting public duty for
private gratification : now, he allows the private life to infect the
public with its own spirit.
Antony. Canidius, we
Will fight with him by sea.
Cleopatra. By sea, what else?
Canidius. Why will my lord do so?
Antony. For that he dares us to't.
Enobarbns. So hath my lord dared him to single fight.
Canidius. Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,
Where Caesar fought with Pompey : but these offers,
Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off,
And so should you.
Enobarbus. Your ships are not well mann'd.
Your mariners are muleters, reapers, people
Ingross'd by swift impress ; in Caesar's fleet
Are those that often have 'gainst Pompey fought :
Their ships are yare, yours, heavy : no disgrace
Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,
Being prepared for land.
Antony. By sea, by sea.
Enobarbus. Most worthy sir, you therein throw away
The absolute soldiership you have by land,
Distract your army, which doth most consist
Of war-mark 'd footmen, leave unexecuted
1 III. vi, from 39.
2 So Caesar seems to think in III. viii.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 135
Your own renowned knowledge, quite forego
The way which promises assurance, and
Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard
From firm security.
Antony. I'll fight at sea.
Cleopatra. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.
Antony. Our overplus of shipping will we burn ;
And, with the rest full-mann'd, from the head of Actium
Beat the approaching Caesar.1
Mere personal rivalry, and the thought that Cleopatra will look on,
inspire Antony with the gambler's passion for risking awful odds,
while there is a wise alternative which the whole army implores
him to take. The battle follows and Cleopatra is the first to flee ;
Antony's heart is tied to her rudder strings, and he hurries after
her. Only then does Antony wake up to the sense that he has
fled before the effeminate Caesar, and that the battle on which
universal empire depends is lost : he knows " he is so lated in the
world that he has lost his way forever." '* Even the gambler's
chances are no longer open to him : in vain he challenges Caesar
to decide the contest in single combat ; Caesar would have " the
old ruffian know he has many other ways to die." 3 All his fol
lowers can read clearly the lesson of their great leader's fall.
Enobarbus. I see men's judgements are
A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike . . . Caesar, thou hast subdued
His judgement too.4
Antony at last realises it to the full.
Ant. When we in our viciousness grow hard —
O misery on't ! — the wise gods seel our eyes ;
In our own filth drop our clear judgements ; make us
Adore our errors ; laugh at's, while we strut
To our confusion.5
i III. vii, from 28. 3 IV. i. 4. 6 III. xiii. in.
2III. xi.3. * III. xiii. 31.
136 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
4. The doom of Antony has been sealed, though the struggle
continues a while longer. The diminution of the captain's brain,
as Enobarbus says, has restored his heart : J with supreme outburst
of valour Antony fights another battle, and beats the enemy to
their beds. A second fight is waged by sea and land : in the crisis
of the day the Egyptian fleet deserts bodily to the enemy. Then
the fall of Antony is complete : retribution has its full sway when
the final stroke has come from Cleopatra. But a fourth stage of the
action has become apparent, mingling with the preceding in the
scenes of the play : 2 when once the doom of Antony has been
assured, nemesis may gradually change to pathos. The hero is
plunged in tragic ruin, so far as the outer life is concerned, and
the ruin is just recompense ; but the inner life has now scope to
reveal itself, and the noble personality that is in Antony may rise
to its full height amid the fragments of his shattered career. The
infatuated commander disappears in the grand soldier; prodigies
of valour and generalship are shown, with an army passionately
devoted to their great chief. Eros, the personal attendant, slays
himself rather than do his sworn duty in lifting his hand against
Antony. Enobarbus, at the first sign of the end, had made peace
for himself with the enemy : his late master's generosity to the
deserter awakens in him a remorse that can only be quenched by
death.
I am alone the villain of the earth,
And feel I am so most. O Antony,
Thou mine of bounty, how would'st thou have paid
My better service, when my turpitude
Thou dost so crown with gold ! . . . I will go seek
Some ditch wherein to die.
Kingly flashes of just resentment, regardless of helplessness, show
the conqueror's advance guard that it is better playing with a lion's
whelp than with an old lion dying. Cleopatra, proved a traitor, is
cast off ; but, when the (false) news, of her death seems to vindi-
1 III. xiii. 195-200.
2 It affects the whole spirit of Act IV, but appears more especially from Scene
xiv.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 137
cate her innocence, the old love for which the world has been lost
returns in all its deepness, and this is the end for Antony.
Unarm, Eros ; the long day's task is done,
And we must sleep . . . From me awhile.
I will o'ertake thee, Cleopatra, and
Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now
All length is torture : since the torch is out,
Lie down and stray no farther ... I come, my queen . . ,
Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand,
And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze :
Dido and her /Eneas shall want troops,
And all the haunt be ours.
It is a Roman climax that Antony should take his life with his own
good sword.
Not Caesar's valour hath o'erthrown Antony,
But Antony's hath triumph'd on itself.
But it is a lingering death, and the guards fill the air with clamour.
Ant. Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate
To grace it with your sorrows : bid that welcome
Which comes to punish us. and we punish it
Seeming to bear it lightly.
Before death comes, Cleopatra is known to be living, and the two
meet : she, afraid to leave the monument lest she be taken prisoner
by Caesar, he, to the last advising how his love may be secure in
treating with the conqueror.
Ant. The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at, but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world,
The noblest ; and do not now basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman, — a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going ;
I can no more.
Caesar and his followers confirm the epitaph.1
i V. i. 30.
138 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Macenas. His taints and honours
Waged equal with him.
Agrippa. A rarer spirit never
Did steer humanity : but you, gods, will give us
Some faults to make us men. Cassar is touch'd.
5. But yet a further stage is to be seen in the action of this
drama.1 The steady movement of relentless tragedy at last seems
to awaken a soul in Cleopatra herself. All the while that Antony
has been standing at bay with ruin, and dying all nobleness and
love, the Egyptian has been packing cards with the conqueror,
ready if needs be to betray her lover. But the actual death of
Antony thrills a touch of womanhood into the fairy enchantress
of male hearts.
No more, but e'en a woman, and commanded
By such poor passion as the maid that milks
And does the meanest chares . . . All's but naught ;
Patience is sottish, and impatience does
Become a dog that's mad : then is it sin
To rush into the secret house of death,
Ere death dare come to us ? . . .
We'll bury him ; and then, what's brave, what's noble,
Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
And make death proud to take us.
It is but an imitative virtue which has begun to animate Cleopatra,
and it is seen side by side with negotiations by which she tries her
false arts on a Caesar as false as herself. But with growing hopeless
ness the new thought gains strength.2
My desolation does begin to make
A better life. 'Tis paltry to be Caesar ;
Not being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave,
A minister of her will : and it is great
1 In the main, Act V; commencing from the death of Antony in IV. xiv.
2 V. ii.
ROMAN LIFE DRAMATISED 139
To do that thing that ends all other deeds ;
Which shackles accidents and bolts up change ;
Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug,
The beggar's nurse and Caesar's.
One more negotiation, and attempt to save something out of the
wreck, and suddenly Cleopatra finds herself taken prisoner by
treachery. Now the outer skin of feminine daintiness in which
her wild spirit had ever been wrapped is touched.
This mortal house I'll ruin,
Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I
Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court,
Nor once be chastised with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up
And show me to the shouting varletry
Of censuring Rome?
Two motives are combining their full force in Cleopatra : outraged
delicacy, and memory of Antony.
I dream'd there was an Emperor Antony . . .
His legs bestrid the ocean : his rear'd arm
Crested the world : his voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends ;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty, j
There was no winter in't ; and autumn 'twas
That grew the more by reaping.1
Unity of purpose becomes ever stronger, and settles into a charac
ter for Cleopatra.
Now from head to foot
I am marble-constant ; now the fleeting moon
No planet is of mine.2
The two elements of this character are reflected in the final scene :
she has "pursued conclusions infinite to die," and discovered the
i V. ii. 76. 2 V. ii. 240.
140 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
delicate wonder of the aspic ; yet, in approaching death, she is
rising nearer to Antony.
I have
Immortal longings in me ... methinks I hear
Antony call ; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act ; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar . . . Husband, I come :
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air : my other elements
1 give to baser life.1
So, in royal robes and crown, her maidens beside her sharing her
fate, Cleopatra finds the stroke of death like a lover's pinch, which
hurts and is desired ; as sweet as balm, as soft as air. What the
Roman conquerors break in to behold is the ideal of Roman con
stancy imitated in the cold marble of luxurious daintiness.
She shall be buried by her Antony :
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous. High events as these
Strike those that make them ; and their story is
No less in pity than his glory which
Brought them to be lamented.
1 V. ii, from 283.
VII
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED
POETRY is the chemistry of human life, and the theatre is the
moral laboratory. Just as the physicist supplements observation
by experiment, setting up artificial combinations of forces in order
that he may watch these working out to a natural issue, so it is
the high function of story to initiate some special situation of
characters and circumstances pregnant with moral suggestiveness ;
the course of the story then follows the situation as in the nature
of things it unfolds itself and reaches a point of satisfaction, the
initial doubt satisfied, the initial perplexity resolved into clearness.
The Shakespearean drama abounds in these moral problems drama
tised. Sometimes the situation which constitutes the problem
seems to arise casually in the course of human affairs. In other
cases there may be even within the story itself traces of con
trivance and design to set up a pregnant situation ; the problem
then becomes, in the fullest sense, an experiment in morals.
I have elsewhere l discussed at length the play of King Lear as
a problem drama : its plot may be thus stated. When Lear, at a
check from Cordelia, suddenly overturns the carefully arranged
division of the kingdom, we have imperious passion overthrowing
conscience (represented in the interference of Kent), and setting
up an unnatural distribution of power : power being taken from
the good (Cordelia) and lodged in the hands of the bad (Goneril
and Regan). The situation of unstable moral equilibrium thus
set up makes the problem : for its solution we trace three interests
side by side in the sequel of events. First, we have the nemesis
1 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist : Chapter X.
141
142 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
upon the wrongdoer ; a double nemesis, for Lear receives only ill
from the daughters unjustly exalted, only good from the Cordelia
he has injured. Again, in the sufferings of the innocent Cordelia
and Kent we see a second consequence of Lear's wrong. For
a third, we note, in the adulterous intrigues of Goneril and Regan,
how power in the hands of the evil is used by them only to work
out their own destruction. The problem as thus stated is dupli
cated in the underplot : in the family of Gloucester a father is
misled into an unnatural distribution of power, power being
wrongfully taken from the good (Edgar) and assigned to the
bad (Edmund); there is the same triple series of consequences —
the double nemesis on the wrongdoer, the sufferings of the inno
cent, the unrighteous exaltation used by Edmund for the intrigues
in which he meets his doom. Again : the special interest of the
Court Fool which is introduced into this play serves to emphasise
a plot of this kind ; it is just where Lear's sufferings at the hands
of his daughters might divert our sympathies into a different
channel that the Jester's part, with its strange compound of idle
fooling with home thrusts of rebuke, comes to keep before us the
idea that Lear is only meeting the solution of the problem his own
rash act has set up. One more interest completes the plot of
Lear. Though the underplot is a duplication of the main plot,
yet there is a difference of spirit between the two. When Lear
would sin, conscience strongly embodied in Kent starts up to
hinder ; in the case of Gloucester there is no such restraining
power, but, on the contrary, the strong Edmund is a force tempt
ing and leading his too credulous father on to his fatal error.
Thus in the dim background of the story is suggested one of the
fundamental problems of the moral world : how there are two
types of sinners, those whose environment is a restraining force,
like an embodied conscience, and those on the contrary, whose
whole surroundings make one embodied temptation. The wider
problem is only touched ; something however of solution is hinted
when we note how the tempter who misleads Gloucester is the
offspring of illicit amour, so announced by Gloucester at the be-
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 143
ginning of the play in a tone of unrepenting levity : l the fruits of
the former sins are seen to make the temptations of the future.
In this play the problem takes the form of disturbed equilibrium
in the moral world working out to a position of rest. In Measure
for Measure the movement is of a different character : the com
plexity of a situation may present itself to our minds as a problem,
and the solution will display complexity gradually drawn into
moral harmony. Much of our thinking on ethical subjects falls
into the form of antitheses : not oppositions, as when good is set
against evil, honesty against fraud ; but relations of ideas which
may be in opposition, but also may be in harmony. A twofold
conception of this kind underlies the plot of Measure for Measure.
One is the antithesis of purity and passion. For the other, the
old antithesis of outer and inner life appears in the form of the
law and the individual. These two antitheses underlie all parts
of the plot, bringing its complexity up to the level of a moral
problem ; the climax reveals the diverse elements in complete
reconciliation.
The life presented in Measure for Measure takes a threefold
form as it is surveyed from the standpoint of purity. We have
what may be called respectable life : the law of purity is here fully
accepted ; there is sin against purity in Angelo and Claudio, but
their full acceptance of the law plunges them in bitter remorse.
Between this and its opposite we find, represented in Lucio, that
which is excellently described by the term ordinary conversation
applies to it — loose life: respectability is claimed, yet there is
tampering with vice, the spirit of raillery acting like Milton's con
ception of an easy bridge from earth to hell. And in the third
place we have low life : not only is it vicious, but vice is an accepted
institution.
At this point a question arises which is a disturbance to many
readers : Why should low life of this type be allowed to appear on
the stage at all ? The iniquity of the brothel and the life of pros-
1 I. i, from 9. For the whole chapter compare pages 353 and 354.
144 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
titution we are unwilling even to name in ordinary social inter
course, although all know of its existence. Yet in the poetry of
Shakespeare we find such life presented ; more than this, we seem
often led into a sort of half sympathy, not indeed for the thing
itself, but for some of those who are involved in its evil.
The question is part of a wider one; and the answer is the
easier if we look at life from the standpoint of our second antithe
sis, that of the law and the individual. No moral system can be
complete that does not make provision for what may be called
Institutional Ethics : the complex ethical attitude that has to be
maintained to the institution and to the individuals involved in it.
War, considered in itself, must be classed as a moral wrong :
founded on hate, its instruments bloodshed and violence, involv
ing at times ruthlessness as a positive duty. Yet who will ques
tion that among warriors are sometimes to be found the highest
types of moral greatness, while the work of war will often serve as
a school of self-sacrifice and virtue? Poetry has always known
how to consecrate the ideal of outlaw life by special types of it,
although in itself this life is in antagonism to fundamental laws of
property. Every reader of Paradise Lost feels in the course
of the poem the attractiveness of Satan as a grand moral person
ality, although this Satan, by his position in the universe, is irre
concilably at war with supreme Good, and is seeking to seduce
innocence into his own perversion. We have to separate, mentally,
the institution and the individual ; responsibility for the institution
is one thing, responsibility of the individual is another. Whereso
ever the responsibility for a war rests, there is terrible guilt ; but
this does not suspend the moral law for the individuals plunged
into war without fault on their part. In practical life it may be
almost impossible to separate the two responsibilities. The judge
may not say to the prisoner : The burglary of which you have been
convicted deserves a ten years' sentence, but, in consideration of
the magnificent stand you made against the police while your
young comrade was escaping, I reduce your sentence by one half.
The judge would be more likely to increase the sentence for an
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 145
additional offence against social order ; yet the irresponsible by
stander would nevertheless be touched by self-sacrificing comrade
ship, and all the more touched by the fact that it was exhibited in
a burglar. Now, in all art we who see or read are in the position of
spectators : we may give our full sympathy to the individual with
out any sense of responsibility for the institution. There is, of
course, nothing in Shakespeare to make the vicious institution
itself attractive. The Friar voices our loathing of it :
The evil that thou causest to be done,
That is thy means to live. Do thou but think
What 'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
From such a filthy vice.1
The preacher's moralising on lust as the path to destruction does
not come home so keenly as Pompey's humour when he finds him
self in the common prison.
I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of profes
sion : one would think it were Mistress Overdone\s own house,
for here be many of her old customers. . . . We have here
young Dizy, and young Master Deep- Vow, and Master Copper-
spur, and Master Starve-lackey the rapier and dagger man,
and young Drop-heir that killed lusty Pudding, and Master
Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shooty the great
traveller, and wild Half-can that stabbed Pots, and, I think,
forty more ; all great doers in our trade, and are now ' for the
Lord's sake.'2
Meanwhile, even in this region of accepted vice, moral differences
are yet to be discriminated, and our sympathy distinguishes be
tween such as Overdone, who is vicious and nothing else, and
Pompey, in whom, though he may be as guilty as his mistress, the
salt of humour has kept the human nature from going entirely bad.
Not only the general field of life surveyed but also the individ
ual personages rest for their dramatic interest on the same ideas.
l III. ii. 21. 2 IV. iii. i.
146 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The most important personages of the play group themselves
naturally around the antithesis of purity and passion. Especially
interesting is Angelo. The contrast between the Angelo of the
opening scenes and Angelo fallen is not a contrast to be explained
by hypocrisy. Angelo is sincere in his devotion to purity, and Isa
bella in time comes to see this.1 But his devotion — though he is
ignorant of the fact until he is tested — is not to a principle, but
to a cause : Angelo is a partisan of purity. It has become a battle-
cry between parties ; Angelo has taken his side, and eagerly adopts
all the livery of his party and enthusiasm of the fight, illustrating
how zealously a man may strive on behalf of a principle which
nevertheless has not entered deeply into his heart. The Duke's
word, " Lord Angelo is precise," suggests the " precisian " or Puri
tan ; we hear of " the outward-sainted deputy," of his " settled
visage," his " dressings, characts, titles, forms ; " the vicious in the
story sneer at Angelo as if his blood were " very snow-broth," how
" a sea-maid spawned him," or " he was begot between two stock
fishes ; " he himself makes " levity " in Mariana his excuse for
forsaking her.2 Above all, under the full force of temptation he
gives us a glimpse of self-revelation :
Yea, my gravity,
Wherein — let no man hear me — I take pride,
Could I with boot change for an idle plume.8
At an opposite point from this Angelo we have Isabella, in whom
purity is a passion. Not only is her brother's crime " the vice
she most abhors and most desires should meet the blow of justice,"
but even legitimate passion she has renounced ; she is entering
upon a celibate life, and desiring a stricter restraint for the sister
hood.4 Her innocence is of course spotless from first to last ; but,
instead of love harmonised with purity, we here have an over
balancing as between the two forms of good, and, passionate for
i v. i. 450.
2I.iii.5o; I. iv. 57; III. i. 89, 90; III. ii. 115; V. i. 56, 222.
3 II. iv. 9. 4 I. iv. 3; II. ii. 29.
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 147
purity, Isabella is cold to claims of love. Hence even Lucio
appears at a moral advantage for a moment, when he presses upon
Isabella the duty to her brother from which she shrinks :
Lucio. Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.1
The crisis of the story distracts Isabella between claims of kinship
and defence of outraged purity ; we see the overbalanced nature
in the cruel rage with which she turns upon her brother in his
moment of weakness.2 Even before this in soliloquy she has said —
More than our brother is our chastity.3
No one will dare to contradict : but what do we think of the
woman who can calmly formulate the principle?
Two more types complete this group. Mariana is all passion,
but it is passion within the law of purity. If she seems to descend
from the highest tone in consenting to the device by which the
faithless Angelo is won, yet this measures the depth of the love
which prompts the sacrifice. Mariana again is an illustration of
the strange power of love to fasten upon the ideal, to love the
man not for what he is but for what he is capable of becoming.4
In Claudio and Juliet we have passion in conflict with the letter
of the law. Their love is pure, their mutual fidelity inviolate ;
what they have sinned against is the conventional form of marriage
which society throws as a hedge around the law of purity, and
they have done this from motives of pecuniary interest.5 Accord
ingly discovery not only brings them into danger, but also plunges
them in remorse.
The administration of justice in this story gives us a small group
of characters, distinguished by their relations to the antithesis of
the law and the individual. The Provost is perfect in the balance
of his allegiance to both. As a subordinate official, law is to him
l I. iv. 77. 2111.1.136. « n. iv. 185.
4 Compare V. i. 430-46. fi I. ii, from 149.
148 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
his oath of office, and under the strongest temptation he will not
violate this ; 1 within this one limit he is seen forever toiling to
soften the rigour of justice for those with whom he has to do ; the
Duke recognises this.
This is a gentle provost ; seldom when
The steeled gaoler is the friend of men.2
Elbow the constable belongs to the shallowest nature of which
men can be made ; he is fussily all for justice, as that whereby he
gains self-importance.3 The most interesting of the group is
Escalus. The administration of justice is a perpetual conflict
between law as an orderly science and the infinite variety of indi
vidual cases to which it has to be applied. The opening of the
play presents Escalus as deeply versed in legal science.4
Duke. The nature of our people,
Our city's institutions, and the terms
For common justice, you're as pregnant in
As art and practice hath enriched any
That we remember.
But what we see of this magistrate in the action of the play shows
a bias towards individuality rather than law. He is not weak, and
if necessary can be severe ; but what he seems to love in each case
is to study the human nature of the persons brought before him ;
he will pooh-pooh form and precedent if he can, with humour and
rough leniency, find some practical course to fit the special case,
and give everybody another chance.5 We are familiar with the
idea of lynch law : in Escalus we seem to have lynch mercy.
When we turn from interest of personality to interest of action
the character of the play as a problem with its solution becomes
much more clear. We find in Measure for Measure perhaps the
purest example in poetry of a moral experiment. This is no case
of a crisis arising of itself in the course of human events ; the
Duke, in his withdrawal from Vienna, is designedly contriving
1 IV. ii. 194. 8 ii. i, from 41 ; etc.
« IV. ii. 89. M.i. 10. ^ E.g. II. i.
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 149
special conditions in which he will be able to study the workings
of human nature. But the scientific experimenter knows that
nature is infinitely complex in its operations ; he can determine
for himself what forces he will set to work, but as to the mode in
which they will manifest themselves he must be prepared for the
unexpected ; he must watch his experiment, use means to keep it
within the channel he desires, and be prepared with resources to
meet what may arise of the accidental. Hence the Duke does
not really withdraw from his city, but hovers in disguise around
the experiment he has set in motion ; he secretly interferes from
time to time, and at the proper moment reveals himself and ter
minates the situation. Both the complication and the resolution
of the plot have their chief motive force in the Duke.
The design underlying the experiment of the plot rests upon
the antithesis of the law and the individual ; it is a double design,
with an application alike to the dispensers of justice and to its
victims. Imperfection in the administration of justice may arise
from the shortcomings of those who administer it ; moreover, so
deeply does precedent enter into the idea of law, that the laxity
of the past gives a tinge of injustice to later strictness. This is
exactly what the Duke puts to his confidant.1
Duke. We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
Which for this nineteen years we have let slip ;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock'd than fear'd ; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead ;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose ;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.
i I. iii.
150 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Friar. It rested in your grace
To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleased :
And it in you more dreadful would have seenVd
Than in Lord Angelo.
Duke. I do fear, too dreadful :
Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope,
'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them
For what I bid them do : for we bid this be done,
When evil deeds have their permissive pass,
And not the punishment.
Inspired by this perplexity the Duke has installed in his place the
two magistrates Angelo and Escalus, representing the two horns
of the dilemma : the workings of unpitying strictness and of con
siderate clemency are to be studied side by side. Angelo awakes
" all the enrolled penalties which have like unsecured armour hung
by the wall;" he will not have the law made a mere scarecrow.1
Escalus, urging moderation, addresses himself directly to the per
sonality of his colleague : might not even his strictness have
yielded had he been subject to a sorer trial? Angelo answers :
'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall. I not deny,
The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try. What's open made to justice,
That justice seizes : what know the laws
That thieves do pass on thieves? 2
Thus the characters of the men chosen by the Duke are just fitted
for bringing out one element in the experiment — the relationship
between law and the personality of those who administer justice.
But the personalities of those on whom justice is to be exercised,
not less than the characters of the judges, may raise the conflict
of law and individuality. Here again may be seen opposite bias
in the colleagues on the bench. When appeal of this kind is
made to Angelo, he answers :
1 1. ii. 170; II. i. i. a II. i. 17.
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 151
Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Why, every fault's condemn'd ere it be done :
Mine were the very cipher of a function,
To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,
And let go by the actor.
Escalus has no authority to interfere ; but he feels bitterly the
unequal pressure of justice on different individuals.
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall :
Some run through brakes of vice, and answer none ;
And some condemned for a fault alone.1
In its general scope then the experiment of the Duke is clear
and simple : strictness of justice and lenity are to be set separately
to work. But neither the Duke nor any one else could foresee
the exact issues that would arise as particular cases set these forces
in operation. Scarcely has Vienna been left to its new deputies
when the crime of Claudio — one who has grossly violated the
outward form of law while he is true to its spirit — brings into full
play the opposing principles : Escalus emphasises the extenua
ting circumstances, Angelo looks only at the offence. But this
Claudio has a sister Isabella who pleads with Angelo for her
brother : at once new moral issues appear of the deepest interest.
The first affects the character of Angelo. To a certain extent the
Duke had foreseen this.
Angelo,
There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to th' observer doth thy history
Fully unfold.'2
The expression " a kind of character " seems to veil a slight doubt
in the ruler's mind as to what the outer stamp upon the life of
Angelo might reveal to the assayer ; it is part of his experiment
that the possession of power should force the character of seeming
precision to reveal its true nature. But no one could have guessed
i II. 11.37; II. i. 38. 21. i.27.
152 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
in what form the assaying would come : that Angelo should be
confronted by a purity as zealous as his own, yet wholly different
in kind ; to use Angelo's own word, that " gravity " should be
tempted by " gravity."
What's this, what's this ? is it her fault or mine ?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she ; nor doth she tempt : but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? . . . What is't I dream on?
0 cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue ! l
As Isabella slowly warms to her work of interceding for Claudio
her womanly intuition penetrates the mystery of Angelo's nature ;
with the insight of ideal purity, she distinguishes between internal
and external purity, she catches Angelo's zeal for the cause, his
ambition to be its foremost champion.
So you must be the first that gives this sentence,
And he that suffers. O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength ; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.2
By the mere contact then of Angelo with Isabella a double effect
has been produced : Angelo has been suddenly revealed to him
self, and is being gradually revealed to Isabella. And with all this
is conjoined another moral issue of high interest : Isabella's own
personality has been drawn into the area of experiment, and there
is distraction in her soul between passionate purity and brotherly
love.
1 II. ii. 162. 2 II. ii. 106, and whole scene.
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 153
How then at this point does the plot of the play stand, consid
ered as an experiment in the field of morals ? One side of the
design has been fully revealed in the light of events — the relation
between justice and the character of the judge ; and the conclu
sion of the third act can moralise in the style of an epilogue :
He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe.1
But this stage of the experiment has been attained only at the
cost of a great moral conflict : Angelo is at deadly feud with An-
gelo, Isabella the nun knows not how to be true to Isabella the
sister of a brother Claudio ; Claudio himself is confronted with
the fullest vengeance of a law which, of all such offenders, Claudio
has least offended.
Here then a fresh stage in the plot unfolds itself: the experi
menter must come to the aid of his own experiment, and compli
cation passes into resolution. The soliloquy just quoted proceeds :
Craft against vice I must apply.
The expression may be somewhat startling, for fiction has accus
tomed us to associate intrigue with purposes of evil ; but there is
no reason why secret agency and finesse of contrivance may not
be employed in the service of good. The craft of the Duke is of
the craftiest : upon a grave moral crisis and impending sin of An
gelo is brought to bear a former moral error of the same man, and
so used that the one is averted and the other repaired.
Duke. Have you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of
Frederick the great soldier who miscarried at sea ?
Isab. I have heard of the lady, and good words went with
her name.
Duke. She should this Angelo have married ; was affianced
to her by oath, and the nuptial appointed: between which time
of the contract and limit of the solemnity, her brother Freder-
i III. ii. 275.
154 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
ick was wrecked at sea, having in that perished vessel the
dowry of his sister. But mark how heavily this befell to
the poor gentlewoman : there she lost a noble and renowned
brother, in his love toward her ever most kind and natural ;
with him the portion and sinew of her fortune, her marriage-
dowry ; with both, her combinate husband, this well-seeming
Angelo.
Isab. Can this be so? did Angelo so leave her?
Duke. Left her in tears, and dried not one of them with his com
fort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries
of dishonour: in few, bestowed her on her own lamentation,
which she yet wears for his sake ; and he, a marble to her
tears, is washed with them, but relents not.1
By the substitution of Mariana for Isabella, a crime committed
in intention by Angelo is made to redress his former injury ; a
supposed sin of Isabella saves her tempter from actual guilt ; and
further, the fancied sin is the price of salvation for Claudio.
But the unforeseen plays a part in all experiment. It comes as
a surprise, and yet is perfectly true to nature, that Angelo, in moral
revulsion and spiritual turmoil at his self-surrender to sin, should
plunge from one crime to another, from fear of consequences
basely withholding the price of his victim's ruin, and secretly has
tening the execution of her brother.2 The Duke must find some
expedient to meet this : he intrigues to substitute a hardened
criminal, long designated for well deserved execution, instead of
the Claudio whom over-rigorous justice was demanding. But an
obstacle arises : 3 at the last moment this Barnardine is found to
be in a reprobate frame of mind, utterly unmeet for death. The
whole experiment is threatened, when suddenly accident — that
plays so large a part in the providence of Shakespeare — intervenes
to save.
Provost. Here in the prison, father,
There died this morning of a cruel fever
One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate,
1 III. i, from 216. 2 IV. ii, from 118. 8 IV. iii, from 70.
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 155
A man of Claudio's years ; his beard and head
Just of his colour. What if we do omit
This reprobate till he were well inclined ;
And satisfy the deputy with the visage
Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio?
Duke. O, 'tis an accident that heaven provides !
With this final touch craft has done its full work against vice : in
all but the outward show of things, reserved for the final scene,
the main resolution of the plot is complete.
Meanwhile, in the person of Escalus, the other side of justice is
allowed its scope, that relaxes law in order to study the individual,
and find a treatment fitted to each single case ; the paternal jus
tice, that hopes against hope for the reformation of the sinner.
Escalus on the bench has evidently a keen enjoyment in studying
the human nature in front of him ; he can bandy wit with low life,
and meet it on its own ground.1 The fussy constable he soothes,
and gently leads up to the idea that society has been doing him an
injustice in burdening him so long with office. For the prisoners
the lenient justice of Escalus takes two forms. The first is, in spite
of plain guilt, to give one more opportunity of amendment ; but
this proves vain for such ingrained evil as that of Overdone and
Pompey.
Pompey. Whip me? No, no ; let carman whip his jade :
The valiant heart's not whipt out of his trade.
Where this kind of leniency has failed, there is yet possible mercy
in another form — discrimination of character. The woman, in
whom there is nothing for amendment to lay hold of, is left to her
fate.2 But Pompey, whose irrepressible humour reveals some depth
of soil in his original nature, has a sphere for himself even in
prison life. He even comes to be promoted — promoted to the
office of under-hangman : the common executioner however fears
that one of Pompey's former mode of life "will discredit our
mystery." 3
1 II. i. 2 in. ji. 201. 8 HI. ii ; IV. ii.
156 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The type of character represented in Lucio has also had its part
in the action. We do not build a gallows for a butterfly ; it satis
fies the fitness of things when loose humour is encountered by irony
of situation : here is a jocose problem and solution. 1 Lucio,
who is hail-fellow with all men, turns his light wit upon the strange
Friar ; the raillery that spares no subject, and insists upon bringing
everything down to its own level, plays upon the character of the
absent Duke — how "the Duke had crotchets in him," how he
would have had good reason for dealing differently with sins like
Claudio's.
Duke. Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to your
reports ; but the best is, he lives not in them.
Lucio. Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do :
he's a better woodman than thou takest him for.
Duke. Well, you'll answer this one day. Fare ye well.
Lucio. Nay, tarry ; I'll go along with thee ; I can tell thee
pretty tales of the Duke.
Duke. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if
they be true ; if not true, none were enough.
Lucio. I was once before him —
Lucio proceeds with confidential gaiety to blab his own misdeeds,
and hands justice a rod with which to scourge him. He enters
boisterously into the excitement of the final scene, enjoying his
own audacity as he puts on to the Friar his own slanders of the
Duke. Then, when all seems to go against this mysterious
stranger, Lucio is the first to lay violent hands upon him and pull
off his hood : levity itself gives the last touch that brings the
shock of denouement to the plot.
Thou art the first knave that e'er madest a Duke.
Thus the complication of this exquisite plot has reached its
adequate resolution ; the moral problem has been fully solved,
and the reconciling force emerges as Mercy in its many-sidedness.
1 IV. iii, from 154 ; V. i.
MORAL PROBLEMS DRAMATISED 157
Angelo, in his zealous service for the cause of purity, has encoun
tered a shock, revealing to him that he is not pure ; giving his sen
sual race the rein, he has plunged from sin to sin. All the while,
unknown to him, his slighted love has been an embodiment of
mercy, by dark means restoring him to himself, still innocent as
regards actions, and for guilty intentions giving the hope that best
men may be moulded out of faults. Isabella, cold to love in her
passion for purity, has nevertheless been led to become an angel
of mercy for her unhappy brother, while for herself she has, with
out seeking, found in the Duke a power that will make purity and
passion one. Claudio and Juliet by their sufferings have made
atonement to the letter of the law which they have violated, while
they were true to its spirit, and so have their part in the harmony
of mercy. We seem to see a reconciling force beneath the course
of events as we behold levity encountered by irony ; or again, as
characters that have sunk to the depths find in the lowest depth
some recognition of what is yet good in them. Surveying from
all its sides this drama of Justice we catch a majestic presentation
of Mercy, not as diluted and weakened Justice, but as something
transcending Justice, holding allegiance equally to the law and the
individual, giving scope for the warmth of passion while it does
reverence to the light of purity. What Shakespeare dramatises in
the concrete, Spenser had already celebrated in ideal form.
For if that virtue be of so great might,
Which from just verdict will for nothing start,
But, to preserve inviolated right,
Oft spills the principal to save the part :
So much more, then, is [Mercy] of power and art
Which seeks to save the subject of her skill,
Yet never doth from doom of right depart ;
As it is greater praise to save than spill,
And better to reform than to cut off the ill.1
1 Faerie Queene, V. x. 2.
VIII
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM
THE two plays treated in the preceding chapter have illustrated
two out of the three classes into which the Shakespearean Drama
is ordinarily divided — tragedy and comedy. It is natural, in an
attempt to survey Shakespeare's world in its moral complexity, to
ask, What is tragedy? and what is comedy? Possibly, indeed,
this inquiry might legitimately be evaded. It is not certain that
the descriptive title under which a literary work is announced is
a part of the literary work itself. Obviously, as the words ' tragic,'
' comic ' are used in ordinary conversation, it is difficult to apply
them to Shakespeare ; what can be less comic than the scene
between Isabella and her brother in prison? and what can be
more comic than the Fool in Lear? Moreover, a possible
explanation for the misapplication of the terms is ready to hand.
Shakespeare produced his plays in an age which strove to adapt
all literature to the forms of the literature of Greece. Now in
Greek drama the distinction of tragedy and comedy was absolute ;
the two were never combined in the same representation, and the
criticism of the age understood the difference between tragedy
and comedy to be just that between the words ' serious ' and
' laughable.' l It would be entirely in keeping with the general
tendencies of Elizabethan literature that two terms of ancient
drama should be applied in a modern literature where they might
really have no place. Accordingly, I have elsewhere 2 advocated
the use of different terms to express the divisions of the Shake -
1 Spoudaios and geloios.
2 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, page 372.
158
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 159
spearean drama. But, whether the terms be appropriate or not,
the classification they attempt to convey is a real one : to examine
the principle underlying the classification is the object of this
and the following chapter.
The examination here attempted must be distinguished from
another treatment of the subject often followed, by which concep
tions of tragedy and comedy are formed from first principles and
the nature of things, and then particular plays are tried by this
conception as to the degree to which they satisfy it. All such
judicial criticism is outside the scope of the present work : we are
to form our conceptions of Shakespearean tragedy and comedy
only from the nature and contents of plays so designated. But
in carrying this principle into operation one consideration should
be borne in mind. Every species of literature is the heir of the
whole literary past : whatever has constituted an element of
dramatic poetry before Shakespeare may possibly reappear in the
Shakespearean Drama, in subordination to or as a part of that which
gives the new species of drama its distinctiveness. A rapid review
then of certain earlier forms of drama and kindred literature will
make a favourable position from which to undertake our specific
inquiry what in Shakespeare is tragedy, and what is comedy. It
will be convenient to begin with the subject of comedy, reserving
tragedy for the next chapter.
The literary evolution of which Shakespeare is a part takes its
origin, not from early English literature, but from the literature
of Greece. In primitive Greek life, at a time when all kinds of
social activity found literary expression in some form of ballad
dance, the ' comus ' was the ballad dance of the revel.1 The same
persons, it might be, who at one part of the day had in the stately
and restrained dance of the ' chorus ' breathed their adoration to
the gods, would at another part of the day throw off restraint,
1 The origin of comedy in the comus, and its early stages of development, are
treated at length in my Ancient Classical Drama, Chapter VII, and subsequent
chapters.
160 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
and, wildly dancing hand in hand through a whole country side,
abandon themselves to rhythmic mirth and every kind of boister
ous jollity. All that the comus uttered was ' comedy ' : thus in
its ultimate origin the whole spirit of comedy was comprehended
in fun and self-abandonment. Soon, as we know, a modification
took place ; the custom arose of halting the comus dance at cross
roads, while the revellers exchanged bouts of chaff and popular
badinage with one another and with passers-by ; here we get,
not fun only, but fun directed against an object, or satire. Yet
another modification was caused by the peculiar social conditions
of ancient Greece. It was a country made up of sharply con
trasting states, aristocratic and democratic. Where democratic
institutions prevailed the license of the comus would know no
limits, and might touch everybody and everything in public or
private life. Where, on the other hand, aristocracy was supreme,
it is easy to understand how popular satire would be restrained
from attacking individuals or political questions ; the energies of
the comus would be concentrated upon satirising human nature
in general, or particular classes of society. Accordingly, as a
matter of historic fact, the aristocratic states of Greece and its
colonies early brought into prominence a form of comedy depend
ing mainly upon social satire, the ridiculing of the quack, or the
market thief, or whatever type of early society was obnoxious
to popular feeling : in literary technicalities this is ' caricature.'
Thus within the limits of primitive literature the spirit of comedy
already appears to be complex, comprehending the three elements
of fun, satire, and caricature.
The evolution of comedy next brings us to a distinct literary
revolution, which gave the world Old Attic Comedy and Aristoph
anes. This revolution consisted, essentially, in the fact that
comedy came to imitate the structure of tragedy. While the
former was a rude popular sport, tragedy in Greece — an inter
weaving of dramatic scenes on the stage with elaborate choral
odes in the orchestra — had become a solemn religious ceremo
nial, celebrated with great magnificence at the public expense.
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM l6l
The mode by which a tragic representation was secured was ex
pressed by the technical phrase that the poet " received a chorus "
from the magistrate ; it was understood that, with the chorus, all
the expenses of training and mounting were provided for him.
Now, a phrase of Aristotle in his historic sketch informs us that
" it was late before comedy received a chorus." The history un
derlying that simple statement seems to have been this. The
comic poets would naturally desire to share the privileges of their
brethren of tragedy ; if they had applied — as, logically, they
ought to have done — for a comus, the magistrate would meet
them with the answer that there was no precedent for equipping
a comus at the public expense ; they therefore put a bold face on
the matter and requested a chorus, and at length from some
friendly magistrate obtained it. Once a comic poet had ob
tained his chorus he would have the full privileges of public rep
resentation ; only of course he must use the chorus, and so cast his
comedy in the structural form of dramatic scenes separated by
choral odes. It is true that the chorus — most stately of all bal
lad dances — was entirely incongruous with comedy. But incon
gruity is itself a comic effect : in this idea we get the distinctive
spirit of the Old Attic Comedy. It is still, what earlier comedy
has been, wild fun, satire, caricature ; but in structure it must
alternate and combine choral songs with actor's dialogue ; above
all, the presence of the chorus favours the sudden change from
comic to serious, from popular fun to elevated poetry. The Clouds
of Aristophanes burlesques the new education by farcical scenes
representing a rough lout, and his son an effeminate fop, trying to
learn the new methods of Socrates ; as part of the burlesque Soc
rates is made out an atheist, worshipping no gods except the virgin
Clouds. This gives opportunity for a chorus of Clouds, moving
about the orchestra with delicate dance motions ; they take a
small share in the general burlesque, but can also give opportu
nity for the highest lyrical poetry, embodying exquisite concep
tions of cloud life : how —
1 62 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Lightly they rest on the time-honoured crest of Olympus,
environed in snow,
Or tread the soft dance mid the stately expanse of old Ocean,
the nymphs to beguile,
Or stoop to enfold in their pitchers of gold the mystical waves
of the Nile;
Or around the white foam of Maeotis they roam, or Mimas
all wintry and bare.
A revolution in art has thus introduced a new element into liter
ature ; the conception of comedy has enlarged to take in the
serious. The mixture of tones — sharp contrasts of comic and
serious, rudeness and poetic elevation — has obtained an estab
lished place in dramatic literature.
A great mass of Greek literature, representing many stages in
dramatic evolution, has been entirely lost ; when comedy is next
seen it is in the hands of the Romans. As we might expect, this
Roman comedy exhibits a great change from the old Attic type.
We are not concerned here with structural change, such as the
loss of the chorus, which has left in its place some metrical flexi
bility and a tendency towards moralising. But in its general
spirit Roman comedy, without losing the old, has admitted a
pew element ; it is dominated by what is among the most per
manent of all literary interests — the interest of story. The term
' story ' may cover any narrative of events ; but story par excellence
is seen where the succession of incidents moves in the form of
complication and resolution. These terms seem to explain them
selves. To take illustration from story in its simplest form. An
anecdote tells of a disappointed lover wishing to commit suicide,
only he is deterred by fear — not fear of dying, but of failing to
die. At last, grown more desperate, he provides himself with a
pistol, a rope, a phial of poison, and a box of matches, and he
climbs to a precipice overhanging the sea. He fastens the rope
to a projecting tree and puts the loop round his neck ; then he
loads the pistol, swallows the poison, strikes the matches and puts
them in his bosom, jumps off the precipice, and fires at his fore-
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 163
head as he jumps. We have complication enough of suicide when
a man is being at once hanged, poisoned, shot, and burned, to say
nothing of a death by drowning suggested from below. Resolu
tion of this complication is found in the simple circumstance that
the aim of the pistol was bad, that the ball severed the rope and
the man fell into the sea, which put out the fire, while the tossing
on the waves before he could get to shore made the unhappy man
vomit the poison, so that he found himself alive after all. This
device of leading events into a complication only that the compli
cation may be resolved makes one of the most prominent forms
of story interest for all literature. In Roman comedy it is the
pure interest of story, simple or complicated, which is supreme.
The older elements of comedy are not lost : there is the mixture
of burlesque scenes with serious moralising ; there is plenty of
satire and broad fun ; and caricature is seen enlarged by three
specially Roman types, of the parasite (or diner-out), the saucy
slave joking old jokes like a modern clown, and the sharper. But
these interests belong to details, or tend to make a separate un
derplot ; the main plot rests, not upon the fun or extravagance of
the matter, but upon the interest of the story itself with its com
plication and resolution. The Captives of Plautus presents a
father using his wealth to purchase prisoners of war, in order that
he may have wherewith to make exchange for his own son, who
has recently been taken prisoner by the enemy. Among his pur
chases is a certain master with his slave ; in reality the slave is
another son of the same father stolen away in childhood : already
we have the complication of a father unconsciously holding his
own son as a slave. The complication increases as the captive
master and slave arrange secretly to exchange positions, so that
the slave (supposed to be the master) may be retained, while the
real master (supposed to be the slave) is sent away into the ene
my's country to arrange for ransom. In time the father discovers
the fraud that has been put upon him, and in anger dooms the
remaining captive (his own son in fact) to the hard labour of the
quarries. The resolution comes with the return of the other son,
164 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
duly ransomed, and at the same time the arrival of the runaway
slave who had years ago stolen the child : through the latter the
identity of this stolen child with the captive doomed to the quar
ries is made known, and all ends happily. The working out of
this complication and resolution is the main business of the play ;
but through its scenes there flits a parasite of the usual type, with
monstrous caricature of eating powers and social servility ; he is
given a slight connection with the main business in being the first
to announce the return of the son from captivity, for which he
claims free quarters in the household for life. A main plot with
interest of story, and an underplot of caricature, make this a
typical Roman comedy.
The comedy then of ancient literature embraced all these in
terests of fun, satire, caricature, the intermingling of serious with
gay matter, and, to crown all, the supreme interest of story with
its complication and resolution. One remark must be added.
Partly through connection of primitive drama with religious ritual,
and partly through mechanical difficulties of early stage repre
sentation, the ancient drama was limited to a single scene. Lack
ing the device of scene-changing, ancient comedy was prevented
from presenting the whole course of a story ; it could put on the
stage only the end or the crisis of the story, leaving other parts
of it to be inferred or suggested indirectly. In technical phrase,
the whole of ancient comedy was comedy of situation : its move
ment was an opening situation of complication developed to a
resolution. And this kind of movement has come to be called
' classical/ to distinguish it from movement of an opposite type,
such as we find in Shakespeare and romantic drama.
Between the close of the ancient drama and the Elizabethan
age there intervenes a vast gulf of time : the Roman empire,
with its Greek- Roman literature, is slowly passing into the civilisa
tion of modern Europe, but passing through ' dark ages/ in which
literature and art and the higher culture seem in danger of being
lost in a social chaos, while the one civilisation which has fallen
into decay is grappling with the other civilisation not yet emerged
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 165
from barbarism. Among other changes of this period drama
ceases to be a vital form of literature ; the stage gives place to the
minstrel as the purveyor of popular amusement, and instead of
acted story we get story narrated. At the same time story be
comes, more than at any other time, the dominant interest in
literature. The minstrels were a wandering class, passing from
place to place and from people to people, and drawing the mytho
logical stores of all nations into a common stock ; the dark ages
became a vast gathering ground for stories of all kinds — stories
long and short, epic and anecdote, serious tales and funny, narra
tives sacred and profane. From the fact that such stories passed
from spoken into written literature at a time when the Romance
languages were in process of formation, the term ' romance ' has
come to describe the mediaeval accumulation of story lore.
In several points the phenomena of this romance are important
for their bearing on the literature of the future. To this period
we are indebted for the immense accentuation of story among the
leading interests of literature — the interest of story for story's
sake, apart from the mode in which it is presented. Again,
romance gives us, not merely multiplication, but also aggregation
of stories : literary interest is felt in interweaving many different
tales into a system. Sometimes a common moral purpose, as in
the Gesta Romanorum or Gower's Lover's Confession, will be
made an excuse for a collection of stories. Or, one introductory
tale will ingeniously be treated as a thread on which to string any
number of other tales : the Arabian Nights and Canterbury Tales
are familiar examples. But the most important influence of
romance in the evolution of literature was the fact that it set free
story from the limitations imposed upon it by the ancient stage ;
instead of being cramped into the one form of a complicated
situation resolving, the stories of romance were free to follow
natural movement, and exhibit the whole course of events from
beginning to end.
Yet another of the phenomena of romance is to be noted, which
has a more immediate bearing upon the subject of the present
1 66 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
chapter. 'Tragedy' and 'comedy' passed into romance as terms
for narrated stories, and gradually a considerable amount of change
came over the relative signification of the two words. Originally,
in Greek drama, tragedy and comedy were distinct things, the
one serious, the other amusing. Later, even within the limits of
classical drama, we have seen how comedy enlarged its meaning
and allowed the serious to mingle with the ludicrous. When all
limitation due to connection with particular festivals was removed,
the stories of romance would be still freer to follow human life in
the mixture of tones, light and dark drawn closer together in
tragedies and comedies alike. But a more specific change came
about, that was destined to influence greatly the drama of the
future. Fashion is a potent factor in art ; in the latter part of the
romance period a certain type of story came into fashion, and
more and more maintained its hold on the popular mind. It
found expression in collection after collection of story lore, per
haps the most characteristic of which belongs to a later period — •
the Mirror for Magistrates. Under this name appeared, one
after another, encyclopaedias of stories, all cast in one mould ;
the word ' magistrate ' was applied to one who had held any
exalted station, and the interest of the story lay in his fall from
this exaltation. Greatness fallen had become the most popular
theme of story in a story age. Gradually the word 'tragedy,'
though no doubt it could still be used of any serious story, came
more and more in the popular mind to suggest this overpowering
interest of an exaltation and a fall. And, as tragedy was becom
ing specialised in its significance, in the same proportion the cor
relative word 'comedy' was enlarging to take in any story that
was not, in the newer sense, a tragedy. This accounts for the
curious circumstance that the most profoundly serious story ever
composed, a story leading us through hell, purgatory, and paradise,
could be entitled by Dante ' The Divine Comedy ' : to mediaeval
ears this need suggest no more than ' The Divine Story.'
Shakespeare belongs to the Romantic Drama ; that is to say, to
the amalgamation of drama and romance. The Renaissance
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 1 67
terminated the dark ages by bringing fully to light the literature
of ancient Greece and Rome. The masterpieces of this literature
were spread over western Europe, and inspired new literary cre
ation. The magnificent dramas of antiquity became models for
Elizabethan playwrights : " Seneca could not be too heavy for
them, nor Plautus too light." But the matter which they under
took to dramatise was taken from the story books of romance, in
cluding the chronicle histories which were treated as romances :
here is found the other constituent element of Elizabethan drama.
The influence of romance, with its long hold on the popular mind,
was not less powerful than the inspiration upon the dramatists of
the classical models ; in a Shakespearean play it is clear that the
purpose to lead up to dramatic situations and effects is not more
prominent than the purpose to do justice to the story for its own
sake. When romantic dramas are compared with the classical
dramas of antiquity, it is easy to see how the powerful influence
of romance has been able to sweep away all the limitations of the
old dramatic form ; how there is no longer any obstacle to the
free intermingling of serious and light tones ; how stage repre
sentation has had to adapt itself to romantic interest, and, by free
multiplication of scenes, with intervals between the scenes, make
provision for presenting the whole course of a story from begin
ning to end.
We are now in a position to take up the main question of this
chapter : What is the Shakespearean conception of comedy? We
may expect to find that it will comprehend all that has been an
element of comedy in the past ; further, that its distinctiveness
will rest upon the union of drama with romance. The conception
may be formulated under two heads, which can be treated sepa
rately. For the first, we may say that Comedy in Shakespeare is
story raised to its highest power.
Even in Roman Comedy the interest of story was supreme ; the
romance of the dark ages not only emphasised this interest, but
also widened the meaning of the word 'comedy' until it became
1 68 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
almost equivalent to ' story.' In Shakespeare story is raised to the
highest power as the harmony of many stories. Plot in romantic
drama differs from classical plot as harmony in music differs from
unison; it is a federation of several stories, any one of which
would have made a whole plot for an ancient dramatist. The
Merchant of Venice furnishes a simple illustration. Here we have
two main stories, taken from distinct books of romance well known
at the time. One is the story of the cruel Jew : how a Christian
merchant came to enter into a bond with a Jewish creditor the
terms of which involved a pound of the debtor's flesh ; how the
bond came to be forfeited ; how at the last moment it was pointed
out that no provision had been made for the shedding of blood,
and on this pretext the bond was upset. The other is the story
of the caskets : that a father bequeathed his daughter's hand and
fortune to the suitor who should make the right choice between
three caskets ; that many failed, but the real lover chose the
right casket and won the maiden. The two stories are inter
woven by Shakespeare in this manner : he makes the desire to
assist Bassanio, the lover in the caskets story, the motive of An
tonio, the merchant of the other story, in his entering into the
strange bond ; while Portia, the maiden of the caskets, is the dis
guised judge who upsets the bond and saves the merchant ; two
stories could not be more neatly interwoven than when the hero
of the one is the complicating force of the other, and the heroine
of the one the resolving force of the other. But the plot of The
Merchant of Venice includes more stories than these. There is
the story of the betrothal ring : how a betrothed maiden happens,
when in disguise, to meet her lover, and entices from him his
betrothal ring ; returning to him in her proper guise she teases
him for a while, and then the mystery is explained. The inter
weaving of this third story with the other two is on this wise :
Portia's appearance as a judge in the Venetian court, however
grand a thing in itself, gives a touch of the masculine at the
moment to her character ; between this and the end of the play is
inserted this girlish frolic of the ring mystery, and the heroine's
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 169
character is felt to be exquisitely balanced before the curtain falls.
Again, place is found in the plot for a fourth story. The story of
the Jew involves an interval of three months between the signing
of the bond and its falling due ; instead of supposing an interval
between the acts, Shakespeare introduces a new interest — the
elopement of Jessica the Jew's daughter with the Christian
Lorenzo, and thus fills the gap of three months with a succession
of busy scenes, converting a weakness into a strength. These
four distinct stories move side by side through the scenes of the
play, supporting one another by a sort of dramatic counterpoint,
like the four parts of a musical harmony. In reality, the plot of
The Merchant of Venice is even more complex than this, and two
out of the four stories are duplicated : not only Portia, but also
her maid Nerissa has an adventure with a betrothal ring ; just as
the Jew's daughter is wedded to a Christian husband, so his
roguish servant Launcelot is transferred to Christian service.1
A Shakespearean comedy then is a harmony of many stories.
But, while the term may mean a simple sequence of events, we
have seen that story par excellence is found where the move
ment leads us through a complication of affairs to a resolution.
Hence it is natural to find that a large proportion of the stories in
Shakespeare's plots are complicated and resolved. Such compli
cation and resolution may take a great variety of different forms.
Sometimes we have ' error ' — that is, mistaken identity — and
the recognition that ends it : Plautus had made a plot out of the
confusion between two twin brothers, the Comedy of Errors du
plicates the entanglement by giving the twin brothers slaves who
are twins. Sometimes we have folly and its exposure : Parolles
moves through the scenes of Airs Well That End's Well posing as
a hero and man of military erudition, until a conspiracy betrays him
in his real character as a coward and a fool. Or the complication
may consist in peril and the resolution in release : ^Egeon in the
Comedy of Errors stands in danger of his life up to the point
1 Compare the scheme of the plot in the Appendix, below, page 347.
I/O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
where accident brings salvation as he is on his way to the block.
Play after play will give examples of the complication of intrigue,
to which the resolution may come either in the form of success or
confusion. We have seen in Winter's Tale and Cymbeline how a
plot may be founded on moral fall and restoration ; in Measure
for Measure on a moral problem and its solution. Complication
and resolution is an abstract idea, which may manifest itself in any
number of different concrete forms.
The intensification of story interest in Shakespearean comedy
goes further still. Not only do we find individual stories that
enter into a plot complicated and resolved : we further find clash
and disentanglement between these complicated and resolved
stories; more even than this, analysis can sometimes trace how
there is clash and disentanglement between these clashes of stories.
This can be made clear only by a somewhat detailed analysis of
particular plays.
The main plot of Twelfth Night1 is a complex story of love :
that particular type of love which in Elizabethan drama is called
fancy, where some waywardness or whim, or perhaps accident, has
had much to do with determining choice. Three personages
appear : Orsino the duke, Olivia the heiress, and Viola, the ship
wrecked girl who for safety takes the disguise of a page. Each
of the three is the centre of a love story ; in each case the love is
complicated by rejection, yet attains a happy conclusion. Any
one of these three loves could be separated from the rest of the
play, and narrated as a complete story in itself. In the actual plot
however the three love stories are made to clash together into a
common entanglement, owing to the mistaken identity of the girl
taken for a page. Viola has no sooner entered as a page into the
service of the Duke than she secretly falls in love with her master ;
the Duke has long been in love with the heiress Olivia, who will
have nothing to do with him, but mopes in solitude ; when the
Duke sends his pretty page with messages of love to his mistress,
1 Compare the scheme of the plot in the Appendix, below, page 340.
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM
171
this is not more cruel to the disguised Viola than fatal to Olivia,
who at once falls hopelessly in love with the messenger page.
Three separate loves have clashed into a triangular duel of disap
pointed fancy : Orsino in love with Olivia, Olivia in love with
Viola, Viola in love with Duke Orsino. The disentanglement
comes when a twin brother of Viola, Sebastian, appears on the
scene : Olivia unconsciously transfers her fancy to this Sebastian,
and is married before she discovers her mistake ; Orsino, having
lost Olivia, is free to receive the love of Viola when she appears as
a girl ; and Viola's secret love can be confessed when her brother's
arrival leads her to drop her disguise. The triangular duel has
resolved into a parallelogram of the forces of love and kinship :
two happy couples, a pair of friends who could not be lovers,
a brother and a sister. The main plot then of this play has
appeared as a clash, due to mistakes of identity, with subsequent
disentanglement, between three love stories, each of which, looked
at in itself, is complicated and resolved.
The underplot of the play is totally different in matter, but
identical in form. Instead of a triangular duel in love we have a
triplet of follies. Somewhat after the fashion of the moral scale
of wrongs already noted in Cymbeline? we have in this play a grad-
1 Above, page 77.
1/2 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
uation of the folly — three types that make a descending scale
as viewed from the standpoint of the natural. Sir Toby Belch
(with whom may be classed Maria) exhibits the natural fooling
which seems no more than a vent for health and high spirit. Sir
Andrew Aguecheek joins in the folly : but in this case we have,
not a genuine article, but a wretched imitation. When Sir Toby
will follow the mischievous Maria " to the gates of Tartar," Sir
Andrew puts in his " I'll make one too : " the single phrase sums
up all there is in this imitative folly, struggling, without any sense
of the ludicrous, to copy the outside ways of funny people, and
laboriously learn to be gay. At a still further remove from what is
natural we may place Malvolio's artificial antagonism to frivolity ;
— artificial, for care is taken to show that Malvolio is no genuine
precisian.
The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly, but a
time-pleaser ; an affectioned ass, that cons state without book
and utters it by great swarths : the best persuaded of himself,
so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his
grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.1
Each of these three types makes a separate story of folly and its
exposure. Sir Toby, by sheer force of boisterous jollity, domi
nates the scenes until his practical joking is tried on a stouter man
than himself; the imitator Aguecheek as usual is with him, and
both encounter the same shock.
Olivia. What's the matter?
Sir And. He has broke my head across and has given Sir
Toby a bloody coxcomb too : for the love of God, your help !
I had rather than forty pound I were at home.2
For Sir Toby and his natural folly exposure ends in nothing
worse of penance than marriage with the maid Maria ; the paltry
imitator has the ignoble end of being cast off even by his model,
who calls him an ass-head and a coxcomb and a gull. For the
folly of Malvolio, that runs so counter to ordinary human nature,
1 Twelfth Night : II. iii. 159. 2 y. i. 178.
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 173
a far worse fate is reserved : his self-importance is played upon by
a deep conspiracy, and he is led to come, cross-gartered and in
yellow stockings, into his mistress's presence and smile his un
gainly courtship, until he has to be put in restraint, while his
indignant protests are read ingeniously as symptoms of madness.
But these three stories of folly are not separate in the plot of the
play : two of them are seen to clash with the third, as Toby,
Maria and Aguecheek devise the conspiracy against Malvolio, the
more natural of the follies uniting against that which is wholly un
natural : 1 this clash of stories finds its disentanglement only in the
mutual explanations which conclude the drama. The underplot, like
the main plot, is seen to exhibit a clash and disentanglement between
three stories, each of which is itself complicated and resolved.
Already in this play we have two distinct systems of stories,
a main plot and an underplot, and each in itself is a clash between
three complicated stories. The entanglement increases as the
two systems are brought into conflict, the underplot clashing with
the main plot. Sir Toby is forever drawing out the unconscious
absurdity of Aguecheek, having as his hold upon him Aguecheek's
absurd pretensions to the hand of Olivia. At one point Sir Toby
sees his chance in the handsome youth who comes backward and
forward between the Duke and Olivia : this is of course the Viola
of the main plot.2 Sir Andrew is instantly given to understand
that this youth is his rival.
She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to
exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in
your heart, and brimstone in your liver. You should then
have accosted her ; and with some excellent jests, fire-new
from the mint, you should have banged the youth into dumb
ness. This was looked for at your hand, and this was balked :
the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and
you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion ; where
you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard, unless you
do redeem it by some laudable attempt.
1 II. iii, from 144. 2 From III. ii.
1/4 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Sir Andrew is worked up to the point of sending a challenge.
The scheme is better than Sir Toby knows : the swagger of page
hood is easy to Viola as long as she is only a messenger, but, when
it comes to fighting, the feminine that is inside the page exterior
begins to quake. The fun goes merrily on : two parties are being
drawn into a duel, each a coward at heart, each persuaded of
the terrible rage and valour of the other, persuaded also that the
only chance is to make some show of fight. But the joke is not
all on one side : the twin brother of Viola appears, and Sir Andrew
is valiant enough to strike him, with unlooked consequences to
himself, and to Sir Toby who comes to his protege's rescue.1 In
these representative personages the underplot is in full conflict
with the main plot, and the entanglement crescendoes, until the
dropping of Viola's disguise makes the general denouement.
Thus in this play of Twelfth Night the ultimate elements of
plot are a number of single stories, each complicated and re
solved ; these fall into two distinct systems of stories, main and
subordinate, and each system shows a clash and disentanglement
of the stories of which it is made up ; finally there is a clash
between these clashing systems of stories, before the final dis
entanglement is reached.
More briefly, in The Merry Wives of Windsor? maybe sketched
another illustration of such complication of complication. Here
we have a primary and a secondary plot. The primary plot is a
clash of triple intrigues. One is Falstaff's intrigue against the
merry wives : this must be taken as a single action, because Sir
John's impudence goes so far as to use the same letter for both,
with nothing but the names different. This intrigue is crossed by
two others : one is the retribution of the wives, for Mistress Page
and Mistress Ford have compared their letters, and join in a com
mon revenge ; the other is the deep scheme of the jealous Ford
to facilitate Falstaff's pursuit until the guilty parties can be de
tected. The whole primary plot is thus a clash of intrigues in
1 IV. ii, from 25 ; V. i, from 175.
2 Compare below, page 343.
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 175
corrupt wooing. For the secondary plot we have natural wooing :
not only is it innocent, but it is the love of youth and maid. There
are three suits for the hand of Anne Page : Slender's suit is backed
by Anne's father, with a view to the union of estates ; Dr. Caius's
suit is backed by Anne's mother, money being the motive ; Fen-
ton's suit is backed by Anne herself, for it is a case of true love.
As three rivals are seeking the same girl the secondary plot (like
the primary) is necessarily a clashing of three intrigues. All these
separate interests are being carried on together, until in the end
the one system is brought into conflict with the other. The wives
of the primary plot, now in full. reconcilement with their husbands,
launch one more device against Falstaff: he is to be enticed to
Windsor Park at night, and set upon by young people in guise of
fairies. But in the details of this device the plotters part company :
Anne's father will utilise the masquerade in order to have Anne
carried off by the suitor he favours ; unknown to the father, her
mother arranges a similar scheme in favour of her candidate ;
Fenton has a plan of his own.1 In the sequel the primary and
secondary plots are seen to meet in this common climax of the
masquerade ; by the personages of the secondary plot the hero of
the main plot has been put to final discomfiture, the vast bulk of him
pinched and burnt by the young fairies with their tapers. But this
triumph of the primary plot has reacted on the secondary plot,
and disentangled the intrigues for Anne by giving her to her own
lover. The mutual disentanglement is emphatic, as the discomfited
Falstaff has his laugh against the irate father and mother : 2 all agree
to be reconciled and make a night of it.
Here then is the first of the two elements which make up the
Shakespearean conception of comedy. All through previous dra
matic development the word ' comedy' has been drawing nearer and
nearer to the word ' story ' : Shakespeare's comedies are harmo
nies of stories. The harmony is again found to be intensification
of story interest. The simple sequence of events that is sufficient
1 Merry Wives IV. iv, vi. 2 V. v. fin.
1/6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
to make a story is intensified when the events move through the
stages of complication and resolution ; in Shakespeare a number of
these complicated stories will be complicated into a mutual clash
and disentanglement; systems of such clashing stories are still
further carried to fresh clash and disentanglement. As a mathe
matical quantity is raised to a higher power by being multiplied
into itself, and multiplied again and yet again, so by successive com
plications of complications Shakespearean comedy intensifies interest
of story to the highest point which artistic receptiveness can endure.
The second main element of Shakespearean comedy is due to
the survival of what has entered into comedy in the various phases
of it that preceded Shakespeare. A drama is a spectacle, and a
spectacle implies a spectator : all that is presented is arranged
with a view to the appeal it will make to the spectator's emotional
nature. In various periods comedy has made its appeal to the.
emotions in various ways. Even in primitive comedy the sympa
thies were drawn out in different directions : they must come into
touch with fun and abandon, with biting satire, with broad farce
and caricature. When Attic Comedy added its choral lyrics,
appeal was made to opposite sympathies at the same time, to the
ludicrous and to the serious. Now, a convenient word to express
these diverse appeals to the spectator's emotional sympathies is the
word tones. Instinctively the mind forms a scale of these tones,
like a musical scale : interest of story may be taken as the indiffer
ence point — since this is an intellectual and not an emotional
interest — and on either side of this middle point we have tones
rising to the tragic, sinking to wild abandon.
Tragic
Serious
Fancy
Interest of Story (emotionally indifferent)
Wit
Ludicrous
Satire and Caricature
Fun and Abandon
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 177
Different analysts would construct their scale differently ; perhaps
no two would agree entirely in their definitions of such words as
' fancy ' and ' ludicrous.' But this makes no difficulty : precise
analysis is out of place where the question is of so fluent a thing
as the emotional effect of a spectacle on a spectator. It is enough
to lay down the general conception of a scale of tones, with higher
and lower as more serious and less serious. In this sense comedy
through large part of its history has exhibited a mixture of tones.
But Shakespeare goes beyond mixture : we may lay it down as the
second element in the Shakespearean conception that Comedy is a
harmony of tones. It is not enough to say that there is no obstacle
to the mingling of serious and light matter : the impression given
is that a blending of tones into a harmony is a fundamental part
of the whole design.
Sometimes this harmony takes the form of balance : for the
higher tone found in one part of the play an equipoise is sought
in the lower tone of another part. The Taming of the Shrew,
with its elaborate crossing of love intrigues, leads us only a little
way towards the serious side of life and character : accordingly
this serious is sufficiently balanced in the underplot by the simple
farce of the pert Grumio, in whom we have a reappearance of the
Roman type of the saucy slave, joking his threadbare jokes and
getting his conventional beating from his master. Similar intrigues
in the The Merry Wives involve however a much deeper element
of the serious in the brooding jealousies of Ford. To balance this
we have, not one, but a whole chorus of caricatures : Shallow, the
rustic magnate ; Slender, the raw material of loutish shyness out
of which such rustic importance is eventually made ; Welsh par
son Evans, with his chop-logic pedantry, and the fire-eating
French doctor his antagonist ; Pistol, all stage rant, his comrade
Nym, all emphatic under-statement, with a third comrade, Bar-
dolph, whose face is humour enough; mine host of the Garter
Inn, with his gush of good fellowship, and his role of everybody's
manager ; Mistress Quickly, the go-between, brazen-faced in sim
plicity, with voluble inventiveness humouring everybody all round
178 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
for tips. It is another illustration of the same type, where we find
the intricate tangle of love stories in A Midsummer-Nighfs Dream
supported, on the one side by the exquisite fancies of fairy life, on
the other side by the broadest farce of the clowns and their uncon
scious burlesque of Pyramus and Tkisbe,
In other cases the effect is not so much the balancing of oppo-
sites, as the blending of several tones in a rich and full harmony.
A perfect illustration is Much Ado about Nothing: here we have
for complication a villanous intrigue that takes us to the very
borders of the tragic ; its resolution is in the farcical fussiness of
Dogberry and Verges ; while the intervals of the play — like the
mean parts in a musical harmony — are filled up with a rich
blend of wit and ludicrous situation, Benedick and Beatrice drawn
railing into one another's arms.1 In the preceding chapter we have
seen how Measure for Measure works out a tragic situation in high
life, throws over low life the clown-like humour of Pompey, and
links the two together by the more polished humour of Lucio and
the ludicrous irony of the situations into which his free tongue
brings him. In The Comedy of Errors we see blended in har
mony a serious element, the peril and release of ^Egeon ; the
comedy of errors itself, with its ludicrous situations ; and an un
derplot of mere farce, the Roman type of the impudent slave
appearing once more. On precisely similar lines runs the play
of All's Well; the character of Bertram in its eclipse and recov
ery is the serious action ; the folly of Parolles and its exposure
make the ludicrous tone ; while in place of the Roman slave we
have the clown his modern counterpart. Only a little different is
Twelfth Night, where the highest tone is love fancy ; the under
plot is ludicrous exposure of folly; and the clown again makes
a third tone, ingeniously brought into touch with every person
age of the play. The Merchant of Venice travels far towards the
tragic : this serious tone is supported by the ripple of wit running
through the parts of Portia, Nerissa, Lorenzo, Gratiano, Launce-
1 Compare the schemes of these plays in the Appendix.
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 179
lot ; to make a fuller chord is added the single farcical touch of
Launcelot's meeting with old Gobbo. Perhaps the fullest har
mony of tones is to be found in The Tempest. We rise to the
most exalted point of the serious when Prospero, temporarily
omnipotent, wields dispensations of providence over " the three
men of sin " ; with this we blend the simple love interest of Fer
dinand and Miranda ; there is the sustained wit of Gonzalo and
the courtiers who tease him ; lowest of all we have the farcical
business of the intoxicated sailors led in dread conspiracy by the
fish-monster Caliban.
In some cases the emotional impression of a story cannot be
conveyed by such simple terms as those that have made up our
scale of tones ; it is something complex and many-sided, and we
sometimes seek to express it by speaking of the ' atmosphere ' of
the story. In such cases the harmony of tones will become —
though the expression strains metaphor — a harmony of atmos
pheres. In a former chapter we have noted how, in Winter's
Talc, as we pass from complication to resolution we meet a total
change of spirit, from court life with high responsibility and grave
sin to rustic simplicity and harmless roguery ; in Cymbeline we
noted a similar change from the atmosphere of the court to the
open air life and the spirit of the cave and the mountain. Great
part of As You Like It is confined within the Forest of Arden, and
is the old conventional pastoral life, with such conventional loves
as those of Silvius and Phoebe : a different atmosphere is brought
to bear upon this as it is played upon by a triple humour — the
natural humour of Rosalind, the professional humour of Touch
stone, and the morbid humour of Jaques, whose carefully culti
vated melancholy depreciates everything with a lurid brightness.
In Love's Labour's Lost we have an atmosphere of the artificial :
the artificial bond of the mutual vow, the artificial life of celibacy,
the euphuism of Armado, and the equally artificial pedantry of
Nathaniel and Holofernes. This appears as the local atmosphere
of Navarre ; the advent of the French princess and her suite, like
a change of weather, brings in a new atmosphere of pure gay hu-
ISO THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
mour, and the impact of the one upon the other gives sustained
coruscations of wit and fun.1
In this connection the comedy of Two Gentlemen of Verona
needs fuller consideration. The reader of this play, upon the
first perusal of it, may well be staggered at some of its departures
from what is natural and probable ; especially the climax up to
which the whole movement leads, when the false Proteus makes
love to the unwilling Silvia in the hearing of Valentine.2 Valen
tine discovers himself, and taunts his friend with his perfidy ;
Proteus can only throw himself upon his friend's mercy; whereupon
Valentine answers :
Who by repentance is not satisfied
Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased.
By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased :
And, that my love may appear plain and free,
All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.
The forgiveness is all well and good : but what are we to say of the
last line, in which the faithful Valentine bestows the equally faith
ful Silvia on the faithless friend? But further study of this drama
illustrates a certain paradox of interpretation — that difficulties by
multiplying may diminish. We find every portion of this play
crowded with unrealities and improbabilities and artificialities,
until we recognise at last that we are not in the ordinary world at
all. Over the story has been thrown the atmosphere of the ' gay
science ' — the poetry of the troubadours and the courts of love :
the conventional love literature from which love was the one thing
absent ; which ransacked ingenuity for conceits and riddles and
twists and turns of mental fencing and word play, cast these into
songs, or sonnets and ' passions,' and selected the nearest princess,
or neighbour's wife, or little child, as an animated target against
which to practise love-making, no more to be confused with a real
object of passion than the dedicatee of an eighteenth-century book
1 This feature of the two plays (Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like If) is
treated at full length in my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist : Chapters XIV, XV.
2 Two Gentlemen: V. iv, especially from 54.
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM l8l
is to be understood as its hero. Thus, in Two Gentlemen, no
sooner have a few lines of natural writing brought out some neces
sary point in the action than the conversation will drift into a bout
of wit- fencing, the chief goodness of the jests consisting in their
badness.1
Proteus. For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine.
Valentine. And on a love-book pray for my success ?
Proteus. Upon some book I love I'll pray for thee.
Valentine. That's on some shallow story of deep love :
How young Leander cross'd the Hellespont.
Proteus. That's a deep story of a deeper love ;
For he was more than over shoes in love.
Valentine. 'Tis true ; for you are over boots in love,
And yet you never swum the Hellespont.
Proteus. Over the boots? nay, give me not the boots.
Valentine. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.
Proteus. What ?
Valentine. To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans ;
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs ; one fading moment's mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights :
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain ;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won ;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.
Proteus. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.
Valentine. So, by your circumstance, I fear you'll prove.
Similarly, when a sentiment or a situation is to be expressed, the
language regularly passes into the form of a sonnet, — not indeed
the strict sonnet of fourteen lines, but such sonnet-like play of
thought as would fit the passage for a place in the Hekatompathia?
To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn ;
To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn ;
To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn ;
U. i.
2 II. vi. 1-30. For other examples compare I. ii. 105-29; II. iv. 129-42; Il.vii.
24-38; III. i. 140-51 and 171-87 ; III. ii. 73-87 (note line 69).
1 82 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
And even that power which gave me first my oath
Provokes me to this three-fold perjury ;
Love bade me swear and Love bids me forswear.
0 sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinnYl,
Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!
At first I did adore a twinkling star,
But now I worship a celestial sun.
Unheedful vows may needfully be broken ;
And he wants wit that wants resolved will
To learn his wit to exchange the bad for better.
Fie, fie, unreverend tongue! to call her bad,
Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr'd
With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths.
1 cannot leave to love, and yet I do ;
But there I leave to love where I should love.
Julia I lose and Valentine I lose :
If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;
If I lose them, thus find I by their loss
For Valentine myself, for Julia Silvia,
I to myself am dearer than a friend,
For love is still most precious in itself;
And Silvia — witness Heaven, that made her fair ! —
Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.
I will forget that Julia is alive,
Remembering that my love to her is dead ;
And Valentine Til hold an enemy,
Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.
When we have our minds thoroughly saturated with this atmos
phere of the gay science, we shall feel no difficulty even in the
climax of the play. To weigh in the scales of sentiment the mis
tress and the friend is precisely the sort of knotty question which
the courts of love would poetically take up ; and a pleasant judi
cature — which considered it a contradiction in terms for a man to
be in love with his own wife — would be as likely as not, in the
present issue, to sacrifice love on the altar of friendship.
It remains to point out that in this play, as in those previously
noted, we have a balance of atmospheres. The two gentlemen
COMEDY AS LIFE IN EQUILIBRIUM 183
have their two servants : the comparatively heavy atmosphere of
euphuistic conceit is contrasted with the light farcical humour
of the stable and servant's hall. Speed and Launce have their
bouts of wit. Where Speed banters his love-lorn master we seem
to realise that there might be such a thing as a prose sonnet.
Valentine. Why. how know you that I am in love?
Speed. Marry, by these special marks : first, you have learned,
like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent ; to
relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast ; to walk alone, like
one that had the pestilence ; to sigh, like a school-boy that had
lost his ABC; to weep, like a young wench that had buried
her grandam ; to fast, like one that takes diet ; to watch,
like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at
Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like
a cock ; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions ; when
you fasted, it was presently after dinner ; when you looked
sadly, it was for want of money : and now you are metamor
phosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly
think you my master.1
More than this, the devotion which the gentlemen pour out upon
their supreme mistresses Launce reserves for his dog. He takes his
pet's unsavoury offence upon himself, and is whipped in his stead!'; 2
yet, like his master, he has to mourn hard-heartedness in the object
of his affections.
I think Crab my dog be the sourest-natured dog that
lives : my mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying,
our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house
in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed
one tear : he is a stone, a very pebble-stone, and has no more
pity in him than a dog : a Jew would have wept to have seen
our parting ; why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept
herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner
of it. This shoe is my father : no, this left shoe is my father :
no, no, this left shoe is my mother : nay, that cannot be so
neither : yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole . . .
i II. i, from 17. 2 iv. iv.
1 84 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white
as a lily, and as small as a wand : this hat is Nan, our maid :
I am the dog: no, the dog is himself, and I am the dog —
Oh ! the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so, so. Now come I
to my father ; Father, your blessing : now should not the
shoe speak a word for weeping: now should I kiss my
father ; well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother : O,
that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss
her, why, there 'tis ; here's my mother's breath up and down.
Now come I to my sister ; mark the moan she makes. Now
the clog all this while sheds not a tear, nor speaks a word ; but
see how I lay the dust with my tears.1
The balancing of atmosphere with atmosphere can hardly go
further than when tours-de-force of doggie sentiment are used to
counterpoise high-flown sentimentalism of the gay science.
Under these two heads then may be formulated the Shake
spearean conception of comedy : story raised to its highest power
of complexity, and the harmony of tones. Comedy so constituted
stands in a clear relation to the moral order of the universe. It
presents life in equilibrium : every intricacy of complication fitted
with its due resolution, as when musical discords melt into con
cords ; the higher tones of our nature supported by or blended
with the lower tones in full emotional harmony. And the cor
relative conception is at once suggested, that in tragedy we have
equilibrium overthrown. This last is the subject of the chapter
that follows.
i II. iii.
IX
TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN
THE received classification of Shakespeare's plays is positive as
regards comedies. Between tragedies and histories the line is
difficult to draw, and the terms are not mutually exclusive. The
relation of the histories to the moral system of Shakespeare
will appear in connection with another part of this work : l the
immediate question is as to the Shakespearean conception of
tragedy. It has been in the main anticipated by the discussion
of the' preceding chapter.
Shakespeare, we have seen, represents romantic drama : the
union of drama and romance. The latter term must be stretched
to include the chronicle histories, and such a work as Plutarch ;
these are treated in the same spirit as the ordinary story books of
romance, for of history in the modern scientific sense there was no
thought. By the other component element, drama, is meant the
revived dramatic literature of Greece and Rome. There was of
course a Mediaeval Drama — of miracle plays, mysteries, moralities,
interludes, histories — which extended into the Shakespearean age ;
and there is evidence that some of its histories were utilised as
materials for the preparation of Shakespearean dramas. But this
does not alter the fact that, considered as a species in literature,
the Shakespearean drama made a fresh start, under the inspiration
of the revived classical dramas and the accumulated stores of
romance. I do not mean to suggest that the Mediaeval Drama was
entirely without influence on the coming drama of the Renaissance :
but the influence was of an indirect kind. It may be said indeed
that the Mediaeval is an anticipation of the Romantic Drama. Part
l Chapter XI 1 1.
185
1 86 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
of the wealth of story accumulated in the age of romance consisted
in sacred story — the narrative of the Bible and the lives of the
saints ; to act these sacred stories for a populace that could not
read them was the original purpose of the miracle plays, however
much they may have widened their design subsequently. Thus
the essence of the Mediaeval, as of the Romantic Drama, was the
application of dramatic form to story material, the story being of
at least equal importance with the dramatic effects. The influence
of audiences trained for generations in dramatised story by the
miracle plays, and similar shows, was a powerful bulwark to the
poets of the Romantic Drama, in their struggle against a criticism
that would have subjected the stage again to the limitations of
pre-romance drama. Without ignoring then this influence of the
Mediaeval Drama we may nevertheless say that the Romantic Drama
of Shakespeare has its roots in ancient drama and in romance ;
in these two directions we are to look if we are inquiring what
may be expected to enter into the Shakespearean conception of
tragedy.
In Greek literature tragedy and comedy were distinct, and
tragedy was ' serious ' drama. The popular idea that a tragedy is
a play which ends unhappily, as opposed to comedies with their
happy endings, will not bear confronting with the masterpieces
of antiquity. ./Eschylus's Trilogy of Orestes ends with Orestes
delivered and the magnificent festival of the Eumenides ; the
(Edipus at Colonus of Sophocles, after heart-rending spectacles
of suffering, displays the exaltation of its hero ; no play could
have a happier ending than the Alcestis of Euripides : yet all these
are tragedies. It was not the nature of the movement, but the
serious tone that made a tragedy to the Greeks. It could hardly
be other than serious, for Greek tragedy was a religious service,
commencing with ritual at the altar of Dionysus ; the choral odes
led the thoughts of the audience in religious meditation, like the
anthems and hymns of a modern choir ; the acted scenes were
sacred myths, like the acted sermon of the miracle play. The
criticism of the age laid its emphasis on this serious character of
TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 1 87
tragedy, in Aristotle's definition of it as imitation of a "worthy,
illustrious, perfect " action ; he makes its moral purpose that of
purifying the emotions of pity and terror. Close analysis may
detect, especially in plays of Euripides, some appearance of lighter
matter as relief; but to the end of the ancient literature the con
ception of tragedy was sufficiently defined by its sombre tone.
It was under the influence of romance that the original concep
tion came to be modified. We have seen in the preceding chap
ter how the words tragedy and comedy were used of the narrated
stories of the dark ages ; how in the freedom of minstrel narration
some rapprochement took place between the two terms, tragedy
admitting more of the comic and comedy more of the tragic.
What is more important than this, we have seen how, towards the
close of the dark ages, a turn of fashion in popular taste produced
a literary impulse of long continuance, destined to influence more
than anything else the conception of tragedy in the future. A
single type of serious story predominated over all others. From
the time of Henry of Huntingdon in the twelfth century, and his
Contempt of the World, there appeared collections of tragedies
the interest of which lay in presenting the illustrious of mankind
falling into ruin or obscurity ; such writers as Boccaccio, with his
De Casibus Illustrium Virorum, and Lydgate, with his falls of
Princes, made their contributions to this popular form of litera
ture. The hold which this type of tragedy had on the public
mind even in the Elizabethan age is evidenced by the number
of successive works which bear the common title of A Mirror for
Magistrates; to one of the series splendid contributions were
made by the Sackville who, in Gorboduc, is recognised as one
of the fathers of our modern drama. Thus tragedy came into the
age of Shakespeare with this special connotation of fallen great
ness ; it is serious story with a tendency to a single type of seri
ousness. As comedy has enlarged to the general presentation
of life in equilibrium, so tragedy has specialised to the concep
tion of equilibrium overthrown. A tragedy is, to Shakespeare's
audience and to Shakespeare, a story of a fall.
1 88 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Sometimes in Shakespearean tragedy we have the career and
the fall of an evildoer ; scarcely any other motive will be found
to underlie the play of Richard the Second. Elsewhere the plot
is made by the fall of many : as we observe the career of Richard
the Third, we see his life an agency of doom to all around him,
in his death he himself becomes a victim. In such a play as
Romeo and Juliet the tragedy lies in the fall of the innocent.
Yet another variety appears in Lear or Othello : the hero is here
great and noble, the tragic interest lies in watching how, in the
mysteries of providence, the small sin or omission overbalances
the general nobility, and there is the same end of ruin. In other
cases the idea of the outer and the inner life comes in : for the
various personages of Henry the Eighth the fall in the world with
out is a rise in the life within ; even in Antony and Cleopatra
something of a higher life is seen to spring up amid the ruin of a
righteous doom. But in all cases alike, what we see of fall is
a fall from which there is no recovery ; tragedy is a complication
never to be resolved.
In the case of comedy the equilibrium appeared, not only in
the movement of the story, which balanced complication with
resolution, but also in the balance and harmony of light and
serious tones. The converse applies to Shakespearean tragedy :
in tone, as well as in movement, equilibrium is overthrown. The
mixture of tones in tragedy is no balance : the serious preponder
ates altogether over the light, is intensified the more because of
the presence of this lighter matter. It is a fundamental principle
of our mental economy, that the stronger emotions are soon ex
hausted into apathy ; those dramatists will draw the most of pity
and terror out of us who know how, at the proper points, to relieve
this pity and terror with opposite tones of feeling. The more
Shakespeare's dramas are examined, the more evident it will be
that the principle of relief is the law underlying the mixture of
tones in tragedy.
In the tragedy of Richard the Second no relief appears in the
form of humorous matter ; possibly we may see it in the spectacu-
TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 189
lar interest of the trial by combat. Such interest is found on a
much larger scale in the successive pageants of Henry the Eighth,
which however take that play out of the category of tragedy, and
make it a complex form of drama.1 The fun and abandon which
made the earliest spirit of comedy have their nearest modern
counterpart in the clown : 'the all-licensed jester, for whom ordi
nary social proprieties are suspended, who may, and must, twist fun
for us out of every thing and out of nothing. The Clown is actually
introduced, with all his laboured fooling, into Othello : his two
brief appearances2 make two breathing spaces for us in the op
pressive crescendo of passion. What essentially is the same effect
appears in Macbeth : the jesting of the professional fool is put
into the mouth of the Porter ; and his light badinage, standing
between the horror of murder and the shock of discovery, has
the effect of the single flash of lightning that blackens the night.3
In Titus Andronicus is a slighter device of the same kind : the
only relief to the accumulating horrors is the rustic stupidity of
a messenger, who is called ' clown ' in the other sense of the
word.4 There is again a group of tragedies in which the spirit
of the professional clown is read into one of the leading person
ages of the story. In King John the earlier appearances of Faul-
conbridge strike us in this vein ; nothing can be more clown-like
than his reiteration to the pompous Duke of the line 5 —
And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs.
But as the tragedy progresses the tone of relief melts out of the
personality of Faulconbridge, and he becomes a grave and strenu
ous statesman. Timon of Athens has for relief element the mis
anthropic humour of Apemantus, called in the list of personages
' a churlish philosopher ' ; Coriolanus similarly has Menenius, with
his spleenful mockery of the populace and its leaders ; in Julius
Ccesar somewhat of the same tone is put into the mouths of the
1 See above, pages 89-92. 3 Macbeth II. iii.
2 Othello III. i and iv. 4 Titus IV. iii, iv.
5 King John III. i. 131, 133, 199, 220, 299.
IQO THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
mob ; in Antony and Cleopatra Enobarbus is the ' plain ' speaker,
until his cynicism is melted away by the tragic situation : all these
are but examples of the relief element of the clown drawn within
the personalities of the story. It may be added that in Richard the
Third the relief seems to be the grim humour of the hero in the
midst of his devilry, until he loses his equanimity in the toils of
fate. In Romeo and Jit he t the relieving wit is distributed through
the parts of Mercutio, the Nurse, and the Musicians : it has all
disappeared before the final climax.
In two of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies the relief ele
ment is of a much more elaborate kind. If analysis be applied
to the fooling of the Shakespearean jester a leading element will be
found to be the incongruity and incoherence of its matter, in
this case of course intentional incoherence. But the unconscious
incoherence of a disordered brain may be used with somewhat of
the same effect. It has been contended indeed that there is a real
difference of sympathetic temperament between an Elizabethan
and a modern audience ; that the symptoms of madness which
are so pathetic to us were to our ancestors simply funny. How
ever this may be, it is clear that the wildness of insanity is used
in Shakespeare's plays as a variation and relief to tragedy. A mas
terly example of this usage is seen in King Lear. As the old man's
brain begins to break down under his daughters' unkindness, he
passes first into the stage of hysteria.
O, how this mother swells up toward my heart !
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below.1
Later his words and actions are helpless insanity.
O, matter and impertinency mix'd !
Reason in madness ! 2
Side by side with this insanity we have the feigned idiotcy of
Edgar : sometimes meaningless nonsense, sometimes approach
ing the mocking nonsense of the typical clown.
l Lear II. iv. 56. 2 iy. vi. 178.
TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 191
Lear. What hast them been ?
Edgar. A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that
curled my hair ; wore gloves in my cap ; served the lust of
my mistress1 heart, and did the act of darkness with her ; swore
as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet
face of heaven : one that slept in the contriving of lust, and
waked to do it : wine loved I deeply, dice dearly ; and in
woman out-paramoured the Turk : false of heart, light of ear,
bloody of hand ; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greedi
ness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of
shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman :
keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen
from lender's books, and defy the foul fiend.
Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind.
Says suum, mun, ha, no, nonny.
Dolphin, my boy, my boy, sessa ! let him trot by.1
When a third type of nonsense — the regular clown or jester —
is added we get, through the central scenes of King Lear, a trio
of madnesses — real, assumed, professional — mingling their inco
herent ravings : a fourth form of wildness, the raging of the tem
pest outside, plays a dreadful accompaniment. So complex is the
relief element in this tragedy.
An equally elaborate treatment of relief is found in Hamlet. As
a first element we have the assumed madness of Hamlet himself.
Hamlet is never mad : the poet's treatment is so clear on this
point that I can only express astonishment that any different view
should have crept into criticism. At the beginning of the story,
even before the excitement of the Ghost Scene, the hero appears
as a man of bitter irony, veiling a tone of feeling with an opposite
tone of expression.
Horatio. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
Hamlet. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student ;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
i III. iv. 87.
1 92 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Horatio. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd close upon.
Hamlet. Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral baked-meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.1
When suddenly has come the shock of a revelation — a revelation
of horror taking the dubious form of a communication from the
supernatural world — it is small wonder that a man of this temper
ament should be driven for a moment to hysteric irony.
0 villain, villain, smiling, damned villain !
My tables, — meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.2
In this mood Hamlet is rejoined by his comrades 3 : when he sees
the astonishment on their faces at his own wild irony, his quick
mind catches the thought of using this hysteric mockery as a
stalking-horse behind which he may watch the dreadful situation
until he can see how to act. He not only so resolves, but he
takes his comrades into his confidence.
But come ;
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,
That you, at such times seeing me, never shall
With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As ' Well, well we know,' or ' we could, an if we would,'
Or, ' If we list to speak,' or ' There be, an if they might,'
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me : this not to do,
So grace and mercy at your most need help you,
Swear.4
The scenes that follow are a simple carrying out of this plan :
like the original Brutus, Hamlet hides behind an "antic dispo-
1 Hamlet I. ii. 176. 3 I. v, from in.
2 I. v. 106. * I. v. 168.
TRAGEDY AS EQUILIBRIUM OVERTHROWN 193
sition " while he waits his chance to act ; at any moment he can
drop his assumed wildness.
Hamlet. You are welcome : but my uncle-father and aunt-
mother are deceived.
Guildenstern. In what, my dear lord?
Hamlet. I am but mad north-north-west : when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.1
This madness of Hamlet then, assumed for a specific purpose
in the movement of the story, serves also as relief : the hysterical
incoherence of the supposed madman is used to mock king and
courtier, and to mock even Ophelia herself, whom in the general
hollowness of all appearances Hamlet has come to doubt. With
this is combined, as in Lear, another form of relief, the real mad
ness of Ophelia, so piteous in its incoherences. Nor is this all.
It must be remembered that the essential idea of relief in tragedy
is not necessarily the mingling of comic with serious : any other
variation of emotional tone may serve, if it is used to break the
sustained sense of movement towards a tragic climax. Such an
emotional break may be found in the uncanny thrill of the Ghost
Scenes, varying the gloomy with touches of the horrible. I would
recognise another variation in the simulated passion of the actors ;
this is an effect more obvious on the stage than in the mere read
ing of the drama, and Hamlet himself seems to note something of
the kind.
Hamlet. Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd ;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! 2
Finally, in the fifth act we have the regular agency of relief, the
clown, varied into the form of grave-diggers, and professional jest-
111.11.387. 2 ii. n. S76.
194 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
ing is turned upon the most gruesome of topics. If this analysis
be correct, we seem in the play of Hamlet to have an underplot
of relief matter, appearing successively in five varied forms : the
supernatural awe of the Ghost Scenes, the hysteric mockery of
Hamlet, the histrionic passion of the players, the pathetic madness
of Ophelia, and the weird humour of the grave-diggers.
Thus it appears that, as the movement of tragedy in Shakespeare
is a fall from greatness, so in its tone it rests upon an overbalanc
ing of emotions: light and dark do not mingle on equal terms, but
the serious is relieved only that it may thereby be the more inten
sified. In all respects Shakespearean comedy and Shakespearean
tragedy are the converse one of the other, as moral equilibrium
and equilibrium overthrown. In comedy we watch human life
plunged it may be in a sea of troubles, sure that natural buoyancy
will bring it again to the surface, with an exhilaration akin to
laughter. In tragedy we see human life mounting, but with an
impulse that has disturbed some secret moral gravitation, that will
make the height of the elevation only the measure of the fall.
X
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR
A STORY is told of a man who, being suddenly called upon to
say exactly what was meant by humour, reserved his definition
till the next day ; the next day he found he would require a
week, at the end of a week, a month ; by that time the subject
had so grown upon him that he went into the country for a
whole year to think it out; at the end of the year he sold his
business, and announced his intention of devoting the rest of
his life to this one question : shortly afterward the man died
of melancholy. Humour is a thing of so strange a nature that
he who has most of it can least say what it is ; while those who
altogether lack it — and they are not a few — have the advan
tage of never knowing their loss. Yet this difficult subject
cannot be altogether ignored in the present work, as a single
illustration will show. Falstaff, the supreme humorous creation
of Shakespeare, is exhibited as violating every law of righteous
ness and beauty: we who read love Falstaff, yet in no way
lessen our love of law. This contradiction of itself makes
humour a problem in the moral system of Shakespeare. It
can be treated only in the way of suggestion.
Some light, though of an uncertain kind, may be thrown upon
the thing from the word that conveys it. In its ultimate ety
mology the meaning of humour is simply moisture. The great
extension of its import rests upon a physiological theory of the
Middle Ages, which made the various juices of the body the de
termining forces of character ; the blood, phlegm, choler inside
the human frame made a man sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric ;
196 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the arrangement of these juices or humours was his ' disposi
tion,' and if they were well mixed he was ' good tempered ' ; the
visible sign of such mixture in his face was his ' complexion,' a
word which, as late as the novels of Richardson, was synony
mous with character. Accordingly ' humour ' was applied to the
whole, or the separate elements, of a man's character ; the usage
of Ben Jonson, with his Every Man in his Humour and Every
Man out of his Humour, at once reflected and intensified the
tendency to apply the term ' humours ' to peculiarities of in
dividual disposition. Now, such individual peculiarities are a
great source of the ludicrous ; again, the incongruities or hidden
congruities in human nature, like other incongruities or congru-
ities, are a leading subject for wit to play upon. Thus the
whole range of human nature, of wit, and of the ludicrous,
are all drawn within the scope of this single word 'humour.'
But in the shiftings to and fro of verbal usage so many-sided
a word was sure to become specialised more or less. On the
one side, wit begins to draw away from humour by suggesting
the cold intellectual appreciation of singularities, while humour
is the emotion excited by them. At another point, such things
as scorn and satire become differentiated by the fact that,
while aiming at the ridiculous, they also imply hostility ; it is
the great note of humour, on the contrary, that it does not lose
sympathy with what it ridicules, and a man is never more
humorous than when he enjoys a laugh at his own expense.
But the sympathetic sense of the ludicrous, which is the specialty
of humour, is free to range over the whole of human nature,
until, in the humour of Thackeray or Bret Harte, we often
laugh only to keep from crying. To all of which it may be
added, that the original signification of the word has never been
altogether lost, and humour is always the most fluent of all the
emotions that have connection with the ludicrous.
As a technical term of the drama, the meaning of humour can
be stated with more precision. It can be approached through a
series of steps, of which the first step is the conception of dra-
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 197
matic tone. We must go back to first principles. Drama is
not a mere reproduction of real life, but is life arranged as a
spectacle. If we turn a mirror upon a landscape, we do not get
a picture : what we see lacks composition and its perspective.
There is a similar perspective in drama ; what is presented is
disposed according to the point of view of the spectator, and to
produce effects in his emotional nature. The emotions in the
scene may be the same as the emotion to be excited in the
spectator, or they may be very different ; on the stage two men
are seen flying at one another's throats, with a woman standing
by and wringing her hands in despair, and all the while the
spectator of the play is smiling at a comic situation. The term
expressing this emotional response in the spectator of the drama
is 'tone.' Without seeking to define these tones — of comic,
farcical, tragic, and the like — we have seen that it is natural to
conceive a scale of tones, the more serious taking place as
higher, the less serious as lower. Now the foe of tone is mono
tone and satiety. Even in real life it is a fundamental principle
of psychology that the passive receiving of impressions without
any reaction in activity is dangerous ; if we listen Sunday after
Sunday to appeals from the pulpit without attempting to act
upon them, our religious exercises have only made us the more
callous ; if we for ever cherish sentiments without any effect on
our conduct, we dwindle into the sentimental. But the spectator
in the theatre is necessarily passive : if one kind of emotional
appeal is continuously made to him without variation, he must
soon become apathetic. Hence the mixture of tones in the
romantic drama : comedy balancing a succession of different
emotions into harmony, even tragedy relieving its serious tone
by what is lighter. From this mixture of tones we may go a
step farther, and recognise what may be called tone-clash :
opposite emotions meet with a shock in the same effect. In
the physical body such a clash of opposites makes hysteria :
the mobile nervous energy relieves itself by laughter and tears
together. So, as we have seen, outpourings of an hysteric
198 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
character make an element in the excited action of Lear and
Hamlet. Or again, tone-clash is illustrated in the regular cus
tom of Shakespeare to use puns in passages of deep emotion ; as
where John of Gaunt, dying of grief, receives the nephew who is
the cause of it with a string of puns on his own name.1 Criti
cism has often taken objection, on the ground that puns are
things comic in their nature. But it is their comic character
that gives them fitness, not for ordinary situations of sadness,
but for agony that is acute : puns in such cases are verbal
hysterics. From these successive conceptions — of dramatic
tones, scale of tones, mixture of tones, tone-clash — we may pro
ceed to the final conception of humour as tone-tremulousness,
like the shake in music ; there is no clash or shock, but diverse
or opposite emotions come so smoothly together that they flow
into a single delightful impression. We are amused at the
violation of the law, and yet are conscious of retaining our
respect for the law ; we enjoy Falstaff 's humiliation, yet have no
sense of triumph over the man ; we appreciate the grotesque in
the Dogberries and Shallows, yet do not cease to feel that they
are men and brethren. As a supreme effect for the manage
ment of tone in drama, the fluency of humour holds contrasted
emotions harmonised in the spectator's sympathy.
The humour, the dramatic expression of which is thus de
scribed, has a natural place in a moral system. It enters deeply
into the real life which it is the province of drama to arrange.
Humour is an emotional antiseptic : the salt of wit keeps senti
ment healthy, saves it from the morbid, makes itself felt just
where the sweet is in danger of becoming the mawkish. It is
the balance-wheel of the sympathies : every feeling indulged is
at the expense of other feelings, and tends toward partisanship ;
in the rapid interplay of emotions humour is the force that
staves off an eccentricity which would disturb regularity. The
l Richard the Second II. i. 74-85. For other examples compare Julius Ccssar
111.1.204-208; Merchant of Venice IV. i. 281; Macbeth II. ii. 56; Richard the
Second IV. i. 315.
THE MORAL SIGNIHCANCE OF HUMOUR 199
heart of a whirlpool is a dead calm : humour is such an indif
ference point in the whirlpool of the passions. It serves as a
sounding-board for taste : without it the loud ring of excess
comes back only in mocking echoes. Humour thus enters
deeply into analysis of character. Greek thought deified the
sense of proportion as a moral force under the name Nemesis :
other powers, like Justice, dealt with right and wrong, but
Nemesis was a providence which visited every kind of excess,
which would strike down a Polycrates for being too fortunate,
or an Hippolytus for being too temperate. Humour is such a
nemesis in human character, watching over the proportion of
parts, interposing to save the ' good ' from becoming ' goody.'
It must be understood of course in all these remarks that the
essential thing is not humour, but the sense of humour ; the
question is not of jocose expression, but of the mental corrective
force that lies in an instinct against excess. Humour is thus
the great contribution of comedy to morals ; it is a sort of comic
conscience, ever making for moral equilibrium.
When life comes to be arranged as a dramatic spectacle the
scope of humour is still further enlarged. It may sometimes
manifest itself as a suspension of the moral law, in the way that
enchantment is a suspension of physical law. This temporary
suspension of moral law is a deep-seated idea in human nature.
In ruder times it manifested itself in such forms as the Roman
Saturnalia, or mediaeval Feasts of Unreason ; the powers of
order were tolerant of the single day in the year when slaves
might whip masters, or a mock pope travesty sacred ritual —
rude expressions of a vague popular conception that even God
must sometimes need a holiday. The more refined fluency of
humour can infuse into regular life a single element of the moral
Saturnalia ; relieving pompous history with by-play of an East-
cheap, bad enough as a reality, but excellent as a spectacle.
Falstaff 's tavern bill with its " one half-pennyworth of bread to
this intolerable deal of sack " typifies the proportions of the
responsible and the frothy in this humorous unreason. Flashes
200 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
from Falstaff himself are continually keeping us in touch with
the idea of moral reversal ; as where the disgruntled pedestrian
threatens " to turn true man and leave these rogues " ; or where
he laments the evil times :
There live not three good men unhanged in England : and
one of them is fat, and grows old : God help the while ! a
bad world, I say.
The moral topsy-turveydom of Eastcheap has reached the point
of paradox.
Poms. Jack ! how agrees the devil and thee about thy soul,
that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a cup of Ma
deira and a cold capon's leg?
Prince. Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have
his bargain ; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs : he
will give the devil his due.
Poins. Then art thou damned for keeping thy word with
the devil.
Prince. Else he had been damned for cozening the devil.
Thus the immorality has become a new morality, and Falstaff
turns moraliser. He gives us a long and ingenious sermon on
the moral effects of sherry, which a teetotaller may admire as an
heresiarch's masterpiece.1 The doctrine of original sin becomes
a comfort to him.
Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest in the state of innocency
Adam fell ; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days
of villany ? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man ;
and therefore more frailty.
We even hear him solemnly discoursing on the vanity of life :
only he means, the life of honour.
Prince. Why, thou owest God a death.
Falstaff. 'Tis not due yet; I would be loth to pay him
before his day. What need I be so forward with him that
l Stand Part of Henry the Fourth : IV. iii, from 92.
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 2OI
calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks me on.
Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how
then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take
away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in
surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in
that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reck
oning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he
feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then.
Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no.
Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it.
Honour is a mere scutcheon : and so ends my catechism.
Humour is often occupied with the ways of human nature.
Zoology gravely studies the ways of animals : not merely the
structures of their skeletons as an element in comparative
anatomy, but the lightest turn of habit and custom, as that one
spider spreads a web, another lives in a box with a lid to it.
The ways of the animal man have a similar interest, even the
infinite variations of individuality : how carriers talk with ostlers
in free slang ; how a tavern hostess adapts herself to imprac
ticable guests ; distracted drawers flinging ' anons ' in every
direction ; what permutations of the human scarecrow can be
mustered into Falstaff's company of soldiers; what combinations
of social absurdities can hold revel in Shallow's orchard. In a
Doll Tearsheet wit can turn its light upon the crudest humanity,
as pictorial art can give us a Dutch genre picture. Mine host's
practical joke in the Merry Wives is a zoological experiment
that brings the oddities of a parson Evans and a Doctor Caius
into just the best situation for fully displaying themselves. And
Prince Henry is a diligent zoological observer, who can repro
duce " all humours that have showed themselves humours since
the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this present
twelve o'clock at midnight."
But besides these indifferent things vice itself may be a spec
tacle ; there is an interest of monstrosity in morals, as in art the
grotesque is a form of beauty. The sins of the nursery have to
be restrained, because they are great things to the little sinners:
202 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
but, once the nursery door is closed, the adult spectator has his
keen enjoyment of the joke. So at the other end of the scale,
vice passes beyond the danger point, and becomes nothing but
spectacle. Only, the perspective of the picture must be so
arranged that the spectator really is at the indifference point;
criticism cannot say how this is to be done, any more than it can
direct a portrait painter how to catch a likeness, yet to miss this
is to make art immoral. Dramatised vice is a demonstration in
moral pathology. In physiology, the disease which may be fatal
to the individual patient becomes a thing of cool interest to the
medical expert, who rather prefers a compound fracture to a
sprain, and may become enthusiastic over the virulent destruc-
tiveness of a cancerous tissue. There is nothing strange in this,
for disease is a manifestation of life as much as health. But
the doctors watching their pathological curiosities in the fever
hospital take measures to guard themselves from infection. So
humour is the great moral disinfectant, with its fluent sympathy
alike for the pathological oddity and for the perfect health. It
is not the depicting of vice that makes literature immoral ; cor
rupt art is the maladroit art which, presenting less or more of
vice, is clumsy enough to leave unneutralised some of the infec
tion, to lay hold of some unwary reader. It is best to leave such
art as this to die the natural death of corrupt things. Unfortu
nately, its denunciation is often undertaken by persons who
have lost their humour touch, whose sympathies have become
set and cannot be made elastic. Such persons are a social
danger, as false prophets who unfortunately have the means of
fulfilling their own prophecies. For life is full of things which
are innocent if left to themselves, but become noxious by merely
having a finger pointed at them ; if corrupt art has injured its
thousands, discussions of corruption have injured tens of thou
sands. Humour is an essential for a censor of morals ; no one
is in a state to discuss literary morality unless he can lay his
hand on his heart and vow that he loves Shakespeare's Falstaff.
History amply confirms the principle thus laid down. Short-
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 203
comings of this kind wrought havoc with the greatest religious
revolution in modern history : Puritanism was religion that had
lost its sense of humour.
In this way Falstaff is a pathological triumph. His vast bulk
is a perpetual symbol of monstrosity: he is a creature of bombast;
unhorsed, he ' frets like a gummed velvet,' he —
sweats to death,
And lards the lean earth as he walks along ;
only a colossus could be the friend to bestride him in the battle ;
he marches in front of his slim page " like a sow that hath
overwhelmed all her litter but one " ; pitched into the Thames
he has " a kind of alacrity in sinking" ; in the wars he prays —
God keep lead out of me ! I need no more weight than mine
own bowels.
Huge in body, brilliant in mind, he has a soul that has forgotten
to grow up : the elephantine senior bids travellers stand with
a —
What, ye knaves ! young men must live.
He must needs be a lad with the other Eastcheap lads, a "latter
spring" in the boisterous irresponsible young manhood which is
an unconscious prolongation of the nursery life. But nature
abhors a monstrosity ; great part of the humour of the scenes is
made by the real youth repelling the artificial, the natural lads
setting on the ugly duckling who has come among them, until
even a Doll Tearsheet, as she ogles Falstaff, insinuatingly asks,
when he will " leave fighting o' days and foining o' nights, and
begin to patch up his old body for heaven." But he is assailed
in vain : Falstaff holds the champion's belt for all of the seven
deadly sins that do not require exertion. Like the pupils with
the fencing master, the comrades of the old knight make their
fiercest attacks on him only for the purpose of drawing out his
irresistible fence. Pelion upon Ossa of shame is heaped upon
204 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
him, but his audacity of unabashedness refuses to be crushed ;
he is flung into seas of discomfiture, but the elasticity of false
hood brings him up again. All the while we are doing involun
tary homage to the strength of moral law in our amused surprise
at the colossal invention that can rise superior to it. Art is
always the conquest of some material : in the humorous art of
these plays moral order has become the stubborn material which
is being bent to spectacular effect, as the convicted liar ever
gets the better of the convincing truth. And this heroism of
moral insensibility is continued to the very end, even to the
point where the dream spectacle is to reach the inevitable wak
ing point. The riotous Prince Hal has become the magnificent
King Henry ; the Falstaff crew have ridden post haste to Lon
don, with the aid of a thousand pounds borrowed from Shallow,
to enjoy the grand things Falstaff has guaranteed them all from
his newly exalted chum. The meeting has come, and the blow
has fallen ; we turn to hear the first words of a crushed man :
and what we hear is one more flash of the old humour —
Falstaff. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pound.
To all this it may be added that humour includes wit, though
the two things are not conterminous. Wit is the finest and
brightest form of mental play ; the brain has its technique, and
Falstaff is the Paganini of humour. It needs but an appro
priate theme, and some tour-de-force of inexhaustible invention
comes pouring out.
Bardolph. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must
needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass, Sir
John.
Falstaff. Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life;
thou art our admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop, but
'tis in the nose of thee ; thou art the Knight of the Burning
Lamp.
Bardolph. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.
Falstaff. No, I'll be sworn ; I make as good a use of it as
many a man doth of a Death's-head or a memento mori ; I
THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMOUR 205
never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire, and Dives that
lived in purple ; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning.
If thou vvert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy
face ; my oath should be, ' By this fire, that's God's angel ' :
but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for
the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou
rannest up Gadshill in the night to catch my horse, if I did
not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire,
there's no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph,
an everlasting bonfire-light. Thou hast saved me a thousand
marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night
betwixt tavern and tavern ; but the sack that thou hast drunk
me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest
chandler's in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of
yours with fire any time this two and thirty years ; God reward
me for it !
Bardolph. 'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly !
Falstaff. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-
burned.
The prince meets Falstaff on equal terms, and their duets are
masterpieces of mental fencing. But, as Falstaff himself says,
he is not only witty, but " the cause that wit is in other men ";
right through the Falstaff plays there runs an electric storm of
brilliance. Even the malapropism of the hostess catches it, and
the stage rant of Pistol ; we are taught elsewhere that murder
may be considered as a fine art, but when Pistol is matched
against Doll Tearsheet we have to recognise that there is a fine
art of scurrility. At times the wit becomes the regular fooling
of the Shakespearean jester. The prince and Falstaff have a
clown duet :
Prince. This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horse
back-breaker, this huge hill of flesh, —
Falstaff. 'Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried
neat's tongue, you stockfish! O for breath to utter what is
like thee! you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile
standing-tuck, —
206 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Touchstone himself could not have bettered the prince's
mystification of the drawer : 1
Prince. But, Francis!
Francis. My lord?
Prince. Wilt them rob this leathern jerkin, crystal-button,
not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-
tongue, Spanish-pouch, —
Francis. O Lord, sir, who do you mean ?
Prince. Why, then, your brown bastard is your only drink ;
for, look you, Francis, your white canvas doublet will sully : in
Barbary, sir, it cannot come to so much.
Francis. What, sir?
Poins. \Withiri\ Francis !
Prince. Away, you rogue! dost thou not hear them call?
\_Here they both call him ; the drawer stands
amazed, not knowing which way to go.
But with the Shakespearean inspiration even foolery is a vent
for mental wealth ; nonsense is simply sense boiling over.
But enough has been written on this topic — I fear, too much ;
it savours of an offence against humour to seek for it a place in
moral economics. I hasten to conclude this chapter, not with
out suspicion that I shall seem to have been training artillery
upon an ignis fatuus, and demonstrating my own lack of humour
by undertaking to discuss it.
1 First Part of Henry the Fourth : II. iv, from 40.
BOOK III
THE FORCES OF LIFE IN SHAKESPEARE'S
MORAL WORLD
CHAPTER XI : Personality and its Dramatic Expression in Intrigue
and Irony
CHAPTER XII : The Momentum of Character and the Sway of Cir
cumstance
CHAPTER XIII: The Pendulum of History
CHAPTER XIV : Supernatural Agency in Shakespeare's Moral World
CHAPTER XV : Moral Accident and Overruling Providence
XI
PERSONALITY AND ITS DRAMATIC EXPRESSION IN INTRIGUE
AND IRONY
WE pass, in this Third Book, from the phenomena of life to
the forces which underlie it ; so far at least as such forces of life
are reflected in dramatic forms. The most obvious of all the
forces entering into human life is that which we call Will :
personal, individual will. Of course, to recognise will as a
force is not to say that such will is necessarily effective or free.
Muscular power is a force : but I may have exerted all the mus
cular power in my body in an attempt to move toward the
north, all the while that stronger muscles than my own were
carrying me to the south ; my muscular power was not free, and
was the reverse of effective, yet it was none the less a force.
Similarly, the power of individual will may be restrained in its
operation by forces from outside ; or even the will may un
consciously have been restrained by other forces within the
individual, so that his consciousness of free will may prove to
have been a self-deception. The present chapter is occupied
with the force of will ; restraints of will from within or from
without are reserved for the chapters that follow.
Our immediate question then becomes this : Is there any ele
ment of dramatic effect which is specially associated with the
force of personal will? An answer will readily suggest itself.
Scarcely any form of dramatic interest is more prominent than
that called Intrigue. Now Intrigue is an expression of personal
will in a very pronounced form : the term implies conscious pur
pose, sustained plan, some amount of effort in the application of
p 209
210 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
means to ends ; often secrecy and finesse are associated with
Intrigue, but these are not essential. In The Merchant of Venice
both Lorenzo and Bassanio are seen wooing. Lorenzo's wooing
of Jessica is, dramatically, an intrigue : effort and contrivance are
necessary to carry off the Jewess without her father's consent.
But Bassanio's wooing does not make an intrigue, for, upon the face
of things, the issue does not depend upon Bassanio's will or effort,
but upon fate or chance ; the dramatic interest of the Caskets
Story must be referred to some other head — it is a problem and
its solution.
We may go farther. As soon as individual will translates itself
into action, it is sure to come into conflict with other individual
wills. This leads us to another among the prominent forms of
dramatic interest — Irony. Etymologically, this is a Greek word
for saying, more particularly, saying as distinct from meaning:
hence its suggestion is a doubleness of significance, at first in
words, subsequently in situations or events. The word had great
vogue in Greek tragedy, which dramatised stories perfectly fa
miliar to the audience as the sacred myths of their gods ; hence
the spectator in the Greek theatre knew all through the movement
what the end of the story must be, and from time to time words
spoken in the scenes would have an ' irony,' from the spectator's
knowledge of the sequel clashing with the unconsciousness of this
sequel on the part of the personages in the story. Thus CEdipus
is heard vowing to move heaven and earth for the discovery of the
man indicated by the oracle as having polluted the city, and
the audience feel a thrill of irony, for they know the polluter will
be discovered to be CEdipus himself, though at that point of the
story he knows it not. Coming down from Greek to modern
drama, the term 'irony' enlarges to include in a general sense the
shocks and clashes between one aspect and another of some
double situation, the whole grasped by the spectator, only part
known to some at least of the personages in the scene. Thus
irony is closely associated with dramatic intrigue ; it obtains
where intrigue clashes with intrigue, or the course of an intrigue
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 211
clashes with some external circumstance, or something in the
character of the persons concerned. In the play of Measure for
Measure we have the intrigue of Angelo to use secretly his power
over her brother's life as a means of forcing Isabella to his will ;
we have again the secret intrigue of the disguised Duke to substi
tute Mariana for Isabella ; yet again we are aware of the circum
stance that Mariana had been the betrothed bride of Angelo
disgracefully cast off: these three things clash together in the
spectator's mind as the dramatic interest of irony, when he sees
a man unconsciously redeem a former sin in the very act (as he
supposes) of committing a new crime. Again, there is another
secret intrigue of Angelo to hurry the execution of Claudio when
(as he supposes) he has gained the prize for which he promised
pardon ; this is met by a counter intrigue of the Duke to substi
tute for Claudio another victim.1 The irony latent in this clash
of intrigues comes to the surface in the final scene, when the
exposed Angelo, after having been saved from his first danger,
and appearing as the husband of Mariana, is sentenced to death
for the foul treachery to Claudio ; 2 Mariana, up to this point in
league with the Duke, is now plunged in tragic dismay, and with
Isabella pleads passionately for the life of the husband that
moment granted her : all the while that the Duke is prolonging
this strained situation the spectator of the drama has the clue in
his possession that will make all straight. In the same play there
is a dramatic intrigue in the Duke's hovering, disguised as a
Friar, about the scenes from which he is supposed to be at
a distance ; this intrigue comes in contact with the personality of
Lucio,3 and the spectator catches a shock of irony as Lucio
confides to the Friar his low opinion of the Duke ; the spectator
catches another shock of irony as the disguised Duke leads on
Lucio to confess to him misdemeanours of his own which will be
used presently when the Duke resumes his seat of judgment. It
is obvious enough that intrigue and irony naturally go together in
1 Measure for Measure IV. ii, from 95. 2 V. i, from 405.
3 III. ii, from 45; V. i.
212 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the moral system of a dramatic literature : as intrigue is specially
consecrated to the dramatic expression of individual will, so irony
has the function of conveying the clash of individual wills with one
another or with circumstances.
In connection with this part of our subject no play of Shake
speare is more brilliant than The Taming of the Shrew}- It has
a primary and a secondary plot : the first is occupied with the
wooing of Katherine, the shrew ; the second with the wooing of
O
her sister Bianca, a natural and winsome girl. Three suitors are
seeking the hand of this Bianca ; their suits are made intrigues
by the circumstance that her widower father, burdened with the
task of finding husbands for his two children, has hit upon the
ingenious plan of announcing to his world that he will receive
no overture for Bianca until her shrewish elder sister is married ;
this forces Bianca 's lovers to use secrecy and contrivance. It
might seem as if this secondary plot, with a triple intrigue and
all its possibilities of irony, would overbalance the primary plot.
But what this last lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality :
the wooing of Katherine is saturated through and through, not
exactly with irony, but with a dramatic quality akin to irony —
the interest of paradox.
We naturally woo that which is attractive ; Petruchio para
doxically undertakes to win what is repellent.
Gremio. But will you woo this wild-cat ?
Petruchio. Will I live? . . .
Why came I hither but to that intent ?
Think you a little din can daunt mine ears ?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar ?
Have I not heard the sea puff'd up with winds
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat ?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies ?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets1 clang ?
1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 344.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 213
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire ?
The method of the wooing is even more paradoxical than the
purpose to woo. Petruchio may be described as a social
' hustler ' : he has all the hustler's accentuated egoism, and
understands the force of mere social momentum. He sets him
self to reverse everything expected of the conventional wooer ;
in the bewilderment that ensues he will sweep resistance off its
feet by the resolute pace of his movements. While Katherine's
shrewishness is the common talk of the city, Petruchio announces
himself to the father as a suitor attracted by —
Her affability and bashful modesty,
Her wondrous qualities, and mild behaviour.
The delighted Baptista must nevertheless adjourn the interview,
as other guests are present, but the hustler cannot wait.
Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste,
And every day I cannot come to woo.
Katherine is sent for ; in a parenthesis of soliloquy Petruchio
unfolds his system of paradox.
Say that she rail ; why then I'll tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale :
Say that she frown ; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash'd with dew ;
Say she be mute and will not speak a word ;
Then I'll commend her volubility,
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence :
If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks,
As though she bid me stay by her a week ;
If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day
When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.
214 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
A stormy scene ensues, but Petruchio will see nothing stormy.
I find you passing gentle,
'Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar ;
For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,
But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers.
The shrew lets off her rage against this wooer to the assembling
company, but Petruchio is unmoved.
Petru. If she be curst, it is for policy,
For she's not froward, but modest as the dove . . .
And to conclude, we have 'greed so well together,
That upon Sunday is the wedding-day.
Kath. I'll see thee hang'd on Sunday first.
Gremio. Hark, Petruchio ; she says she'll see thee hang'd first.
Tranio. Is this your speeding ? nay, then, good night our part !
Petru. Be patient, gentlemen ; I choose her for myself :
If she and I be pleased, what's that to you ?
'Tis bargain'd 'twixt us twain, being alone,
That she shall still be curst in company.
Whirled at this pace to a wedding-day, the shrew, with no dis
tinct plan of resistance, can only find a fresh grievance in her
proposed bridegroom keeping her waiting : after a while this is
lost in a tour-de-force of paradox.
Petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old jerkin, a pair
of old breeches thrice turned, a pair of boots that have been
candle-cases, one buckled, another laced, an old rusty sword
ta'en out of the town-armoury, with a broken hilt, and chape-
less ; with two broken points ; his horse hipped with an old
mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred ; besides, possessed
with the glanders and like to mose in the chine ; troubled with
the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped
with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,
stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots,
swayed in the back and shoulder-shotten ; near-legged before
and with a half-checked bit and a head-stall of sheep's leather
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY
which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath
been often burst and now repaired with knots ; one girth six
times pieced and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath
two letters for her name fairly set down in studs, and here and
there pieced with pack-thread.
Even the anxious father has to remonstrate, but Petruchio will
not explain.
To me she's married, not unto my clothes.
How the momentum of Petruchio's wildness gets the parties into
the church we can only conjecture, for that part of the story
goes on behind the scenes ; but the proceedings in the church
are related by Gremio : how the mad bridegroom swears his
' ay ' so loud that the priest drops the book, and is cuffed as he
picks it up again ; how he ends by drinking a health, and throws
the sops in the sexton's face. Katherine at last wakes up her
resistance when the newly wedded man will go away on unex
plained business before the wedding feast ; Petruchio sweeps
away the resisting bride as in a fervour of delivering gallantry.
Grumio,
Draw forth thy weapon, we are beset with thieves ;
Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man.
Fear not, sweet wench, they shall not touch thee, Kate ;
Til buckler thee against a million.
The paradoxical taming is continued at home.
Katherine. I, who never knew how to entreat,
Nor never needed that I should entreat,
Am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep ;
With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed ;
And that which spites me more than all these wants,
He does it under name of perfect love ;
As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,
'Twere deadly sickness or else present death.1
l Taming of Shrew IV. iii. 8.
2l6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The paradoxical conclusion of this primary plot is that the tamed
shrew reads to the mild Bianca and other normal wives a long
lecture on wifely submissiveness.
What the interest of paradox is to the primary, the interest of
irony is to the secondary plot. As we have seen, three lovers
make conflicting suits for the hand of the pretty Bianca : Hor-
tensio is a neighbour : Gremio has the common combination of
age with wealth ; Lucentio is a newcomer to Padua, and with
him it is a case of love at first sight.1 All three lovers have to
make their approach indirectly. Hortensio, in return for intro
ducing his friend Petruchio as a suitor for Katherine, arranges
that his friend shall introduce himself disguised as a teacher of
music for Bianca. Gremio on his part will have an agent for
his interests among Bianca's teachers. But Lucentio, in scholar's
disguise, applies for this agency : already we get our first flash
of irony as Gremio unconsciously introduces into the circle of
Bianca's instructors his dangerous rival. As the story pro
gresses, a situation of prolonged irony appears : the disguised
rivals have to carry on their wooing in the presence of one
another.2 The fair pupil has some trouble to keep the peace
between her masters ; she sets the musician to getting his diffi
cult instrument in order, while the teacher of poetry has his
chance.
Lucentio. ' Hie ibat Simois ; hie est Sigeia tellus ;
Hie steterat Priami regia celsa senis.'
'Hie ibat,' as I told you before, — 'Simois,' I am Lucentio,
— ' hie est,' son unto Vincentio of Pisa, — ' Sigeia tellus,' dis
guised thus to get your love ; — ' Hie steterat,' and that Lu
centio that comes a-\vooing, — < Priami,' is my man Tranio, —
' regia,' bearing my port, — ' celsa senis,' that we might beguile
the old pantaloon.
Bianca tries if she has learned her lesson.
^•Taming of Shrew I. i. 152, and whole scene. 2 III. i.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 2I/
< Hie ibat Simois,' I know you not, — <hic est Sigeia tellus,'
I trust you not, — ' Hie steterat Priami,' take heed he hear us
not, — ' regia,' presume not, — ' celsa senis ' despair not.
The music-teacher in his turn begs Bianca to read a new gamut,
newer than anything taught in his trade before — the gamut of
Hortensio.
Bianca (reads) " ' Gamut ' I am, the ground of all accord,
1 A re,' to plead Hortensio's passion ;
' B mi,' Bianca, take him for thy lord,
' C fa ut,' that loves with all affection :
' D sol re,' one clef, two notes have I :
1 E la mi,' show pity, or I die."
Call you this gamut? tut, I like it not :
Old fashions please me best ; I am not so nice,
To change true rules for old inventions.
But the finesse of intrigue in the secondary plot goes far beyond
this. Lucentio has come to Padua with a certain amount of
state ; he has servants, and a family name to support. One of
his servants is Tranio, in whom we recognise a modernisation
of a type familiar to Roman Comedy, the scheming slave or
professional sharper. When, therefore, Lucentio assumes his
disguise, he makes this Tranio take his master's name and
position ; more than this, the pseudo-Lucentio is to go in state to
Baptista's house, and be in name one more suitor for the hand
of Bianca ; he will thus be always at hand to second his master's
secret play.1 Tranio acts the gentleman to perfection, and
makes a social impression for the name of 'Lucentio.'2 Thus
the real Lucentio carries on a double campaign, wooing the lady
in his own (disguised) person, and through his servant heading
off his rivals. Two more strokes of irony are due to the
machinations of Tranio, soi-disant Lucentio. When one of the
rivals, Hortensio, is getting discouraged — since the teacher of
poetry steadily gains upon the teacher of music — the supposed
1 1. i, from 203. 2 II. i, from 87; I. ii, from 219.
218
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Lucentio with easy magnanimity moves Hortensio to mutual
renunciation of their claims.1
Hortensio. Quick proceeders, marry! Now, tell me, I pray,
You that durst swear that your mistress Bianca
Loved none in the world so well as Lucentio.
Tranio. O despiteful love! unconstant womankind!
I tell thee, Licio, this is wonderful.
Hortensio. Mistake no more : I am not Licio,
Nor a musician, as I seem to be ;
But one that scorn to live in this disguise. . . .
Know, sir, that I am call'd Hortensio.
Tranio. Signior Hortensio, I have often heard
Of your entire affection to Bianca ;
And since mine eyes are witness of her lightness,
I will with you, if you be so contented,
Forswear Bianca and her love for ever.
Hortensio. See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio,
Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow
Never to woo her more, but do forswear her,
As one unworthy all the former favours
That I have fondly flatter'd her withal.
Tranio. And here I take the like unfeigned oath,
Never to marry with her though she would entreat.
Not less ironical is the situation when the assumed Lucentio
makes his play against the other rival.2 Gremio has no attrac
tions of youth ; his time comes when the question is of settle
ments. But even Gremio's wealth is made to look small by one
who can draw upon the bank of imagination.
Baptista. Say, Signior Gremio, what can you assure her?
Gremio. First, as you know, my house within the city
Is richly furnished with plate and gold ;
Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands;
My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry ;
In ivory coffers I have stuff 'd my crowns ;
IV. ii.
2 II. i, from 343.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY
In cypress chests my arras counterpoints,
Costly apparel, tents, and canopies,
Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl,
Valance of Venice gold in needlework,
Pewter and brass and all things that belong
To house or housekeeping : then, at my farm
I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail,
Sixscore fat oxen standing in my stalls,
And all things answerable to this portion.
Myself am struck in years, I must confess ;
And if I die to-morrow, this is hers,
If whilst I live she will be only mine.
Tranio. That ' only ' came well in. Sir, list to me :
I am my father's heir and only son :
If I may have your daughter to my wife,
I'll leave her houses three or four as good,
Within rich Pisa walls, as any one
Old Signior Gremio has in Padua ;
Besides two thousand ducats by the year
Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure.
What, have I pinch'd you, Signior Gremio?
Gremio. Two thousand ducats by the year of land!
My land amounts not to so much in all ;
That she shall have ; besides an argosy
That now is lying in Marseilles' road.
What, have I choked you with an argosy?
Tranio. Gremio, 'tis known my father hath no less
Than three great argosies ; besides two galliases,
And twelve tight galleys : these I will assure her,
And twice as much, whate'er thou offer'st next.
Gremio. Nay, I have offer'd all, I have no more ;
And she can have no more than all I have.
219
Four fine situations of irony have thus sprung from the clash
of intrigues in the secondary plot. A fifth is added as at last
the secondary plot is made to clash with the primary. Tranio,
playing the role of his master, has had it all his own way so far ;
but he is now, naturally enough, called upon to make good his
22O THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
promises by a pledge from Lucentio's father.1 Without a blush
he undertakes this.
'Tis in my head to do my master good ;
I see no reason, but supposed Lucentio
Must get a father, call'd • supposed Vincentio ' ;
And that's a wonder : fathers commonly
Do get their children ; but in this case of wooing,
A child shall get a sire, if I fail not of my cunning.
The plan is a simple one : the strangers entering the city are
scanned, until a suitable figure is found in a certain Pedant.2
Tranio. What countryman, I pray?
Pedant. Of Mantua.
Tranio. Of Mantua, sir? marry, God forbid!
And come to Padua, careless of your life?
Pedant. My life, sir! how, I pray? for that goes hard.
Tranio. 'Tis death for any one in Mantua
To come to Padua. Know you not the cause?
Your ships are stay'd at Venice, and the duke,
For private quarrel 'twixt your duke and him,
Hath published and proclaim'd it openly :
'Tis marvel, but that you are but newly come,
You might have heard it else proclaim'd about.
Pedant. Alas, sir, it is worse for me than so!
For I have bills for money by exchange
From Florence and must here deliver them.
Tranio obligingly proposes that the stranger shall assume the
personality of one Sir Vincentio of Pisa, shortly expected to
arrange a matter of dowry for his son on his marriage to Signior
Baptista's daughter ; the Pedant is only too glad to save his
life on these easy terms. So far the intrigue of Tranio is
triumphant ; but meanwhile the train of events which makes
the primary plot of the play is preparing for it a collision.
Petruchio and his Katherine journeying to Padua fall in by the
1 II. i, from 389. 2 IV. ii, from 59.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 221
way with a reverend senior travelling in the same direction ; 1
when the name of Vincentio of Pisa is mentioned, Petruchio
hails him as a prospective marriage connection, and escorts him
to the house where his son will be found to have made a wealthy
and influential match. As they knock at the door 2 the real and
the assumed Vincentio clash.
Pedant (looking out at the window). What's he that
knocks as he would beat down the gate?
Vincentio. Is Signior Lucentio within, sir?
Pedant. He's within, sir, but not to be spoken withal.
Vincentio. What if a man bring him a hundred pound or
two, to make merry withal.
Pedant. Keep your hundred pounds to yourself: he shall
need none, so long as I live.
Petruchio. Nay, I told you your son was well beloved in
Padua. Do you hear, sir? To leave frivolous circumstances,
I pray you, tell Signior Lucentio, that his father is come from
Pisa, and is here at the door to speak with him.
Pedant. Thou liest : his father is come from Padua, and
here looking out at the window.
Vincentio. Art thou his father?
Pedant. Ay, sir ; so his mother says, if I may believe her.
Petruchio (to Vincentio}. Why, how now, gentleman ! why,
this is flat knavery, to take upon you another man's name.
Pedant. Lay hands on the villain : I believe a' means to
cozen somebody in this city under my countenance.
The ironical situation is prolonged as Lucentio's servants come
on the scene, and hasten to take part against their master's own
father ; stormy passages ensue, until Lucentio comes in person, but
comes with his bride on his arm fresh from the church. There is
explanation and confession : but the essential of the marriage has
been secured, and the irate father can only make the best of the
circumstances : irony gives place to the usual happy ending.
For Shakespeare's treatment of intrigue and irony it seems
i IV. v, from 26. 2 V. i.
222 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
natural to mention first this play of The Taming of the Shrew ;
no other drama is richer in ironic situations, while the personal
will, of which intrigue is the embodiment, seems to find its climax
in a sustained paradox. Hardly less remarkable is The Two
Gentlemen of Verona : here the successive advances in intrigue
and irony seem to be made with all the regularity of a game of
chess.1
The opening situation is complex, yet without conflict. We
have three independent interests to keep before our minds : there
is the romantic friendship between Proteus and Valentine, the two
gentlemen of Verona ; there is the love of one of them, Proteus, for
Julia ; again, over in Milan, there is what, to distinguish it from
love, we may call a piece of social matchmaking — the suit of
Sir Thurio for the hand of Silvia, the Duke's daughter, favoured by
her father, resisted by herself. The movement of the play com
mences with Valentine setting off on his travels ; he comes to
Milan, and entertains for Silvia a passion which is fully recipro
cated. This love of Valentine and Silvia becomes an intrigue,
since it must be kept from the knowledge of the father and the
accepted suitor. The irony latent in such a situation become^
apparent in a later scene,2 at a time when Valentine's secret has
been betrayed to the Duke. The lover, conscious to himself of
a rope-ladder under his cloak with which he is to scale Silvia's
window, is detained by the Duke with a long confidential ex
planation of his purpose — from disgust with his daughter's
perverseness — to marry again.
Val. What would your Grace have me to do in this ?
Duke. There is a lady in Verona here
Whom I affect ; but she is nice and coy
And nought esteems my aged eloquence :
Now therefore would I have thee to my tutor —
For long agone I have forgot to court ;
1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 341.
2 Two Gentlemen of Verona III. i, from 51.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY
223
Besides, the fashion of the time is changed —
How and which way I may bestow myself
To be regarded in her sun-bright eye.
Valentine gives the Duke good advice ; but it appears that the
lady is jealously kept all day from the approach of wooers.
Val. Why, then, I would resort to her by night.
Duke. Ay, but the doors be lock'd and keys kept safe,
That no man hath recourse to her by night.
Val. What lets but one may enter at her window?
Duke. Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground,
And built so shelving that one cannot climb it
Without apparent hazard of his life.
Val. Why then, a ladder quaintly made of cords,
To cast up, with a pair of anchoring hooks,
Would serve to scale another Hero's tower,
So bold Leander would adventure it.
Duke. Now, as thou art a gentleman of blood,
Advise me where I may have such a ladder.
Val. When would you use it ? pray, sir, tell me that.
Duke. This very night ; for Love is like a child,
That longs for every thing that he can come by.
Val. By seven o'clock I'll get you such a ladder.
Duke. But, hark thee ; I will go to her alone :
How shall I best convey the ladder thither?
Val. It will be light, my lord, that you may bear it
Under a cloak that is of any length.
Duke. A cloak as long as thine will serve the turn ?
Val. Ay, my good lord.
Duke. Then let me see thy cloak :
I'll get me one of such another length.
Val. Why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord.
Duke. How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak ?
I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me.
What letter is this same ? What's here ? ' To Silvia' !
And here an engine fit for my proceeding.
Meanwhile the action of the play has made a second advance
when Proteus, unexpectedly, has also been sent by his father to
224 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
travel. Proteus has arrived at Milan, and instantly fallen in love
with Silvia. Such love makes a triple intrigue : it is an intrigue
in love, for Proteus is thus false to his Julia ; it is an intrigue in
friendship, Proteus betraying his friend's secret to the Duke in
order to get Valentine out of the way ; yet again, it is an intrigue
in social life and matchmaking, since the only way of getting
access to Silvia is for Pjoteus to pretend to woo on behalf of
Sir Thurio.
Proteus. Already have I been false to Valentine,
And now I must be as unjust to Thurio.
Under the colour of commending him,
I have access my own love to prefer :
But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,
To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.
When I protest true loyalty to her,
She twits me with my falsehood to my friend ;
When to her beauty I commend my vows,
She bids me think how I have been forsworn
In breaking faith with Julia whom I loved. 1
The movement advances yet another stage : Julia, fearing
herself forsaken by her absent lover, sets off to travel in dis
guise of a boy ; and at last, in Milan, engages herself as page to
the unconscious Proteus. What before was triple intrigue now
becomes triple irony. There is irony in love, as Julia is brought
by a friendly landlord to hear her lover serenade another mis
tress.2
Host. How now ! are you sadder than you were before ?
How do you, man ? the music likes you not.
Julia. You mistake : the musician likes me not.
Host. Why, my pretty youth ?
Julia. He plays false, father.
Host. How ? out of tune on the strings ?
Julia. Not so ; but yet so false that he grieves my very
heart-strings.
Host. You have a quick ear.
* IV. ii. 1. a iv. ii, from 26.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY
225
Julia. Ay, I would I were deaf ; it makes me have a slow
heart.
Host. I perceive you delight not in music.
Julia. Not a whit, when it jars so.
Host. Hark, what fine change is in the music!
Julia. Ay, that change is the spite.
Host. You would have them always play but one thing ?
Julia. I would always have one play but one thing.
But there is also irony in friendship : by one of Shakespeare's
happiest touches, Proteus sends the page to Silvia for her
picture ; as the indignant Silvia takes the part of the unknown
Julia the real Julia is warming to her, and thus a secretly dawn
ing affection between their mistresses comes to supply the place
of the secretly ruptured friendship between the two gentlemen
of Verona.1
Silvia. O, he sends you for a picture.
Julia. Ay, madam.
Silvia. Ursula, bring my picture there.
Go, give your master this : tell him from me,
One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget,
Would better fit his chamber than this shadow . . .
Julia. Madam, he sends your ladyship this ring.
Silvia. The more shame for him that he sends it me ;
For I have heard him say a thousand times
His Julia gave it him at his departure.
Though his false finger have profaned the ring,
Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong.
Julia. She thanks you.
Silvia. What say'st thou?
Julia. I thank you, madam, that you tender her.
Poor gentlewoman ! my master wrongs her much.
Silvia. Dost thou know her?
Julia. Almost as well as I do know myself :
To think upon her woes I do protest
That I have wept a hundred several times.
Silvia. Belike she thinks that Proteus hath forsook her.
1 IV. iv, from 113.
226
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Julia. I think she doth ; and that's her cause of sorrow.
Silvia. Is she not passing fair?
Julia. She hath been fairer, madam, than she is :
When she did think my master loved her well,
She, in my judgement, was as fair as you ;
But since she did neglect her looking-glass,
And threw her sun-expelling mask away,
The air hath starved the roses in her cheeks,
And pinch'd the lily-tincture of her face,
That now she is become as black as I.
Silvia. How tall was she ?
Julia. About my stature : for, at Pentecost,
When all our pageants of delight were play'd,
Our youth got me to play the woman's part,
And I was trimm'd in Madam Julia's gown ;
Which served me as fit, by all men's judgements,
As if the garment had been made for me :
Therefore I know she is about my height.
And at that time I made her weep agood,
For I did play a lamentable part :
Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning
For Theseus' perjury and unjust flight ;
Which I so lively acted with my tears
That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,
Wept bitterly ; and would I might be dead
If I in thought felt not her very sorrow!
Silvia. She is beholding to thee, gentle youth.
Alas, poor lady, desolate and left!
I weep myself to think upon thy words.
Here, youth, there is my purse: I give thee this
For thy sweet mistress' sake, because thou lovest her.
Farewell. \_E.rit.
Julia. And she shall thank you for\ if e'er you know her.
To such irony in love and friendship is added, for completeness,
irony in the matter of the matchmaker's intrigue, when Proteus
reports progress to Sir Thurio, for whom he is supposed to be
wooing, and the asides of the page accentuate the ironic situation.1
i V. ii.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY
227
Thurio. Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit?
Proteus. O, sir, I find her milder than she was ;
And yet she takes exceptions at your person.
Thurio. What, that my leg is too long ?
Proteus. No ; that it is too little.
Thurio. I'll wear a boot, to make it somewhat rounder.
Julia. {Aside) But love will not be spurr'd to what it loathes.
Thurio. What says she to my face ?
Proteus. She says it is a fair one.
Thurio. Nay then, the wanton lies ; my face is black.
Proteus. But pearls are fair ; and the old saying is,
Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies1 eyes.
Julia. {Aside) 'Tis true ; such pearls as put out ladies' eyes ;
For I had rather wink than look on them.
Thurio. How likes she my discourse?
Proteus. Ill, when you talk of war.
Thurio. But well, when I discourse of love and peace ?
Julia. {Aside) But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.
Thurio. What says she to my valour?
Proteus. O, sir, she makes no doubt of that.
Julia. {Aside} She needs not, when she knows it cowardice.
Thurio. What says she to my birth ?
Proteus. That you are well derived.
Julia. (Aside) True ; from a gentleman to a fool.
Already we have a triple intrigue with its triple irony ; it only
needs that a further advance of the movement shall bring the
threads of the plot to a common meeting point. This is secured
by the agency of a band of Outlaws infesting Italian roads ; * first
Valentine, going into banishment, is captured by them and be
comes their captain ; then all the other personages of the plot
in succession fall into the hands of the Outlaws and the power
of Valentine. The prolonged irony of the plot thus intensifies
to such shocks of clashing as will rapidly produce new com
binations. First, we have Proteus forcing his love upon the
indignant Silvia in the hearing of Valentine himself : the injured
1 IV. i ; compare V. Hi, iv.
228 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
friend discovers himself, and Proteus's guilty intrigue is shat
tered at a blow. But in the rebound from this we have another
shock : in his fulness of forgiveness Valentine speaks of bestow
ing his Silvia on Proteus, when a cry from the swooning page
discovers Julia. The captured Duke and Thurio cease to pre
sent further obstacles. All dissolves into a final situation of
equilibrium, triple like the opening situation, but with a happy
change of persons : we end with the restored friendship of
Valentine and Proteus, the restored love of Proteus and Julia,
and the new love of Valentine and Silvia triumphant over all
the crosses of fortune.
The two plays of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth
Night have been mentioned in a previous chapter as examples
of plot resting mainly upon the clash of intrigues. Such plays
naturally will be full of irony. Two illustrations are especially
striking. The jealous Ford, warned of Falstaff ' s designs against
his wife, forms a deep intrigue of his own : in disguise he seeks
the knight, and makes a pretext for urging him on in his wicked
purpose ; Ford's idea, of course, being to keep in touch with
Falstaff's intrigue until he can choose his own moment for ex
posing it. But to the dramatic spectator the irony is exquisite :
a gallant forming a design against a wife is being paid money by
the husband for acting upon it ; again, Ford, laying a deep
scheme for finding out whether his wife may not be in some
slight degree assailable, is forced under his disguise to listen
patiently to a circumstantial account of how this wife has been
already assailed, and further to know that he himself was
present on the occasion and blindly let the assailant escape.
From Twelfth Night comes the prettiest of all ironic situations.
The disguised Viola loves the Duke, and naturally would throw-
obstacles in the way of the love embassies to Olivia. So the
supposed page reads lectures to his master on love.
Viola. Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,
Hath for your love as great a pang of heart
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 229
As you have for Olivia : you cannot love her ;
You tell her so ; must she not then be answer' d ?
The Duke with much rhetoric protests that no woman's heart
is big enough to hold love like his own.
Viola. Ay, but I know, —
Duke. What dost thou know?
Viola. Too well what love women to men may owe :
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter loved a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
Duke. And what's her history?
Viola. A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek : she pined in thought ;
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? . . .
Duke. But died thy sister of her love, my boy?
Viola. I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers, too : and yet, I know not.
A Midsummer-Night 'j Dream * goes beyond even Twelfth Night
in intricacy of ironic situations. It well may; for in the Midsiim-
mer-Nighfs Dream supernatural machinery is available, and
fairy enchantment goes to swell the natural crossing of cir
cumstance. We hear how Cupid's fiery shaft, aimed in vain
at a maiden queen, fell upon a little western flower which is
called love-in-idleness : 2
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 342.
2 Midsummer-Night's Dream II. i. 155-187.
230 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
But for this sweet poison there is an antidote : Dian's bud
prevails over Cupid's flower, if it be crushed into the eye of the
deluded lover : 1
Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,
To take from thence all error with his might,
And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.
With motive agencies of this kind to draw upon, we are pre
pared for a plot that will exhibit an ever increasing crescendo
of entanglement.
The original situation — lying outside the play — was simple :
two pairs of mutual loves, Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius
and Helena. When the parties first appear before us in the
play,2 some unknown accident or personal whim has produced a
situation of perversity ; for Demetrius has transferred his love
to Hermia, two men loving the same woman, while Helena is
forsaken, yet still loves. This situation is converted into a
triple intrigue by the circumstance that Hermia 's father favours
the suit of Demetrius, and invokes the authority of the Duke.
Accordingly we have, first, the lovers Lysander and Hermia
stealing away by night out of Athens ; then Helena, admitted
to their confidence, betraying their flight to Demetrius;3 then
again, as Demetrius pursues the lovers, Helena herself pursuing
Demetrius.4 In this entanglement of perverse intrigue all enter
the enchanted wood. Now the King of Fairies interferes :
1 ill. ii. 366; IV. i. 78. » I. i. 246.
2 I. i, from 21. * II. ii, from 84.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY
231
hearing the lamentations of Helena and the scorn of Demetrius,
he sends Puck to exercise the virtue of Cupid's flower upon
' an Athenian ' whom he will find in the wood ; Puck mistakes
his man, and anoints the eyes of Lysander, who, when he
awakes, is enchanted into adoration of Helena.1 We have thus
— not, as in Twelfth Night, a triangular duel of fancy — but
what may be called a quadrangular duel of perverse affection :
Lysander in love with Helena, Helena with Demetrius, Deme
trius with Hermia, Hermia with Lysander. The mistake being
discovered, Oberon himself takes charge of the remedy : 2 he
applies the juice to Demetrius 's eyes, while Puck is sent to
bring Helena to the side of Demetrius when he shall awake.
The charm takes effect, but the complication is greater than
ever : once more we have two men wooing one woman, with
another woman forsaken ; but Helena, the doubly-wooed, takes
it all for mockery of her forsaken condition ; at last she turns
upon Hermia, and squabbles between the girls are added to
crossings of the lovers. 3
1 II. ii. 70, 103. 2 HI. ii, from 88.
8 From III. ii. 192 to 447 this acutest phase of the entanglement prevails:
dotted lines in the figure suggest the breaking up of amicable relations between
the two girls, and again between the two men.
232 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Helena. Lo, she is one of this confederacy !
Now I perceive they have conjoin'd all three
To fashion this false sport, in spite of me.
Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!
Have you conspired, have you with these contrived
To bait me with this foul derision ?
Is all the counsel that we two have shared,
The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us, — O, is it all forgot ?
All school-days' friendship, childhood innocence?
This is only the mild beginning : in time they come near to
personal violence.
Helena. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,
Let her not hurt me : I was never curst ; . . .
O, when she's angry, she is keen and shrewd !
She was a vixen when she went to school ;
And though she be but little, she is fierce.
Hermia. ' Little ' again ! nothing but ' low ' and 'little '!
Why will you suffer her to flout me thus ?
Let me come to her.
Meanwhile the combative spirit has spread to the men :
Demetrius. If she cannot entreat, I can compel.
Lysander. Thou can'st compel no more than she entreat. . . .
Demetrius. I say I love thee more than he can do.
Lysander. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.
At last we have the vixenish Hermia chasing the longer-legged
Helena, the two lovers with drawn swords chasing one another
through the dusky wood ; Puck, with mist and mimicking voice,
rejoicing to emphasise the confusion. When all lie down from
sheer weariness, unconscious of the vicinity of the others, the
time has come for applying the antidote. It only needs to
squeeze Dian's bud into the eyes of Lysander,1 and the whole
1 III. ii. 450.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 233
tangle of ironic perversity resolves into the final happy situa
tion : two pairs of loyal lovers, the sundered friendship of
the schoolmates and the sundered good-fellowship of the
young men entirely restored. As the four awake and leave the
enchanted wood, they can hardly persuade themselves that
the distracting events of the night have been anything more
than a midsummer-night's dream.1
Two more of Shakespeare's comedies are noteworthy for the
treatment of intrigue and irony. The main plot of Much Ado
About Nothing- rests upon an intrigue of the blackest villany.
Don John, rebel against his brother the Prince, has been con
quered, and brought home in sullen subjection : he is on the
watch for mischief. He and his followers concert a deep
scheme against a favourite of the Prince : it is that some one
should personate Hero, and exhibit her in an equivocal situation
before the Prince and his friend, the very night before she is to
become this Claudio's bride. But conspiracy is for ever at the
mercy of accident ; irony and accident combine when the dra
matic providence of the play contrives the slightest of accidents
as sufficient for the purpose. It is found in the Night Watch —
stupidest of all Night Watches, a company of louts officered by
a pair of asses ; these have not had time to compose themselves
to sleep through their watch before they happen to overhear
a conversation of Don John's men, and the conspiracy is be
trayed before it has reached its completion. It is however just
1 IV. i. 136-196.
2 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 346.
234 TIIE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
here that the strongest irony comes in. The officers of the
watch, Dogberry and Verges, big with self-importance, bring
their discovery to the governor.1
Leonato. What would you with me, honest neighbour ?
Dogberry. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with
you that decerns you nearly.
Leonato. Brief, I pray you ; for you see it is a busy time
with me.
Dogberry. Marry, this it is, sir.
Verges. Yes, in truth it is, sir.
Leonato. What is it, my good friends ?
Dogberry. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the
matter : an old man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, God
help, I would desire they were ; but, in faith, honest as the
skin between his brows.
Verges. Yes, I thank God I am as honest as any man
living that is an old man and no honester than I.
Dogberry. Comparisons are odorous : palabras, neighbour
Verges.
Leonato. Neighbours, you are tedious.
Dogberry. It pleases your worship to say so, but we are
the poor duke's officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I
were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to be
stow it all of your worship.
Leonato. All thy tediousness on me, ah ?
Dogberry. Yea, an 'twere a thousand pound more than
'tis ; for I hear as good exclamation on your worship as of
any man in the city ; and though I be but a poor man, I am
glad to hear it.
Verges. And so am I.
Leonato. I would fain know what you have to say.
Verges. Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your
worship's presence, ha' ta'en a couple of as arrant knaves as
any in Messina.
Dogberry. A good old man. sir ; he will be talking : as
they say, when the age is in, the wit is out : God help us !
i Muck Ado III. v.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 235
it is a world to see. Well said, i1 faith, neighbour Verges :
well, God's a good man ; an two men ride of a horse, one
must ride behind. An honest soul, i' faith, sir ; by my troth
he is, as ever broke bread ; but God is to be worshipped ; all
men are not alike ; alas, good neighbour.
Leonato. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you.
Dogberry. Gifts that God gives.
Leonato. I must leave you.
Dogberry. One word, sir : our watch, sir, have indeed com
prehended two aspicious persons, and we would have them
this morning examined before your worship.
Leonato. Take their examination yourself and bring it me :
I am now in great haste, as it may appear unto you.
The dramatic spectator thus watches the important discovery in
the act of being revealed, and revealed to the father of the
threatened bride: but he sees, on the other hand, the fussy
haste of Leonato, with a bridal ceremony on his hands, and the
fussy self-importance of Dogberry and Verges, resolved to make
the most of their accidental find, clash together, and delay the
understanding of what has happened until it is too late, and
the unhappy Hero has been shamed before the whole congrega
tion. The resolution of this entanglement is striking. Villa-
nous intrigue has been met by accident ; has been reinstated by
perverse folly : it is now met by what may be called the pious
intrigue of the Friar. His sagacity has suspected some con
cealed wrong : he throws over Hero the veil of a reputed death,
until bridegroom and Prince and father have learned the truth
and been stricken with remorse. Claudio penitentially under
takes the strange recompense to the family honour, that he
shall wed a veiled and unknown bride ; the raised veil dis
plays Hero risen from the death of her slandered fame, and
all ends happily.
As the main plot of this play is interesting for its peculiar
handling of intrigue and irony, so the underplot is a masterpiece
of what we have already seen in another play — the paradoxical
intrigue. Benedict and Beatrice have become types for the
236 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
whole literary world of the commonest of social conventionalities,
what Shakespeare calls " the merry war of the sexes." The
underplot is an ingenious conspiracy of the other personages of
the story to bring the man-quizzer and the woman-quizzer into
love with one another. The vein of paradox is richly worked,
and concludes in a paradoxical consummation.
Benedick. A miracle ! here's our own hands against our
hearts. Come, I will have thee ; but, by this light, I take thee
for pity.
Beatrice. I would not deny you ; but, by this good day, I
yield upon great persuasion ; and partly to save your life, for
I was told you were in a consumption.
The other play to which I have made reference is the comedy
of All's Well that Ends Well. We are not concerned with the
difficult question of the play — the exact characters of Helena
and Bertram. It is enough that the plot is made by a pair of
cross intrigues.1 There is the intrigue of Helena to win Ber
tram ; successful so far that the King, grateful for his rescue
from illness, has used his feudal authority to force unwilling
Bertram to accept Helena as his wife. But though the ceremony
of marriage is compulsory, its consummation depends upon Ber
tram's will : his intrigue is to escape the reality of the union to
which he has been obliged to give nominal assent. Bertram
sends the obedient wife to his ancestral home, making a pretext
for a temporary separation which he means shall be eternal.
Helena at last learns her husband's will in this enigmatic
message : 2
When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never
shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that
I am father to, then call me husband : but in such a ' then '
I write a < never.'
1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, p. 345.
* All's Well III. ii. 59.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 237
This is of course the crux of the whole plot: the opposing
intrigues have met in a central point. All that follows is a
prolonged irony : Bertram, using deep finesse to point the
impossibility of union with Helena, is all the while teaching
Helena the exact means of winning him. As happens so often
with enforced marriages, Bertram takes refuge in general dissi
pation ; in particular, he wooes a virtuous maiden of Florence.
Helena has disappeared, as it seems never to return ; and in
time is supposed to be dead. But she has followed in secret her
husband's career, and at last concerts her plot with Diana of
Florence, to take Diana's place, and turn an intended sin into a
deed of restitution.
Helena. Why then to-night
Let us assay our plot ; which, if it speed,
Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed
And lawful meaning in a lawful act,
Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.1
The irony that tinctures the whole situation breaks out finely at
one point in the dialogue. The impassioned Bertram is wooing
the Florentine maiden, when she suddenly seems to yield.2
Diana. Give me that ring.
Bertram. I'll lend it thee, my dear ; but have no power
To give it from me.
Diana. Will you not, my lord?
Bertram. It is an honour 'longing to our house,
Bequeathed down from many ancestors ;
Which were the greatest obloquy i' the world
In me to lose.
Diana. Mine honour's such a ring :
My chastity's the jewel of our house,
Bequeathed down from many ancestors ;
Which were the greatest obloquy i' the world
In me to lose : thus your own proper wisdom
illl.vii. fin. 2 iv. ii. 39.
238 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Brings in the champion Honour on my part,
Against your vain assault.
Bertram. Here, take my ring:
My house, mine honour, yea, my life, be thine,
And Fll be bid by thee.
The plot goes forward to its completion. Bertram awakes from
deepest disgrace to find a refuge in the restored Helena ; he has
consummated a union in the act of deserting it, and by his own
unconscious deed fulfilled the impossible condition his own
bitter wit had devised.
In this way intrigue, with its attendant irony, dominates the
comedies of Shakespeare. But intrigue has a place in tragedy
also, and here the irony may be of a different kind. The great
study for this is the play of Othello} As motive centre of this
play, we have lago, whose soul is shaped by intrigue ; infinitely
crafty to plot, lago is also infinitely subtle to suspect ; until sus
picion goes beyond all natural bounds, and — like an eye
strained by gazing at strong colours — lago sees nothing but his
own dark passions even in the purity of Othello and Cassio.2
The opening situation of the drama is threefold. In Roderigo
we have lust : the mere pursuit of a beauty which morally is on
a plane out of his reach ; mere animal pursuit, in the spirit of
the poet's scornful word —
Man is the hunter; woman is his game ;
The sleek and comely creatures of the chase ;
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins.
Cassio is heart whole : even in his liaison with Bianca — which
in the spirit of the age must be considered an innocent thing —
he is tolerant, not amorous ; while he has been the trusted go-
between in arranging the marriage of Desdemona with his chief.
The third element in the opening situation is the mutual love of
Othello and Desdemona; the natural affinity of soul which has
1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, p. 363.
2 Othello : II. 1.304, 316.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 239
s r I f
drawn together such opposites as the swarthy Moor and the deli
cate aristocratic beauty of Venice. Upon this threefold situation
is brought to bear the brooding suspiciousness of lago, and we get
a threefold intrigue. Against Roderigo it is the intrigue of the
sharper and his dupe ; Roderigo is baited with specious hopes,
while he turns his estate into costly jewels, which get no farther
than the coffers of lago. As to Cassio, lago has a double plot :
he seeks to oust him from an office he desires for himself; yet
more, he seeks to get rid altogether of a man the daily beauty in
whose life makes lago seem ugly.1 The third intrigue is against
Othello : the soul of lago, sodden with jealous suspicion, has con
ceived the impossible idea that Othello has wronged him with his
wife Emilia;2 and lago resolves to make Othello in his turn feel
what the pangs of jealousy mean. And here the treatment of
intrigue is different from what we have seen in the other plays.
Instead of these intrigues conflicting with one another, lago, by a
few simple devices, is able to make them all cooperate in one
single monster intrigue. By the simple suggestion to Roderigo
that Desdemona is in love with Cassio the two first intrigues be
come one :3 Roderigo, maddened at the idea, is easily persuaded,
at the risk of some bodily suffering, to provoke a quarrel with
Cassio when on military duty, and by the scandal that ensues
Cassio loses his position ; at the same time it is by employing
Roderigo, and giving him a sense of doing something in the
pursuit of Desdemona, that lago keeps his hold on Roderigo's
purse. Later lago sets Roderigo on to attacking Cassio by night,
lago himself being at hand to secure, as he hopes, the death of
both.4 Again, by choosing the name of Cassio as the name to
suggest to Othello in connection with dark insinuations against
the honour of Desdemona, lago makes the second and third
intrigues into one ; by a sort of economy of villany it is brought
about that all done towards racking Othello's heart with jealous
1 V. i. 19. 8 From II. i. 220.
2 I. iii, from 392; II. i, from 295. 4 iv. ii, from 173;
V. i.
240 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
misery is so much done towards bringing Cassio into danger,
making him the victim of one who is as powerful to destroy as
he is maddened with sense of injury. Not only have the four
intrigues become one, but also the other threads making up the
plot have been interwoven with them : Roderigo's mad pursuit of
Desdemona has added impetus to the schemes of lago ; the force
that linked Desdemona to Othello has become a sundering force
when love has corrupted into jealousy ; even the affair of Cassio
and Bianca1 is by accident made to lend a touch of impulse to the
swelling current of suspicion. Thus all the trains of action move
to a common culmination in a tragic climax. But an unexpected
part of this tragic climax is the reaction of the intrigues upon the
intriguer. It is here that irony begins to appear ; and it is a triple
irony. The dark plotting of lago is at last betrayed to Othello —
and by whom? It is lago's wife ^Emilia whose simplicity hits
upon the truth that none of the rest have seen ; lago, vainly seek
ing to stop the revelation, when it has come out, in a moment's
frenzy stabs his wife. Here is the first irony : when first lago
conceived his groundless suspicions, he vowed he would be
"evened with Othello, wife for wife";2 in a sense very different
from what he meant his words have been fulfilled ; his devilish
machinations have led Othello to slay Desdemona, and, in the
rebound of this tragedy, lago has come to slay his own Emilia,
and is thus " evened with Othello, wife for wife." The second
irony has reference to Roderigo : lago had contrived his death
to prevent his own betrayal ; and from the pocket of the slain
Roderigo is taken the paper which makes the final link in the
chain of evidence against lago.3 Yet again, lago had plotted
against Cassio's office and his life : Cassio just escapes with his
life, succeeds Othello in the office of governor, and his first official
act is to superintend the torturing of lago.4
Here is the doublesidedness of situation and mockery in events
1 III. iv, from 168 ; IV. i, from 151. 8 Compare V. i. 15, and V. ii. 308.
2 II. 1-308- * V. ii. 332-335.
DRAMATIC INTRIGUE AND IRONY 241
which make irony ; but there is a difference from what has so far
appeared. It is not so much the irony of circumstances as the
irony of fate. In comedy, the irony depended upon the dramatic
spectator who was, so to speak, in the confidence of the story, and
held in his hands the two sides of the situation of which actors in
the story saw only one side. But in this play, the suggestion is
as if fate — or providence, or the general course of events — was
itself the spectator, holding the clue to the issue, which it made
known in a shock of irony only when the issue was visibly de
termined. And such irony as this has a great part in securing the
dramatic satisfaction with which such a tragedy closes. If we
look merely at the bare events, we find all parties evened in a
common ruin ; the innocent Desdemona and the nobly erring
Othello are just as certainly overthrown as the stupid Roderigo
and lago the arch-villain. But, for a difference, a halo of pathos
surrounds the fallen Othello and Desdemona; not entirely free
from error, they have nevertheless perished because they are too
nobly trustful for the evil surroundings in which they are placed.
But in the fall of Roderigo and lago — in the spectacle of lust
slain by craft, craft overwhelmed in the ruins of its own crafti
ness — there is no redeeming pathos, but only the bitterness of
mocking nemesis; they have lived the life of villains, and the
irony of fate has at last shown them up for fools.
XII
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER AND THE SWAY OF
CIRCUMSTANCE
PERSONAL will, we have seen in the preceding chapter, is the
most obvious of the forces moving the moral world ; and it has
its dramatic representation in intrigue and irony. Our next
question is of other forces that tend to limit individual will.
Two expressions rise naturally to the tongue as expressing the
modification of individual action — heredity and environment.
We have to consider the relation of these to the moral system
of Shakespeare.
The force of heredity does not seem to be prominent in
Shakespeare's world : we should rather say that it is conspicu
ous by its absence. Perhaps the strongest form of heredity is
racial influence, and a chapter of this work1 has been devoted
to certain racial characteristics of Roman life ; yet, as succes
sive periods of Roman history were portrayed in the three plays,
we saw the specially Roman view of life yielding steadily before
the growing freedom of individuality, racial heredity becoming
diluted by advancing cosmopolitanism. Again, we know both
the parents of Hamlet, and the divided character of the hero
might suggest that the strength inherited from his father was
modified by weakness derived from his mother. Yet the same
play gives us the two brothers, as unlike " as Hyperion to a
satyr," with nothing in the way of ancestry to account for the
difference. Similarly, nothing is suggested to explain why Henry
of Monmouth should be so diverse from his brothers ; or why
l Chapter VI.
242
THE MOMENTUM OP CHARACTER 243
such a father as Bolingbroke should have such a son as Henry ;
or why such a son as Hotspur should come from such parents
as the hesitating Northumberland and his unwarlike wife. Dif
ference of maternity, of course, would account for the differences
between Edgar and Edmund in King Lear, or between the prince
and Don John in Much Ado, or between Faulconbridge and the
rightful heir in King John. But this is not suggested to explain
why Lear should have daughters so different, nor why there
should be such opposite characters in the family of Sir Rowland
de Boys. It seems strange that Cymbeline should be the father
of such a daughter as Imogen, and such sons as the two stolen
boys ; in the same play the very courtiers remark upon the dif
ficulty of heredity in such a case as the Queen and Cloten —
— that such a crafty devil as is his mother
Should yield the world this ass !
In saying this I do not mean to suggest that Shakespeare is in
any way untrue to life ; in the world of the actual it is clear that
heredity serves as a very uncertain criterion for the analysis of
individuality. Where the question is of pigeons, or even of race
horses, the qualities in consideration are so comparatively simple
that careful breeding may produce very definite results. In
human nature the force of heredity is displayed chiefly in the
lower stages of civilisation ; as we rise higher in the scale of
personality tokens of hereditary resemblance approach nearer
and nearer to curiosities. In any case, there is no need to dwell
long upon this topic. Our question is, not simply the facts of
the Shakespearean world, but the representation of those facts
in dramatic forms ; and I am unable to see that any element of
dramatic form is associated with the expression of heredity, as
this term is generally understood.
There is, however, something, not usually comprised under the
term 'heredity' and yet closely akin to it, which plays a great part
in every dramatic system. In the number of a man's ancestors
we ought in strictness to reckon the man himself ; not only is
244 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
" the boy the father to the man," but the past of each individual
life is in some sort an ancestor to his present and his future.
Heredity is habit writ large: certain repeated actions have by
repetition become easy, they pass into tendencies, they stiffen
into habits ; and such habits can be transmitted from one in
dividual to another, whether by the force of imitation, or of
training, or perhaps by physical propagation. In the same way,
if we take a single life at any point of its history, we shall find
accumulated tendencies and habits which are passing on from
the past to the future of that life as forces, exerting just such
influences as would be exerted by habits and qualities derived
by that life from ancestral lives. Such tendencies transmitted
from the past to the present will be varied, and often mutually
antagonistic ; but as we compare and set one against another we
are usually able to strike a balance, or determine a mathematical
resultant of them all, which we call the individual's ' character ' :
the mark or stamp distinguishing him from other individuals.
Obviously, character is one of the forces of life, and a force
modifying free individual action ; we call the man a free agent,
yet we expect that he will act according to his 'character.' The
exact nature of character as a force may be expressed by the
word momentum. Steam or other power has set a wheel in mo
tion ; when the power is withdrawn the motion continues, and
must continue until the acquired momentum is counteracted by
friction or other forces. Similarly, a man's character is the
momentum of his past : new influences may change the char
acter, but in the absence of these the character acquired in the
past is a real force carrying the individual in definite directions.
It is hardly necessary to remark that character is one of the
universally recognised elements of dramatic effect. The posi
tion then of character as one of the forces modifying personal
will becomes important in the moral system of the Shakespearean
world. The poet has given us two specially interesting studies
of this topic, the momentum of character : one may be briefly
stated, the other will need detailed analysis.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 245
The Caskets Story in The Merchant of Venice is a dramatised
problem.1 The hand of Portia, and all her wealth, is by her
father's will destined to the suitor who shall choose rightly
between three caskets. What grounds of choice are there for
the successive candidates ? One casket is of gold, another of
silver, a third of lead ; the golden casket has the inscription —
Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.
There is another inscription for the silver casket —
Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.
Yet another inscription is on the casket of lead —
Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.
If there is an inclination to connect the metal of the casket
with the idea of success or failure, this may be overthrown by
some different suggestions from the mottoes ; if after elaborate
balancing of metal against motto and motto against metal
ingenuity can still find some preponderance in favour of one
alternative, there is yet a further doubt whether — in what pre
sents itself as a puzzle to guess — the preponderance may not
have been anticipated by the testator who propounds the puzzle,
and so discounted. To all appearance the prize of Portia is
staked upon absolute chance.
Such is the problem ; what is the solution as worked out in the
incident dramatised ? We are permitted to hear in part the
train of argument by which each suitor, as he thinks, is being
led to his decision ; all the while we are in a position to see
that, not their reasoning, but their whole character in reality
fixes their choice. The prince of Morocco has been moulded
by royal position in a country in which royalty is a sort of
divinity : anything below gold is secretly repugnant to him,
however he may reason ; moreover, his soliloquy betrays that
1 This has been worked out at length in my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist,
Chapter I.
246 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the desire of many men has been the real bait to bring him
from his distant home, and not the worth of Portia. The prince
of Arragon has been stamped into a character by aristocracy,
and its theory of the rule of desert :
O . . . that clear honour
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover that stand bare!
How many be commanded that command !
How much low peasantry would then be glean'd
From the true seed of honour! and how much honour
Pick'd from the chaff and ruin of the times
To be new-varnish'd !
Accordingly he ' assumes desert ' : and the silver casket betrays
him. Bassanio alone has come in the character of a true lover,
to whom the giving and hazarding of all for his love is more
blessed than any receiving. Thus the incident as a whole —
under the appearance of men reasoning in an issue where we
see reasoning is a futile weighing of evenly balanced alternatives
— in reality presents the momentum of character : the respective
characters of three men, formed by the reasonings and choices
of their whole past, have had force to carry them over a crisis
in which conscious choice was no more than a self-deception.
But for the momentum of character the supreme illustration
is the career of Macbeth. In appreciating character as a force
the first step is to form a clear conception of the particular
individuality in its essential features. Here a difficulty arises :
the popular conception of Macbeth is one which, as it appears
to me, is wholly at variance with the evidence of the play. It
dates from the period when Shakespeare, ignored by the scholar
ship of the age, was left to the theatre ; and, naturally, the
bias of stage interpretation is rather towards what is impressive
in the acting than what rests upon the weighing of evidence.
This traditional reading of the hero — apart from the question
of its correctness — is no doubt interesting in itself. It is that
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 247
of a great soul overborne by external influence : some say, the
influence of his wife ; others would put it, the temptation of the
Witches ; yet others would combine the two. Such a view of
Macbeth appears to me in flat contradiction to the text of the
play. A single passage1 is sufficient to disprove it, while the
view of the hero suggested in that passage is in harmony with
all that appears of Macbeth from beginning to end. Let us
commence by examining this crucial point of the drama.
The situation is that Macbeth is debating whether he shall
not drop the plan that has been arranged for Duncan's murder ;
Lady Macbeth is holding her husband to the plot. In answer
to a taunt of cowardice Macbeth has spoken big words :
I dare do all that may become a man ;
Who dares do more is none.
Unfortunately, Lady Macbeth is able to make this rejoinder :
What beast was't then
That made you break this enterprise to me ? . . .
Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both :
They have made themselves.
Macbeth does not contradict: we have it then, on the admis
sion of the parties themselves, that it was Macbeth who proposed
the murder of Duncan to his wife, and not Lady Macbeth to her
husband. When was this proposal made ? Since the opening of
the drama Macbeth and his wife have not been together until the
day when the above words are spoken. The reference cannot
be to some interview earlier in the same day, because of the
note of time Lady Macbeth gives —
l Macbeth: I. vii, from 29. Mrs. Siddons [quoted in the Variorum (second)
edition, page 473] says, " There can be no doubt that Macbeth, in the first instance,
suggested the design of assassinating the King."
248 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, etc.
These words can apply only to the visit of Duncan ; and this
visit was arranged, and made known by Macbeth to his wife,
before Macbeth arrived at his castle.1 Nor can the proposal of
treason — as I have sometimes heard it suggested — have been
made in the letter sent to Lady Macbeth.2 It would seem to be
a purposeless absurdity that a man should write a suggestion of
treason and murder to a wife he will presently see ; moreover,
we hear Lady Macbeth reading the letter, which seems to be all
about the meeting with the Witches ; when it has been read,
Lady Macbeth's comment implies just the absence of what it is
suggested that the letter might have contained :
I do fear thy nature ;
It is too full o1 the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.
There is no escape from the conclusion that, at some time
before the commencement of the drama, and thus before the
meeting between Macbeth and the Witches, Macbeth had opened
the scheme of murder to his wife. One thing more is implied
by this important passage. Lady Macbeth goes on to use
strange language.
I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me :
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
It appears then that Macbeth's 'breaking' of the enterprise
to his wife was no cautious suggestion of treason, but a violent
oath of resolve. How can the popular tradition of Macbeth, as
a soul ruined by others, stand against the positive revelation of
this passage, which carries us back to a period before the com-
1 Compare I. v. 32-38. 2 In I. v.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 249
mencement of the play, before the meeting of Macbeth with the
Witches, and exhibits him as breaking to his wife a scheme of
treason and murder, and swearing to it with a violence which the
startled wife can convey only by using the most terrible image
that a mother's mind could call up ?
When this traditional misapprehension has been cleared out
of the way, it is not difficult to form a definite conception for
the character of Shakespeare's Macbeth. So far as an individ
ual character can ever be summed up in a single phrase,
Macbeth is the man of action. In our antithesis of the outer
and inner life, this personage would stand for one side of the
antithesis alone. Like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, an exact
converse to Shakespeare's Hamlet, Macbeth is strong, quick, full
of resource, in moments of action ; feeble and vacillating in
moments of thinking and introspection. To differentiate the
character still further, two other salient features may be noted,
though they are natural consequences of the first. As a man of
action Macbeth is specially discomposed by suspense, the time
of strong feeling where there is no outlet in deeds. Again, it is
an age of superstition : unlike Banquo, who doubts, but doubts
with an open mind, and unlike Lady Macbeth, who ignores the
supernatural altogether, Macbeth himself is a prey to supersti
tion ; the absence of any inner life of his own has left him
defenceless against what his age accepts. These three things
— magnificent capacity for action, intolerance of suspense,
proneness to superstition — make a definite conception for the
character of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and become a triple clue
by which it can be recognised in all its phases of development.
We are now to watch the character so defined gathering force
and momentum as it passes through successive stages of the
story. Four stages may be recognised in the developing
activity of Macbeth. His first crime (the murder of Duncan) is
a thing of long premeditation and brooding, with several fluctu
ations of purpose. The second crime (the murder of the grooms)
is the impulse of a single moment. With the third crime (the
250 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
murder of Banquo) we find something like deliberate enjoyment
of slaughter. In the fourth stage Macbeth's life is all crime :
he is hurried from one violence to another by irresistible frenzy.
And, side by side with this increasing capacity for evil action,
we can see in the hero of the play how suspense grows from an
uncomfortable feeling to a torturing and settled disease ; we can
see again how the superstition, which at first was only a wonder,
comes in time to be for Macbeth his sole refuge and trust.
Our earliest knowledge of Macbeth, derived from the passage
of the play analysed above, is that he has devoted himself by
mighty oath to treason against his king, the time for executing
the treason being in some future not yet seen. Meanwhile
Macbeth has become the hero of a successful war ; returning
from this war he is met by the Witches,1 who hail him as thane
of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and finally add —
Thou shalt be KING hereafter!
Macbeth starts : how is this start to be interpreted ? The
ordinary view of the hero reads this start as the shock of tempta
tion, that moment first presented. But it must be remembered
that there was nothing strange or guilty in the words of the
Witches ; Banquo, who is present, and of course reflects the
ideas of the time, sees nothing sinister.
Banquo. Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair?
The crown in the days of our story did not descend according
to fixed rules ; it was at the moment probable enough that one
so high in the line of succession (though not the highest) should
come in time to wear the crown ; it was as natural for fortune
tellers to promise Lord Macbeth the throne as it would have
been for them to promise a young maid a handsome husband.
But when we know that Macbeth, according to Shakespeare's
handling of the story, had actually sworn before this to the crime
1 1. iii, from 38.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 251
that would take King Duncan's life, then we easily understand
the start of Macbeth, as he finds the purpose he supposed to be
the secret of his wife and himself already outside him, seeming
to glitter in the malicious gleams of a witch's laugh. The inci
dent continues : messengers bring Macbeth tidings of his eleva
tion to the thaneships of Glamis and Cawdor ; naturally, such a
testimony to the prevision of the Weird Sisters plunges Macbeth
in thought.1
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good : if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth ? I am thane of Cawdor :
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings ;
My thought, whose murder —
(I interrupt to inquire, whence has Macbeth caught the idea of
murder ? whence, of horrible imaginings ? Not from the inno
cent prediction of the Witches : there were many ways — suc
cession, election — by which without improbability this kinsman
of the King might succeed to the crown. It is from Macbeth's
own guilty past that all these items of conspiracy have been
fetched. But let the soliloquy continue.)
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
We are watching Macbeth shaken by suspense ; the common
place flattery of the Witch has wakened the sleeping treason,
and to a nature like Macbeth's a fearful deed present for the
doing is more easy to bear than the imagination of the deed in
the future. But at this point the current of thought changes.
1 I. iii, from 130.
252 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir.
If the natural course of events — as the Witches say, and it
never occurs to Macbeth to doubt their insight into the future —
is going to bring the crown to Macbeth, why should he meddle
with such dangerous matter as treason and murder ? The latter
train of thought prevails : Macbeth will wait.
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
Thus the final effect of the meeting between Macbeth and the
Witches is the opposite of what the popular view of the play
suggests : Macbeth drops the treason he had formerly sworn to
execute, and is content to wait on events.
He soon resumes his treasonable plans ; but why ? because of
a fresh appeal to his practical nature. This is a proclamation
of a Prince of Cumberland,1 — the title of an heir apparent to
the Scotch throne, as the title Prince of Wales still describes the
heir apparent to the throne of England. Such an incident
removes Macbeth 's chance of attaining the crown by natural
succession ; he must fall back upon his former guilty purpose.
The Prince_of Cumberland ! that is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires ;
Let not light see my black and deep desires :
The eye wink at the hand : yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
Now opportunity presents itself, in the unexpected visit of
King Duncan to his subject's castle. As Macbeth, in advance
of Duncan, enters his castle, he is met by his wife with the
words :
You shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch.2
1 I. iv, from 35. 2 i. v. 68.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 253
As a result of this step on the part of Lady Macbeth the man
of action is left with nothing to do ; all the interval of waiting
till night shall make murder possible is for Macbeth a period of
prolonged suspense, and he is accordingly plunged in vacillation
and dread. This explains his extraordinary conduct in leaving
the table at which his king is supping,1 and going aside to pour
out his feverish thoughts in soliloquy. The famous soliloquy2 of
Macbeth has been so grandly worded by the poet as to cast
a glamour of grandeur upon the speaker. But if we look at the
naked thought beneath the clothing of words, we find nothing
but the practical man's weighing of practical consequences.
Macbeth says to himself distinctly that it would be well to do
the deed, if only he could be secured against the consequences ;
against the consequences in this life, for he would " jump the
life to come." Macbeth sees clearly that the murder of the King
would outrage loyalty, hospitality, pity, kinship ; but his thought
is as to the effect of these outraged feelings on others, in setting
all Scotland weeping ; he shows no sign of revolting against
such outrage in his own heart. At this point3 his wife joins
Macbeth ; and the scene becomes increasingly significant.
Those who hold the traditional view of the play are accustomed
to lay special stress upon this phase of the story ; here, at least,
(they say) we have Macbeth seeking to abandon his treason, and
his wife holding him to his purpose. But careful study of the
text will not support this view: Macbeth's words have their
reference, not to abandoning treason, but to postponing it. We
have seen that it is Macbeth himself who originated the purpose
to murder Duncan ; Lady Macbeth is responsible for one par
ticular plan of execution — the murder of the King in her castle
that very night. The dialogue at this point turns upon the
latter only : Macbeth sees the risk of such a project, and would
drop it and trust to some future opportunity.
Macbeth, We \vil! proceed no further in this business.4
1 I. vii. 29. 3 I. vii. 29.
2 I. vii. 1-28. 4 I. vii. 31 ; compare I. v. 68.
254 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
(The reader will remember Lady Macbeth's phrase in a pre
ceding scene : " You shall put this night's great business into
my dispatch.")
Macbeth. He hath honour'd me of late ; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.1
Macbeth has just been elevated in rank, and is at the height of
his popularity; with a dreadful instinct of economy the prac
tical man suggests it would be well to get all that can be got out
of these advantages, before risking them by a suspicious deed.
What other meaning can the words bear ? If it is suggested
that compunction of conscience and sense of gratitude to Duncan
are rising in Macbeth, how ridiculous the sentence becomes ! it
can only be paraphrased thus : Duncan has been kind to me,
and I must not murder him so soon ! These words so soon are
of themselves sufficient proof that the question is of postponing,
not of abandoning treason. The scene proceeds with the pas
sage already analysed. We have the taunt, the rejoinder, the
reminder of Macbeth's original proposal and violent oath. At
last the real thought of Macbeth comes out —
If we should fail?2
Then Lady Macbeth puts her full scheme before her husband —
to drug the tired grooms and make the deed seem theirs.
Macbeth's practical instinct seizes a feasible scheme, he inter
rupts his wife, and finishes her plan for her; with admiring
exultation he accepts the murder plan, and never hesitates until
it is accomplished.
It is now a period of action,3 and Macbeth is seen in his
strength ; as he stands in the castle yard at night, waiting for
his wife's signal, his words breathe exultation and a sense of
mastery. Here we get the first of several phenomena which
l I. vii. 32-35. 2 I. vii. 59.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 255
illustrate the peculiar psychology of Macbeth — his tendency to
project his thoughts in objective forms ; it is part of his general
superstition that he has such difficulty in separating between
objective and subjective, in distinguishing quickened imagi
nation from external reality. In this early stage, however,
Macbeth has some control over superstition ; when his intentness
upon murder has taken form as a dagger floating in the air and
marshalling him the way that he is going, he does question
whether it is a false creation, or whether his eyes are worth all
the rest of his senses. It is noteworthy that in this, as in other
cases of the same phenomenon, the objective form changes with
the changing thoughts of Macbeth ; as the excited imagination
hurries from beginning to end of the deed, the appearance of the
dagger undergoes a corresponding variation :
I see thee still ;
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before.1
The intense stillness is broken by the signal bell : unhesitat
ingly Macbeth passes into the sacred apartments of his royal
guest, lightly snatches the daggers from the heavily snoring
grooms, with a warrior's sureness of stroke plunges them into
the King's body, and draws them forth streaming with blood.2
The boundary of murder is passed : what response will the
universe make ? A sleepy laugh : a nightmare cry of ' Murder' ;
two sleepers half awaking ; a ' God bless us ! ' and an ' Amen' :
these weird omens quiver through the superstitious soul of a
warrior who would have known how to encounter a room full of
rousing guards. But there is more than superstition : Macbeth,
who can never endure a single moment's suspense, must wait, 3
until the half-wakened sleepers have slept again. Intent on the
one question, whether the guards are yet asleep, Macbeth finds
ill.i.45.
2 The scene in the King's chamber has to be inferred from details in II. ii.
3 Compare II. ii. 24 : "I stood and heard them."
256 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
his thoughts travelling outside him, and becoming objective as
a voice : 1
Sleep no more !
Macbeth does murder sleep . . .
As Macbeth whispers the incident to his wife he cannot make
her understand, he cannot make us understand, whether this
was a real voice, how much was his own thought. But as he
stands in panic of suspense the shriek of an owl2 above his
head plunges him into the depths of demoralisation, and, for
getful of all, he speaks aloud 3 as he springs down the steps to
reach the courtyard. Amid the tempest that just begins to howl
Macbeth incoherently seeks to make known what has happened ;
reminded that he has spoiled the plot by bringing the grooms'
daggers 4 away he is helpless to repair the mistake, and his wife
must do what the warrior dares not face. The tempest is now
furious : but through its howlings is heard the knocking of those
who are come to wake the King ; so demoralised still is Macbeth,
through his moment of suspense and shock of ill omen, that he
has a vague fear that this knocking will wake the King, until the
approach of a call to act steadies his brain, and he realises the
whole situation :
Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst!
There is an interval of a minute or two — it cannot be more6
— and Macbeth appears before us again a totally changed man.
The chamberlains entering the courtyard encounter their host
as a nobleman of dignified bearing : the man of action easily
attains self-control when it is a question of meeting an emer
gency in the presence of his fellow-men. The awful discovery is
made, and loud-voiced consternation rouses the castle : Macbeth
plays perfectly his role of startled innocence. He seizes the
hand of Lennox, and the two rush to the scene of death, as if to
Ul.ii. 35. 211. ii. 16. 3n.ii. 17. MI. ii, from 48.
6 The knocking within makes Scenes ii and iii (of Act II) continuous.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 257
see whether the tidings can be true.1 But a moment of crisis is
awaiting Macbeth. The two nobles leave the courtyard together,
and return together : it can be but a single second that Macbeth
lingers behind in the royal chamber after Lennox has left it.
But that instant was a moment of horrible suspense : there were
the grooms heavily sleeping, soon to be roughly wakened and
given opportunity to tell their tale : the guilty man cannot wait,
but in overpowering impulse of action stabs the grooms, and
thereby ruins the deeply laid plot. It is true that when he has
recovered himself in the presence of the courtiers listening to
Lennox's horrified description of the scene, Macbeth almost
repairs his blunder by the innocent way in which he makes
known what he has done.2
Macbeth. O, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them.
Macduff. Wherefore did you so?
Macbeth. Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? . . . Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood,
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance : there, the murderers
Steep?d in the colours of their trade . . .
It is a splendid piece of acting, but of no avail : every hearer
seizes the truth, and it is only accident that saves Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth 's timely fainting3 produces a moment's diversion,
and the courtiers feel they must pause4 before determining the
question of guilt : in that hour's pause the flight of the King's
sons turns suspicion in another direction,5 and instead of holding
Macbeth guilty the nobles call him to the throne.
Our review of the story has passed through two out of the
four stages of Macbeth 's life. We have seen how his first crime
was the close of a long period of brooding and of changing pur-
1 II. iii, from 70. 3 II. iii. 123.
2 II. iii. ii3. 4 II. iii, from 132.
5 Compare II. iii. 127-129 with II. iv. 22-32.
s
258 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
pose ; when once he had passed the boundary line between in
nocence and guilt the evil in Macbeth had attained a sudden
impetus, and the murder of the grooms was the suggestion and
execution of a single moment of time. We pass to a third stage,
in which evil will have gained a still surer hold upon the sinner.
But our first note of this third stage is the way in which the
feeling of suspense, hitherto a thing of recurrence, has now
become to Macbeth a continuous agony.
Macbeth. We have scotched the snake, not kilPd it ...
But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly : better be with the dead.
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.1
It is indeed this torture of suspense which leads to Macbeth's
third crime, the murder of Banquo. For we must distinguish :
the precise issue here is not simply the slaying of Banquo —
sooner or later the rivalry of the two men must have ended in
violence2 — but the slaying of Banquo at the precise moment
when he is slain. The time is so close to the death of Duncan
that it would be impossible but that the one crime should draw
attention to the other ; in actual fact, one scene 3 of the play
brings out, in the innuendoes of Lennox, that the suspicions
diverted from Macbeth by the flight of Duncan's sons are all
brought back again by the murder of Banquo. How comes it
that the politic Macbeth acts so rashly ? The clue is given in
his words to his rival : 4
We hear, our bloody cousins are bestow'd
In England and in Ireland, not confessing
Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers
1 III. ii. 13. 3 III. vi.
2 Compare III. i. 49-72. * III. i. 30.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 259
With strange invention : but of that to-morrow,
When therewithal we shall have cause of state
Craving us jointly.
It appears that the time is the day preceding a Council of State
in which the King and his nobles must hear for the first time
the representations of Duncan's sons, who at present are supposed
by all to be the murderers of their father. Precisely as in the
matter of the grooms, Macbeth cannot endure the suspense of
waiting for the critical moment ; and this torturing suspense
impels him, in the face of every reason of policy to the con
trary, to get rid of the most formidable of the councillors. As
to its mode of operation, this third crime of Macbeth displays
deliberate contrivance, appreciation of professional murderers
as tools of crime, and even a suggestion of the artistic enjoy
ment that comes with facility.1 Macbeth will not in plain terms
reveal his purpose to his wife, but this is the tone in which he
speaks of it.
Then be thou jocund : ere the bat hath flown
His cloister'd flight, ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums
Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note . . . Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day ;
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale ! Light thickens ; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood :
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse ;
Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
Thou marvell'st at my words : but hold thee still ;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
It is in the reaction from this third crime that we see most
clearly the advancing hold of superstition upon Macbeth. From
1 Compare, generally, III. i, from 72; and III. ii, from 37.
260 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the first he has taken for granted the supernatural, as repre
sented in the oracles of the Weird Sisters ; and from the first
we have noted his tendency to project his thoughts as external
sights and sounds. But in the case of the airy dagger Macbeth
could question ; even when he describes the voice crying, " Sleep
no more," he at least leaves a confusion between thought and
sound. But in the apparition of Banquo's Ghost Macbeth has
lost all power to discriminate between objective and subjective.
It is only an apparition : no eye sees it but Macbeth's, and the
stage-directions are only intended to assist us as to what Mac
beth is supposed to see. Yet not only is Macbeth slow in
realising this fact, even after his wife has spoken to him, but
from beginning to end of the scene his peculiar psychology is
illustrated, and successive stages of his thinking reflect them
selves in successive modifications of the apparition.
It is necessary to analyse the scene1 with some minuteness.
We must imagine a banqueting chamber, and a table of horse
shoe shape, the curved end towards the side of the chamber
adjoining the kitchen and offices, where a crowd of servants are
standing ; the other end flanked by two chairs of state, and
pointing towards the hall in which the guests are assembling.
Macbeth leads the procession into the banqueting chamber, and
ceremoniously hands his queen to one of the chairs of state ;
instead of taking the other himself he passes forward with the
words :
Ourself will mingle with society
And play the humble host.
Our hostess keeps her state.
To the guests this seems no more than an act of graceful con
descension ; Macbeth's real purpose in keeping for himself the
middle seat at the curved end of the horseshoe is to be near the
crowd of servants, so that he can, without difficulty, communicate
with the messenger he is so anxiously awaiting. Even before
i ill. iv.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 26 1
he has taken his seat he catches sight of the murderer; forget
ting state, he passes on to him and says :
There's blood upon thy face.
We may be sure that a professional bravo would know his busi
ness better than to pass through a crowd of servants with tokens
of crime about him : the blood is of course in Macbeth's imagi
nation. The news is spoken, and the fearful shock of safety
and danger mixed makes the King's brain reel. But a voice
from the Queen recalls him to the duties of host, and Macbeth,
advancing toward the table, resolves — with the quickness of a
man of action — to prepare beforehand for the inevitable dis
covery, and let the court know his devotion to Banquo. As he
speaks his words of regret for the absence of their chief guest,
the apparition fills the vacant seat in the centre of the curve.
Macbeth is still standing between the table and the servants :
what he sees is only the form of the ghostly figure, indistinguish
able from any other figure of a guest ; as he says, the table simply
seems full. But when other guests point to the empty chair, we
must suppose that the apparition turns and faces his murderer.
Macbeth. Which of you have done this ?
Lords. What, my good lord ?
Macbeth. Thou canst not say I did it : never shake
Thy gory locks at me.
Evidently the apparition has undergone a change : had there
been " gory locks " upon the head at first, Macbeth could not
have mistaken it for the figure of an ordinary guest in pronounc
ing the table full. In the wild scene that follows still further
change is evident.
Macbeth. The times have been
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end ; but now they rise again.
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns.
262 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The murderer in describing the deed to Macbeth had spoken of
" twenty trenched gashes on his head, the least a death to
nature " : l the detail has sunk in Macbeth's excited mind, and
reproduced itself in the apparition. In time, Macbeth is made to
understand that no eye but his own has seen the ghost. There
is now one more chance for the man of action to recover the
ground lost by his blunder. Macbeth will pursue his policy2 of
speaking endearingly of Banquo : hitherto he has been taken by
surprise, supposing that all recognised the ghost, but now he
determines by force of will to keep down his tremors, and
bravely face the apparition, which he knows his words will re
call. So he strains his nerves, and proposes the health of
Banquo. The ghost reappears : but in what form ?
Macbeth. Avaunt! and quit my sight ! let the earth hide thee!
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold ;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
Which thou dost glare with.
The idea of blood and murder in general, the idea of Banquo as
a living man like other men, Banquo bleeding, Banquo pierced
with twenty mortal wounds, Banquo a corpse dead and moulder
ing in the grave : these are naturally the successive stages of
Macbeth's thought at this crisis, and these are the successive
forms presented by the apparition, which only the criminal's own
brain has created. So completely has imagination now become
reality.
We have reached the fourth and last stage of Macbeth's
career. It is now no longer a question of single crimes : a daily
diet3 of violence and horror afflicts Scotland; beholders speak
of madness or valiant fury ; Macbeth himself expresses the
accelerated impetus of his downward rush, as he says that his
deeds must be acted ere they may be scanned.4 Before this
point superstition has been his ruin ; yet from the scene of the
1 III. iv. 27. 8 iv. iii. 4.
2 From line 88. 4III.iv. 140.
THE MOMENTUM OF CHARACTER 263
apparition he betakes himself to the Weird Sisters,1 and makes
the supernatural his sole refuge. But what are we to say as to
the third note of Macbeth's character ? Already suspense had
become to him a settled state of torture ; in his final stage the
torture of suspense yields to its opposite. The Witches delude
their victim with ambiguous oracles : Macbeth feels a sense of
calm trust replacing his gnawing dread.2
Sweet bodements ! good !
Rebellion's head, rise never till the wood
Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth
Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath
To time and mortal custom.
It is just as, in a physical body decaying with disease, there
comes a point where agonising pain gives place to a numbness,
which means mortification. Beyond the stage of painful sus
pense there comes to Macbeth the stage of sweet security, which
is the mortification of the soul. And from such security Mac
beth is awakened only by the shock of final ruin.
Such then is the clearly marked character of this famous
hero of Shakespearean drama, and such is the movement
through which, with ever increasing force, that character is
hurried. He is the man of action, intolerant of suspense,
defenceless against popular superstition. Crime draws him on
through stages of long hesitation, of sudden impulse, of satisfied
acceptance, of headlong passion. At first he can reason with
suspense, then it becomes an unmanning bewilderment in which
he ruins the scheme he has so much admired ; then suspense
becomes a chronic disease ; finally it yields to the more terrible
opposite stage of blind security. Superstition is, at first, one of
the sources to which Macbeth looks for guidance ; later, ominous
words of sleepers are enough to drive him from mastery of a
crisis to helpless imbecility ; soon he is unable to distinguish
superstition and reality ; at last, superstition is his only hope.
i III. iv. 132. 2 IV. i. 96.
264 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
By free choice and wilful passion Macbeth has embraced for him
self a career of crime ; when once he has brought his life to the
point of passing from purpose to murderous deed, he has attained
a terrible momentum of character which hurls him to his ruin.
Heredity is a limitation upon personal will from within ; a
corresponding limitation from without is expressed by the term
'environment.' In a sense, the whole universe may be consid
ered as the environment of each individual in it. The present
chapter, however, confines itself to the more immediate environ
ment that we call circumstance ; remoter forces will be treated
later.
The influence of circumstances upon individual action is a
thing too obvious to be interesting, too multiform to admit of
analysis. Here, as in other cases, our question is whether
there is any association of dramatic form with the force of
circumstance. Those who take an interest in the analysis of
plot will recognise something which answers to this description.
Shakespeare's plots are harmonies of several stories, or, as they
are technically called, actions, combined in a single design.
When a plot has been analysed into its constituent actions, there
is generally one of these which is of a different character from
all the rest ; it is the Enveloping Action lying outside the others,
and seeming to envelop them, like the frame of a picture or the
fringe round a pattern. This element of dramatic plot cor
responds to something in real life. The main force in life (we
have seen) is individual will ; but the individual is a part of the
state or community, and this state has a life and a movement of
its own, a broader sphere of action in which the personal actions
proper to stories are merged. To take the simplest illustration.
A story turns upon the love of a man and a maiden ; the rise
and progress of this love, its difficulties, interruptions, and happy
restoration. Perhaps there is nothing that these two individuals
think less about than the politics of the country in which they
THE SWAY OF CIRCUMSTANCE 265
reside. Yet the course of its political history may greatly affect
the story of love : war may break out, the lovers may be
separated, separations may produce jealousy and rivalry : after
all, the course of true love may have run smoothly or roughly
according to the twists and turns of political history. The
enveloping action in fiction is usually just what we call 'history,'
as distinguished from ' story ' ; if not exactly history, it is some
sphere of action larger and broader than the individual interests
which are the proper sphere of story.
In the play of Richard the TJiird we saw how the enveloping
action was the Wars of the Roses; the details making up the
matter of the drama are so many items in the political conflicts
of Lancaster and York. In Romeo and Juliet the enveloping
action is the old feud of Montague and Capulet ; in The
Merchant of Venice the feud of Jew and Christian. In Cymleline
we have the war for subjection or independence between Rome
and Britain. There is the Florentine war to play a similar part
in All's Well that Ends Well. In Lear we find a war of the rival
countries England and France; in Hajnlet a war of Denmark
and Norway; in Othello a naval war of Venice with the Turks.
To most readers, no doubt, this particular element in the various
plays is of little importance, or it is altogether overlooked. But
it was otherwise with the poet himself ; and those who delight
to trace the fine workmanship of the dramatist will see clear
evidences of design and contrivance in the way this enveloping
action is regularly worked into the design of the plot. A good
illustration is the play of Much Ado about Nothing. Here the
enveloping action is the war between the Prince and his bastard
brother : one of those petty faction conflicts with which Italian
history is rife, of no interest in itself to readers of the story.
Yet Shakespeare takes pains to insinuate this thread of action
into the leading points of the movement, letting it just appear
at the beginning, the turning point, and the end. The defeat of
Don John makes the opening situation, by which the personages
are drawn together to exert influence on one another : it is the
266 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
return from the war which brings Claudio to indulge his love
for Hero, Benedick to tease and be teased by Beatrice, Don
John himself in sullen submission to look around for opportuni
ties of mischief.1 When the villanous design against Hero's
honour, which is the foundation of the plot, has been unex
pectedly discovered, Don John is compelled to flee, and the
rebellion which makes the enveloping action is reinstated.2 And
when this sad complication has at last attained complete and
happy resolution, though the reader has forgotten all about Don
John and civil war, yet Shakespeare devotes a few final lines to
arrival of news that the rebel has once more been defeated,
and the enveloping action has thus come to a close.3 Another
example is A Midsummer-Night '.$• Dream. The matter of the play
is the gossamer substance of fairy life, with arbitrary accidents
of love as fanciful as the title of the poem suggests. Yet all this
is enclosed in the substantial framework of public life and state
ceremonial, an enveloping action of the Marriage of Theseus
and Hippolyta, which connects itself with every thread of the
design. For this public function the youths of Athens have
prepared their farcical tragedy; Oberon and Titania have come
from infinite distance for this precise occasion ; their mutual
jealousy is jealousy of the royal bride and bridegroom, their
renewed amity will crown the wedding day with midnight fairy
dance ; when in the morning light the human lovers awake
from their tangled experience, their strange situation is by the
King and his bride put down to connection with the wedding
ceremonies and sports:
No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May ; and, hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity.4
The amount of motive influence exerted by the enveloping
action upon the rest of the movement is substantial, although
l Much Ado I. i, iii. 2 Compare V. ii. 63. s V. iv. 127.
4 Midsummer-Night's Dream I. ii ; II. i. 69-76; IV. i. 92; IV. i. 129.
THE SWAY OF CIRCUMSTANCE 267
the influence is indirect. In Richard the Third, not only is the
matter of the play part of the Wars of the Roses, but Richard
himself, and the lesser personages, are a creation of those faction
rights, and are inspired by the passions of the wars. The feud
of Montague and Capulet has determined the peculiar type of
love for the play — the love that is binding together born
enemies ; the feud makes all the difficulties for this course of
true love, and turns it finally into a terrible tragedy. Persecu
tion of Jews by Christians not only accounts for much in the
character of Shylock, but even determines largely the action of
Antonio and other Christians. In Cymbeline, the war has the
effect of drawing together the personages of the play as the
movement progresses ; it is this which brings Posthumus and
lachimo from Italy back to Britain ; it draws Imogen into the
Roman host and the meeting with her husband ; it attracts the
royal boys and their foster-father into the conflict in which their
fresh valour is to reverse the current of events. Notably in Lear
the French war draws all the several personages to a meeting
point which makes a crisis. In Hamlet, the first thought of
those who see the Ghost in armour is of the warlike preparations
going on around them ; our first sight of the hero at court is in
connection with an embassy which diverts the threatened war
into another channel ; the casual passage of troops later in the
play rouses Hamlet to the task in which he has been flagging ;
when the catastrophe has exhausted the royal house of Denmark,
Hamlet with dying breath recognises the claims to succession of
Fortinbras, who is just returning in triumph from the war. An
interesting case is the play of Love's Labour's Lost. Here the
enveloping action is a political negotiation : it appears only
at two points. The arrival of the French princess and her
suite to conduct this negotiation brings a force of young and
healthy life to confound the solemn plans of Navarre : humour
dissolves solemnity, and all gradually works out to a complete
dramatic finish. But then a turn comes in the enveloping
action — the death of the French King whom the embassy rep-
268 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
resents.1 At once a serious tone is thrown over the comic
denouement ; the love that has been made in jest is concluded
in earnest.
'The sway of circumstances:' this expression, I think, con
veys that element of life to which the enveloping action of
dramatic plot corresponds. Just as the moon, with unseen
agency and at infinite distance, draws the tides of the sea its
own way ; just as the swing of Earth on its axis, that no atten
tive discrimination can detect, yet carries mankind through its
phases of day and night : so the enveloping history, remote as it
may be from individual interest of story, becomes a force to
mould and sway the story's course. The sway then of cir
cumstance, and the momentum of character, make the dramatic
counterparts to the two most obvious limitations of individual
will — environment and heredity.
It may be added, that in certain cases it is the larger life of
the state and community which the drama brings into promi
nence, while individual action with its story interest falls into a
subordinate place. But this differentiates a special dramatic
type ; side by side with tragedy and comedy, Shakespeare has
given us the history, as the play in which the enveloping action
is predominant over all the rest of the plot.
1 Love's Labour's Lost V. ii, from 725.
XIII
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY
OUR survey of the Shakespearean world has reached the point
where, as dramatised in the enveloping action, we have seen history
enfolding story, the larger life of the state or nation touching, yet
lying outside, the narrower life of personality. Between the two
things thus brought together there is one obvious difference. Story
must, in the nature of things, be complete ; unless the course of
individual action has run its full round, so that nemesis, pathos, or
similar principles are caught, there is no story. On the contrary,
the history that makes an enveloping action is fragmentary ; it is
but a small arc of a circle extending beyond the field of view.
Even in the special type of dramas called histories, where the
enveloping action predominates over all the rest of the plot, the
limits of a single drama are too strait to comprehend the large
unity that belongs to history ; other forms of dramatic interest
obtain here, such as the notoriety of the incidents presented, and
their appeal to the instinct of patriotism. But the question
naturally presents itself : If a larger arc of the circle were presented,
if a sufficiently wide range of national life could be dramatically
treated, then might not history catch the completeness of story,
and great historic principles be seen to emerge ?
It is obvious that there are good materials for the consideration
of this question in the plays of Shakespeare which treat the history
of England. They are ten in number ; eight of the ten are con
tinuous, or at least named after successive reigns ; the other two
are indeed separated from the continuous succession, but in a way
which naturally invites the suggestion so often made, that they
constitute a prologue and an epilogue to the double tetralogy.
269
2/0 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
We are deterred, it is true, from expecting much in the way of
sustained plan by the mode in which the plays were produced ;
the later tetralogy was composed before the earlier; moreover,
in the three parts of Henry the Sixth indications of collaboration,
and the working over of other materials, are specially clear. Buthere,
as always, the question is not of an author and a conscious plan.
These dramas stage English history, as other plays stage romance
stories. The real question is, whether the conception of history
betrayed in this succession of plays is resolvable into anything
that can be called law or principle.
To me it appears that we must answer this question in the
affirmative. A certain principle of history, simple yet highly
impressive, appears dramatically enunciated in the prologue play,
worked over on the largest scale in the succession of eight
historic dramas, and recast with a striking variation in the play
which serves as epilogue. The principle is best expressed in
metaphorical language : it is the pendulum swing of events be
tween one and the other of two rival interests ; a deep-seated
alternation in the natural course of things. Such a principle needs,
however, a corollary. If the general movement is to be a pendu
lum-like alternation, this will be the more impressive dramatically if
it is broken at intervals by what appears like a position of rest :
not rest in the negative sense, — as if the alternation at that point
was merely not perceptible, — but a peculiar, striking, exceptional
evenness between things which before and after are seen rising and
falling. Or it may be that there is a pause to gather in fresh
material, which is itself presently to become the subject of rapid
mutation. This then is the nature of the movement I am seeking
in this chapter to trace through the succession of historic plays ;
a persistent swing in the course of history to and fro, broken by
parentheses of emphasised rest, or other preparation for fresh
alternation.
It is the play of King John which serves as prologue for the
historic succession. Here we have very clearly marked the two
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/1
interests between which the movement of the plot is to alternate.
England and France are throughout Shakespeare treated as rival
countries ; the rivalry in the present case is enhanced by a double
claim to the English crown ; France has backed the cause of young
Arthur, while John has his claim supported by the strong argument
of possession. Yet other forces are added to both sides, to make
the scale more even. Feminine influence is strong for either
cause ; the passionate young motherhood of Constance is a
bulwark for Arthur ; the queen mother Elinor brings to John the
strength of maturity and political capacity. Again, France has an
ally, the Duke of Austria, who appears always in his robe of lion's
skin, in token of the proud feat by which he held prisoner the
magnificent Cceur-de-lion ; naturally he is the enemy of the King
who is his prisoner's brother. On the other hand the English army
contains Faulconbridge, bastard son of this Coeur-de-lion, whose
rude humour loses no opportunity of mocking the lion- like preten
sions of Austria, while his rough valour eventually brings the boaster
to his doom. Between these evenly balanced interests — England
with its allies, France with its allies — the pendulum of fortune is
to be seen swinging.1
But, as we have seen, the alternation will be the more dramati
cally impressive if the movement can start in some evenness of
poise between the interests that are afterwards to rise and fall.
This is secured by the curious incident of Angiers, which occupies
the second act of the play. This Angiers is a fortified city in
that part of the land of France which at the period of the play
was an appanage of the English crown. The French King has
begun the war against John by besieging this place ; his ally and
the French court are with him in the field. And it is here that
King John, with his court and his army of invasion, encounters
his rival. First, there is a discussion of rights and claims between
the two courts, feminine bitterness and rough humour bearing
1 For dividing points and exact references compare the scheme of King John in
the Appendix below, page 365. .
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
their part in the dialogue. Words proving vain, both armies turn
to force, and the city is summoned with blast of trumpet.
First Cit. Who is it that hath warn'd us to the walls?
King Philip. Tis France, for England.
King John. England, for itself.
You men of Anglers, and my loving subjects, —
King Philip. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's subjects,
Our trumpet call'd you to this gentle parle, —
King John. For our advantage ; therefore hear us first.
Oratory follows from both kings, but the good burghers have a
plain answer.
First Cit. In brief, we are the King of England's subjects ;
For him, and in his right, we hold this town.
King John. Acknowledge then the king, and let me in.
First Cit. That can we not ; but he that proves the king,
To him will we prove loyal : till that time
Have we ramm'd up our gates against the world.
The citizens of Angiers have exactly anticipated the spirit of the
future Jacobite toast :
God bless the King; God bless our faith's defender;
God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender :
But who Pretender is, and who is King,
God bless us all, that's quite another thing.
There is nothing to be done except that the two parties determine
their claims by force. With the stage symbol of alarums and ex
cursions a battle is indicated, and then summons is renewed : the
French herald declaring that victory plays upon the dancing
banners of the French ; his rival of England proclaiming with
equal confidence King John commander of this hot malicious day.
But the burghers have been watching from the walls, and know
the facts.
Blood hath bought blood and blows have answer'd blows ;
Strength match'd with strength, and power confronted power:
Both are alike ; and both alike we like.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/3
One must prove greatest : while they weigh so even,
We hold our town for neither, yet for both.
Nothing could emphasise more dramatically the even poise of the
scales in which England and France are being weighed than the
possibility of a single city thus defying three potentates and their
armies. Faulconbridge catches the situation, and asks why the
rival kings let "these scroyles of Angiers " flout them, and why
they do not unite their forces to level the insolent fort to the
ground, and afterwards fight out their own quarrel. The counsel
suits the spirit of the times ; there is a movement for carrying it
into effect, when the citizens feel the peril of their position, and
meet the crisis with a proposal of their own. In parley with the
kings they point to two youthful figures in the rival courts, the
French Dauphin, and Blanch, niece of the English King.
He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she ;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
In pompous oratory it is suggested that a union of these two per
sons would heal the breach between two kingdoms, and be more
powerful than cannon to open the fortress gates. The policy of
such a match attracts the elders ; youth and beauty work upon the
parties concerned ; the project gains ground, and articles of treaty
are discussed. The evenly balanced conflict has ended in com
promise, Faulconbridge alone catching the humour of the situation :
that King John to bar a title to the whole has voluntarily sur
rendered a part, while the champion of conscience has exchanged a
holy war for a vile peace, all through that great bias of the world
— Commodity !
Now it is precisely with this proposal from the men of Angiers
that the peculiar movement of the play has started from its posi
tion of rest. Up to this point, all has gone to emphasise the even
balance of the two parties ; when this compromise has been
accepted, we have the whole power of England, of France, of
2/4 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Austria, concentrated on one side, while on the other side young
Arthur is left helpless and alone. It is in vain that they talk to
Constance of the blessedness of peace, and declare that the day
which has brought it shall be a perpetual holiday.
Constance. A wicked day, and not a holy day!
What hath this day deserved? What hath it done,
That it in golden letters should be set
Among the high tides in the calendar?
Nay, rather turn this day out of the week,
This day of shame, oppression, perjury.
Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child
Pray that their burthens may not fall this day,
Lest that their hopes prodigiously be crossed ;
But on this day let seamen fear no wreck ;
No bargains break that are not this day made :
This day, all things begun come to ill end,
Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!
The passion of Constance is the precise measure of the degree to
which the pendulum of fortune has swung to the side opposed to
Arthur. Yet it is in the midst of this scene of bitterness between
Arthur's mother and her former allies that a diversion takes place,
and, in reality, the sway of movement has begun to turn in an
opposite direction.
The diversion has been made by the entrance of the papal
legate : on his way to England he has met its king in company
with the King of France. In presence of the two monarchs and
their courts the legate blurts out certain demands respecting
quarrels between the English crown and primate. John is repre
sented in this drama as the mouthpiece of England's antagonism
to papal pretensions.
John. What earthly name to interrogatories
Can task the free breath of a sacred king?
When Philip is shocked at resistance to Holy Church, John speaks
with more and more of defiance, until the legate thunders excom-
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/5
munication, and King Philip is commanded to loose the hand of an
arch-heretic. It had happened that the papal legate entered at the
very moment in which the two kings by a ceremonious hand-clasp
were signifying their new peace and alliance : round that hand-clasp
a great contest now wages — Pandulph against John, Constance
against Elinor, Austria against Faulconbridge ; the newly pledged
lover and his prospective bride take opposite sides. Arguments as
to the sacredness of peace and treaty faith seem vain.
Pandulph. All form is formless, order orderless,
Save what is opposite to England's love.
The conflict extends to the very verge of excommunication against
Philip : only then does he yield.
PandulpJi. I will denounce a curse upon his head.
King Philip. Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.
Constance. O fair return of banished majesty!
Elinor. O foul revolt of French inconstancy !
The loosing of this hand-clasp has symbolised a swing of the
pendulum from one extreme to the very opposite : a moment
before Arthur was alone, and all power massed on the side of
John ; by this change we see the whole strength of France and
Austria transferred to the support of Arthur, with the addition of
the spiritual power of Rome and Holy Church, while John must
face this vast combination without a single ally.
There is another turning-point, and the pendulum swings back.
This time it is by ' the fortune of war ' : providence is not always
on the side of the big battalions, and, though France, Austria, and
Rome are all against England, in the actual fight it is England
that wins. A roaring tempest shatters the French fleet ; their
armies are disgracefully defeated in the field ; the Duke of Austria
is slain in battle by Faulconbridge. This Faulconbridge, as a man
not likely to be frightened by bell, book, and candle, is sent to
England to seize the wealth of the Church. —
2/6 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Ere our coming, see thou shake the bags
Of hoarding abbots ; imprisoned angels
Set at liberty : the fat ribs of peace
Must by the hungry now be fed upon.
More than all this : little Arthur is taken prisoner by John, and
given into the sure custody of Hubert. Reversal of fortune could
not be more complete : Constance appears before us —
a grave unto a soul ;
Holding the eternal spirit, against her will,
In the vile prison of afflicted breath.
Even the Dauphin of France finds life not worth living :
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
Now, it is just at the close of this speech of the Dauphin that
one more turning-point of the plot must be placed ; the pendulum
of events prepares to swing again from one extreme to the op
posite. This time the change comes through that hidden force
in things we call ' reaction ' : the sagacious legate sees how the
very completeness of John's good fortune will make him reckless
and unscrupulous ; something will happen to Arthur, there will be
a revulsion of feeling in England against the evil King, and the
French prince may claim the crown by virtue of his marriage with
Lady Blanch. And events turn out precisely as Pandulph prophe
sies. The fourth act is filled with dramatic interest of detail,
especially with reference to the character of Hubert as a man of
mystery, who plays a deeper part than appears on the surface.
But the drift of this act in the general plot is to present Arthur
dead, the blame of it fixed by the national voice on the King, the
French invading in force, and the English nobles — who constitute
the military force of the country — deserting in mass to the enemy.
John is left helpless, with a hostile people behind him, and in
front an enemy already landed on his shores.
An adroit device of a desperate man makes another turning-
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 277
point, and introduces one more reversal of the scale of fortune.
In flat contradiction to his late position as representative of na
tional independence, King John in this extremity surrenders his
crown to Rome, and, at the opening of the fifth act, is seen receiv
ing it back as Rome's vassal. Thus one powerful element of the
combination against him is not only removed, but transferred to
King John's side.
Pandiilph. It was my breath that blew this tempest up,
Upon your stubborn usage of the pope;
But since you are a gentle convertite,
My tongue shall hush again this storm of war,
And make fair weather in your blustering land.
Of course, the invading prince of France resents thus being made
a puppet of Roman diplomacy. But meanwhile Faulconbridge,
embodying the patriotic spirit which repels invasion under any
pretext, has raised a powerful force to confront Lewis. Provi
dence takes the English side, and the French reinforcements are
wrecked on the Goodwin sands. More strange still : a dying
nobleman of the French army reveals to the English a treacherous
plot against the nobles who had deserted to France.
Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold ;
Unthread the rude eye of rebellion
And welcome home again discarded faith.
Seek out King John and fall before his feet ;
For if the French be lords of this loud day,
He means to recompense the pains you take
By cutting off your heads : thus hath he sworn
And I with him, and many moe with me,
Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury ;
Even on that altar where we swore to you
Dear amity and everlasting love. . . .
Commend me to one Hubert with your King :
The love of him. and this respect besides.
For that my grandsire was an Englishman,
Awakes my conscience to confess all this.
278 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Thus at this point it is the representative of France who is de
feated, deserted, and helpless, and all power has gravitated to the
English side.
Yet the course of events dramatised in this play is to see just
one more swing of the pendulum. King John, victorious against
the French and in the restored allegiance of his nobles, is suddenly
conscious that he is doomed never to reap the fruits of victory.
Poison'd, — ill fare, — dead, forsook, cast off:
And none of you will bid the winter come
To thrust his icy ringers in my maw,
Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course
Through my burn'd bosom, nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips
And comfort me with cold.
As Faulconbridge enters, the King rallies his strength to hear the
news he brings.
The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd,
And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail
Are turned to one thread, one little hair :
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
Which holds but till thy news be uttered.
The news Faulconbridge brings is that the forces he was leading
to meet fresh advance of the Dauphin have been overpowered by
a flood as the Wash was being crossed. At the shock of this loss
the King dies, and the pendulum swing of the plot ceases. It
only remains for the papal legate to make peace between the
countries, and Henry reigns in his father's stead.
To the modern reader Shakespeare's dramatisation of the reign
of King John comes as a surprise. There is not a hint of what
we are accustomed to consider as the characteristic of that reign,
making it the most critical period of English history ; on the other
hand, what would seem matter of inferior moment is treated with
fine workmanship and dramatic vigour. The explanation is easy, if
this play is to stand as prologue to the succession of histories, and
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 2/9
if the spirit of history, as conceived by Elizabethan dramatists,
consisted in the pendulum-like alternation of fortune. Nowhere
else do we find the rival interests so evenly balanced, nor the
balance so constantly emphasised ; nowhere else do we see such
sharp turns in events, and such great mutations realised in such
brief intervals. Moreover the whole of this manifold alternation
is within the limits of a single play, and centres around the single
personality of King John.
It is different as we pass on : we now have a succession of eight
dramas making a connected whole ; the longer period is fit for
the larger life of history. The two interests between which fortune
is to alternate remain substantially the same throughout. On the
one side we have the crown ; on the other side we see, now
domestic sedition, now foreign war, until the two elements seem
to unite as court factions grow into the fully developed Wars of
the Roses. Of course, in the several plays which make up the
series there is much beside this main interest of historic action
and reaction. In King John we have had the characters of Faul-
con bridge, of Hubert and Arthur ; in later plays we have the
personalities of a Hotspur and a Glendower ; the Falstaff under
plot in the two parts of Henry the Fourth throws the historic
interest into the shade. And further, if we divide the eight plays
into two tetralogies, we get (as earlier chapters of this book have
pointed out) a rise throughout the three plays of the interest
which is to dominate the fourth : a rise of Henry Prince of Wales
into the ideal heroism of Henry the Fifth, a steady development
of Gloucester into the ideal villany that is to be the note of
Richard the Third. But the link of continuity which binds the
eight plays into a whole is this alternation, stretching from play to
play, between the royal power and its domestic and foreign foes.
If a position of rest is wanted as a starting-point for a move
ment of alternation, we find it surely in that strange sentiment of
the divine right of kings, which more or less obtains throughout
Shakespeare's treatment of English history, but in the play of
280 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Richard the Second stands out in high relief from contrast with
the King who represents it. To Richard the sacred authority of
the crown seems valuable only as a means of supply for the ex
pensive vices he displays in company with his creatures.
Gaunt. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war ;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea . . .
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm.
Frivolity sits upon the throne : none the less gravity bows down
in pious submission. From this height of divinely constituted
authority the sway of events is seen bringing the royal power
down to the depths. The turning-point is dramatically marked.1
Richard has been delayed in Ireland by contrary winds, all the
while that in England rebellion has been gathering head. At last
he lands, and fondles with his hand the soil of his kingdom, safe
now its rightful ruler has returned.
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord :
For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay
A glorious angel : then, if angels fight,
Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards the right.
From these very words Richard turns to meet the first of a string
of messengers bearing news of delay, of dispersion, of death, till
further inquiry becomes useless.
1 For divisions and exact references throughout this chapter, see scheme of the
historic plays in the Appendix below, pages 365-369.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 28 1
Aumerle. Where is the duke my father with his power?
King Richard. No matter where ; of comfort no man speak :
Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs ;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors and talk of wills :
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke'1s,
And nothing can we call our own but death,
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
This passage stands but at the centre of the play ; yet all the rest
is no more than the swing downward from exalted kingship to
humiliation, deposition, imprisonment, murder ; the swing upward
of Bolingbroke, who entered England humbly claiming the prop
erty of his deceased father, to the throne vacated by Richard.
In the plays treating the reign of Henry the Fourth the historic
alternation is seen to have recommenced. The power which
hurled Richard from kingship was Bolingbroke in alliance with
Northumberland : Bolingbroke's was the rival title to the throne,
Northumberland was the influence to bring round the English
nobles and lead the revolution. As the first part of Henry the
Fourth opens we see these firm allies separated : King Boling
broke has sunk from security to the necessity of meeting factious
uprisings in all parts of his dominions, and the link that binds all
these rebel factions together is Northumberland. Hotspur, the
warrior of the rebellion, is Northumberland's son ; his brother
Worcester is its statesman ; family ties connect the house of
Northumberland with Wales, and bring the mighty Welsh ma
gician Glendower to aid the cause ; the Percies, moreover, in
their period of loyalty, had made conquests in Scotland, and,
turning rebels, can by restoring prisoners win Douglas and the
Scotch to their side. To so low a point has the royal power
declined in contrast with rising rebellion, that the chief concern
of the revolting leaders is how they shall divide the country
282 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
between themselves. A well-known speech of the King not only
recognises Northumberland as the focus of this widespread sedi
tion, but is further important as giving expression, in the midst
of the shifting incidents, to the thought of alternating fortunes
as the law of national history.1
O God ! that one might read the book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea ! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune's hips ; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors ! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
'Tis not ten years gone
Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,
Did feast together, and in two years after
Were they at wars : it is but eight years since
This Percy was the man nearest my soul,
Who like a brother toil'd in my affairs
And laid his love and life under my foot,
Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard
Gave him defiance. But which of you was by —
You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember —
When Richard, with his eye brimful of tears,
Then check'd and rated by Northumberland,
Did speak these words, now proved a prophecy ?
' Northumberland, thou ladder by the which
My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne ;' . . .
' The time shall come,' thus did he follow it,
'The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head,
Shall break into corruption ' : so went on,
Foretelling this same time's condition,
And the division of our amity.
1 // Henry the Fourth : III. i. 45.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 283
Northumberland is the one link binding the scattered rebellions
into a unity of strength : the hesitation and weakness of North
umberland dissolves this unity. Irresistible as a whole, the
rebels are defeated piecemeal, and the pendulum of fortune is
seen to have moved to the side of royal power. Passage after
passage marks the critical position of Northumberland in the
plot.1 Meanwhile, this man upon whom everything depends is
exhibited before us in the bosom of his family, distracted by
doubts.
Northumberland, 'Tis with my mind
As with the tide swell'cl up unto his height,
That makes a still-stand, running neither way :
Fain would I go to meet the archbishop,
But many thousand reasons hold me back.
I will resolve for Scotland. -
The temporising policy of Northumberland paralyses his allies ;
one after another the separated forces of revolt are wiped out,
until Westmoreland can say to the King in his palace —
There is not now a rebel's sword unsheath'd.
Fortune has swung to the full height of exaltation for the king ;
in an instant it swings back again, for the shock of good news
brings on apoplexy.
King. And wherefore should these good news make me sick ?
Will Fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters ?
She either gives a stomach and no food ;
Such are the poor, in health ; or else a feast,
And takes away the stomach ; such are the rich,
That have abundance and enjoy it not.
I should rejoice now at this happy news ;
And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy :
O me! come near me ; now I am much ill.
1 E.g. I Henry the Fourth: II. iii. init. ; IV. i. 13-85; IV. iv, from 13; II Henry
the Fourth : I. i. 163; I. iii, from 10.
2 // Henry the Fourth : II. iii. 62.
284 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
From the triumphant scene of his long-delayed success the King
is carried to die.
We now reach, in the play of Henry the Fifth, one of those
breaks in the mutations of fortune, which, we have seen, are an
essential feature in the movement of history as conceived by
Shakespeare. The starting-point for the oscillation between royal
power and sedition was found in the divinity of kingship : the
presentation of a kingly personality makes a central stage of rest.
A former chapter of this book has dwelt upon the way in which
Shakespeare reads into the character of Henry of Monmouth a
combination of all elements making supreme heroism ; under
heroic rule like this resistance to royal power appears only to
display its own weakness. Before this we have seen sedition
taking local colour from all parts of the king's dominions : we
have had Glendower and Welsh, Douglas and Scotch, the Percies
and English revolt; in King John we have heard of rebels in
Ireland. But it is a distinctive note in the French war of Henry
the Fifth that all the component elements of Great Britain are
represented ; one line of action in the underplot is made by
English officers and men led by Gower, Welsh officers led
by Fluellen, Scotch by Jamy, Irish by MacMorris, all blending
together into a pageant of military life.
We pass on, and the swing of fortune is resumed, and main
tained through the three parts of Henry the Sixth. Rest is still
used as a contrast to motion, but in a different way ; instead of
intervals of repose, making breathing spaces in a long-sustained
movement of alternation, we here have the element of rest main
tained continuously as a background, against which the rising and
falling vicissitudes stand out in relief. This element of repose is
the King himself. We have had divinity of kingship and kingly
personality : in the present case we have unkingly kingship. The
spirit of Henry is the devout ideal of the quiet cloister, ever in
antagonism with the turmoil of public life. In a lonely spot
adjoining a battlefield of civil war, on which son is killing father
and father son, Henry meditates.1 —
1//7 Henry the Sixth : II. v. 20.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 285
O God ! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain ;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
How many make the hour full complete ;
How many hours bring about the day ;
How many days will finish up the year ;
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times :
So many hours must I tend my flock ;
So many hours must I take my rest ;
So many hours must I contemplate ;
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young ;
So many days ere the poor fools will can ;
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece :
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
The personality of Henry is before us through three plays, symbol
of this reposeful ideal : meanwhile, those who rule in his name, but
not in his spirit, are giving scope for the ceaseless mutations of
fortune.
The first play opens with the French war : if we read continu
ously the scenes portraying this war we may almost mark the
margin of the book with the crescendo and decrescendo of
musical score, so regularly and rapidly does the pendulum swing
between English success and failure. The funeral of Henry the
Fifth is disturbed by messengers following on one another's
heels with tidings of ill : Guienne, Champagne, Rheims, Orleans,
Paris, all lost ; the Dauphin crowned in Rheims, the Bastard of
Orleans, the Dukes of Anjou and Alencon supporting his cause ;
and worse still, the stout Talbot treacherously deserted and taken
prisoner. As the scene shifts to the seat of war the worst for
England seems realised : Charles and his French lords feel that
one more effort will raise the siege of Orleans. —
286 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Remaineth none but mad-brain'd Salisbury ;
And he may well in fretting spend his gall,
Nor men nor money hath he to make war.
The battle is essayed, and at once the sway of fortune has changed
in favour of England : the Dauphin is in full retreat, cursing his
dastard soldiers, while Salisbury now is called a desperate homicide
fighting as if weary of life ; the French say the English army is
made up of Samsons and Goliases, that —
Their arms are set like clocks, still to strike on.
But immediately fortune turns again : the hopes of the enemy
rise as news comes of the Holy Maid, raised up by miraculous
vision to drive the English from France. La Pucelle appears,
easily foils the simple devices tried to test her ; and French victory
is felt to be assured.
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
With Henry's death the English circle ends ;
Dispersed are the glories it included.
But, to balance this, the English side receives a most valuable
accession : in the trenches round Orleans, Salisbury welcomes
Talbot, ransomed from captivity after innumerable adventures.
As the tale of adventure is being told, fickle fortune is veering : a
gun carefully trained to cover the turret where the two warriors are
speaking is touched at the right moment by the gunner's boy,
and — woe for England ! — the noble Salisbury is shattered to
pieces. There is a cry that La Pucelle is approaching : the turns
of fate are quick : in the valiant agony of witnessing the fall of
Salisbury, Talbot drives the Dauphin and his French forces in
headlong flight ; in another moment it is Talbot who is driven
before the French Maid, the old warrior bursting with spleen,
giddy with whirling thoughts, as his forces give ground before
a woman ; all is vain, the French colours wave on the walls of
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 287
Orleans. Night settles down on the French rejoicings, to quench
them in humiliation. The English regent and his ally of Burgundy
approach with scaling ladders ; the cry of ' St. George ' and
' a Talbot ' is heard, and the French " leap over the walls in their
shirts " ; as the French leaders stand half dressed, with bundles of
clothes under their arms, mixing mutual recriminations with plans
of rallying, a single unseen Englishman raises the cry of ' Talbot,'
and scatters them in flight, their clothes left behind as spoils for the
humorous soldier. Another turn of Fortune ; this time the fickle
dame wears the guise of courtesy. English hopes seem to decline
as the irresistible Talbot is enticed into the castle of the Countess
of Auvergne, on a pretext of hospitable admiration ; the admiration
is dropped as soon as her porter enters with the keys of the castle,
and the hostess taunts Talbot with being her prisoner.
Long time thy shadow had been thrall to me,
For in my gallery thy picture hangs :
But now the substance shall endure the like,
And I will chain these legs and arms of thine.
The hopes of England have risen again as we hear the ringing
laugh of the great prisoner.
No, no, I am but shadow of myself :
You are deceived, my substance is not here ;
For what you see is but the smallest part
And least proportion of humanity :
I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here,
It is of such a spacious lofty pitch,
Your roof were not sufficient to contain H.
Talbot winds his horn, and from outside is heard the drum and
thunder of artillery : the captor is at the captive's mercy. With
the scene shifted to Rouen, the alternation of fate goes on. The
English lose Rouen, deceived by La Pucelle's picturesque strata
gem of warriors disguised as market men with their sacks ; the
English recover Rouen the same day, with the more than pictu
resque incident of the regent Bedford, at point of death, remaining
288 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
on the scene in his chair, until English victory gives him leisure
to die. One more mutation, in favour of France : policy is tried
where force has failed, and, as the English forces march along in
full strength, their indispensable ally of Burgundy is detached, and
subjected to the inspired eloquence of the Holy Maid. He is
bewitched, relents, is vanquished, will sever himself from Talbot,
and transfer his force to the opposite scale : the third act ends
with the swing of the pendulum wholly to the side of English
loss.
The fourth act is a parenthesis in the general movement of
alternation. The present play has for its main interest the French
war, the play which follows, English sedition : these are re
spectively the fields in which the pendulum of movement mani
fests itself. This fourth act has the function of linking these two
things, war and sedition, into one. Single scenes scattered through
the series of war pictures have displayed the factious rivalry among
the English nobles — Gloucester against Winchester, white rose
of York against red rose of Lancaster. In the fourth act the boy
King, in vain effort of reconciliation, takes the unfortunate step of
himself putting on the red rose of Somerset, while he appoints the
rival Duke of York regent of France, with Somerset to support
him. The consequences may be foreseen. Talbot in desperate
straits at Bourdeaux appeals for succour : York lingers to lay the
blame on Somerset, Somerset on York. What help is secured
comes too late : the siege of Bourdeaux becomes the piteous
tragedy of the two Talbots, aged father and young son, clasped
together in the arms of death.
It remains for the fifth act to present, most dramatically, the
final alternation of fortune in the war between England and
France. The scene has shifted to Angiers ; outside its walls battle
is raging, and it seems to be in favour of England. The Holy
Maid betakes herself to her magic.
Now help, ye charming spells and periapts ;
And ye choice spirits that admonish me,
And give me signs of future accidents.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 289
Fiends appear. She makes her appeal : they walk and speak
not. She offers to lop off a member of her body : they hang their
heads. She offers her body itself in payment of their aid :
they shake their heads. Then she bids them take her soul, if
only the French may foil the English : the Fiends vanish, and
La Pucelle gives up hope. She is soon taken prisoner, and the
fortunes of England have risen above the power of sorcery and
miracle. But in the very same battle another woman is taken
prisoner by the English ; the seeming success in reality is fraught
with ruin. The prisoner is the Princess Margaret of Anjou,
whose beauty casts upon her captor Suffolk a spell that wrecks
his life ; the princess is reserved as queen for Henry, but — by
strange reversal of marriage customs — a price is to be paid for
her : the price is nothing less than the counties of Anjou and
Maine, keys of Normandy. It is a bargain of infatuation : grizzled
warriors weep that the dominion of England in P'rance is irre
trievably lost.
In the second part of King Henry the Sixth sedition makes the
matter of the plot : in the alternate triumphs of hostile factions
the regular historic movement is to be recognised. Margaret has
become a force in England; Suffolk and Winchester support her,
while others rally around the good Gloucester, protector of the
realm. At first the sway of fate is all in favour of the Queen and
her party. Gloucester is struck at through his wife ; the duchess
is insulted at court, and is caught by spies in secret stances of
magic. Gloucester is relieved of his protectorate, and accusations
are pressed against the retiring official. He is committed to the
custody of his enemies ; they are led on by factious hate to con
trive murder. In an instant the pendulum swings back : through
a series of picturesque incidents we have the wave of revulsion
spreading high and low. Winchester dies in impenitent frenzy,
raving of poison and murder. The King shudders at the tight of
his lovely Queen, and, strengthened by the riots of the indignant
commons, banishes Suffolk ; in his banishment he is taken by
pirates, and recognised. —
290 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Whitmore. The Duke of Suffolk, muffled up in rags !
Suffolk. Ay, but these rags are no part of the duke :
Jove sometime went disguised, and why not I ?
Captain. But Jove was never slain, as thou shalt be.
Sedition again appears ; but its form is entirely changed — it is
the grotesque popular rising of Jack Cade, half rude fun, half
reckless bloodshed. Its leaders are Dick Butcher, Smith the
Weaver, a Sawyer, a Tanner ; its charter —
There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a
penny ; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops ; and I will
make it felony to drink small beer : all the realm shall be in
common.
But the flood of rascality is irresistible in its flow : ordinary forces
of the king, noble warriors, are in turn overwhelmed ; the tide has
reached Blackheath, Southwark, London Bridge, Cannon Street,
Smith field. Even the proud Buckingham and Clifford have to
approach the rebels as ambassadors from the King. But this is
the sudden turn of the tide : as the ambassadors harangue and
Cade answers, the mob shout alternately for King and for Cade.
Cade. Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this
multitude? ... I see them lay their heads together to sur
prise me. ... My sword make way for me, for here is no
staying.
The tide of sedition has ebbed, the mob has soon vanished, and
Jack Cade's head is presently brought in triumph to the King.
The fifth act makes a point of transition to that which is to be
the final phase of all this dramatised history, and the new region
in which the oscillations of fortune are to be traced. It merely
brings to a climax what has run as a side issue through the two
dramas, — the rising claims of the House of York. At first1 it
was but a heated dispute of noble friends in the Temple-garden ;
i / Henry the Sixth : II. iv.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 29 1
plain Richard Plantagenet has insisted, against Somerset, upon a
point of family honour.
Plantagenet. Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,
In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts :
Let him that is a true-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honour of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.
Somerset. Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
At the end of this famous scene Warwick makes prophecy :
Warwick. This brawl to-day,
Grown to this faction in the Temple-garden,
Shall send between the red rose and the white
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.
So far the question is only whether Richard Plantagenet is
tainted by his father's treason; in the next scene,1 conference
with the dying Mortimer stretches the claim, not to a dukedom
of York, but to the throne of England. As a next step,2 both the
main factions agree in a bill for restoring Richard Plantagenet,
and the King creates him Duke of York. In the second play, his
secret ambitions become public property : an armourer is accused
by his apprentice of saying that York is rightful heir to the
throne ; York may indignantly denounce the traitor, but hence
forth he is a marked man.3 He is forced forward in his ambition,
gathers friends round him, and to these unfolds his claim, win
ning powerful support.4 His foes, upon an outbreak of rebellion
in Ireland, combine to send York into safe obscurity on pretext of
service against the rebels.5 York sees his chance. —
1 7 Henry the Sixth : II. v. 8 II Henry the Sixth : I. iii. 30, 180225.
2 / Henry the Sixth : 1 1 1. i, from 149. * 77 Henry the Sixth : II. ii.
577 Henry the Sixth : III. i, from 282.
2Q2 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
'Twas men I lacked, and you will give them me :
I take it kindly ; yet be well assured
You put sharp weapons in a madman's hands.
York returns from Ireland with an army at his back ; he gradually
throws off the disguise, and puts forward pretensions to the crown.1
There is a fresh precipitation of factious England into new com
binations ; the battle of St. Alban's is a trial of strength, and York
at least holds his own. Thus we pass to the new phase of our
history ; it is no more a case of sedition, but of armies and the
battlefield ; the pendulum of fortune is to sway between York and
Lancaster in the campaigns that make up the Wars of the Roses.
At the outset 2 the White Rose is seen in the ascendant : the
Yorkists have seized the palace, and King Henry, to save his very
Parliament house from being a shambles, weakly makes compro
mise, granting the succession to his rival if his own reign may be
undisturbed. Revulsion of feeling against a father who thus dis
inherits his son throws moral force to the side of the Lancastrian
queen ; the Red Rose is victorious at Wakefield ; the Duke of
York is taken prisoner, is mocked with a paper crown, while the
inhuman Margaret flourishes in his face a napkin dyed with the
blood of the tender son of York, whom Clifford has just assassi
nated. Fate, as if in horror of such bloodthirsty passion, swings
to the other side : Towton field knows many mutations, but in the
end the Lancastrians are routed, butcher Clifford has fallen and
his corpse is mocked by the foe ; finally King Henry is passively
taken prisoner by two foresters, who, for all their simplicity, weigh
more in the scales of war than the peaceful King. When the
Duke of York is seated triumphantly on the throne with the Lan
castrian rivals in exile, prosperity makes him wanton : he insists
upon a mesalliance which insults his party, his own brother
Clarence, and Warwick the main bulwark of his power, passing
over to the enemy ; the downward sway of Yorkist fortune con-
1 II Henry the Sixth, from V. i.
2 For references see scheme in Appendix, below, pages 368-369.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 293
tinues into the war which breaks out anew, and its first incident is
an inglorious surprise of Edward's camp, the King being captured
in his gown. The oscillations of fate now become more rapid.
Almost immediately the star of York is in the ascendant ; what
surprise lately did stratagem now undoes ; and King Edward
escapes, carrying his warder with him. Again : the action dis
plays a happy hour for the Lancastrians ; their King is seen released
from captivity, making Clarence and Warwick the agents of his
rule. In another moment we have King Henry recaptured in his
palace ; the flowing tide is with the Yorkists, and in rapid succes
sion we have the double desertion of Clarence, the death of War
wick, the fatal battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, the assassination
of the Prince of Wales and of the King.
When we pass to the play entitled Richard the Third, the Wars
of the Roses seem to be over ; the truth is rather that they have
reached their climax — the natural climax of the victors falling out
over the spoils. The pendulum movement traced through so
many plays also attains its climax : the dramatic counterpoint
doubles, and two distinct alternations are perceptible side by side.
For one, the whole play in its main plot is but a single swing of
the pendulum ; it is the Rise and Fall of Richard ; villany irresist
ible strangely elevates Gloucester to a giddy height, and no less
mysteriously irresistible nemesis drags him down. While the rise
of Richard is in progress, the underplot (as we have seen in a
former chapter)1 is made by the alternate rise and fall of indi
viduals composing the faction of York — Clarence, the Queen's
kindred, Hastings, Buckingham : whoever triumphs over the last
becomes the victim of the next. And the protracted fall of Rich
ard (we have seen) takes the form of tantalising fluctuations of
hope and despair, as messages pour in from a distance, or delusive
victory mocks him in the battle itself. That no mode of emphasis
may be wanting, the passion of the play catches the rhythm of
alternation : Margaret's curses and Richard's retort unify at the last
moment the whole war of factions, York made the nemesis upon
1 Above, pages 41-42.
294 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Lancaster, and Lancaster upon York, from generation to genera
tion. Only with the death of Richard does the long drawn
movement reach a position of rest :
Now civil wars are stopped ; peace lives again.
The continuous succession of plays is exhausted ; but there still
remains the drama of Henry the Eighth, which criticism loves to
call the epilogue to Shakespeare's dramatic history of England.
The suggestion is interesting, for the first note struck by the
prologue to this play is mutation of fortune ; we are bidden to look
upon grand personages of history in their pomp and pride, and
then see —
How soon this mightiness meets misery.
Moreover, as we have seen in our discussion of the drama, what
there is in it of history takes the form of rise and fall ; successive
stages in the rise of the young beauty, and successive stages in
the fall of the older wife who must make way for her. But we
also saw that there was another element of interest in Henry
the Eighth, different from this. The larger life of history in this
drama mingles with the more confined life of personality. Four
personages were made prominent — Buckingham, Katherine,
Wolsey, Cranmer : these were not treated — like John, Queen
Margaret, Warwick, Clifford, and the like — from the outside only,
as so many pieces on the chess-board of history. The inner life
of individuality was, for these four personages, fully displayed ; we
were able to see how that which is a fall in the life without may be
a rise in the life within, how external elevation may be spiritual
poverty. The outer life of each individual is part of the pageant
of history ; whether he be small or great, his external career may
be swung into currents for which he is not responsible, yet which
he cannot resist. But whoever has awakened to a consciousness
of a life within has a realm of his own outside the sway of history ;
for the determination of individual character the individual him
self is solely responsible.
THE PENDULUM OF HISTORY 295
The pendulum swing of events, the ceaseless oscillation of
fortune, the alternate rise and fall of the scales in which issues are
weighed, this — with shadowings of rest for relief or contrast — is
the law of history, as history is dramatised in Shakespeare. Like
the colour of the atmosphere — invisible in the air around us,
showing deep blue as we gaze into the depths of space — this
pendulum of events is only traceable on the vast scale of national
history, in which the minutes and hours are reigns and dynasties.
It is an intelligible principle ; so much of natural history takes the
form of action and reaction, that it need not seem strange if tem
poral history, seen in extenso, should have ebbs and flows of its
tide. The conception of alternate rise and fall of human institu
tions seems in close harmony with the scheme of providential gov
ernment that was ' wisdom ' to the Hebrew psalmist :
He turneth rivers into a wilderness,
And water springs into a thirsty ground ;
A fruitful land into a salt desert,
For the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
He turneth a wilderness into a pool of water,
And a dry land into water springs.
And there he maketh the hungry to dwell,
That they may prepare a city of habitation ;
And sow fields, and plant vineyards,
And get them fruits of increase.
He blesseth them also, so that they are multiplied greatly;
And he suffereth not their cattle to decrease.
Again, they are minished and bowed down
Through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
He poureth contempt upon princes,
And causeth them to wander in the waste, where there is no way.
Yet setteth he the needy on high from affliction,
And maketh him families like a flock.
The upright shall see it, and be glad ;
And all iniquity shall stop her mouth.
296 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
As it appears in Shakespeare, this sway of history is wholly free
from suggestion of fatalism. Throughout the ten plays there has
been no hint of malicious destiny mocking strenuous endeavour,
such as Greek tragedy delighted to display ; there has been no
unnatural interference with the consequences of acts. And the
epilogue play comes to make impressive the distinction of story
and history : it is but the outer life, entangled with the lives of
others, on which the swing of historic movement can exercise even
the slightest impulse ; the life of inner personality is entirely our
own.
XIV
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN THE MORAL WORLD OF
SHAKESPEARE
IN our survey of the forces of life we commenced with what is
nearest to us, individual will. We then saw how Shakespearean
drama indicates the limitations on personal will ; from within, in
heredity and character ; from without, in the sway of immediately
surrounding circumstance. In the preceding chapter we went still
further afield, and noted how the vast movements of history, only
perceptible when time is surveyed on a large scale, constitute a
force, to which individual will may yield or rise superior. In this
chapter we have to go beyond the bounds of that ordinary course
of things we call Nature, and inquire as to the Supernatural, how
far it is one of the forces of life in Shakespearean drama. I do
not here speak of God, nor of the system of law or providence in
which his action may be manifested. The question is of super
natural agencies : how the system of Shakespeare is related to the
varied powers, familiar in human tradition, which come between
the ordinary course of Nature, and the supreme force of Deity.
It is obvious that from the present point of view two plays of
Shakespeare stand apart from all the rest, and form a class by
themselves. In A Midsummer- Nigh fs Dream and in The Tem
pest, the whole action is permeated by the supernatural. But it is
clear that these two dramas are in no way pictures of real life ;
they are dramatisations of the supernatural. Fairy existence in
the one, magic and enchantment in the other, are the hypotheses
on which the whole story rests. It does not follow that much may
not be learned from these plays with reference to the moral system
of Shakespeare ; but they have no bearing upon the question im-
297
298 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
mediately before us — the position of supernatural agency in real
life.
In the other plays free use seems to be made of what in ordi
nary parlance is called the supernatural. In Cymbeline gods and
goddesses of classical antiquity descend upon the scene. The
oracle, which was so important in classical drama, makes a pivotal
point for Winters Tale, and has a subordinate place in Cymbeline ;
although in both these poems the local colour is modern rather
than ancient. Soothsayers, and innumerable forms of omen, such
as in antiquity went hand in hand with oracles, are used to a con
siderable extent in Shakespeare's Roman plays ; and similar de
vices1 appear in some of the plays of English history. Fiends
make an appearance in the first part of Henry the Sixth in con
nection with the sorcery of La Pucelle ; in Henry the Eighth we
have a vision of angels. Witches, and the apparitions their spells
can raise, play a prominent part in the tragedy of Macbeth. And
ghosts seem to have an important share in the action of the dramas
of Hamlet, Julius Ccesar, Macbeth, Richard the Third.
An attempt is often made to get rid of this apparently super
natural element in Shakespeare's plays by rationalising it out of
all real existence ; the ghosts and omens (it is said) are but
hallucinations of those who see or hear them ; Macbeth's witches
are but a stage symbol for the spirit of temptation. Such sugges
tions usually come from criticism that has never frankly accepted
inductive examination of the literature as the sole ground of the
discussion ; and the rationalising proposal is dictated by a desire
to bring Shakespeare into harmony with our own more advanced
age, that has got rid entirely of oracles and soothsayers, and only
smiles at a ghost story. But such a line of argument is, even from
its own point of view, hazardous ; for if a single case of the super
natural in Shakespeare is accepted, all chance of his being pre
sented as a modern rationalist is gone. Yet, unless violence is to
be done to every indication of the text, who can explain away the
Ghost in Hamlet or the Witches in Macbeth ? The Ghost is seen
1 E.g. Peter of Pomfret in the play of King John.
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 299
by different persons at the same time, by the same persons at
different times ; he makes known circumstances not known before,
and subsequently confirmed by evidence. If this is not sufficient,
by what kind of evidence will it ever be possible to substantiate
objective existence? Similarly, the Witches not only appear to
Banquo as well as to Macbeth, but they are shown alone, plying the
ordinary trade of witches ; if their predictions in the first act might
be guesses, what is to be said of the fourth act, in which their
apparitions foresee the history of Scotland for centuries and the
union of the three crowns?1 This is presented as supernatural
knowledge, and only with supernatural knowledge can the scene
be reconciled. I am not questioning that some of Shakespeare's
supernatural phenomena can be explained as hallucinations ; my
argument is that in every case it must be a question of the evi
dence from the details of the play.
It is indeed not easy to find any criterion upon which we can
absolutely rely for testing reality in the supernatural agencies
of Shakespearean drama. It might have been expected that such
a criterion would be found in the stage-directions, in which a
dramatist speaks for himself. In Shakespeare there are doubts as
to the authenticity of the stage-directions. But even if this point
be waived, we find that what directions there are seem equivocal
in their bearing on the present issue. The case has already been
noted2 of the Banquet Scene in Macbeth, where stage-directions
declare that the Ghost sits in a particular chair, that it disappears
and reappears, whereas it is certain in this instance that the appari
tion is wholly the creation of Macbeth's imagination ; here then
stage- directions are no more than a symbol, assisting us as to
what Macbeth is supposed to see. A somewhat similar, but much
more intricate case, is the second Ghost Scene in Hamlet: 3 here
the opposing evidence is difficult to balance. On the one hand,
the stage-directions state that the Ghost enters, that it makes exit ;
more than this, a speech of six lines is represented as spoken by
1 Macbeth : IV. i. 120-121. 2 Above, page 260.
3 Hamlet: III. iv.
300 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
the Ghost. On the other hand, it is made positive that the ap
parition is seen and heard by none but Hamlet himself.
Queen. To whom do you speak this?
Hamlet. Do you see nothing there?
Queen. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I see.
Hamlet. Nor did you nothing hear?
Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.
Hamlet. Why, look you there ! look, how it steals away !
My father, in his habit as he lived !
Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal !
{Exit Ghost.
Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain :
This bodiless creation ecstasy
Is very cunning in.
Hamlet. Ecstasy !
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music : it is not madness
That I have uttered : bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word ; which madness
Would gambol from.
It is intelligible enough that a man who has once been so shocked,
as Hamlet had been, by a visit from the unseen world should in
a future moment of excitement, create the supernatural visitor by
mental act. And this view receives support from the particular
form taken by this second apparition ; Hamlet has just been pour
ing out his soul in a vivid picture to his mother of the husband
she had slighted, and the Ghost appears, not the armed warrior
of the first act, but the subject of Hamlet's description :
My father, in his habit as he lived.
On the other hand, it does seem violence of interpretation to
understand the Ghost's speech of six lines as nothing more than a
symbolic way of indicating what Harnlet thinks. And yet certain
considerations favour this view. As in the case of Macbeth,1 it is
what is uppermost in Hamlet's mind at the moment that would
1 Compare above, pages 255, 260-262.
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 301
thus find expression in the form of hallucination. The spirit in
which Hamlet goes to the interview with his mother is thus con
veyed.1
Hamlet. 'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world : now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother.
0 heart, lose not thy nature ; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom :
Let me be cruel, not unnatural :
1 will speak daggers to her, but use none.
He is in a state of violent excitement ; his mind is running upon
apparitions from the grave and from hell ; two thoughts are strug
gling within him — the two thoughts planted in his soul by the
Ghost Scene of the first act — revenge, and some final tenderness
to the mother. Now, the speech attributed to the apparition is
just made up of these two thoughts.
Hamlet. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,
That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by
The important acting of your dread command?
O, say !
Ghost. Do not forget : this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.
But, look, amazement on thy mother sits :
O, step between her and her fighting soul :
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works :
Speak to her, Hamlet.
The first word of the apparition, put into his mouth by Hamlet's
question, is the revenge ; the second, is the relenting to the
woman's weakness. And this speech makes the turning-point of
the scene : of the two ideas contending all along for mastery
in Hamlet's mind he has hitherto carried out the one ; from this
point he devotes himself to the other. Real or not real, the
1 Hamlet: III. ii. 406.
302 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Ghost gives expression to the mind of Hamlet. Between indica
tions so evenly balanced I will not undertake to pronounce. But
a third alternative is worthy of consideration. Seeing that ghosts
belong, not to the domain of natural law, but to the unknown
supernatural, may it be that objective and subjective have no
application to them? or that they can appear objective and sub
jective at the same time ? Just as, even within the limits of the
positive world, there are objective vibrations of air so rapid that
only some ears, and not all, can catch them, so may it be a quality
of the supernatural apparition that it has objective existence, yet
is perceptible, not to all eyes and ears, but only to those of one
tuned (so to speak) into harmony with the mind of the apparition,
by crime, or kinship, or mission of revenge ?
The general drift of these remarks is, that the important question
in reference to supernatural agencies in Shakespeare is, not their
objective reality, but their function in the plot. Does the course of
the drama indicate that what appears as a manifestation of some
thing outside ordinary Nature can exercise influence upon men and
events ? On the answer to this depends the question whether super
natural agency is one of the forces of life in Shakespeare's world.
On this point it appears to me that three propositions may be
laid down. First : Supernatural agency in Shakespeare has no
power to influence events unless by influencing persons. A large
proportion of the supernatural in these dramas is concerned with
the indication of future events. The event always agrees with the
prediction : the knowledge of the future is supernatural. We are
thus brought to the grand question which has perplexed theology
for centuries : Does foreknowledge imply predestination? What
ever may be the truth in theology, the practice of Shakespeare is
unmistakable. The key-note is given by the striking words which
Banquo addresses to the Witches :
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow and which will not,
Speak then to me.1
1 Macbeth : I. iii. 58.
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 303
A power is implied which is superhuman, the power to read the
future. But the future so read is a future brought about by
natural causes, by seed and its fructification, and by no other
power. On this text Shakespeare's whole treatment of the super
natural is a comment : there is infallible prediction, there is also a
rational train of causes and effects bringing about the issue pre
dicted. Such foreshadowings as omens, oracles, visions, affect the
question only negatively ; in these cases we have pure revelation
of the future, with no suggestion of an agency behind prediction
or fulfilment. The Ghosts who make the vision of Richard the
Third point to the morrow ; but there is nothing to imply that
they can affect the issue of the battle — except by depressing the
spirits of Richard and raising those of Richmond. But the lead
ing illustration of this principle is of course the play of Macbeth.
Here the Witches make elaborate predictions of the future, all of
them exactly fulfilled. In each case however Shakespeare has
enabled us to see a regular succession of natural causes, amply
sufficient to bring about the result. Macbeth is to be thane of
Glamis and thane of Cawdor ; he becomes the first by his father's
death, the second by promotion to the position of the rebel he
had overcome ; there is no room here for intervention of the
Witches. Macbeth is told he shall be king : we have had occasion
to trace the fluctuation of events by which he becomes king, but
there is no hint of the influence of the Witches, except so far as
their words may have influenced Macbeth himself in the part he
plays. The Witches make the double-edged forecast as to
Banquo, that he shall be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, that
he shall get kings though he be none ; all is fulfilled in the
moment when the father is struck by murderers, and in the dark
the nimble son escapes ; yet in this attack the Witches do not
appear, unless it was their words that set Macbeth on to this
crime. Yet again, there is the dark saying about Birnam Wood
coming to Dunsinane ; but we know by how natural a train of in
cidents the marvel was made a reality; no supernatural instiga
tion, but only a happy thought of military stratagem brought it
304 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
about.1 There was another dark saying, that only the man " not
born of woman " could slay Macbeth ; we are allowed to see how
the individual to whom alone that description applies receives an
injury of his own from the tyrant, in addition to the injuries he
resents on behalf of his country;2 the double motive brings Mac-
duff naturally to the vengeance, in which, it is easy to understand,
his passionate power is irresistible. The supernatural agencies
revealed by Shakespeare stand aloof from the game of life as
spectators ; as spectators they can see further than the players ;
but they have no means of affecting the play itself, except so far
as what they report may influence the minds of the players.
How far then can supernatural agencies influence persons in the
drama ? Here a second proposition may be laid down : The
supernatural has no power over men except by their own consent.
It may be asked, How does Richard consent to the ghostly visit
ants who torment him, or where is there consent to the omens
which disturb the world of the Roman plays? The answer is,
that consent is given by deeds as well as by words. Crime is a
debt : Richard has given his victims' ghosts the hold on him that
the creditor has on the lingering debtor. The application of the
principle to the omens in Julius Ccesar is very clear. To the
world at large these are meaningless ; they come down with a
weight of influence only on those who in their hearts have ac
cepted that to which the omens are pointing. Casca3 pours out
a description of the heavens in supernatural convulsion ; Cicero
makes answer :
Why, saw you anything more wonderful?
Still more excitedly Casca tells of portents on earth passing belief;
still his interlocutor remarks coolly :
Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time :
But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
1 Macbeth : V. iv. 2 Macbeth : IV. iii, from 159. 3 Julius Ccesar : I. iii.
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 305
In a moment Cassius comes : how does he treat the wild phe
nomena on which Casca is so eloquent?
Cassius. For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
Submitting me unto the perilous night,
And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone . . .. ,
Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man
Most like this dreadful night,
That thunders, lightens, open graves, and roars
As doth the lion in the Capitol,
A man no mightier than thyself or me
In personal action, yet prodigious grown
And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.
Casca. 'Tis Caesar that you mean.
Cicero and the innocent see curiosities, where men with con
spiracy in their hearts see encouraging omens from heaven. The
play of Macbeth is again in point. The Witches first meet the
hero in company with Banquo : Banquo questions in vain, but as
soon as Macbeth speaks a single word, the predictions flow out.1
As we have seen, Macbeth's start explains the difference : he had
already sworn treason against King Duncan in his heart. The
second time the Witches exercise their function, it is Macbeth
who has sought them out, and by the power of curses forced them,
in spite of their resistance, to speak of the future.2 The prin
ciple applies similarly to Hamlet? When Bernardo and Marcellus
first see the Ghost, they fear to question, and the apparition makes
no communication. When Horatio goes further and addresses
the strange figure thus —
What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march ? —
his unfortunate word "usurp'st" implies a doubt, and the appari
tion stalks offended away. On its return, Horatio makes solemn
1 Macbeth: I. iii. 39-50. 2 Macbeth: III. iv. 132; IV. i. 50. 3 Hamlet : I. i, iv.
x
306 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
adjuration ; the apparition seems about to speak, when the sound
of cock-crow marks the end of night's limitation. Subsequently
Hamlet himself recognises his father, and implores communica
tion of his thought : only then is the revelation fully vouchsafed.
In each case consent to receive the revelation is implied. All
this may seem to amount to no more than the popular super
stition, that a ghost cannot speak until spoken to. But it is
striking that the great traditional machinery of the supernatural
— a celestial and an infernal hierarchy impelling men to good
and to evil — is absent entirely from Shakespeare's world ; the
only angels who appear signify to Katherine that the victory of
life is won ; the only fiends are invoked by La Pucelle, and sig
nify their powerlessness to help.1 Shakespeare's supernatural
agencies are what Banquo calls them — instruments of darkness :
of no significance except in hands that consent to use them.
We may go yet further in the third of our propositions : The
influence in Shakespeare of the supernatural on persons is seen to
emphasise and assist, but never to initiate or alter, a course of
action. Supernatural power can only — to borrow a Shakespearean
phrase — marshal men the way that they are going. In Winter's
Tale Leontes has passionately invoked the oracle as his final court
of appeal : as soon as it has spoken against him he exclaims :
There is no truth at all i' the oracle :
The sessions shall proceed : this is mere falsehood.
It takes natural events — the report of son and wife's death — to
turn him from his headlong career. Richard after the Ghost Scene
declares that shadows have struck more terror to his soul than all the
forces of the enemy : but he only fights the harder in the morrow's
battle. As before, it is the plays of Macbeth and Hamlet that
are the crucial tests of Shakespeare's mode of handling the super
natural. In the former we have a series of shocks, each promising
to change Macbeth's action, each ending by leaving it where it
would otherwise have been. The word " Thou shalt be King "
1 Henry the Eighth : IV. ii ; / Henry the Sixth ; V. iii.
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE
(as we have seen1) inflames for the moment Macbeth's former
purpose of treason ; at the end of the scene he drops the treason ;
in the next scene — for rational considerations — he falls back to his
first plans. When the Witches have promised Banquo greatness
higher than Macbeth's, does not this (it may be asked) impel
Macbeth to the murder of his rival ? We have his whole feeling
unveiled in soliloquy.2
Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep ; and in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd ; 'tis much he dares ;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety. There is none but he
Whose being I do fear : and, under him,
My genius is rebuked ; as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Caesar. He chid the sisters
When first they put the name of King upon me,
And bade them speak to him : then prophet-like
They hail'd him father to a line of kings.
Macbeth enlarges on this prediction, making it a motive in his
design against Banquo, yet only one motive amongst others ; in
the event itself, as we have seen,3 it is neither this nor the other
sources of hatred that actually determine the expedition against
Banquo, but a sudden emergency in which Banquo's presence is a
special danger. When the apparitions say to Macbeth —
Beware the thane of Fife :
he instantly answers —
Thou has harp'd my fear aright.
Does not the oracle about Birnam Wood affect Macbeth's action,
by leading him to shut himself up in Dunsinane Castle ? Appar
ently it does ; but Macbeth's description of that fortress —
Our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn : here let them lie
Till famine and the ague eat them up —
1 Above, pages 251-252. 2 Macbeth : III. i. 49. 8 Above, pages 258-259.
308 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
suggests that in any case this would have been the position in
which he would have awaited an invading army. The promise of
safety against all born of women might have been expected to set
Macbeth's mind at ease ; on the contrary, he surrounds himself
with just the same reign of terror that other tryants use who have
no supernatural backing.
The play of Hamlet tests our third principle more severely.
At first sight it would seem that the intervention of the Ghost
initiates the whole action of the drama. Yet it is notable, in the
scene of Hamlet and the Ghost, that when the actual point of the
revelation is reached —
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown —
Hamlet instantly interjects —
O my prophetic soul !
My uncle !
Hamlet's own mind had anticipated the supernatural revelation.
This throws light on his suspicion of " foul play," on his still earlier
expression of the weariness of all life, which at the time seemed out
of proportion to surrounding circumstances.1 Hamlet's whole
spirit had been clouded over with a vague sense of horror : the word
of the Ghost simply precipitates this into a definite thought of
crime. As the action proceeds our principle receives fresh confir
mation. The ghostly visitant with all his dread authority imposes
on Hamlet a distinct task of vengeance, and Hamlet under this
influence passionately accepts the commission. As a fact, does
he act upon it? He soon falls back into sceptical doubt of the
character of the apparition ; must lay a scheme for confirmation,
and gets it to the full. Still does he act? He is passionately re
solved to act, is ever reproaching himself for delay ; but in actual
fact the supernatural commission is never fulfilled, and the king is
slain at last by a sudden impulse of Hamlet, prompted by another
crime that moment discovered.
1 Hamlet ; I. ii. 256, and whole scene from line 66,
SUPERNATURAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE 309
Thus slight is the degree of influence Shakespeare admits for
supernatural manifestations : they cannot deflect men from a course
of action, they can but give this a touch of impetus. The popular
feeling is that communications from the unseen world, if such
things can be, must be most powerful motives in human action.
Powerful such supernatural interference would be in disturbing
the imagination and the emotions ; but it is the regular order of
natural influences which alone can govern action. Shakespeare's
treatment of the supernatural is but a comment on the text : If
they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be
persuaded though one rose from the dead.
One doubt remains : if so little is permitted to supernatural
agency, was it worth while to introduce it at all? In reality, the
function of the supernatural in Shakespeare is most important ;
but it is a function addressed, not to the persons in the story, but
to the spectator of the drama. Shakespeare inherits from ancient
literature the whole conception of Destiny. This Destiny found
expression in the Classical Drama chiefly in the form of the
' oracular action ' : a mysterious oracle of the future is gradually
cleared up in meaning as it is gradually fulfilled. Shakespeare
retains enough of the supernatural to make possible this oracular
action in a plot, but rejects the idea of Destiny as a force control
ling events. All that is necessary for the dramatic effect is
foreknowledge. Even in sober prose a succession of commonplace
incidents can be vividly interesting when, at the end, the historian
brings out the principle underlying the incidents. Drama must go
beyond history, and borrows enough of the supernatural to make
the future issues send a flash-light into the events while still in
progress. Seen in this light of a known future, the course of
events, though natural and regular, is imbued with some strange
colour. There is the colour of mystery. Birnam Wood moving
to Dunsinane Castle : how is it possible? Curiosity is prolonged
until, in the most unexpected yet intelligible action of an army
knowing nothing of the prediction, the impossible has become an
accomplished fact. Or, there is the colour of irony, a tinge of
3 10 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
mockery cast over a succession of events. The supernatural has
proclaimed that Macbeth shall be king. But to this kingship, not
in itself improbable, we the spectators see a formidable obstacle
arise — the proclamation of an heir apparent ; when we further see
that this proclamation leads Macbeth to take up again the treason
he had dropped, when the obstacle in the way of the prediction is
thus converted into a step toward its fulfilment, we seem to catch
a spirit of mockery in the natural course of history. Again and
again the effect is repeated. Duncan's son and heir has escaped
when his father is murdered, but this flight of the son diverts
public suspicion from Macbeth to himself, and Macbeth is pro
claimed king. Macbeth is supernaturally guaranteed against all
not born of women, yet is bidden beware the thane of Fife. As
an extra precaution Macbeth sends out to destroy this thane and
his whole family. We the spectators are allowed to see the thane
of Fife — the man not born of woman — just about to give up his
vengeance and quit his country, when the news of the raid, that
destroyed all his family but missed himself, brings him back to the
mission which none can accomplish but himself.1 Every single
detail is rational and intelligible : but in the light of the predicted
future the succession of details seems to be a mocking conspiracy.
To sum up. Supernatural agency has a place in the world of
Shakespeare. Among the forces of life, it has no power except
to accentuate what already exists ; but it has great power to
illuminate life for those who are life's spectators. To express a
principle of drama in language of the theatre : On the stage of
human life man is the only actor ; to supernatural agency it is
given to manoeuvre the footlights.
^Macbeth: IV. iii, from in.
XV
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE
IN an earlier chapter of this book we have seen that accident is
to be reckoned among the things that determine issues in human
life. We saw the story of Romeo and Juliet as permeated with
the accidental ; its great turning-point — the friar messenger
stopped at the door of the infected house — is a piece of pure
chance that is efficient cause of a triple tragedy. Similar cases
abound in other plays. In The Comedy of Errors the maze of
cross purposes follows by natural sequence from the original situa
tion, and might well bring the various parties concerned to the
priory ; but it is an accident that they appear just as the proces
sion of ^Egeon to his execution is passing ; five minutes difference
either way would have made the comedy into a tragedy. In
Much Ado about Nothing the natural thing for the Watch to do
is, not to arrest prisoners, but to " go sit here on the church-bench
till two, and then to bed." By accident they overhear a conversa
tion they do not understand, and arrest an important personage
without knowing it, taking him for an accomplice of the thief
Deformed ; then accident is multiplied into accident as, when
they bring their prisoner before the governor, Leonato's patience
gives out, and he devolves the examination, just before he would
have heard what would have saved his own daughter from public
shame. The Outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona are not
a blockading force who stop all travellers leaving Milan ; yet they
happen to stop, first Valentine, then in succession all the person
ages associated with his story, whose presence upon one and the
same spot is the only thing necessary to resolve a complicated
situation. And a play like Cymbeline has a vein of accident run-
3"
312 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
ning right through it : that Imogen in her wanderings should find
the cave where her lost brothers live, that the poison, given
as a precious drug to Pisanio, should be transferred innocently
to his mistress and tasted when she is alone in the cave, that
she should be buried just where the march of the Roman army
should encounter her on waking from her trance — these and the
like make a chain of coincidences, not of cause and effect, and
assist us to realise how much in life of the actual rests upon the
casual.
It need cause no difficulty that the word ' accident ' as here
used admits of no precise definition. We are reminded of the
old logical Fallacy of the Sorites, which would fain question the
existence of a heap of corn, on the ground that no one could
determine how many ears of corn would have to be removed before
it ceased to be a heap. It is not by any amount of the unforeseen
and unexpected, less or more, that an event is made into an acci
dent. Life is full of the unexpected ; a man who has no resource
to meet what has not been foreseen lacks an important part of the
equipment of life, and must expect to suffer accordingly. I have
ventured to use the term ' moral accident.' In the external uni
verse we may make it a postulate that everything shall be deemed
to have a cause ; the moral world, on the contrary, concerns in
dividual lives, and there must be many things determining the fate
of an individual which are nevertheless entirely outside his control,
which appear therefore in his moral field as causeless. It is thus
not any analytic quality of the circumstance itself, but some rela
tion between circumstances and personality, that makes the basis
of moral accident. We must not call the arrival of the Players in
Hamlet an accident ; true, he was not expecting them, but their
coming was a natural part of court life ; if they had not appeared,
some other device would have been used by the prince to make
his test of the King. It is otherwise with the incident of the
Pirates in the same play. Possibly the marine insurance of the
times would recognise piracy among its risks ; but that pirates
should attack this particular ship, that in boarding Hamlet should
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 313
be the only man borne off, that this should upset entirely the well-
laid plan of the King and alter Hamlet's whole future — here is
the combination of fateful circumstances making a moral accident.
It is instructive to consider in this light the slaying of Polonius.
From Hamlet's point of view there is in this nothing accidental ;
it is just in accordance with his character to strike while the iron
is hot, and to be benumbed by the time of cooling. But from the
standpoint of Polonius this small piece of harmless fussiness setting
in motion such a ponderous force of reaction goes beyond the
bounds of cause and effect, and sinks into the accidental. Thus
the same incident may be a moral accident to one of the persons
concerned in it, not to another.
Shakespeare's most elaborate treatment of accident is in The
Merchant of Venice. But in approaching this masterpiece it is
necessary to protest against the confusion introduced into its
analysis by modern attempts to clear Shakespeare from the charge
of intolerance. We have grown ashamed of the spirit of per
secution with which mediseval Christianity visited a people in
some respects — notably in finance — representing a higher civil
isation than its own. Attempt is made to suggest that Shake
speare was above this. Stress is laid upon such passages as
this.
Shylock. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my moneys and my usances :
Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well then, it now appears you need my help :
Go to, then ; you come to me, and you say
'Shylock, we would have moneys : ' you say so ;
You, that did void your rheum upon my beard
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. . . .
314 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
Antonio. I am as like to call thee so again,
To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.
If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends ; for when did friendship take
A breed ibr barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who, if he break, thou mayst with better face
Exact the penalty.
The suggestion is that Shakespeare is enlisting sympathy for the
oppressed Jews; that the arrogant intolerance of Antonio is the
error on which the peril of his life is soon to come down as a judg
ment. I should be only too glad on this point to be convinced ;
but I am bound to say that there appears to me not a shred of
support in the whole play for this interpretation. Antonio is rep
resented as the most ideal of characters, and his intolerance is
part of his perfection — an uncompromising hatred of what (ac
cording to the spirit of the times) ought to be hated. When the
Christian merchant is brought low, neither by himself nor by others
is there any recognition of rebuked pride ; on the contrary, it is
as a martyr that Antonio suffers.
Antonio. He seeks my life ; his reason well I know :
I oft deliver'd from his forfeitures
Many that have at times made moan to me ;
Therefore he hates me.
When Antonio has triumphed, he couples his ' mercy ' to Shylock
with the condition that Shylock shall become a Christian, which
the court confirms as if it were a matter of course. All this is in
full accord with the mediaeval feud of Jew and Christian. It is
true that, in the passage quoted above and in other passages,
sympathy is being enlisted with the wrongs of Shylock ; but for
what purpose? The traditional Story of the Pound of Flesh in
volves a malice so hideously inhuman that it becomes difficult to
conceive ; the dramatist emphasises the wrongs done to Shylock
as so many incentives to revenge, helping to make the particular
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 315
revenge taken less incredible. Of course, it is always right to
sympathise with trouble and to be indignant at the sight of wrong ;
but sympathy should not be confused with partisanship. It may
be well to drop a tear over Shylock staggering dazed out of the
court to go to his lonely home ; but it should not be forgotten
that even this is a slighter ruin than the fate which, only a few
minutes before, Shylock was clamoring to inflict upon his adver
sary. The sentimentalism that would make Shylock the real hero
of The Merchant of Venice savours of the little child's remark on
the famous painting of the martyrs cast to lions — that there was
one poor little lion that had not got a martyr.
With this prejudice cleared out of the way, we can do justice to
the elaborate plot of the play.1 In the main story we have, not
simply a Christian and a Jew, but a supremely noble Christian and
a supremely base Jew. Antonio is a combination of dignified
strength with almost womanly tenderness towards his young friend
Bassanio ; all in the play feel the greatness of this character, not
the least of them the incomparable Portia. Shylock is — what
the traditional story requires — a monster of cruelty and greed in
his public life ; in private, we have his daughter's authority for it
that his house is a hell.2 Yet the course of events is such that this
supremely noble Christian is helplessly at the mercy of the base
Jew; and how has it been brought about? By the most extreme
example of the accidental ever imagined in fiction. It would have
been a remarkable accident if all Antonio's ships had been wrecked,
so vast is his enterprise, and so prudent is he in distributing risks.
But as a fact, not a single ship miscarries : yet the merchant him
self, his creditors, his friends, the business world, all act upon the be
lief that all the ventures are lost, and this in a matter of bankruptcy
and of life and death. If an accidental occurrence seems almost
too slight a motive for dramatic action, how infinitely slight and
1 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 347. The
Merchant of Venice is discussed in detail in Chapters I to III of my Shakespeare
as a Dramatic Artist.
2 Merchant of Venice : II. iii. 2.
316 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
nebulous must seem a concatenation of false rumours of accident.
But all this is only half the story. In the other half the wheel
goes round, and it is the Jew who is helpless before his Christian
adversary: and how has this come to pass? Shakespeare keeps
up the traditional story, which overthrows the bond because it
contains no provision for shedding of blood ; but he puts this plea
in the mouth of a girl. The real legal plea is added afterwards,
common sense coming to buttress up the picturesque : Portia has
consulted with the learned Bellario, who supplies her with the fact
that there is a statute making Shylock's proposal of the bond a
capital offence.1 The extraordinary thing is that neither Antonio
and his well-paid advisers, nor the Jews to whom the law meant so
much, nor the court of Venice which seems to have taken counsel's
opinion on its own account,2 should have known of this Statute of
Aliens, dug out of the dust heap of forgotten legislation by a sin
gle exceptional pundit. The reversal of the action, as well as the
earlier phase of it, rests upon a hair's-breadth chance. The whole
story takes unity as the exhibition, in twofold form, of character
wholly under the dominion of accident.
With this story of the Jew the plot of The Merchant of Venice
interweaves the story of the Caskets. A father with a vast fortune
and a precious daughter to dispose of rests the possession of both
on a choice between caskets ; for ground of choice there is nothing
but the three metals and the three mottoes ; each is a precarious
guide, the combination of the two dissipates precarious indication
into pure chance. We have thus an elaborately contrived accident
as the essence of the situation. It has been noted in an earlier
chapter3 what ensues: suitors go honestly through trains of
reasoning in an irrational issue, but the spectator sees how the
whole character of each suitor determines his choice, making
Morocco lean to gold, Arragon to desert, the true lover Bassanio
to hazarding in preference to receiving. The problem of the
accidental has been solved by force of character. And the whole
1 Merchant of Venice: IV. i, from 347. * Merchant of Venice : IV. i. 104.
3 Above, pages 245-246.
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE
plot of the drama thus balances before our eyes, in parallel move
ments : on the one side character at the mercy of accident, on the
other side accident wholly dominated by character.
So methodical a treatment of accident as this play affords leads
us naturally to a further step in our survey of the subject. So
far we have considered accident only negatively : its recognition
saves us from seeking to make such principles as retribution
universal, and so degrading the moral into the mechanical. But
may it be possible to read a more positive significance into the
accidental, and give it a more definite place in a moral system?
The question at once puts us in touch with a venerable specula
tion of popular thought. When a modern reader applies himself
to the life and literature of Greek antiquity, perhaps nothing im
presses him more at first than the wide acceptance of the omen
and the influence of mantic art. In profundity and subtlety of
intellect the Greek is at least the equal of the modern mind. Yet
this wise people is seen, in the regulation of daily life, to give
anxious attention to things which a modern observer can only
regard as flimsy puerilities. If a beast is slain for a sacrificial
feast, the entrails are carefully inspected ; their normal or ab
normal appearance, or the kind of sputtering they make in the
fire, is accepted as indication of good fortune or evil to come.
The movement of flickering flame is precisely marked ; observa
tories are built for studying the zigzag darting of flying birds ; the
exact itinerary of the wayward lightning flash is a question of im
portance ; it makes a difference whether the sudden thunder clap
was heard on the right side or on the left ; a sneeze, a bodily
convulsion, a chance word of greeting, a stumble over a threshold
— all these may be ominous of futurity. Now, it will be noted
that the one element common to all these different kinds of omen
is the purely accidental nature of the thing observed. Greek
subtlety has seized upon what is furthest removed from orderly
habit and regularity of occurrence, and to this it looks for tokens
from the Supreme. For that portion of the universe which mani
fests itself in the form of law is limited by law ; if the higher will
3l8 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
is ever to indicate itself it must be by using some machinery that
is outside the course of law. The philosophy of the omen is that
accident is the only possible revelation of Destiny.
A similar conception enters into modern thought, though of
course it finds very different degrees of acceptance in different
minds. A man sets out for the train by which he goes every day
to the city ; he turns back because he has forgotten his pocket-
handkerchief ; he thereby misses his train by just half a minute ;
the train is wrecked and many are killed. Instantly the man is
conscious of a supreme will in the universe, and that it has inter
fered for his protection. Suppose that the individual in question
had been possessed of a peculiar sensitiveness to magnetic condi
tions of the atmosphere, that on this particular morning the air
struck him as in an abnormal condition favorable to snapping of
axles or rails, and that on this account he postponed his journey :
then the subsequent wreck would have raised no thoughts in the
man's mind beyond the beauty of the science of magnetics. It
was the purely accidental character of what occurred — the trifle
of a forgotten handkerchief saving a life — that kindled the con
ception of a special providence ; and it was not for the man in the
excitement of a personal revelation to trouble himself with the
question of the other people who remembered their handkerchiefs
and were killed.
In ancient and modern thought alike then there is at least
a tendency to associate accident with supreme providence ; not
indeed the providence of everyday life, which reveals itself in
the form of regular and orderly law, but what may be called Over
ruling Providence — the supreme power of the universe acting
outside law. The idea of course is not that all apparent accidents
are so to be interpreted ; but that, if providential power other
than regular law is to act at all, it is only in the form of the acci
dental that it can manifest itself.
Shakespeare's great treatment of this particular aspect of his
moral system is the play of Hamlet. In this perplexing and diffi
cult plot we have at all events the assistance of an interpretation
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 319
coming from the poem itself. Horatio, Hamlet's confidant all
through, is deputed by the dying prince to read the lesson of the
whole story. We never hear Horatio's explanation ; but the sum
mary he makes of what he is to say is itself instructive.
And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
How these things came about : so shall you hear
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters,
Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors1 heads.1
Evidently the association of accident and overruling providence
is a main thought of Horatio's homily ; and the facts of the play
fully support this interpretation.
In the main plot2 of Hamlet (as in Cymbeline) we can note a
system of graded wrong, with appropriate nemesis and pathos ;
but in each single case there is the intervention of accident. At
one end of the scale we have the gross crime of the King — mur
der of a brother and King to gain the brother's wife and kingdom.
Eventually due retribution comes from the natural avenger of blood.
Yet, although the murdered father comes from his grave to stir up
his son and avenger, Hamlet is seen to hesitate and delay, is for
ever on the verge of avenging and yet stops short : until accident
intervenes in the circumstance of the poison prepared by the King
for Hamlet being tasted by the Queen. Then the full nemesis
descends : the King has just time to see himself the murderer of
the woman he loves, and then falls at the hand cf his brother's
avenger. Next, we have the lesser crime of the Queen : yet crime
we must call it, for the implication of the whole story is a guilty
love while her first husband is yet alive. Nemesis overtakes her,
as she meets her death from her lover's hand : yet by accident, for
the death was meant for her son, and — to add pathos to her fall —
1 Hamlet : V. ii. 390.
2 Compare the scheme of the play in the Appendix below, page 364.
320 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
it was anxiety over the position of this well-loved son that made
the thirst so fatally quenched. We now pass outside crime, to
what is merely unwisdom. The wrong of Polonius amounts to no
more than politic intermeddling ; and he meets a meddler's fate
— yet by accident, a fate intended for another.
Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell !
I took thee for thy better : take thy fortune ;
Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger.
Much the same may be said of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
They are not near my conscience ; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow :
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.
Their nemesis is to go unconsciously to the doom to which they
were assisting Hamlet. And it is accident that has so decreed :
the accident is one of those strange, unaccountable impressions
that sometimes come upon a man, so that he feels irrational in
acting on them, and yet in the sequel finds overpowering justifica
tion. If it seems to be straining this word accident to extend it so
far, I can only say that it is Hamlet himself who is responsible for
the interpretation. With these words he introduces his story of
the feeling which prompted him to open the sealed packet.
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting,
That would not let me sleep : methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,
And praised be rashness for it, let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall ; and that should teach us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.1
Of Ophelia the only evil is that she is not strong enough for the
situation in which she finds herself; gifted with clearer insight
1 Hamlet : V. ii. 4, and whole scene.
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 32!
than that of others around her, the force of maidenly tradition
checks her from acting on her instincts as to Hamlet. It is
simple love yielding to unfavourable circumstances ; and the
agony that follows brings Ophelia to pathetic doom, and yet a
doom which only the accidental breaking of a tree bough made
irremediable. As Ophelia appears a type of simple love, so
Laertes represents simple sense of duty — to avenge a father's
slaughter. Yet Laertes, like his sister, yields to circumstances, and
is persuaded to exchange the public demand of justice for the fine
scheme of private revenge :J accident once more intervenes, and —
in the extraordinary shuffling of the foils — Laertes is pierced with
the poisoned weapon he intended for another.
Six times has the retributive principle in the universe asserted
itself, and six times it has been an " accidental judgement." But
in the wide field of action thus displayed what has been the motive
force ? Nothing but the character of the hero, the peculiar char
acter of Hamlet. He is the great type of the inner life preponder
ating over the life without. Above all things Hamlet is the man of
introspection ; his luminous subtlety in self-analysis has made this
the classical poem of soul philosophy. His agile mind-play
extending over the whole field of intellect and emotion enables him
at will to assume even distraction, and use it as a stalking horse
for his designs. But the moment Hamlet essays to act in the
common world of men his emotional strength dissipates into
sceptical indecision ; newer and ever newer trains of thought about
acting exhaust the energy to act. The tragedy of Hamlet is that
to the ideal man of the life within is intrusted a bold enterprise of
the life without. How the Ghost's commission would have been
executed if confided to a Macbeth or an Antony it is easy to
imagine : the guilty King would have fallen by a single telling blow,
and justice would have been satisfied. But as it is, the tentative
hesitation of Hamlet enlarges the area of wrong ; for all the evil
and ruin of the play — except the original crime that precedes the
rise of the curtain — the delay of Hamlet is the occasion. And
1 Hamlet: IV. vii, from 60.
Y
322 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
at last a sudden flash of action on Hamlet's part puts the finishing
stroke to the whole tragedy. But this sudden determination seems
possible for Hamlet only in the face of accident : of that twofold
revelation of accident, that in a moment showed him the poisoned
foil slaying the slayer as well as the victim, the poisoned drink
intended for the enemy slaying the poisoner's beloved queen.
The whole play of Hamlet is a rich blend of three elements :
character, accident, nemesis, are here all interwoven.1 And the
sense of overruling providence to which such cooperation points
has never been more aptly phrased than in the famous saying of
Hamlet —
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
These moral accidents are sudden openings into the unknown,
giving us scattered intimations of a supreme Power behind the
visible course of things, overruling all. Can Shakespeare go
further, and afford us any revelation of the supreme Power itself?
The Shakespearean Drama does not, like Job or Faust, give us
a Council in Heaven, with Deity expounding his own purposes.
Nor does it, like the Passion- Play of Ober-Ammergau, present
Deity descended to earth, exhibiting itself in human form and
human action. But there is a third alternative : to display human
ity ascending, not indeed into heaven, but at least to the position
of an overruling providence. " If I were God — " : there is noth
ing irreverent in the fancy, and such a speculation, carried into
detail, will bring the providential control of the universe home to
our minds through our imagination and our sympathies. Now
this is precisely the idea underlying Shakespeare's play of The
Tempest. As remarked before, this is not a play of real life ;
Shakespeare assumes the hypothesis of enchantment. Enchant
ment is, within the enchanted circle, omnipotence; Prospero is,
for the enchanted island, and for the single day during which his
spells have force, a supreme controller of events. Accordingly,
1 Compare the scheme of the play below, page 364.
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 323
as we follow the course of the poem, we are watching in dramatic
presentation the mind of an overruling providence.
I have elsewhere treated in detail The Tempest as a study of
personal providence.1 A few points only need be instanced here.
Our first sign of providential control is the tempest itself, which is
raised by Prospero to sweep his foes within the circle of his power,
yet which is held in such restraint that there is no harm —
No, not so much perdition as an hair
Betid to any creature in the vessel
Which thou hearclst cry, which thou saw'st sink.
Here is a hint of the great mystery of providence, by which the
course of the objective world, common to all, can yet be made to
work high purposes in the subjective lives of single individuals.
After a back glance into the past, in which the providential work
of mercy and judgment has been (so to speak) rehearsed in the
control of the elemental beings Ariel and Caliban, we have a new
phase as Miranda, out of her charmed sleep, wakes to behold
Ferdinand, drawn on by enchanted music.
Prospero. At the first sight they have changed eyes.
What appeared an accident in the meeting of Romeo and Juliet,
now is seen as the direct act of a controlling power. Not less
suggestive is the remaining course of this love episode :
Prospero. This swift business
I must uneasy make, lest too light winning
Make the prize light.
What might be drawn as a lesson from a course of events at the
end, is here at the beginning made a providential purpose.
A striking episode in the play is the Conspiracy of Antonio and
Sebastian : conscienceless villains, just saved from the awful tem
pest, and already brooding over new schemes of treason.2 Mys-
1 In my Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Chapter XIII.
2 Tempest : II. i, from 191.
324 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
teriously the whole train of courtiers, and the King himself, are
suddenly locked in sleep ; Antonio and Sebastian are left wide
awake. With increasing force the suggestiveness of the situation
gains upon them ; it has become irresistible, and the two swords
are being drawn from their sheaths, when in a moment the air has
become vocal as the voice of Ariel. warning Gonzalo : the courtiers
spring to their feet, and face the two guilty men, elaborating ex
cuses for their drawn swords. Thus finely are touched two of the
deepest mysteries in the conception of providential control : the
providence of opportunity, that lures the sinner on to his sin ;
the not less strange providence of accident, interposing when of
other salvation there seems no hope.
For. the central incident of the drama we naturally look when
the cruel authors of Prospero's expulsion from Milan encounter
their victim in his plenitude of omnipotence.1 A supernatural
banquet invites the exhausted King and his courtiers ; then, ere
they can partake, the banquet vanishes and gives place to the
avenging harpy, and the speech of doom is heard.
You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,
That hath to instrument this lower world
And what is in't, the never-surfeited sea
Hath caused to belch up you ; and on this island
Where man doth not inhabit ; you 'mongst men
Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad ;
And even with such-like valour men hang and drown
Their proper selves.
\_Alonso, Sebastian, etc., draw their swords.
You fools ! I and my fellows
Are ministers of Fate : the elements,
Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock''d-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that's in my plume : my fellow-ministers
Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,
Your swords are now too massy for your strengths
1 Tempest : III. iii.
MORAL ACCIDENT AND OVERRULING PROVIDENCE 325
And will not be uplifted. But remember —
For that's my business to you — that you three
From Milan did supplant good Prospero ;
Exposed unto the sea, which hath requit it,
Him and his innocent child : for which foul deed
The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have
Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,
Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,
They have bereft ; and do pronounce by me,
Lingering perdition, worse than any death
Can be at once, shall step by step attend
You and your ways ; whose wraths to guard you from —
Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls
Upon your heads — is nothing but heart-sorrow
And a clear life ensuing.
Charmed from man's first instinct of physical resistance, sundered
from the comforting neighbourhood of fellow-men, cut off from
the regular course of nature which is the foundation on which
rests the sense of security, alone with their sin and with Destiny
— a Destiny whose agencies fill all space, while all time is but
the delaying which is no forgetting — the three men of sin have
awakened in a single moment to the whole doom of lingering per
dition, and have just enough sanity left to know the sense of mad
ness. Here is the Shakespearean conception of hell : but it is a
present hell, and a hell from which there is just one path of escape,
in contrition and a purified life.
Omnipotence has put forth its utmost of power : with what
effect? Alonso is seen in agonies of remorse, the Alonso who
before he came within Prospero's enchantment had a heart to
suffer, who heard the name of Prospero in every thunderclap and
whistle of the threatening storm.1 But Antonio and Sebastian, the
hard-hearted, are hardened still further into resistance.
Sebastian. But one fiend at a time,
I'll fight their legions o'er.
Antonio. I'll be thy second.2
1 Compare Tempest: III. iii. 95. 2 Tempest : III. iii. 102.
326 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
The Shakespearean Drama has caught the spiritual mystery : He
that is righteous, let him be righteous still ; and he that is filthy,
let him be filthy still.
There is yet one more phase in this revelation of personal provi
dence. Prospero's purpose extends from judgment to mercy.
The charm dissolves apace,
And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason. . . . Their understanding
Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy.
What ensues gradually unfolds itself as a universal restoration, em
bracing not only the holy Gonzalo and the remorseful Alonso, but
also the hardened Sebastian and Antonio, Caliban the gross, Stephano
the drunken ; it extends even to the inanimate things of nature —
the ship, that at the opening of the play had been seen to burn
and sink, reappearing as trim as when she first left her dock.
Is this sound theology? Are its parts even consistent one with
the other? There is no question here of theology, there is no
question of soundness, there is no question even of consistency.
The whole is but the dramatisation of a fancy, the fancy of a
human mind and heart elevated for a single day to the position
of an overruling providence. All the varied ideas which in the
past have impressed thinking minds as they have surveyed the
course of the world may here find a place, without sense of con
flict or need of reconciliation. Whatever it may be, this specula
tion on personal providence in The Tempest makes the natural
close to the task attempted in this book. The dramatic expres
sion of the forces in the moral world of Shakespeare commences
with personal will, its busy intrigues, and their ironic clashings.
It extends to the various restraints, from within and from without,
which limit personal will. It ends with the conception of person
ality projected to the supreme control of the universe.
APPENDIX
PLOT SCHEMES OF SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMAS
PLOT IN SHAKESPEARE
DRAMATIC PLOT may be defined, from the artistic side, as the concur
rence of all that appears in a drama in a unity or harmony of design.
Its interest is analogous to that of geometric drawing : a course of
events may be appreciated in itself, like the beauty of a curve ; or
various courses of events may be seen to harmonise, as with the intri
cacy of intersecting lines in a pattern. From the side of human
interest it may be said that plot is in fiction what providence is for the
real world ; every play is a microcosm, of which the poet is the creator,
and its plot the providential scheme. The analysis of such plot is
analogous to science, which takes to pieces the world of reality, and
shows how these parts combine in a unity of evolution or law.
The founder of literary criticism was Aristotle, and attempts are still
made to adapt his system to modern poetry. But Greek drama and
Shakespearean drama are at opposite ends of the dramatic scale : the
one rests upon utter simplicity, the other upon infinite complexity.
Circumstances of its origin made Greek tragedy a literary species by
the distinguishing characteristic of the ' three unities ' : the unity of action
limited a play to a single story, the unities of time and place still further
limited the presentation of this story to its crisis, all the rest of it being
conveyed indirectly. The romantic drama, on the contrary, combines
in one play any number of different stories, exhibiting each story (it
may be) from beginning to end. Thus beauty in Greek drama resolves
itself into this — how much can be kept out : it rests upon indirect
suggestion and sculpturesque pose. Beauty in romantic drama seeks,
on the contrary, to get in all the matter possible, crowding in fulness
of picturesque action, yet all of it within the bounds of harmony.
Literature is the richer for containing these contrasted types : but the
same plan of analysis will not fit both. In Greek drama plot was so
simple that it was indistinguishable from movement of story. In the
analysis of Shakespearean drama movement falls into the background ;
what becomes prominent is the interweaving of different stories, that
move side by side like the four parts of musical harmony, with the
artistic effects of symmetry, balance, contrast, making themselves felt
as these stories progress. The interest is closely akin to that of
counterpoint in music.
329
330 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
THE UNIT OF PLOT
In romantic drama, naturally, the unit of plot is the romance or story.
Thus The Merchant of Venice takes three stories from different books
of romance, adds to these a fourth story, and interweaves all four into
a scheme of plot. [See above, page 168.] The word 'story,' how
ever, connotes the human interest ; the corresponding term in art
analysis is 'action.' An action is a series of incidents that can be
thought of as a separate whole. In Othello, we may take various
details from successive parts of the play, and mentally put them
together as ' the intrigue of lago to get money out of Roderigo ' : this
is an ' action.' Such ' actions ' are the units into which a Shakespearean
plot resolves itself ; f stories ' are actions which have human interest
enough to stand alone (like the Story of the Pound of Flesh), whereas
other actions would have interest only as analytic elements of a plot
scheme. )
A story, or action, may be simple or ' complicated.' Any sequence
of events which, for any purpose, is regarded as a unity, would be a
simple action. In other cases a train of events is diverted from its
apparent course — this is 'complication' : there follows then either
' resolution,1 the complication being overcome, or tragic ' determina
tion,' the natural course of events being hopelessly destroyed. [See
above, pages 162-3.]
NOTE : In what follows the reader should refer to the plot scheme of
each play as it is mentioned: the references give the pages below on
which the schemes will be found.
The foundation step in plot analysis is the identification of these
actions : the perception of what, in regard to the design of the whole,
is worth distinguishing as an independent unit. It is easy to see that
an action is constituted by an exhibition of jealousy and subsequent
reconciliation, as with Antipholus of Ephesus in Comedy of Errors
(page 339), or the Fairies in Midsummer-Nights Dream (page 342) ;
or by a misunderstanding and its explanation, as with Antipholus and
his slave Dromio (page 339) ; or by the peril of ALgeon and his sudden
release in the same play ; or by the haunting of the Mechanics and
their disenchantment in Midsummer-Nights Dream (page 342) ; or
by the artificial convention of the King and his suite in Lovers Labour"1*
APPENDIX 331
Lost and the reaction under influence of his visitors (page 348). Simi
larly, love that ends in marriage makes action after action in As You I
Like It and similar plays (pages 340, 349, etc.) ; an action is made by
the tragic love of Suffolk in // Henry the Sixth, or by the wooing in
! broken French and English in Henry the Fifth (page 391). The
: friendship of Proteus and Valentine, interrupted and restored, makes
an action (page 341), and so does the friendship of Achilles and
Patroclus with its tragic termination (page 362). Not only is an ac
tion constituted by folly and its exposure, as with Parolles (page 345),
but also by the sustained exhibition of folly, of which three types, mak-
i ing three separate actions, may be seen in Twelfth Night (page 340).
So the sustained pathos of Cordelia's sufferings in Lear, or of Portia in
Julius Ccesar (pages 354, 357), is sufficient to give individuality to an
action ; similarly, the comic life portrayed through the two parts of
Henry the Fourth (page 370) makes a comic action in the plots of those
plays. We get a character action, such as that of Coriolanus (page
358). Contrast of character makes a single action when it binds to
gether Achilles and Ajax into a single element of plot (page 362) ; or
it is a point of contrast between two separate actions in Timon (page
/ 355)? where of the two contrasting personages one is seen in the move
ment of the play to rise and fall, the other to fall and rise. Obviously,
an intrigue makes a dramatic action. [Compare pages 343, 344.] <'
No type of action is simpler than the nemesis action made by a crime
and its retribution, of which the play of Richard the Third is full (page
403). A whole group of actions may be described as arch actions I
here plot form and geometric form become very close. An arch action
may be a rise and fall, as in the case of the conspirators in Julius Ccesar
I (page 357) ; the passage from the end of success to the beginning of
failure occurring at the centre of the drama, as if at the summit of the
arch. Or, the arch reversed appears in such a plot as Winter's Tale,
where there is fall and restoration, the oracle appearing as keystone
332 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
/(page 350). A field for ingenuity is open in the attempt to represent
plot design in geometric figure. This last play, with its central oracle
gathering up the sixfold destruction and shadowing the sixfold restora
tion, would be represented with considerable exactness by a figure like
this. [Compare pages 70, 75, 350.]
Sometimes what gives unity to an action is its connection with the
movement of the drama. Thus in Two Gentlemen (page 341) the suc
cessive journeys of the different personages make a complicating action
in the whole scheme. Or, the proceedings of Horatio in Hamlet (page
364) are a stationary action : they are valuable in shedding light on
the rest of the plot, but Horatio himself is not involved in the compli
cations which embrace the rest of the personages.
It need cause no difficulty that an action is sometimes unified by
more than one kind of interest, just as, in geometry, a line may be at
one and the same time an arch and a wave line. In Merry Wives
(page 343) the Ford action is obviously an intrigue ; but it is also a
character action, the intrigue being a revelation of a peculiar form of
jealousy. The Coriolanus action (page 358) is a triple action, of char
acter, nemesis, and pathos. [Compare page 124.]
APPENDIX 333
The dramatic effect of counteraction may be ground for distinguish
ing separate actions ; thus, as soon as the character of Coriolanus
(page 358) becomes an independent interest, it becomes worth while
to recognise three other interests, because these are working in different
ways against the realisation by Coriolanus of his ideals. [Compare
cross actions, pages 359, 360, 361.]
Subactions, — These are in the fullest sense actions, but they also
stand in the relation of subordination, either to other actions, or to the
design of the plot as a whole. In The Shrew (page 344) it is clear
that the suits of Hortensio, of Gremio, of Lucentio, for the hand of
Bianca are separate intrigue actions in the secondary plot. But the
suit of Lucentio differs from the rest in the fact that he carries on a
twofold wooing: a direct wooing in disguise, and an indirect wooing
through his servant Tranio assuming the master's name. This differ
ence alone is sufficient reason for dividing the Lucentio action into two
subactions ; there is a further reason in the fact that the Tranio sub-
action comes into conflict with what constitutes the primary plot of the
play. [See above, page 219.] Another type of subaction is seen in
Much Ado (page 346) . The serious plot of that drama is made by a
villanous intrigue (of Don John) destroyed by the farcical irony of the
Watch (who blunder into an important discovery while they are fussing
over trifles) . Now, the same villany produces another intrigue on a
small scale — a misunderstanding between two friends, soon removed
(see the references on page 346) ; and in the general trouble of the
main intrigue there is an independent scene of petty irony, where
Antonio, lecturing his injured brother on the duty of patience, loses his
temper and has to be himself restrained. These two items are in no
way essential to the main business, but have their place in the plot as a
petty intrigue and a petty irony, reflecting the main intrigue and irony
in the way in which, in architecture, the main lines of the building may
be reproduced in the details of ornament. Two more subactions of the
same kind may be seen in the same artistic plot : it is an irony (Leonato
breaking off the hearing just before the secret comes out) that delays
the main resolution, and it is an intrigue (an honest intrigue) of the
Friar that restores the delayed resolution. [Compare a somewhat simi
lar case on page 360.] — We have generating subactions in Lear (page
354), carried on to initiate the main situation, and then merged in
other elements of the plot ; link subactions, and other terms, which will
explain themselves. — In the succession of histories, where there is a
334 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
unity stretching beyond single plays, it becomes necessary to indicate
germ actions (e.g. page 371), to cover matter which has no relation to
the plot of the particular play, but is (by necessity of historic date)
inserted in that play to prepare for what will be found later.
Circumstances. — An action is essentially a succession of details taken
from different parts of the play. But sometimes the place in the design
of the plot ordinarily held by an action is taken by a single isolated
' circumstance.1 Thus the shipwreck in Comedy of Errors (page 339)
is an isolated fact of the past ; yet it must have a place in the plot, as a
' motive circumstance,1 since it is the source of movement for the whole
drama, originating the situation out of which the separate actions arise.
Similarly, a shipwreck is a motive circumstance for Twelfth Night ;
from this comes Viola, who brings about the complication of the play,
and Sebastian, who resolves it. Again, in Two Gentlemen (page 341)
the accident of Valentine being captured by Outlaws and becoming
their captain is the whole resolution of the plot ; it presents itself to
our minds as a single point in the design upon which the different lines
impinge. In Romeo (page 360) the accidental circumstance of the mas
querade initiates the main complication, the accidental circumstance of
the infected house tragically determines the whole (above, pp. 52, 59).
Other examples in Hamlet (page 364), and Merchant (page 347), and
Timon (page 355).
COMPOUNDING OF ACTIONS INTO PLOTS
In Greek drama the whole plot of a play would be comprehended in
a single action. In Shakespearean drama a number of single actions
are interwoven into a plot, and such plots may be further compounded
into a more complex plot, the various elements of such a scheme ex
hibiting mutual parallelism or contrast, or other effects of economic
harmony. This has been fully illustrated in the discussion of comedy
(above, pages 167-176). In the Comedy of Errors (page 339), Antiph-
olus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse are centres of separate
dramatic interests ; the one passes through a phase of family jealousy
to its termination in reconciliation, the other falls in love with Luciana
and eventually wins her. These two brothers Antipholus have further mis
understandings with the two Dromios, which are subsequently explained.
Here are four distinct interests or actions going on at the same time,
which, however, are not separate, but clash together, owing to the open-
APPENDIX 335
ing situation of mistaken identities. Obviously, a time will come when
the pairs of twins will meet in the same place, and all the complications
will resolve : the four actions will have been interwoven into a comic
plot. But, as a fact, how is this brought about? Side by side with
these actions another (serious) action has been in view — ^Egeon in peril
of his life, until a sudden release comes ; this release is the meeting
with the personages of the comic side, as a result of which the serious
action brings about the resolution of the comic entanglement, and the
meeting with the persons of the comic entanglement secures the salva
tion of ALgeon.. Thus the comic plot and the single serious action have
been interwoven into the main plot of the play. — Or again, in the
Merry Wives (page 343), we have three separate intrigues (Falstaff
against the wives, the wives to punish Falstaff, and Ford to work out
his jealous scheme) clashing together into what may be called the pri
mary plot: as a whole it may be described by the term 'corrupt
wooing.' Side by side with this we have another clash and disen
tanglement of three separate intrigues to win Anne Page ; each has its
separate interest, but they unite in a second plot, which may be de
scribed by the term 'natural wooing.' These two plots go on side by
side, contrasted in spirit, parallel in their form, each consisting of three
clashing intrigues. But the scheme of the play involves still further
interweaving, for the primary and secondary plots clash together in the
common climax of the masquerade, each producing a reaction upon
the other. [See above, pages 174-175.] — To take another instance:
the plot of the Merchant of Venice may be roughly analysed as four
stories interwoven (above, page 168). More fully (see page 347) we
see in it a primary plot, that may be described as 'character swayed by
accident ' and a secondary plot exhibiting ' accident swayed by char
acter.' [See above, pages 315-317.] These two plots, thus contrasting
in matter, may, in form, be resolved into elements exactly parallel each
to each : a main action, with two underactions reduplicating the main,
one seriously, the other comically. There is further interweaving of
the two plots, as the complicating and resolving forces of the primary
are furnished by the leading personages of the secondary plot (page
1 68) . — The scheme of Lear (page 354) is made up of two plots exactly
parallel : in each a generating action produces a situation of problem,
which finds a triple solution, the problem and the three elements of the
solution being the same for each ; the two are drawn closer together by
minor link actions. In the play of Troilus (page 362) we obviously
336 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
have two plots very different in spirit : the one is an heroic, the other a
love tragedy. The heroic tragedy is a clash of four tragic actions,
drawn together into a common ruin ; the love plot is a similar clash of
two love actions, tragically determined ; the heroic and the love plot
are seen in their progress to clash together.
Underplots. — -Where the whole scheme of a play shows multiple
plot, the different plots may appear to stand upon equal footing, as in
the primary and secondary plots of the preceding paragraph ; or one
plot may stand in subordination, either to another plot or to the scheme
as a whole. One source of such ' underplot ' is the purpose to give plot
interest to the servants or dependants of the leading personages : this
is the 'dependent underplot.' In Lear (page 354) one problem arises
in the royal family itself, the other in the family of Gloucester, the
King's chamberlain : this last is thus a dependent underplot. [For
other examples, see pages 344, 347.] In Shakespeare's dramatic
practice the spirit of an underplot may often be found where the term
does not appear in the scheme of the play. Thus in such plays as
Much Ado, Midsummer-Night, Lovers Labours Lost, As You Like /t,
there are personages (like Dogberry and Verges, the Mechanics, Armado,
Audrey) who might well be centres of underplots, but as a fact they
are taken up into the working of the main plots. Or again, the place
of underplot is filled by subactions (Roweo, Macbeth). — See the
schemes of these plays : pages 360, 356.
Enveloping Action. — This plays an important part in the compound
ing of plots and actions into a whole scheme. The term has been fully
explained (above, page 264-8).
Relief. Atmosphere. — The discussion of comedy and tragedy
(above, Chapters VIII and IX) has emphasised the importance in
Shakespeare of the mixture of tones, serious and lighter. These have
a place in a scheme of plot, though they enter into it only indirectly.
The essential idea of plot is that it should reduce all the matter of a
play to a unity of design. But it will often appear that, when the
whole scheme of plots and actions is complete, there still remains some
matter unprovided for, and this is found upon examination to be part
of the relief element of the play. Thus in Comedy of Errors (page
339), over and above the drollery of the Dromios in conflict with their
masters, which is one element of the plot scheme, there is further fun
on their part, e.g. the scene (III. ii, from 80) in which the fat kitchen
wench is described. This has no place in the plot, but must be credited
APPENDIX 337
to ' relief.1 Similarly in Twelfth Night (page 340), apart from all that
makes the plot, there is a purpose to bring the Clown successively into
contact with all the personages of the drama, with ' relief ' effects. Thus
a plot scheme ought to indicate the treatment of relief. Often the relief
element is wholly immanent in the plot, or merged in particular persons
or incidents (pages 347, 349, 360, etc.)- At other times it is outside
the plot scheme, scattered, without attempt at design, through various
parts of the play (pages 339, 345, etc.). In other cases, the relief
itself makes an underplot : thus in Two Gentlemen (page 341) it makes
an atmosphere of itself contrasting with the atmosphere of the rest of
the play ; in Merry Wives (page 343) we have for relief an overplus
of caricature personages, with subactions of complication and resolu
tion. Yet again we see cases in which the relief element is suggestive
of design, though not amounting to underplot ; especially in Lear (page
354), where it is concentrated in the central scenes, or Winter's Tak,
where it distinguishes in spirit the resolution of the plot from its com
plication (page 350, compare above, pages 71-5).
CONCLUSION
The leading literary interest in such plot analysis consists in realising
how drama can extend the artistic effects of design — parallelism, har
mony, contrast — into so unpromising a medium as that of realistic
human life. At the same time the harmonies and contrasts are full of
moral suggestiveness.
A difficulty is felt by some : did Shakespeare really intend all these
effects of design? Nothing of the kind is suggested. A particular
poet may happen to be also a man of analytic mind ; but, as poet, all
that he need be credited with is an exquisite sense of balance and har
mony. As the necessities of the story lead him to introduce particular
details, the artistic instinct makes him feel these incomplete without
other details to balance them. A sculptor does not go to work with a
foot rule to measure the limbs he is modelling ; yet, when the statue is
finished, another man may measure and find interesting ratios between
length of arm and girth of waist. A man of musical genius may write
excellent music, and yet he may be entirely ignorant of the counter
point by which others will discover in his composition regular system.
In any case, the question how a poet came to produce his work can
have no effect on the question of fact — whether the finished work does
z
338 THE MORAL SYSTEM OF SHAKESPEARE
or does not exhibit such and such features. That many readers feel a
difficulty in realising this is only one among many indications that lit
erary study is as yet imperfectly differentiated from other studies, such
as biography ; many readers are unable steadily to observe the poetry
from the fact of their attention wandering to the personal poet.
Finally, it must be understood that a play can be analysed into very
different schemes of plot. It must not be thought that one of these
schemes is right and the rest wrong ; but the schemes will be better
or worse in proportion as — while of course representing correctly the
facts of the play — they bring out more or less of what ministers to
our sense of design.
339
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
A COMEDY OF SITUATION
Above, pages 169, 334
Main Plot : From the Motive Circumstance of the Shipwreck
COMIC PLOT : the Situation of Error developing as a
Antipholus of Ephesus : Family Jealousy and
Reconciliation
Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus : Misunder-
Clashoffour standing and Explanation
Actions
Antipholus of Syracuse : Fancy and Marriage
Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse : Misunder
standing and Explanation
all four drawn by the Error into the maximum of Clashing —
disentangled by contact with the Serious Action
SERIOUS ACTION : Peril and Release of ^Egeon : impinging upon
Comic Plot, resolving it and resolved by it
Relief : Word fencing of Saucy Servants — scattered
340
TWELFTH NIGHT
A COMEDY OF SITUATION DEVELOPING
Above, pages 170-4
Plot
From the Motive Circumstance of the Shipwreck, by the Compli
cating Personage Viola [disguised as a page] :
MAIN PLOT: Situation of Error — developing into a Clash or
Triangular Duel of Fancy
Viola in love with Duke
Duke in love with Olivia
Olivia in love with Viola
UNDERPLOT : A Triplet of Folly, graded
Belch and Maria : natural abandon
Aguecheek : imitation abandon
Malvolio : unnatural antagonism to abandon
developing into a Clash of the rest against Malvolio
CLASH of the Main and Underplot in the course of develop
ment: Intrigue to set Aguecheek against [disguised] Viola
From the Motive Circumstance of the Shipwreck, by the Resolv
ing Personage Sebastian [twin to Viola] :
MAIN PLOT disentangled as a Double Marriage
Viola and Duke
Olivia and Sebastian
UNDERPLOT : Resolved with the resolution of the Main Plot
Relief
Professional Folly of the Clown brought successively into contact
with all the personages of the plot
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
A COMEDY OF SITUATION DEVELOPING
»
Above, pages 222-8
Main Plot : With Atmosphere of the Gay Science [pages 180-4]
Original Situation
Disconnected
Triplet
Friendship of Proteus and Valentine
Love of Proteus and Julia
Thurio's suit to Silvia [in Milan]
First phase of the Complicating Action : Journey of Valentine
Connected
Triplet
Friendship of Proteus and Valentine
Love of Proteus and Julia
Rivalry of Valentine and Thurio for Silvia
Second phase of the Complicating Action : Journey of Proteus
against Love : Proteus false to Julia
against Friendship : Proteus false to Valentine
in Social Life : Proteus false to Thurio
Triple
Intrigue
Third phase of the Complicating Action : Journey of Julia in disguise
in Love : Proteus wooing Silvia in presence of
Julia
in Friendship : Silvia drawn unconsciously to
Triple Irony Julia by the falseness of Proteus to Valen
tine
in Social Life : Proteus mocking Thurio, with
Julia's asides
Resolving Accident : The Outlaws : stopping successive fugitives
bring about final clash and Final Situation
Harmonised
Triplet
Friendship of Proteus and Valentine
Love of Proteus and Julia
Love of Valentine and Silvia
Underplot : Relief Atmosphere of Abandon. [Saucy servants — farcical
word fencing — Dog sentiment parodying sentiment of Gay Science.]
342
A MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S DREAM
A COMEDY OF SITUATION AND ENCHANTMENT
Above, pages 229-33
Plot
ENVELOPING ACTION : Nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta
ENVELOPING MOTIVE ATMOSPHERE : Enchantment of the Wood
on Midsummer-Night
Instruments of /Complicating: Cupid's Flower
Enchantment \
NResolvmg : Dian's Bud
MAIN PLOT : Clash in common Enchantment, and Disentangle
ment, of
I. Fancy: the Lovers. [A triple situation of
perversity — complicated into quadruple
perversity — further complicated into com
plete mutual hostility — resolved into har
mony as two pairs of lovers.]
Three Types
of Life
2. Fairy Life : Oberon and Titania. [Conjugal
quarrel — complicated into distraction of
monstrosity — resolved into reconciliation.]
3. Burlesque (unconscious) : The Mechanics.
[Complicated into distraction of haunting
and resolved.]
Relief : immanent in plot
343
THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR
A COMEDY OF INTRIGUE
Above, pages 174, 228
Main Plot
PRIMARY : Corrupt Wooing — a Clash of
Triple
Intrigues
Character Intrigue : Falstaff against the Wives
Intrigue of Character : Ford's Jealousy
Counter
Intrigue of Nemesis: The Wives
against Falstaff
SECONDARY : Natural Wooing (of Anne Page) — a Clash of
Triple
Intrigues
Caricature : Slender's Suit [backed by the father
— from motives of estate]
Caricature : Caius's Suit [backed by the mother
— from motives of fortune]
Character : Fenton's Suit [backed by the girl —
for true love]
CLASH of Primary and Secondary plots in a COMMON CLIMAX of
Primary : final nemesis (and reaction)
Secondary : character vanquishes caricature
Mutual Reaction : the laugh turned against the
persecutors of Falstaff. [Compare V. v. 247.]
The Mas
querade
Underplot of Relief
Chorus of Caricatures
Simple
Mistress Quickly
Bardolph, Pistol and Nym
Sir Hugh Evans
Host of the Garter Inn
/Complication: Host's trick on Duellists [II.
iii and III. i]
N
Resolution : Duellists1 trick on Host [IV. iii
and v]
344
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
A COMEDY OF CHARACTER AND INTRIGUE
Above, pages 212-22
Main Plot
PRIMARY: Paradoxical Wooing — Intrigue of Petruchio to tame
the Shrew Katherine
SECONDARY : Natural Wooing (of Bianca) — a Clash of
Suit of Hortensio [neighbour] : rising out of
the Primary plot and absorbed into it
Triple
Intrigues
Suit of Gremio [old man] : defeated
Suit of Lucentio [young stranger] : attained —
takes a double form
(a) Wooes for himself in disguise as
Cambio
His servant Tranio wooes in his
master's name in order to head off
rivals
CLASH of Primary and Secondary plots through Subaction (b)
/Complication : Tranio's false Vincentio encountered by the
/ real Vincentio of the Primary plot
^Resolution : General comic Reconciliation
Dependent Underplot of Relief : Grumio as the Saucy Servant
345
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
A COMEDY OF CHARACTER AND INTRIGUE
Above, pages 236-8
Plot
SERIOUS PLOT : Love of Helena for Bertram
Generating Subaction : Helena's healing of the King — which
develops :
<I ntrigue of Bertram to evade marriage relatio ns
Intrigue of Helena to restore marriage rela
tions
COMIC PLOT : Folly [Heroic Imposture] and Exposure : Parolles :
rising out of the Serious Plot and determined by the Enveloping
Action
ENVELOPING ACTION : Florentine War
Relief : Humour of the Clown — scattered
346
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
A COMEDY OF CHARACTER AND INTRIGUE
Above, pages 233-6
Plot
SERIOUS PLOT : Love of Claudio and Hero
Complicating Villany Action : Intrigue of Don John
g /Petty Intrigue: Misunderstanding of Friends:
.2 / Claudio and Don Pedro [I. iii, from 42 ; II. i,
% < from 161]
\
^
Petty Irony : Rivalry of the angry Brothers :
Leonato and Antonio [V. i]
Resolving Farcical Action : Irony of the Watch's discovery
%
.o /(delaying) Irony of Leonato's Impatience [III. v]
o <^
ja ^(restoring) Righteous Intrigue of the Friar
w
SUPPLEMENTARY COMIC UNDERPLOT: Paradoxical Intrigue to
bring Benedick and Beatrice together
ENVELOPING ACTION : Rebellion of Don John
Relief : implicit in the comic and farcical elements of the plot
347
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
A COMEDY OF CHARACTER AND ACCIDENT
Above, pages 315-7
Primary Plot : Character swayed by Accident
MAIN NEMESIS ACTION : Story of the Pound of Flesh : a supremely
noble Christian at the mercy of a supremely base Jew — the posi
tions suddenly reversed
Complicating Accident : The rumoured Shipwrecks
Resolving Accident : The forgotten Statute
DEPENDENT UNDERACTIONS
A. Reduplicating the Main action : the Jew's daughter for
sakes her father for a Christian
AA. Farcical Subaction : the Clown transferred from Jewish
to Christian service
ENVELOPING ACTION : Mediaeval Feud of Jews and Christians
Secondary Plot : Accident swayed by Character
MAIN PROBLEM ACTION : The Caskets Story — an apparent crisis
of chance really determined by character
Complicating
and Resolving Circumstance : The three Caskets
DEPENDENT UNDERACTIONS
B. Reduplicating the Main action : Gratiano and Nerissa
BB. Comic Subaction: Ironic Episode of the Betrothal Rings
Clash and Disentanglement of Primary and Secondary : the Secondary
Plot is the Motive force of the Primary
Complicating Personage : Bassanio
Resolving Personage : Portia
Relief : merged in individual personages of the plot
348
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
A COMEDY OF CONVENTION AND HUMOUR
Above, page 267
Plot
ENVELOPING MOTIVE ACTION : the French Embassage
Complicates : by introducing the Humorous Atmosphere
Resolves : the French king's death converts all to serious
ATMOSPHERE of ARTIFICIAL CONVENTION
A. The King and /amongst themselves : the Vow
his Suite Nag against outsiders : Celibacy
An himself: Euphuism
B. Don Armado ^
\n relation to outsiders : Hypocrisy
C. Nathaniel and/in themselves : Pedantl7
Holofernes \for outsiders : Pompous Pageantry
ATMOSPHERE of NATURAL HUMOUR Complicating and Resolving
AA. The Princess and /the Vow
her Suite : break down \the Celibacy
/Moth : foil to the Euphuism of B [as true wit]
BB. S
\Jaquenetta : attracts B to hypocrisy
/Dull : foil to the Pedantry of C [as plain sense]
CC. /
XTostard : breaks down the pompous pageant [V. ii. 678]
Relief : immanent in the plot
349
AS YOU LIKE IT
A COMEDY OF CONVENTION AND HUMOUR
Above, page 179
Plot
OUTER ENVELOPING ACTION : Civil War of the Dukes — ends in
Religious Conversion
INNER ENVELOPING ACTION : Feud in the de Boys family — ends
in Dramatic Conversion
i. Love and Disguise: Rosalind and
Orlando
MAIN PLOT of
Quadruple Loves
2. Love and Folly: Audrey and Touch
stone
3. Conventional Love : Phebe and Silvius
4. Love at first sight : Celia and Oliver
INNER ATMOSPHERE : Play of
Natural : Rosalind
Triple Humour
Professional : Touchstone
Morbid : Jaques
OUTER ATMOSPHERE : Conventional Pastoral Life : The Forest of
Arden
Relief : immanent in the plot
350
THE WINTER'S TALE
A COMEDY OF FALL AND RESTORATION
Above, pages 65-76, 332
Plot: An ARCH PLOT of Fall and Restoration — bound together by
ORACULAR INTEREST
THE FALL: Tragic Tone: Sundering of Sicilia and Bohemia
through Jealous Madness of Leontes
lost wife
lost friend
lost son
lost babe
lost minister (Camillo)
lost servant (Antigonus)
ORACLE
sixfold destruction revealed
sixfold restoration shadowed
Antigonus's widow united to Camillo
minister restored
lost daughter found
son-in-law in son of old friend
friend restored
wife restored as from the grave
THE RISE : Pastoral Tone : Reuniting of Sicilia and Bohemia by
the Romantic Love of Florizel and Perdita
Underplot of Relief: Atmosphere of Rural Simplicity (flavoured with
Roguery) accompanying passage at centre from Complication to
Resolution. [Above, pages 71-5-]
CYMBELINE
A COMEDY OF FALL AND RESTORATION
Plot : An ARCH PLOT of Tangled Wrong and Harmonious Restoration
— with ORACULAR INTEREST for emphasis. [Above, pages 76-88.]
THE WRONG and FALL
Blind Wrong [Cymbeline v. Belarius and Pos-
thumus] — loss of all — restored by victims
Perverse Wrong : Retaliation [Belarius v.
Cymbeline] — banished life — rescues vic
tims in crisis
Sixfold scale 3. Perverse Wrong : False Honour [Posthumus]
of Graded — lower crime — remorse — reunion
Wrong 4. Perverse Wrong : False Candour [lachimo]
— lower crime — shame — reunion
5. Crafty Villany [the Queen] — by irony of
death an instrument of restoration
6. Stupid Villany [Cloten] — by irony of death
an instrument of restoration
by (i) loses husband
by (2) loses brothers
by (3) loses her love
by (4) loses her reputation
by (5) her life threatened
by (6) her honour threatened
honour saved
life saved
reputation cleared
love restored
brothers found
husband recovered
THE RESTORATION and RISE
1. Suffering Innocence : Imogen
2. Suffering Fidelity : Pisanio
3. Suffering Guilt : Posthumus and lachimo
4. Honest Intrigue : Cornelius
5 . Nature
6. Overruling Providence. [With Oracle.]
ENVELOPING ACTION : British and Roman War
Relief : Atmosphere of Open Air Life in the Restoration
MOTIVE CENTRE
Imogen
Sixfold
Forces of
Restora
tion
352
THE TEMPEST
A COMEDY OF ENCHANTMENT AND RESTORATION
Above, pages 322-6
Plot: An ARCH PLOT of Tangled Wrong and Restoration — resting
upon the idea of ENCHANTMENT as omnipotence
ENVELOPING MOTIVE ACTION : Enchantment of Prospero
MAIN PLOT: The Three < Men of Sin' [III. iii. 53]
Usurpation of Milan by Antonio
Feud of Alonso and Prospero
Conspiracy of Antonio and Sebastian [II. i]
MOTIVE CENTRE : COMMON MADNESS
Conspiracy averted at its crisis
Alonso and Prospero become kinsmen
Throne of Milan abandoned
UNDERPLOT : linking the two sides of the Main Plot
< Ariel : upward : assisting
_ ... P ,
Caliban : downward : resist
ing Prospero
2. Children: Enchanted Love/ Miranda
\Ferdinand
3. Servants: Intoxicated Conspiracy /Callban
\ Stephano and Trinculo
4. Spectators: Miracle / Courtiers> led by Gonzalo
\Sailors, led by Boatswain
5. Background of Nature /Tempest
\Calm
COMMON CLIMAX of Universal Restoration
Relief : merged in Nos. 3, 4 of Underplot — and in Mask
353
Plot
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
A PROBLEM COMEDY
Above, pages 143-57
ENVELOPING MOTIVE ACTION : The Duke
/His withdrawal generates the Problem
^His return assists the Solution
MAIN PLOT : Respectable Life [Angelo etc.] : Law accepted
Problem Situation
Law and Individual
Triple Clash
Purity and Passion
Outer and Inner
Solution : General Harmony of Mercy
{Nemesis Action (assisting the generation of the Problem) :
Claudio and Juliet
Character Action (emphasising the Solution) : Escalus —
Provost
a. Angelo's Intrigue against Isabella
Complicating
Resolving
b. Intrigue to hasten Claudio's death
aa. Duke's Intrigue to substitute Mari
ana for Isabella
bb. Accidental provision of a substitute
for Claudio
LINK. ACTION : Loose Life : Lucio
/Complication : Raillery
^Resolution : Irony (of events)
UNDERPLOT : Low Life : Vice accepted
/Complication : Hardened Vice
another chance
\r>
Resolution : Mercy
[Escalus] as
discrimination of character between
Overdone and Pompey
Relief : merged in Link Action and Underplot
2A
354
KING LEAR
A PROBLEM TRAGEDY
Above, pages 141-3
Plot
MAIN PLOT
Problem Situation : Lear [Passion] : a father reversing
moral equilibrium of the family
Solution
Nemesis (double) on the father
Triple Sequence Sufferings of the Innocent : Cordelia
of events Power used by the evil for their own
destruction : Goneril and Regan
Generating Subaction : Cordelia's Outburst of temper
DEPENDENT UNDERPLOT
Generating Subaction : Edmund's Plot against Edgar
Problem Situation : Gloucester [Weakness] : a father revers
ing moral equilibrium of the family
Solution
Nemesis (double) on the father
Triple Sequence
of events
Sufferings of the Innocent : Edgar
Power used by the evil for his own
destruction : Edmund
LINK SUBACTIONS
/Albany : rising
^Cornwall : sinking
/Oswald : Servility and Nemesis
MCent : Plainness and Pathos
ENVELOPING ACTION : War of England and France
Relief: concentrated in centre of the movement [pages 190-1]
Real : Lear
Triple Madness
Feigned : Edgar
Professional : the Fool
with an accompaniment of Nature Passion : The Storm
355
TIMON OF ATHENS
A TRAGEDY OF CHARACTER
Turning upon the Outer and Inner Life
Plot
MAIN ACTION
<Timon (Inner Life) : Rise and Fall. [Volun
tary Communism — by Enveloping Action
i . • t , • • -i
determined to tragic rum.l
o J
Alcibiades (Outer Life) : Fall and Rise. [In
jury from Enveloping Action — roused to
redress.]
Link Circumstance: Dis./ emphasises the Fall of Timon
covery of Gold \ ^^ the Rise
restrains the communism
Link Personage : Flavius
a comforter in ruin
ENVELOPING ACTION : Social Corruption of Athens
Underplot of Relief : Misanthropic Humour of Apemantus [with oc
casional emphasis from the Fool] — in contact with the enveloping
corruption and tragic misanthropy
356
MACBETH
A TRAGEDY OF CHARACTER AND NEMESIS
Above, pages 246-64
Turning upon the Outer and Inner Life
Plot
MAIN ACTION
Character /Macbeth (Outer Life) \ in the form of Rise
Contrast\Lady Macbeth (Inner Life)/ and Fal1
<Subactionto Rise: Banquo [Rival of Inner Life]: Nobility
and Pathos
Subaction to Fall : Macduff [Rival of Outer Life] : Unwis
dom (over-caution) with Nemesis and Restoration
ENVELOPING ACTION : [Illuminating: seepages 309-10]: Oracu
lar Action [rationalised] of the Witches
Relief : Incident ; the Porter : Farcical Wit
357
JULIUS QESAR
A TRAGEDY OF CHARACTER AND NEMESIS
Above, pages 125-8
Outer Life : pure Roman ideal of the State
Turning upon the
nner Life : claims of the Individual
Plot
MAIN NEMESIS ACTION : The Conspiracy : Rise and Fall
/Character Contrast : Brutus and Cassius
^Pure Pathos : Brutus and Portia
System of
SUBACTIONS „ „ ,„
/Subaction to Rise : Fall of Caesar
^Subaction to Fall : Rise of Antony
ENVELOPING ACTION : Roman Mob and Civil Faction
Relief : Scattered details — in the Mob and Casca
358
CORIOLANUS
A TRAGEDY OF CHARACTER, NEMESIS AND PATHOS
Above, pages 113-25
Outer Life : Principle : Roman ideal of the State
Turning upon
inner Life: Compromise: Claims of Individuality
Main Plot
CROSS ACTIONS
Character Action : Coriolanus : Pure Ideal of the State.
[Maintained against the first counteraction — yielding to
the second in Nemesis — by the third converted to Pathos .]
First Counteraction : The People and Tribunes : Claims of In
dividuality. [By compromise of banishment a Nemesis.]
Second Counteraction : Volumnia : Kinship and Patriotism
(i.e. local loyalty) modifying Ideal of the State. [By com
promise of attempted reconciliation produces Nemesis.]
Third Counteraction : Aufidius : Personal Rivalry modifying
Ideal of the State. [Converts Nemesis to Pathos.]
ENVELOPING ACTION : Wars of Romans and Volscians
Underplot of Relief : Menenius : Stationary Character Action treated
for < plainness ' (i.e. Clown humour)
359
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
A TRAGEDY OF CHARACTER, NEMESIS AND PATHOS
Above, pages 128-40
..Outer Life : Public Life (of Antony)
Turning upon <^
Mnner Life : Private Life (of Antony)
Main Plot
..Antony and Caesar : Outer Life
CROSS ACTIONS <^
\Antony and Cleopatra: Inner Life
[Corrupted individuality brings to Antony and Cleopatra
Nemesis of external ruin — out of this ruin rises Pathos of
individual nobility.]
Epic form : Five stages of movement
1 . Opening Situation : Public Life neglected for Private
2. Return to Public Life : Rise of Antony
3. Fall of Antony: Public Life infected with spirit of
Private Life
4. Pathos of nobility in ruin of Antony
5. Pathos of imitative nobility in ruin of Cleopatra
ENVELOPING ACTION : Roman Civil War
Underplot of Relief : Enobarbus : Dependent Action treated for Humour
— changing to Pathos with the pathos of the Main Action
360
ROMEO AND JULIET
A TRAGEDY OF PATHOS
Above, pages 46-64
Plot
CROSS ACTIONS
A. Feud of Montagues and Capulets : tragically reconciled
aa. Subaction : Feud of Duellist and Humourist (Tybalt
and Mercutio) : tragically determined — assists
counteraction
bb. Subaction : Suit of Paris : tragically determined —
assists counteraction
B. Love of Romeo and Juliet : tragically consummated
/initiating: The Masquerade
MOTIVE ACCIDENTS /
^determining: The Infected House
/reconciling : Friar Laurence : honest
/ herb wonders
MOTIVE PERSONAGES^
^destroying : The Apothecary : dishonest
herb wonders
ENVELOPING ACTION (rudimentary) : Omens of impending Fate
Relief : merged in minor personages [Mercutio, Nurse, Peter, Mu
sicians]
TITUS ANDRONICUS
A TRAGEDY OF HORROR
Plot
CROSS ACTIONS
Feud of Andronicus family and Saturninus
First Counteraction : Feud of Tamora family against Andro
nicus
Second Counteraction : Intrigue of Tamora and Aaron
Third Counteraction : Love of Bassianus and Lavinia
ENVELOPING ACTION : Roman and Gothic Wars
Relief : Incident of the Countryman treated for Rustic Wit
362
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
A COMBINED HEROIC AND LOVE TRAGEDY
Main Plot (Double) : An Heroic Tragedy and a Tragedy of Love
drawn together in a common Enveloping Action
ENVELOPING ACTION : War of Greeks and Trojans [Emphasised
by ORACULAR ACTION of Cassandra]
CENTRAL LINK CIRCUMSTANCE uniting Heroic and Love plots :
Calchas's claim of his daughter (III. iii)
HEROIC PLOT
Clash of
Heroic Actions
1. Friendship of Achilles and Patroclus
2. Intrigue of Achilles and Polyxena (III. iii,
from 190)
3. Character Contrast: Proud Achilles and
proud Ajax
4. Rivalry of Achilles and Hector
tragically determined. [No. 3 rouses Achilles (III. iii. 225) to
the final battle — No. 2 delays him (V. i. 42), until death of
Patroclus (No. i) maddens him to treacherous overthrow of
Hector (No. 4).]
LOVE PLOT
Clash of
Love Actions
5. Passion of Troilus for Cressida
6. Intrigue of Cressida and Diomedes
tragically determined in deadly feud of Troilus and Diomedes
CLASH of Heroic and Love Plots. [Troilus in deadly feud per
suades Hector (V. iii, from 31) to the final battle against the
warning of the omens.]
Underplot of Relief
Thersites, of the Heroic plot > treated for Qown humour
Pandarus, of the Love plot >
363
OTHELLO
A TRAGEDY OF SITUATION DEVELOPED BY INTRIGUE
Above, pages 238-41
Plot:
MAIN ACTION
Original Situation
r. Bianca's liaison with Cassio
2. Roderigo's pursuit of Desdemona
of Love Actions Trug loye of Desdemona and
Othello
Motive Intrigues centring in lago
Four Intrigues
4. Intrigue against Roderigo to draw
money
1 5. Intrigue to gain Cassio's office
[6. Intrigue against Cassio's life
7. Intrigue against Othello to make
him feel the pangs of Jealousy
by lago as motive centre all drawn into a unity — with
8. Reaction : all lago's intrigues recoiling on him in Nemesis
ENVELOPING ACTION : The Turkish War
Relief : Episodes of the Clown
364
HAMLET
A TRAGEDY OF NEMESIS, CHARACTER AND ACCIDENT
Main Plot
SYSTEM OF Six
ACTIONS :
Graded Wrong
with Nemesis
and Pathos
6.
Above, pages 318-22
The King : Greater Crime and (Accident as
sisting) full Nemesis
The Queen : Lesser Crime and (Accident as
sisting) pathetic Nemesis
Polonius : Politic Intermeddling and (Acci
dent assisting) pathetic Nemesis
Guildenstern and Rosencrantz : Lesser na
ture intermeddling and (Accident assisting)
Nemesis
Ophelia : Simple Love yielding to circum
stances and (Accident assisting) pathetic
Nemesis
Laertes: Simple Duty yielding to circum
stances and (Accident assisting) Nemesis
MOTIVE CHARACTER ACTION : Hamlet (resting on Outer and Inner
Life): by hesitation enlarging the Wrong — by sudden determina
tion (Accident assisting) consummating the Nemesis and Pathos
MOTIVE CiRCUMSTANCES/inWatingmovement: the Ghost
\assisting consummation: the Pirates
STATIONARY CHARACTER ACTION : Horatio : illuminating the plot
ENVELOPING ACTION : Wars of Norway and Denmark
Underplot of Relief [Pages 191-4]
Successive phas
es of Passion
with
the Main)
Supernatural Awe : Ghost Incidents
Hysteric Mockery of Hamlet
Histrionic Passion of the Players
Pathetic Madness of Ophelia
Weird Humour : The Gravediggers
365
THE HISTORIC SERIES
TEN PLAYS OF ENGLISH HISTORY BOUND TOGETHER BY A
MOVEMENT OF HISTORIC ALTERNATION
[Above, Chapter XIII]
Prologue Play : King John
Alternation between England with King John and
France backing claims of Arthur to the English Crown
Starting point for the Alternation: Evenness of the two sides etnpha-
sised by Angiers defying armies of three potentates [/-//. /'. ^/j]
The Blanch-Dauphin alliance [II. i, from 416] :
pendulum swinging to the English side : Eng
land, France and Austria all against Arthur :
despair of Constance [II. i. 4i6-III. i. 134]
A turning-point in the entrance of the Papal Legate : Rome,
France and Austria all against England : triumph of Con
stance [III. i, from 135]
Fortune of War reverses all this : Austria anni
hilated, France defeated, Arthur taken prisoner,
Faulconbridge mulcting Roman property in
England: despair and death of Constance [III.
ii-III. iv. in]
Reaction : complete security of the English king encourages
designs against Arthur's life — revulsion of people, desertion
of English nobles and invasion of England by the French
prince [III. iv. ii2-end of IV]
Upon submission of the English crown to the
Pope Rome is transferred to the other side —
Faulconbridge rouses resistance to invasion,
French reinforcements lost at sea, treason
against English nobles brings them back to
their allegiance [V. i-v]
Accident of the Washes shows fortune turning against the
English when King John suddenly dies of poison
366
Eight Plays
Alternation between power of the Crown on the
one and on the other side foreign war or sedi
tious nobles, culminating in the Wars of the Roses
Starting point in play of Richard the Second: the Divine Right of
Kings in supreme einpJiasis by contrast with frivolity of the King: a
turning-point in the awakening of the Return from Ireland [/-///.
Downfall and deposition of King Richard with
rise of the rebellion under Bolingbroke assisted
by Northumberland [III. i. 63-! V]
Bolingbroke as King Henry the Fourth, with Northumber
land as chief supporter, triumphant over all faction [V]
With the plays of Henry the Fourth appears the
breach between King Henry and Northumber
land, who serves [above, page 281] as link be
tween factious uprisings in England, Scotland,
Wales. [Highest point of the rebellion indi
cated in III. i. of First Part.]
Hesitation of Northumberland [above, page 283] paralyses
the union of rebels, and they are defeated piecemeal. [Fail
ure of the rebellion indicated in II. iii of Second Part.]
News of the complete overthrow of the rebellion
causes apoplexy and death of King Henry [IV.
iv, from 80]
Central stage of rest in the Historic Alternation : the kingly character
unites all factions : English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, all cooperate in the
War against France. [Play of Henry the Fifth.']
In I Henry the Sixth the Historic Alternation recommences, and is
traced, first in the war with France, then in sedition by nobles
Succession of English losses : the Dauphin at
Orleans elate with hope [I. i-ii. 21]
Battle: the Dauphin in full retreat [I. ii. 22-46]
Sorcery : Accession to the French forces of the
Holy Maid [I . ii, from 47]
Surprise : Recovery to the English side of Talbot redeemed
from captivity [I. iv. 23-68]
Gun Incident : Salisbury is slain by the French
[I. iv, from 69]
Outburst of English rage and Dauphin put to flight [I. v.
init. stage-direction]
Sorcery: Advance of the Holy Maid: the Eng
lish routed and siege of Orleans raised [I. v, vi]
Night Attack : panic of the French, and Orleans taken by
the English [II. i-ii. 33]
Stratagem of Duchess of Auvergne to capture
Talbot [II. ii. 34-iii. 42]
Counter stratagem of Talbot : Duchess of Auvergne over
powered [II. iii, from 43]
Stratagem of warriors disguised as market people :
Rouen taken by the French [III. ii. 1-74]
Rouen retaken the same day by the English, — incident of
Bedford's death [III. ii, from 75]
Diplomacy : the English ally Burgundy detached
by eloquence of the Holy Maid [III. iii]
Act IV (of I Henry the Sixth} is a parenthesis in the movement of
alternation : seditions spirit of English nobles [indicated in I. /, iii ; II.
iv, V ; III. t] now comes to affect the French war. [Afove, page 288. .]
The English capture the Holy Maid, and the power of
sorcery is overthrown [V. ii ; iii. 1-44 ; iv]
The English capture Margaret of Anjou, whose
infatuating beauty brings about surrender of Eng
lish conquests in France [V. iii, from 45 ; v]
368
With // Henry the Sixth the movement of Historic Alternation is trans
ferred to the factions of English nobles
The faction of Queen Margaret, supported by
Suffolk and Winchester, wins a series of triumphs
over the Protector Gloucester, culminating in his
murder [I-III. ii. 26]
General revulsion of feeling: the King alienated from his
Queen, Winchester dies of remorse, Suffolk banished and
slain by pirates [III. ii. 2/-IV. i]
Sedition reappears in the popular rising of Jack
Cade (secretly prompted by York), which is
successful over the royal forces [IV. ii-viii]
Gradually the rebels melt away, Jack Cade is slain by Iden
of Kent [IV. viii-x]
Act V (of II Henry the Sixth) is a parenthesis in the movement of alter
nation : bringing to a climax claims of York that have been rising through
two plays [see above, pages 290-2] — by successful resistance at St.
Albatfs sedition grows into Wars of the Roses
With /// Henry the Sixth the Historic Alternation is traced wholly in
the Wars of the Roses : seen in relief against a background of the
unwarlike king [especially II. v and III. i]
York in the ascendant : King Henry compro
mises by recognising York as his successor
[I. i. 1-210]
Revulsion of feeling in favour of Lancaster and the Queen :
Victory of Wakefield, assassination of York and Rutland
[I. i. 2H-II. ii]
Revulsion of feeling in favour of York : Victory
of Towton, Clifford slain and King Henry taken
prisoner [II. iii to III. i]
Edward of York as King makes a mesalliance : Warwick,
Clarence, and French alliance secured for Lancaster — in
vasion, King Edward taken prisoner [III. ii-IV. iv]
369
Escape of King Edward by stratagem [IV. v]
King Henry in power, supported by Clarence [IV. vi]
Advance of Edward : King Henry captured and
Clarence returns to Yorkists — battles of Barnet
and Tewkesbury — capture of Queen, assassina
tion of Prince and King [IV. vi. 7/-V]
With the play of Richard the Third the Historic Alternation is seen
in the House of York divided against itself: double alternation in the
whole and the parts. [Above, pages 42-4.]
Main Plot : the Rise and the Fall of Richard
The Rise of Richard is the motive The form taken by the Fall of
force of an alternating system of Richard is an alternation of sug-
Nemesis actions, the victor of one gestions of hope and despair car-
being the victim of the next ried on into the battle itself
Epilogue Play: Henry the Eighth
Alternation in Public life : the Mask
Alternation in Individual life: the History
The Mask The History
Rise of Ann Bullen : Her meeting BUCKINGHAM seen in haughty ex-
with the King altation
Fall of Katherine: the Di- Buckingham exhibited in his
vorce Court pageant
KATHERINE in a position of dig-
Rise of Ann Bullen : Her corona- nity and power
tion as Queen T_ . . . ,
Katherine in obscurity
Fall of Katherine seen in WOLSEY in supreme exaltation and
Vision as Exaltation of a security
Saint Wolsey fallen
f . „ „ ~, . . . CRANMER in disgrace
Rise of Ann Bullen : Christening
of her babe Elizabeth Cranmer in exaltation
370
THE HISTORIC PLAYS SEPARATELY
King John
MAIN PLOT
Prologue to the alternating movement of the Historic Series
UNDERPLOT
i. A System of
Character
Subactions
Arthur : Child life as a link between
( Constance : Passionate Motherhood
Hubert : the Man of Mystery
2. Character Development : Faulconbridge
RELIEF : implicit in character of Faulconbridge
Richard the Second
MAIN PLOT
Part of the alternating movement of the Historic Series
UNDERPLOT
/York and Loyalty
Character Contrast /
Aumerle and Sedition
RELIEF : spectacular
First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth
MAIN PLOT
Part of the alternating movement of the Historic Series
UNDERPLOT of RELIEF
Comic Action of Prince Henry and the Falstaff lads
371
Henry the Fifth
MAIN PLOT
Stage of Rest in the alternating movement of the Historic Series :
An ideal Character
revealed in five epic stages The Council
Heroism -v. Treason
Action
Trouble
Love
UNDERPLOT
1 . Survival of the Comic Action of the Falstaff crew
2. Reconciled factions [English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish] displayed
in military cooperation
3. Love making in broken French and English
RELIEF : implicit in Underplot
First Part of Henry the Sixth
MAIN PLOT
Part of the alternating movement of the Historic Series
UNDERPLOT of Germ Actions only
Germ of Sedition [I. i, iii ; III. i]
Germ of Wars of Roses [II. iv, v; IV. iv; in IV. merged in
French War]
Germ of Love of Margaret and Suffolk [V. iii, from 45]
RELIEF: spectacular — merged in the main plot
372
Second Part of Henry the Sixth
MAIN PLOT
Part of alternating movement of the Historic Series
UNDERPLOT
Germ Action of Wars of Roses [I. i, from 207; II. ii ; III. i. 87
and from 282 ; V]
Relief Incidents
Duchess of Gloucester and Sorcery [I. ii, iv; II.
i, from 165 ; II. iii, iv]
York and Popular Judicial Combat [I. iii. init.
and from 180 ; II. Iii, 46]
Gloucester and Popular Miracle [II. i]
Love of Queen and Suffolk [III. ii, from 289 ; IV. iv]
Enveloping Oracular Action [I. iv : all fulfilled]
Third Part of Henry the Sixth
MAIN PLOT
Part of alternating movement of the Historic Succession
UNDERPLOT
Germ Action of Character and Ideal Villany
RELIEF: spectacular — merged in the main plot
Richard the Third
MAIN PLOT and UNDERPLOT : part of the alternating movement of the
Historic Succession. [Above, page 293]
RELIEF : implicit in character of Richard
373
Henry the Eighth
MASK PLOT and HISTORIC PLOT : part of the alternating movement
of the Historic Succession
RELIEF : spectacular in the Mask
INDEX OF PLAYS
All's Well That Ends Well: plot
scheme 345 — comments 169, 178,
236-8, 265.
Antony and Cleopatra : plot scheme 359
— comments 113, 128-40, 188, 190.
As You Like It : plot scheme 349 — com
ments 179, 243, 336.
Comedy of Errors : plot scheme 339 —
comments 169, 178, 311, 330, 334,
334-5, 336.
Coriolanus : plot scheme 358 — com
ments 113-25, 189, 332, 333.
Cymbeline : plot scheme 351 — com
ments 76-88, 179, 243, 265, 267, 298,
3I9-
Hamlet : plot scheme 364 — comments
191-4, 242, 265, 267, 298, 299-302,
'' SOS-6, 3o8-IO> 312-3. 3l8-22, 332- 334-
Henry the Fourth, : plot scheme 370 and
366 — comments 279, 281-4, 331-
First Part : comments 15-22, 206,
243. Second Part : comments 16,
18, 19, 23, 200, 201, 243.
Henry the Fifth : plot scheme 371 and
366 — comments 13-32, 242, 243, 284,
331-
Henry the Sixth : comments 270, 279,
284-5.
First Part : plot scheme 371 and 366-7
— comments 285-9, 298, 306.
Second Part: plot scheme 372 and
368 — comments 33, 289-92, 331.
Third Part: plot scheme 372 and
368-9 — comment 33-9, 292-3.
Henry the Eighth : plot scheme 373 and
369 — comments 89-105, 188, 189, 294,
298, 306.
John {King) : plot scheme 370 and 365
— comments 189, 243, 270-9, 279.
Julius Casar : plot scheme 357 — com
ments 113, 125-8, 189, 304-5, 331.
Lear (King): plot scheme 354 — com
ments 46-7, 141-3, 158, 188, 190-1, 243,
265, 267. 331, 333, 335, 336, 337.
Love's Labour's Lost: plot scheme 348
— comments 179, 267-8, 330, 336.
Macbeth: plot scheme 356 — comments
189, 246-64, 298-9, 302, 303-4, 305,
306-8, 336.
Measure for Measure: plot scheme 353
— comments 143-57, 158, 178, 211-2.
Merchant of Venice : plot scheme 347 —
comments 168-9, x78-9, 210, 245-6,
265, 313-7- 33°. 334, 335-
Merry Wives of Windsor : plot scheme
343 — comments 174-5, J77-8, 201,
228, 332, 335, 337.
Midsummer-Night's Dream : plot scheme
342 — comments 178, 229-33, 266, 297,
330, 336.
Much Ado about Nothing : plot scheme
346 — comments 178, 233-6, 243, 265-6,
3", 333, 336-
Othello : plot scheme 363 — comments
188, 189, 238-41, 265, 330.
Richard the Second: plot scheme 370
and -366 — comments 15, 17, 18, 188,
188-9, 280-1.
Richard the Third: plot scheme 372
and 369 — comments 39-45, 188, 190,
265, 267, 293-4, 3°3-
Romeo and Juliet: plot scheme 360 —
comments 46-64, 188, 190, 265, 323,
334, 336.
Taming of the Shrew : plot scheme 344 —
comments 177, 212-21, 333.
Tempest: plot scheme 352 — comments
179, 297, 322-6.
Timon of Athens : plot scheme 355 —
comments 189, 331, 334.
Titus Andronicus : plot scheme 361 —
comment 189.
Troilus and Cressida : plot scheme 362
— comments 331, 335.
Twelfth Night : plot scheme 340 — com
ments 170-4, 178, 228-9, 331, 334, 337-
Two Gentlemen of Verona : plot scheme
341 — comments 180-4, 222-8,311,331,
332, 334, 337-
Winter's Tale : plot scheme 350 — com
ments 65-76, 179, 298, 306, 331-2,
337-
375
GENERAL INDEX
Abandon as a dramatic tone 176, 341.
Accideut, moral and physical discrimi
nated : 50 and Chapter 111,311 and
Chapter XV — negative aspect, in re
lation to connection of character and
fate: 50, 317 — positive aspect, asso
ciated with providence: 317-26, 87 —
illustrations : Romeo and Juliet 50 and
Chapter III, 360; Merchant 313-7;
Hamlet 319-21; various 311-2.
Comedies of Accident 347 — Trag
edies of Accident 364.
Action, as the unit of plot: 330-4 —
simple and complicated 330 — varieties
of 330-3 — subactions 333 — circum
stances substituted for actions 334 —
compounding of actions into plots
334-7-
Alternation an element in Shake
spearean conception of history 270,
295-6 — traced in succession of plays
270-96, 365-9.
Ancient v. modern thought as to com
munity and individual 111-3.
Antimask 89.
Arch as a type of dramatic form 76, 331,
350-2.
Aristophanes 160.
Aristotle 9, 161, 329.
Atmosphere, as an extension of dra
matic tone : 179-84 [compare 336-7]
— illustrations : Winter's Tale 71-3,
179,350; Two Gentlemen 180-4, 341 !
various 55, 179-80, 342, 348-51.
Balance, Moral, or Heroism : n, 13 and
Chapter I — balance of tones 177-8.
Ballad dance 159.
Being and Doing, antithesis of: 91.
Ben Jonson 89, 196.
Biblical religion, alleged effect on dra
matic conceptions : 47.
Captives, Play of: 163-4.
Caricature as a dramatic tone 160, 163,
176, 177-8, 343.
Centre, dramatic [central personages,
etc.] : 76, 84, 351, 352, 362, 363, 366.
Character, relation to fate: 7, 46-51 —
character action 331, 370 — comedies
of 344-7 — contrast 355-7, 370— de
velopment 14-23, 33-9, 370 — ideal
character 371 [compare Chapter I]
— tragedies of 355-9, 364.
Chorus 159, 161.
Chronicle histories, 185.
Circumstance as an element of plot 334,
339-41. 3<H-
Circumstances, sway of, as one of the
forces of life : 264-8 [compare 62-4] —
its dramatic expression in the Envelop
ing Action 264-8.
Clash and disentanglement 170-6, 339-
4°- 342-3- 347. 362.
Classification of Shakespearean plays
185.
Climax, dramatic : 76, 343, 352.
Clouds, Play of: 161.
Clown 189-94, 340, 345, 349, 363.
Comedy : as life in equilibrium 109, 158
and Chapter VIII — primitive 159-60
— Old Attic 160-2, 176 — Roman 162-4
— Classical 164 — of Situation 164 —
changes of, in Dark Ages 164-6.
Shakespearean conception founded
on union of drama and romance 166-7
— story raised to its highest power
167-76 — harmony of tones 177-84 —
as life in equilibrium 184— the con
verse of Shakespearean tragedy 194.
Comedies of Accident 347 — of Char
acter 344-7 — of Convention 348-9
— of Enchantment 342, 352 — of Fall
and Restoration 350-1 — of Intrigue,
343-6-
376
GENERAL INDEX
377
Community and individual, antithesis
of: in and Chapter VI — ancient and
modern conceptions distinguished m-
3 — a view point for the Roman plays
113 — in Coriolanus appears as princi
ple and compromise 113-25 — in
Julius Ccesar evenly balanced 125-8
— in Antony and Cleopatra appears
as public and private life of Antony
128-40.
Complexity, moral, in the Shakespearean
world : 109 and Book II.
Complexity and Harmony, in Measure
for Measure : 143-57.
Complicating action 332.
Complication and resolution : 162-3, 33°
— an element of Shakespearean com
edy 169-76 — illustrations: Twelfth
Night 170-4 ; Merry Wives 174-5 '•
various 169-70.
Compliment as an element of the mask
89, 92, 105.
Compromise v. principle in Coriolanus
114-25.
Comus 159.
Contrast as an element of plot interest
334-
Convention, comedies of, 348-9.
Counteraction, 333, 358, 361.
Court Fool 142 : see Clown.
Cross Actions, 345, 358-61.
Dark Ages, 164-5.
Deformity of Richard 33-4.
Dependent Underplot 336, 344, 347, 359.
Destiny in Greek drama 47 — in Shake
speare 62-4, 302, 309.
Doing and Being, antithesis of: 91.
Enchantment, comedies of, 342, 352.
Enveloping action : dramatic expression
of environment as one of the forces of
life 264-5 — as an element of plot 264-
5 — its connection with the history
drama 268-9 — illustrations : Much
Ado 265 ; Midsummer-Night 266 ;
Love's Labour's Lost 267; various 41,
265-8, 342, 345-9, 351-64.
Environment in application to Shake
speare's Moral System : 242, 264-8 —
circumstances as immediate environ
ment 264-8 — historical environment
269 and Chapter XIII — supernatural
environment 297 and Chapter XIV —
overruling providence 311 and Chap
ter XV.
Epic form 359, 371.
Equilibrium: Life in, as comedy 109 —
overthrown, as tragedy 109 — unstable,
as a moral problem in Lear 141-3.
Error as a dramatic term 169, 339, 340.
Ethics, relation of Shakespeare to : 5 —
institutional 144.
Experiment in morals {Measure for
Measure} : 148-56.
Experimental side of philosophy, as fic
tion : 4, 141.
Fall and Restoration, Comedies of:
350-1-
Fall and Rise : as a form of movement
355 — in the life without and the life
within: 91-2 — illustrations: Henry
the Eighth 91-107 ; Antony and Cleo
patra 132-5.
Fallacy of Quotations i, 7, 8.
Falstaff 174-5, I9S- X99> 200> 203-6.
Fancy as a dramatic tone 176.
Farce as a dramatic tone 346.
Fatalism distinguished from historic
alternation 296.
Fate in relation to character 7.
Feud of Jew and Christian 313-5, 347
— of Montagues and Capulets 360
[compare Chapter III passim"].
Fiction as the experimental side of phi
losophy 3-6.
Fool 142, 189-94, 20S> 3S4~S- [See Clown.]
Forces of life in Shakespeare's moral
system 8, 9, 207 and Book III — of
restoration in Winter's Tale and Cym-
beline 84.
Foreshadowing, dramatic : 62-4.
Fun as a dramatic tone 176.
Gay Science 180, 341.
Generating Action 333, 345, 354.
Germ Action 334, 371-2.
Ghost scenes as dramatic relief 193.
378
GENERAL INDEX
Ghosts, Shakespeare's treatment of:
298-310.
Graded folly 171, 340 — tone 196-8 —
wrong 77 [compare 351], 319-21 [com
pare 364].
Heredity in application to Shakespeare's
moral system 242-64.
Heroic tragedy 362.
Heroism as a root idea in Shakespeare's
moral system n and Chapter I.
Historic movement as one of the forces
in Shakespeare's moral system 270,
294-6 — historic succession of plays
269-96, 365-73.
History as a class of drama 185, 268 and
Chapter XIII — pendulum of 269 and
Chapter XII I.
Histrionic passion as relief in drama
193. 364-
Horror, tragedy of: 361.
Humour, moral significance of: 195 and
Chapter X — the word ' humour ' 195-6
— as a technical term of drama 196-8
its various applications in life and in
drama 199-206 — an element in char
acter 199 — as comic conscience 199
— as suspension of moral law 199-201
— in relation to ways of human nature
201 — application to vice 201-3 — es-
sential to a censor of morals 202 —
humour and wit 204-6 [compare 196]
— relation to the Jester 205.
Hysteria in relation to the Jester and to
madness 190-4 — as relief in tragedy
I93> 364 — as tone-clash 197-8 — puns
as verbal hysterics 198.
Individual and community, antithesis
of : in and Chapter VI — ancient and
modern conceptions distinguished
111-3 — a view point for the Roman
plays 113 — in Coriolanus appears as
compromise and principle 113-25 — in
Julius Ccesar evenly balanced 125-8 —
in Antony and Cleopatra appears as
private and public life of Antony
128-40.
Individual and law, antithesis of, in
Measure for Measure : 143-57.
Inner and Outer: in and Chapter VI.
[See Life Without.]
Innocence and pathos as a root idea in
Shakespeare's moral system n, 46-51
— illustration : Romeo and Juliet
51-64.
Institutional Ethics 144.
Interlude 185-6.
Interweaving of plots 168, 335 [com
pare 334-8].
Intrigue as a dramatic expression of
personal will ; 209 and Chapter XI —
relation between intrigue and irony
210-2 — illustrations : Tarn ing of 'Shrew
212-21; 7wo Gentlemen 221-8 ; various
210, 211, 228-41, 340-1, 343-6, 363,
[compare 85].
Comedies of Intrigue 343-6 — Trag
edies of Intrigue 363.
Irony associated with Intrigue as a
dramatic expression of personal will
211-2 [see above Intrigue] — other
illustrations: 42, 74, 82-3, 346 — irony
of fate and of circumstances distin
guished 241 [compare 62-4].
Jealousy, types of, distinguished : 66.
Jester 189-94. [See Clown.]
Job, Book of, its bearing on connection
of Character and Fate : 48-9.
Justice and Policy, in Julius Ceesar :
127-8.
Laboratory, moral, the theatre as : 141.
Law and individual, antithesis of, in
Measure for Measure : 143-57.
Liberty, ancient and modern conceptions
of: 112 [compare 128].
Life, types of, in Measure for Measure :
143-57-
Life Without and Life Within, The : n,
89 and Chapter V — one of the root
ideas in Shakespeare's moral system
90-2, 106-7 — as Doing and Being 91
— as law and individual 143 — in rela
tion to differences between ancient
and modern thought 111-3 — illustra
tions : Henry the Eighth 90-107, 294 ;
Coriolanus 113-25,358; Julius Ccesar
125-8, 357 ; Antony and Cleopatra 128-
40, 359 ; various 143, 321-2, 355-9, 364.
GENERAL INDEX
379
Link actions, personages, etc. : 333, 353-
5. 362.
Love, Tragedies of: 362.
Ludicrous as a dramatic tone 176.
Lynch mercy (in Escalus) 148.
Madness in relation to the Fool 190 — to
Hamlet 191-4 — trio of madness in
Lear 191.
Mask 87-8, 89 and Chapter V, 352, 369,
373-
Mediaeval drama, its influence on Ro
mantic drama 185-6.
Mercy as the solution in Measure for
Measure 156-7.
Minstrels 165.
Miracle Play 185-6.
Mirror for Magistrates, The : 166, 187.
Modern v. ancient thought as to com
munity and individual 111-3.
Momentum of character, as one of the
forces of life in Shakespeare's moral
system : 242-64 — illustrations : Mer
chant of Venice 245-6 — Macbeth 246-
64.
Moral Problems dramatised 109, 141 and
Chapter VI I — Lear 141-3 — Measure
for Measure 143-57 — Merchant of
Venice 347.
Moral System of Shakespeare, what is
implied in : 1-9.
Morality play 185-6.
Mystery play 185-6.
Nature as a force of restoration 85-6.
Nemesis : not an invariable principle of
providence 46 — in character (hu
mour) 199 — nemesis action 331 —
illustrations : Richard the Third 42-5,
369; Coriolanus 124-5, 3S8; Antony
and Cleopatra 136-43, 359 ; Lear 141-
2, 354; various 343, 347, 353, 355-7,
363-4-
Night Scene in Richard the Third 43-4.
Omen : philosophy of, 317-8 — in Shake
speare 298, 303-5 [compare 62-4].
Oracle and Oracular action: 65, 69-71,
76, 87-8, 332, 350-1, 356, 362, 372.
Outer and Inner: in and Chapter VI.
[See Life Without.]
Overruling providence: 318-26 — illus
trations: Cymbeline 87-8; Hamlet 318-
22 ; Tempest 322-6.
Pageant 89.
Paradox : as a dramatic interest akin to
irony 212 — illustrations: Taming of
Shrew 212-6, 222, 344; Much Ado
235-6. 346.
Parallelism as an element of plot beauty
334-8 passim.
Parasite 163, 164.
Passion and purity, antithesis of, in
Measure for Measure : 143-57.
Pastoral as a dramatic tone 7 1-3 , 349, 350.
Pathology, moral, dramatised in humour
202.
Pathos ii, 46-51, 51-64, 124-5, I36~40,
319-22, 357, 364.
Patrician party in Coriolanus 114-23.
Patriotism, ancient and modern con
ceptions of: 121, 123-4.
Pendulum: of history 269 and Chapter
XIII — of retribution 41.
Personality as one of the forces of life
in Shakespeare's moral system 209
and Chapter XI — expressed in In
trigue and Irony 209-12.
Plautus 163, 169.
Plebeian party in Coriolanus 114-23.
Plot in Shakespeare : 329 and Appendix
— general conception of plot 329, 337-8
[compare 3, 41, 50-1, 61, 65, 70, 73, 76,
83, 106, 122, 153, 156, 237, 264, 302] —
difference of Greek and Shakespearean
or Classical and Romantic 329 [com
pare 168] — unit of plot or action 330-4
— compounding of actions into plots
334-7 — representation of plot in geo
metrical design 331-2 — plot schemes
for Shakespearean plays 339-73.
Plutarch, 185.
Poetry : relation of, to prose 3-6 — to
verse 3-6 — to philosophy 3-6.
Policy and Justice, in Julius Ccesar :
127-8.
Principle v. compromise in Coriolanus
114-25.
GENERAL INDEX
Problems, Moral, dramatised: 109,141
and Chapter VII — l^ear 141-3 — Meas
ure for Measure 143-57 — Merchant of
Venice 347.
Prose, relation of, to poetry and verse :
3-6-
Providence in relation to plot : 3, 7, 41,
43-5, 47-51 [compare Chapter III
passini], 65, 106, 241, 295, 297 — over
ruling providence as one of the forces
in Shakespeare's moral system 318-26
— illustrations: Cymbeline 87-8,351;
Hamlet 318-22; Tempest 322-6.
Psychology, relation of Shakespeare
to: 5.
Puns as verbal hysterics 198.
Purity and passion, antithesis of, in
Measure for Measure ; 143-57.
Quotations, Fallacy of: i, 7, 8.
Redemption as a poetic ideal 65, 76.
Relief in tragedy 188-94 — in relation to
plot 336-7 — illustrations: Lear 190-
i ; Hamlet 191-4 ; various 188-90 [com
pare 354-64] — relief in comedy 336-7
[compare 339-53].
Renaissance 166-7.
Resolution (of complication) : 162-3.
Restoration : wrong and, as one of the
root ideas of Shakspeare's moral sys
tem : 11,65-88 — spirit of, in Winter's
Tale 71-6 — forces of, in Winter's Tale
and Cymbeline 84-8 — universal 352.
Retribution: a fundamental idea in
morals 40 — its relation to plot 40-5 —
not an invariable principle of provi
dence 46 and Chapter III passim —
wrong and retribution as one of the
root ideas in Shakespeare's moral sys
tem n, 33 and Chapter II.
Rise and Fall, as a form of movement :
355i SS^, 369 — in the life without and
the life within : 91-2 — illustrations :
Henry the Eighth 91-107 ; Antony and
Cleopatra 132-5.
Romance, influence of: 165-7.
Romantic drama 166-7, 185-6.
Root ideas of Shakespeare's moral sys
tem : ii and Book I — heroism and
moral balance 13 and Chapter I —
wrong and retribution 33 and Chapter
II — innocence and pathos 46 and
Chapter III — wrong and restoration
65 and Chapter IV — the life without
and the life within 89 and Chapter V
— all harmonised in the last 106-7.
Roses, wars of: 41, 279, 292-4, 368-9.
Rustic atmosphere in Winters Tale:
Sackville 189.
Satire as a dramatic tone 160, 176.
Saucy slave (or servant) 163, 339, 341,
344-
Scale : of tones 176-7 — of wrong 77,
319, 351, 364.
Serious tone 176.
Sharper 163.
Siddons, Mrs., on responsibility of Mac
beth 247 note.
Simplicity, rustic, in Winter's Tale :
71-3-
Situation: comedies of 339-42 [compare
164] — tragedies of 363.
Sixfold structure 65, 70-1, 76, 84.
Spectacle, the drama a : 8, 145, 176, 197,
309-10, 316.
Spectacular relief 188-9, 37°~3-
Stage-directions in relation to questions
of the Supernatural : 299-302, 260.
State, ancient and modern conceptions
of: ni-2.
Stationary action 332, 364.
Story : interest of 162-76 — harmony of
stories 168-9.
Subaction 333, 336, 343, 345-6, 354,
356-7- 370.
Supernatural, The, as one of the forces
of life in Shakespeare's moral system :
297 and Chapter XIV — dramatisa
tion of, in Midsummer-Night and
Tempest 297-8 — reality of, in other
Shakespearean dramas 298-302 — func
tion of, in Shakespearean plot 302-10.
Sway of Circumstances 268 [compare
264-8],
Symmetry as an element of dramatic
interest 84, 329, 334-6, 337-8.
System, moral, what is implied in : 1-9.
GENERAL INDEX
381
Tetralogies u, 33.
Theatre as moral laboratory 141 and
Chapter VII.
Tone, dramatic : 9, 197-8 — analysis of
196-8 [compare 176-7] — mixture of
tones 197 [compare 162, 176] — tone-
clash 197-8 — tone-tremulousness or
humour 178 — harmony of tones as
an element in Shakespearean comedy
178-84 — relief tones in tragedy 188-94.
Tragedy : as equilibrium overthrown
109, 184, 185 and Chapter IX — Greek
conception of tragedy 186 [compare
160] — modification under romance
influence 187 [compare 166] — speciali
sation to the idea of fallen greatness
187 — use of relief 188-94 — the con
verse of comedy 194.
Problem Tragedy 354 — Tragedies
of Character 355-9, 364 — of Nemesis
356-9, 364 — of Pathos 358-60 — of
Horror 361 — Heroic 362 — Love 362
— of Situation 363 — of Intrigue 363
— of Accident 364.
Tragic tone 176.
Turning-points 265, 270-9.
Underplot : 336 [compare 163] — illus
trations : Richard the Third 41 ;
Twelfth Night 171 ; Lear 336; various
340-1, 343-4, 346-7, 350, 352-3,355,
358-9, 362, 364, 370-1, 372.
Unstable equilibrium as a moral problem
in Lear 141-3.
Vice as an institution in Measure for
Measure 143-5 — as a spectacle 201-4.
Villany, ideal : 39-45.
Weird humour as relief 193.
Will, personal, as one of the forces of
life in Shakespeare's moral system :
209 and Chapter XI — its dramatic ex
pression in Intrigue and Irony 209 and
Chapter XI — restraints on 209 — he
redity 242-3 — character 243-4 — envi
ronment 242, 264-8 [compare 297 and
Chapter XIV], 311, 326 and Chapter
XV.
Wit as a dramatic tone 176.
Witches in Alacbeth : 298-310 passim.
Wrong and Restoration, as one of the
root ideas in Shakespeare's moral sys
tem : ii, 65-88 — illustrations : Winter's
Tale 65-76 ; Cymbeline 76-88.
Wrong and Retribution, as one of the
root ideas in Shakespeare's moral sys
tem : ii, 33 and Chapter II.
Wrong, graded : 77 [compare 351], 319-
21 [compare 364].
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