Historical And Critical Notices of the Principal Dramas Of Shakspeare.

Romeo And Juliet. (1595.)

Two powerful families of Verona, the Montecchi and the Capelletti (the Montagues and Capulets), had long lived on terms of such hostility to each other, that it had frequently led to sanguinary conflicts in the open streets. Alberto della Scala, the second perpetual captain of Verona, had ineffectually endeavored to reconcile them; but he succeeded so far in bridling their enmity, that "when they met," says Grirolamo della Corte, the historian of Verona, "the younger men made way for their elders, and they mutually exchanged salutations."

In the year 1303, under the reign of Bartolommeo della Scala, who had been chosen perpetual captain on the death of his father Alberto, Antonio Capelletto, the leader of his faction, gave a great entertainment during the carnival, to which he invited most of the nobility of Verona. Romeo Montecchio, who was about twenty-one years of age, and one of the handsomest and most amiable young men in the city, went thither in a mask, accompanied by some of his friends. After some time, taking off his mask, he sat down in a corner, from which he could see and be seen. Much astonishment was felt at the boldness with which he had thus ventured in the midst of his enemies. However, as he was young and of agreeable manners, the Capulets, says the historian, "did not pay so much attention to his presence as they might have done if he had been older." His eyes and those of Giulietta Capelletto soon met, and being equally struck with admiration, they did not cease to look at each other. The festivities terminated with a dance, which "among us," says Girolamo, "is called the hat-dance (dal cappello)," in which Romeo engaged; but, after having danced a few figures with his partner, he left her to join Juliet, who was dancing with another. "Immediately that she felt him touch her hand, she said, 'Blessed be your coming!' And he, pressing her hand, replied, 'What blessing do you receive from it, lady?' And she answered, with a smile, 'Be not surprised, sir, that I bless your coming; Signor Mercurio had been chilling me for a long while, but by your politeness you have restored me to warmth.' (The hands of this young man, who was called Mercurio the Squinter, and who was beloved by every one for the charms of his mind, were always colder than ice.) To these words, Romeo replied, 'I am greatly delighted to do you service in any thing.' When the dance was over, Juliet could say no more than this: 'Alas! I am more yours than my own.'"

Romeo having repaired on several occasions to a small street upon which Juliet's windows looked out, one evening she recognized him "by his sneezing or some other sign," and opened the window; they saluted each other very courteously (cortesissimamente), and, after having conversed for a long while of their loves, they agreed that they must be married, whatever might happen; and that the ceremony should be performed by Friar Leonardo, a Franciscan monk, who was "a theologian, a great philosopher, an admirable distiller, a proficient in the art of magic," and the confessor of nearly all the town. Romeo went to see this worthy; and the monk, thinking of the credit he would gain, not only with the perpetual captain, but also with the whole city, if he succeeded in reconciling the two families, acceded to the request of the young couple. On Quadragesima Sunday, when confession was obligatory, Juliet went with her mother to the church of St. Francis in the citadel; and having entered first into the confessional, on the other side of which Romeo was stationed, they received the nuptial benediction through the window of the confessional, which the monk had had the kindness to leave open. Afterward, by the connivance of a very adroit old nurse of Juliet's, they spent the night together in her garden.

However, after the festival of Easter, a numerous troop of Capulets met, at a little distance from the gates of Verona, a band of Montagues, and attacked them, at the instigation of Tebaldo, a cousin-german of Juliet, who, seeing Romeo use every effort to put an end to the combat, went up to him, and, forcing him to defend himself, received a sword-thrust in his throat, from which he fell dead on the spot. Romeo was banished; and a short time afterward, Juliet, on the point of finding herself compelled to marry another, had recourse to Friar Leonardo, who gave her a powder to swallow, by means of which she would appear to be dead, and would be interred in the family vault, which happened to be in the church attached to Leonardo's convent. The monk was to deliver her immediately from her grave, and to send her in disguise to Mantua, where Romeo was residing; and he promised to inform her lover of their design.

Matters were arranged as Leonardo had suggested; but Romeo, having been informed of Juliet's death by an indirect source, before he received the monk's letter, set out at once for Verona with a single domestic, and, having provided himself with a violent poison, hastened to the tomb, opened it, bathed Juliet's body with his tears, swallowed the poison, and died. Juliet awaking from her trance the instant afterward, seeing Romeo dead, and learning from the monk, who had come up in the meanwhile, all that had happened, was seized with such violent paroxysms of grief, that, "without being able to utter a word, she fell dead upon the bosom of her Romeo." [Footnote 19]

This story is told as true by Girolamo della Corte, and he assures his readers that he had often seen the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, which, rising a little above the level of the ground, and being situated near a well, then served as a laundry to the orphan asylum of St. Francis, which was being built in that locality. He relates, at the same time, that the Cavalier Gerardo Boldiero, his uncle, who had first taken him to this tomb, had pointed out to him, at a corner of the wall, near the Capuchin Convent, the place from which he had heard it said that the bones of Romeo and Juliet, and of several other persons, had been transferred a great number of years before. Captain Bréval, in his Travels, also mentions that he saw at Verona, in 1762, an old building which was then an orphan asylum, and which his guide informed him had once contained the tomb of Romeo and Juliet, but that it no longer existed.

It was probably not in accordance with the narrative of Girolamo della Corte that Shakspeare composed his tragedy. It was first performed, as it would appear, in 1595, under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth, and was printed for the first time in 1597. Now the work of Girolamo della Corte, which was intended to contain twenty-two books, was interrupted in the middle of the twentieth book, and in the year 1560, by the illness of the author. We learn, moreover, from the editor's preface, that this illness was prolonged, and terminated in the death of the historian; that the necessity for revising a work, to which Girolamo himself had been unable to give the finishing stroke, occupied a considerable period; and, finally, that the lawsuits, "both civil and criminal," with which the editor was tormented, prevented him from bringing his undertaking to a conclusion as promptly as he could have desired; so that the work of Girolamo could not have been published until a long while after his death. The edition of 1594 is, therefore, to all appearance, the first edition, and could scarcely have fallen into Shakspeare's hands so early as 1595.

But the history of Romeo and Juliet, which was doubtless very popular at Verona, had already formed the subject of a novel by Luigi da Porto, published at Venice in 1535, six years after the death of the author, under the title of "La Giulietta." This novel was reprinted, translated and imitated in several languages, and furnished Arthur Brooke with the subject of an English poem, which was published in 1562, and from which Shakspeare certainly derived the subject of his tragedy. [Footnote 20]

The imitation is complete. Juliet, in Brooke's poem, as well as in the novel of Luigi da Porto, kills herself with Romeo's dagger, instead of dying of grief, as in the history of Girolamo della Corte; but it is a singular circumstance, that both Arthur Brooke's poem and Shakspeare's tragedy make Romeo die, as in the history, before Juliet awakes, whereas, in the novel of Luigi da Porto, he does not die until after he has witnessed her restoration to life, and had a scene of sorrowful farewell with her. Shakspeare has been blamed for not having adopted this version, which would have furnished him with a very pathetic position; and it has been inferred that he was not acquainted with the Italian novel, although it had been translated into English. Several circumstances, however, give us reason to believe that Shakspeare was acquainted with this translation. As for his motives for preferring the poet's narrative to that of the novelist, he may have had many; in the first place, to account for his departing in so important a point from the novel of Luigi da Porto, which he has followed most scrupulously in almost every other particular, perhaps Arthur Brooke, the author of the poem, may have had some knowledge of the true history, as related by Girolamo della Corte. Being a contemporary of Shakspeare, he may have communicated this to him, and Shakspeare's careful conformity, as far as he was able, to history, or to the narratives received as such, would not have allowed him to hesitate as to his choice. Moreover—and this was probably the true reason of the poet—Shakspeare very seldom precedes a strong resolution by long speeches. As Macbeth says:

"Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives."

Whatever anguish reflection may add to grief, it fixes the mind on too large a number of objects not to distract it from the single and absorbing idea which leads to desperate actions. After having received Romeo's farewell, and lamented his death in concert with him, it might have happened that Juliet would have bewailed him all her life instead of killing herself on the spot. Garrick rewrote the scene in the monument, in accordance with the supposition adopted in the novel of Luigi da Porto; the scene is touching, but, as was perhaps inevitable in such a situation, which it would be impossible to delineate in words, the feelings are too much and too little agitated, and the despair is either excessive or not sufficiently violent. In the laconism of Shakspeare's "Romeo and Juliet," in these last moments, there is much more passion and truth.

This laconism is all the more remarkable, because during the whole course of the play, Shakspeare has abandoned himself without constraint to that abundance of reflection and discourse which is one of the characteristics of his genius. Nowhere is the contrast more striking between the depth of the feelings which the poet describes, and the form in which he expresses them. Shakspeare excels in seeing our human feelings as they really exist in nature, without premeditation, without any labor of man upon himself, ingenuous and impetuous, mingled of good and evil, of vulgar instincts and sublime inspirations, just as the human soul is, in its primitive and spontaneous state. What can be more truthful than the love of Romeo and Juliet, so young, so ardent, so unreflecting, full at once of physical passion and of moral tenderness, without restraint, and yet without coarseness, because delicacy of heart ever combines with the transports of the senses! There is nothing subtle or factitious in it, and nothing cleverly arranged by the poet; it is neither the pure love of piously exalted imaginations, nor the licentious love of palled and perverted lives; it is love itself—love complete, involuntary and sovereign, as it bursts forth in early youth, in the heart of man, at once simple and diverse, as God made it. "Romeo and Juliet" is truly the tragedy of love, as "Othello" is that of jealousy, and "Macbeth" that of ambition. Each of the great dramas of Shakspeare is dedicated to one of the great feelings of humanity; and the feeling which pervades the drama is, in very reality, that which occupies and possesses the human soul when under its influence. Shakspeare omits, adds, and alters nothing; he brings it on the stage simply and boldly, in its energetic and complete truth.

Pass now from the substance to the form, and from the feeling itself to the language in which it is clothed by the poet; and observe the contrast! In proportion as the feeling is true and profoundly known and understood, its expression is often factitious, laden with developments and ornaments in which the mind of the poet takes delight, but which do not flow naturally from the lips of a dramatic personage. Of all Shakspeare's great dramas, "Romeo and Juliet" is, perhaps, the one in which this fault is most abundant. We might almost say that Shakspeare had attempted to imitate that copiousness of words, and that verbose facility which, in literature as well as life, generally characterize the peoples of the South. He had certainly read, at least in translation, some of the Italian poets; and the innumerable subtleties interwoven, as it were, into the language of all the personages in "Romeo and Juliet," and the introduction of continual comparisons with the sun, the flowers, and the stars, though often brilliant and graceful, are evidently an imitation of the style of the sonnets, and a debt paid to local coloring. It is, perhaps, because the Italian sonnets almost always adopt a plaintive tone, that choice and exaggeration of language are particularly perceptible in the complaints of the two lovers. The expression of their brief happiness is, especially in the mouth of Juliet, of ravishing simplicity; and when they reach the final term of their destiny, when the poet enters upon the last scene of this mournful tragedy, he renounces all his attempts at imitation, and all his wittily wise reflections. His characters, who, says Johnson, "have a conceit left them in their misery," lose this peculiarity when misery has struck its heavy blows; the imagination ceases to play; passion itself no longer appears, unless united to solid, serious, and almost stern feelings; and that mistress, who was so eager for the joys of love, Juliet, when threatened in her conjugal fidelity, thinks of nothing but the fulfillment of her duties, and how she may remain without blemish the wife of her dear Romeo. What an admirable trait of moral sense and good sense is this in a genius devoted to the delineation of passion!

However, Shakspeare was mistaken when he thought that, by prodigality of reflections, imagery, and words, he was imitating Italy and her poets. At least he was not imitating the masters of Italian poetry, his equals, and the only ones who deserved his notice. Between them and him, the difference is immense and singular. It is in comprehension of the natural feelings that Shakspeare excels, and he depicts them with as much simplicity and truth of substance as he clothes them with affectation and sometimes whimsicality of language. It is, on the contrary, into these feelings themselves that the great Italian poets of the fourteenth century, and especially Petrarch, frequently introduce as much refinement and subtlety as elevation and grace; they alter and transform, according to their religious and moral beliefs, or even to their literary tastes, those instincts and passions of the human heart to which Shakspeare leaves their native physiognomy and liberty. What can be less similar than the love of Petrarch for Laura, and that of Juliet for Romeo? In compensation, the expression, in Petrarch, is almost always as natural as the feeling is refined; and whereas Shakspeare presents perfectly simple and true emotions beneath a strange and affected form, Petrarch lends to mystical, or at least singular and very restrained emotions, all the charm of a simple and pure form.

I will quote only one example of this difference between the two poets, but it is a very striking example, for it is one in which both have tried their powers upon the same position, the same feeling, and almost the same image.

Laura is dead. Petrarch is desirous of depicting, on her entrance upon the sleep of death, her whom he had painted so frequently, and with such charming passion, in the brilliancy of life and youth:

"Non come fiamma che per forza è spenta, Ma che per sè medesraa si consume, Se n'andò in pace l'animo contenta. A guisa d'un soave e chiaro lume, Cui nutrimento a poco a poco manca, Tenendo al fin il suo usato costume; Pallida no, ma più che neve bianca Che senza vento in un bel colle fiocchi, Parea posar come persona stanca. Quasi un dolce dormir ne' suoi begli occhi, Sendo lo sperto già de lei diviso, Era quel che morir chiaman gli sciocchi, Morte bella parea nel suo bel viso." [Footnote 21]

The following translation is from the pen of Captain Macgregor:

"Not as a flame which suddenly is spent, But one that gently finds its natural close, To heaven, in peace, her willing spirit rose; As, nutriment denied, a lovely light, By fine gradations failing, less, less bright, E'en to the last gives forth a lambent glow: Not pale, but fairer than the virgin snow, Falling, when winds are laid, on earth's green breast, She seem'd a saint from life's vain toils at rest. As if a sweet sleep o'er those bright eyes came, Her spirit mounted to the throne of grace! If this we, in our folly, Death do name, Then Death seem'd lovely on that lovely face." [Footnote 22]

Juliet also is dead. Romeo contemplates her as she lies in her tomb, and he also expatiates upon her beauty:

* * * "O, my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty; Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

I need not insist upon the comparison; who does not feel how much more simple and beautiful the form of expression is in Petrarch? It is the brilliant and flowing poetry of the South, beside the strong, rough, and vigorous imagination of the North.

The love of Romeo for Rosaline is an invention of Luigi da Porto, retained in the poem of Arthur Brooke. This invention imparts so little interest to the first acts of the drama, that Shakspeare probably adopted it merely with a view to giving greater effect to that character of suddenness which distinguishes the passions of a Southern clime. The part of Mercutio was suggested to him by these lines of the English poem:

"A courtier that eche where was highly had in price, For he was courteous of his speeche, and pleasant of devise. Even as a lyon would emong the lambs be bolde, Such was emong the bashful maydes Mercutio to beholde."

Such was, doubtless, the bel air in Shakspeare's time, and it is as the type of the amiable and amusing companion that he has described Mercutio. However, though he was not bold enough to attack, like Molière, the ridiculous absurdities of the court, he very frequently makes it evident that its tone was a burden to him; and the part of Mercutio seems to have been a great tax upon his taste and uprightness of mind. Dryden relates as a tradition of his time, that Shakspeare used to say, "that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him." Mercutio has, nevertheless, had many zealous partisans in England; among others, Johnson, who, on this occasion, soundly rates Dryden for his irreverent words regarding the witty Mercutio, "some of whose sallies," he says, "are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden." Shakspeare's aversion for the kind of wit of which he has been so lavish in "Romeo and Juliet," is sufficiently proved by Friar Laurence's injunction to Romeo when he begins to explain his position in the sonnet style:

"Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift; Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift."

Friar Laurence is the wise man of the play, and his speeches are, in general, as simple as it was allowable for those of a philosopher to be in his time.

The part of Juliet's nurse also contains but few of these subtleties, which Shakspeare seems to have reserved, in this work, to persons of the higher classes, and sometimes to the valets who ape their manners. The character of the nurse is indicated in Arthur Brooke's poem; in which, however, it is far from possessing the same homely truthfulness as in Shakspeare's drama.

Wherever they are not disfigured by conceits, the lines in "Romeo and Juliet" are perhaps the most graceful and brilliant that ever flowed from Shakspeare's pen. They are, for the most part, written in rhyme, another homage paid to Italian habits.

Hamlet. (1596.)

"Hamlet" is not the finest of Shakspeare's dramas; "Macbeth," and, I think, "Othello" also, are, on the whole, superior to it: but it perhaps contains the most remarkable examples of its author's most sublime beauties, as well as of his most glaring defects. Never has he unvailed with more originality, depth, and dramatic effect the inmost state of a mighty soul; never, also, has he yielded with greater unrestraint to the terrible or burlesque fancies of his imagination, and to the abundant intemperance that is characteristic of a mind which hastens to diffuse its ideas without any selection, and which delights to render them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected expression, without caring to give them a pure and natural form.

According to his custom, Shakspeare took no trouble in "Hamlet," either to invent or to arrange his subject. He took the facts as he found them recorded in the fabulous stories of the ancient history of Denmark, by Saxo Grammaticus, which wore transformed into tragical histories by Belleforest, about the middle of the sixteenth century, and were immediately translated and became popular in England, not only among the reading public, but also on the stage, for it appears certain that six or seven years before Shakspeare, in 1589, an English poet named Thomas Kyd had already written a tragedy on the subject of Hamlet. This is the text of the historical romance out of which, as a sculptor chisels a statue from a block of marble, Shakspeare modeled his drama.

"Fengon, having secretly assembled certain men, and perceiving himself strong enough to execute his enterprise, Horvendile, his brother, being at a banquet with his friends, suddenly set upon him, where he slew him as traitorously as cunningly he purged himself of so detestable a murder to his subjects; for that before he had any violent or bloody hands, or once committed parricide upon his brother, he had incestuously abused his wife, whose honor he ought to have sought and procured, as traitorously he pursued and effected his destruction. * * *

"Boldened and encouraged by his impunity, Fengon ventured to couple himself in marriage with her whom he used as his concubine during good Horvendile's life, * * * and the unfortunate and wicked woman, that had received the honor to be the wife of one of the valiantest and wisest princes of the North, imbased herself in such vile sort as to falsify her faith unto him, and, which is worse, to marry him that had been the tyrannous murderer of her lawful husband. * * *

"Geruth having so much forgotten herself, the prince Hamblet perceiving himself to be in danger of his life, as being abandoned of his own mother, to beguile the tyrant in his subtleties, counterfeited the madman with such craft and subtle practices that he made show as if he had utterly lost his wits; and under that vail he covered his pretense, and defended his life from the treasons and practices of the tyrant his uncle. For every day being in the queen's palace (who as then was more careful to please her whoremaster, than ready to revenge the cruel death of her husband, or to restore her son to his inheritance), he rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the dirt and mire, running through the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one word, but such as seemed to proceed of madness and mere frenzy; all his actions and gestures being no other than the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of all reason and understanding, in such sort, that as then he seemed fit for nothing but to make sport to the pages and ruffling courtiers that attended in the court of his uncle and father-in-law. But many times he did divers actions of great and deep consideration, and often made such and so fit answers, that a wise man would soon have judged from what spirit so fine an invention might proceed. * * *

"Hamblet likewise had intelligence in what danger he was like to fall, if by any means he seemed to obey, or once like the wanton toys and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent to him by his uncle; which much abashed the prince, as then wholly being in affection to the lady; but by her he was likewise informed of the treason, as being one that from her infancy loved and favored him, and would have been exceeding sorrowful for his misfortune. * * *

"Among the friends of Fengon, there was one that, above all the rest, doubted of Hamblet's practices in counterfeiting the madman. His device to entrap Hamblet in his subtleties was thus—that King Fengon should make as though he were to go some long voyage concerning affairs of great importance, and that in the mean time Hamblet should be shut up alone in a chamber with his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden behind the hangings, there to stand and hear their speeches, and the complots by them to be taken concerning the accomplishment of the dissembling fool's pretense; * * * and withal offered himself to be the man that should stand to hearken and bear witness of Hamblet's speeches with his mother. This invention pleased the king exceeding well. * * *

"Meantime, the counselor entered secretly into the queen's chamber, and there hid himself behind the arras, not long before the queen and Hamblet came thither, who, being crafty and politic, as soon as he was within the chamber, doubting some treason, used his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to come like a cock, beating with his arms (in such manner as cocks use to strike with their wings) upon the hangings of the chamber; whereby, feeling something stirring under them, he cried, "A rat! a rat!" and presently drawing his sword, thrust it into the hangings, which done, he pulled the counselor, half dead, out by the heels, and made an end of killing him. * * * By which means having discovered the ambush, and given the inventor thereof his just reward, he came again to his mother, who in the mean time wept and tormented herself; and having once again searched every corner of the chamber, perceiving himself to be alone with her, he began in sober and discreet manner to speak unto her, saying,

"'What treason is this, most infamous woman of all that ever prostrated themselves to the will of an abominable whoremonger, who, under the vail of a dissembling creature, covereth the most wicked and detestable crime that man could ever imagine or was committed? Now may I be assured to trust you, that like a vile wanton adulteress, altogether impudent and given over to her pleasure, runs spreading forth her arms to embrace the traitorous villainous tyrant that murdered my father, and most incestuously receivest the villain into the lawful bed of your loyal spouse? * * * O, Queen Geruth! it is licentiousness only that has made you deface out of your mind the memory of the valor and virtues of the good king, your husband and my father. * * * Be not offended, I pray you, madam, if, transported with dolor and grief, I speak so boldly unto you, and that I respect you less than duty requireth; for you, having forgotten me, and wholly rejected the memory of the deceased king my father, must not be ashamed if I also surpass the bounds and limits of due consideration. * * *'

"Although the Queen perceived herself nearly touched, and that Hamblet moved her to the quick, where she felt herself interested, nevertheless she forgot all disdain and wrath, which thereby she might as then have had, hearing herself so sharply chidden and reproved, to behold the gallant spirit of her son, and to think what she might hope, and the easier expect of his so great policy and wisdom. But on the one side, she durst not lift up her eyes to behold him, remembering her offense, and on the other side, she would gladly have embraced her son, in regard of the wise admonitions by him given unto her, which as then quenched the flames of unbridled desire that before had moved her. * * *

"After this, Fengon came to the court again, and determined that Hamblet should be sent into England. Now to bear him company were assigned two of Fengon's faithful ministers, bearing letters engraved in wood, that contained Hamblet's death, in such sort as he had advertised the King of England. But the subtle Danish prince, while his companions slept, having read the letters, and known his uncle's great treason, with the wicked and villainous minds of the two courtiers that led him to the slaughter erased out the letters that concerned his death, and instead thereof graved others, with commission to the King of England to hang his two companions. * * *

"Hamblet, while his father lived, had been instructed in that devilish art, whereby the wicked spirit abuseth mankind, and advertiseth him of things past. It toucheth not the matter herein to discover whether this prince, by reason of his over great melancholy, had received those impressions, divining that which never any but himself had before declared. * * *" [Footnote 23]

It was evidently Hamlet who, in this narrative, struck and allured the imagination of Shakspeare. This young prince, mad from calculation, and perhaps slightly mad by nature; cunning and melancholy; burning to avenge the death of his father, and skillful in defending his own life; adored by the young girl sent to work his ruin; an object of dread, and yet of tenderness, to his guilty mother; and, until the moment of throwing off the mask, hidden and incomprehensible to both: this personage, full of passion, danger, and mystery, well versed in the occult sciences, and whom, perhaps, "by reason of his over great melancholy, the wicked spirit enabled to divine that which never any but himself had before declared;" what an admirable character was this for Shakspeare, that curious and deep-searching observer of the secret agitations of the human soul and destiny! Had he done nothing more than depict, with the bold outline and brilliant coloring of his pencil, this character and situation as delineated in the chronicle, he would assuredly have produced a masterpiece.

But Shakspeare did much more than this: under his treatment, Hamlet's madness becomes something altogether different from the obstinate premeditation or melancholy enthusiasm of a young prince of the Middle Ages, placed in a dangerous position, and engaged in a dark design; it is a grave moral condition, a great malady of soul which, at certain epochs and in certain states of society and of manners, diffuses itself among mankind, frequently attacks the most highly gifted and the noblest of our species, and afflicts them with a disturbance of mind which sometimes borders very closely upon madness. The world is full of evil, and of all kinds of evil. What sufferings, crimes, and fatal, although innocent errors! What general and private iniquities, both strikingly apparent and utterly unknown! What merits, either stifled or neglected, become lost to the public, and a burden to their possessors! What falsehood, and coldness, and levity, and ingratitude, and forgetfulness, abound in the relations and feelings of men! Life is so short, and yet so agitated—sometimes so burdensome, and sometimes so empty! The future is so obscure! so much darkness at the end of so many trials! In reference to those who only see this phase of the world and of human destiny, it is easy to understand why their mind becomes disturbed, why their heart fails them, and why a misanthropic melancholy becomes an habitual feeling which plunges them by turns into irritation or doubt—into ironical contempt or utter prostration.

This was assuredly not the disease of the times in which the chronicle represents Hamlet to have lived, nor indeed of the age in which Shakspeare himself flourished. The Middle Ages and the sixteenth century were epochs too active and too rude to give ready admittance to these bitter contemplations and unhealthy developments of human sensibility. They belong much rather to times of luxurious life, and of moral excitement at once keen and leisurely, when souls are roused from their repose, and deprived of every strong and obligatory occupation. It is then that arise these meditative discontents, these partial and irritated impressions, this entire forgetfulness of all that is good, this passionate susceptibility to all that is evil in the condition of man, and all this pedantic wrath of man against the laws and order of the universe.

That painful uneasiness and profound disturbance which are introduced into the soul by so gloomy and false an appreciation of things in general, and of man himself—which he never met with in his own time, or in those times with the history of which he was acquainted—Shakspeare devined, and constructed from them the figure and character of Hamlet. Read once again the four great monologues in which the Prince of Denmark abandons himself to the reflective expression of his inmost feelings; gather together from the whole play the passages in which he casually gives them utterance; seek out and sum up that which is manifest, and that which is hidden in all that he thinks and says, and you will every where recognize the presence of the moral malady which I have just described. Therein truly resides, much more than in his personal griefs and perils, the source of Hamlet's melancholy; in this consists his fixed idea and his madness.

And with the admirable good sense of genius, in order to render the exhibition of so sombre a disease not only endurable, but attractive, Shakspeare has endowed the sufferer himself with the gentlest and most alluring qualities. He has made Hamlet handsome, popular, generous, affectionate, and even tender. He was desirous that the instinctive character of his hero should in some sort redeem human nature from the distrust and anathemas with which it was laden by his philosophic melancholy.

But, at the same time, guided by that instinct of harmony which never deserts the true poet, Shakspeare has diffused over the whole drama the same gloomy color which opens the scene; the spectre of the assassinated monarch gives its impress to the movement of the drama from its very outset, and leads it onward to its termination, and when that term arrives, death reigns once more; all die, the innocent as well as the guilty, the young girl as well as the prince, and she more mad than he is; all depart to join the spectre who had left the tomb only that he might drag them all with him on his return. The whole circumstance is as mournful as Hamlet's thoughts. None are left upon the stage but the Norwegian strangers, who then appear for the first time, and who have previously taken no part in the action.

After this great moral painting comes the second of Shakspeare's superior beauties, dramatic effect. This is nowhere more complete and more striking than in "Hamlet," for the two conditions of great dramatic effect are found in it, unity in variety—one sole, constant, and dominant impression; and this impression varied according to the character, the turn of mind, and the condition of the different personages in whom it is developed. Death hovers over the whole drama; the spectre of the murdered king represents and personifies it; he is always there, sometimes present himself, sometimes present to the thoughts, and in the language of the other personages. Whether great or small, innocent or guilty, interested or indifferent to his history, they are all constantly concerned about him; some with remorse, others with affection and grief, others again merely with curiosity, and some ever without curiosity, and simply by chance: for example, that rude grave-digger, who says that he entered on his trade on the day on which the late king had gained a great victory over his neighbor, the King of Norway, and who, while digging the grave of the beautiful Ophelia, the mad mistress of the madman Hamlet, turns up the skull of poor Yorick, the jester of the deceased monarch—the skull of the jester of that spectre, who issues at every moment from his tomb to alarm the living and enforce the punishment of his assassin. All these personages, in the midst of all these circumstances, are brought forward, withdrawn, and introduced again by turns, each with his own peculiar physiognomy, language, and impression; and all ceaselessly concur to maintain, diffuse, and strengthen the sole, general impression of death—of death, just or unjust, natural or violent, forgotten or lamented, but always present—which is the supreme law, and should be the permanent thought of all men.

On the stage, before a large and mingled crowd of spectators, the effect of this drama, at once so gloomy and so animated, is irresistible; the soul is stirred to its lowest depths, at the same time that the imagination and senses are occupied and carried away by a continuous and rapid external movement. Herein is displayed the two-fold genius of Shakspeare, equally inexhaustible as a philosopher and as a poet; by turns a moralist and a machinist; as skillful in filling the stage with uproarious movement, as in penetrating and bringing to light the inmost secrets of the human heart. Subjected to the immediate action of such a power, men en masse require nothing beyond that which it gives them; it holds them under its dominion, and carries by assault their sympathy and their admiration. Fastidious and delicate minds, which judge almost at the same moment that they feel, and carry the necessity for perfection even into their liveliest pleasures, have an immense taste and admiration for Shakspeare also; but they are disagreeably disturbed in their admiration and enjoyment, sometimes by the accumulation and confusion of useless personages and interests, sometimes by long and subtle developments of a reflection or an idea which it would be proper for the personage to indicate en passant, but in which the poet takes pleasure, and so pauses for his own gratification; but more frequently still by that fantastic mixture of coarseness and refinement of language which sometimes imparts factitious and pedantic forms even to the truest feelings, and a barbarous physiognomy to the noblest inspirations of philosophy or poetry. These defects abound in "Hamlet." I will neither give myself the painful satisfaction of proving this assertion, nor will I omit to state it. In point of genius, Shakspeare has perhaps no rivals; but in the high and pure regions of art, he can not be taken as a model.

King Lear. (1605.)

In the year of the world 3105, say the chronicles, "at what time Joas ruled in Judah, Leir the son of Baldud was admitted ruler over the Britons." He was a wise and powerful prince, who maintained his country and subjects in a state of great prosperity, and founded the town of Caerleir, now called Leicester. He had three daughters, Gonerilla, Regan, and Cordelia, "which daughters he greatly loved, but specially Cordelia, the youngest, far above the two elder." Having attained a great age, and becoming enfeebled both in body and mind, "he thought to understand the affections of his daughters toward him, and prefer her whom he best loved to the succession over the kingdom. Whereupon he first asked Gonerilla, the eldest, how well she loved him; who, calling her gods to record, protested that she loved him more than her own life, which by right and reason should be most dear to her. With which answer the father, being well pleased, turned to the second, and demanded of her how well she loved him, who answered (confirming her sayings with great oaths) that she loved him more than tongue could express, and far above all other creatures of the world." When he put the same question to Cordelia, she answered, "Knowing the great love and fatherly zeal that you have always borne toward me (for the which I may not answer you otherwise than I think, and as my conscience leadeth me), I protest unto you that I have loved you ever, and will continually (while I live) love you as my natural father. And if you would more understand of the love that I bear you, ascertain yourself, that so much as you have, so much you are worth, and so much I love you, and no more." Her father, displeased with this answer, married his two eldest daughters, one to Henninus, duke of Cornwall, and the other to Maglanus, duke of Albany, "betwixt whom he willed and ordained that his land should be divided after his death, and the one half thereof immediately should be assigned to them in hand; but for the third daughter, Cordelia, he reserved nothing."

It happened, however, that Aganippus, one of the twelve kings who then governed Gaul, heard of the beauty and merit of this princess, and desired to have her in marriage. He was told that she had no dowry, as every thing had been bestowed on her two sisters; but Aganippus persisted in his request, obtained Cordelia's hand, and carried her in triumph to his kingdom.

Meanwhile, Leir's two sons-in-law, beginning to think he was reigning too long, seized violently upon the land which he had reserved for himself, and assigned him only a sufficient income to live and maintain his rank. Even this allowance was gradually diminished; but what caused Leir most pain was the extreme unkindness of his daughters, who "seemed to think that all was too much which their father had, the same being never so little; insomuch that, going from one to the other, he was brought to that misery that scarcely they would allow him one servant to wait upon him." The old king, in despair,' fled from the country, and took refuge in Gaul, where Cordelia and her husband received him with great honors, and raised an army and equipped a fleet to restore him to his possessions the succession of which he promised to bequeath to Cordelia, who accompanied her father and husband on this expedition. The two dukes having been slain, and their armies defeated, in a battle fought with Aganippus, Leir reascended his throne, and died two years afterward, forty years after his first accession. Cordelia succeeded him, and reigned five years; but in the mean while, her husband having died, her nephews, Margan and Cunedag, rebelled against her, conquered her, and cast her into prison, where, "being a woman of a manly courage, and despairing to recover liberty," she committed suicide. [Footnote 24]

This story is borrowed by Holinshed from Geoffrey of Monmouth, who probably constructed the history of Leir from an anecdote of Ina, king of the Saxons, and the answer of the "youngest and wisest of the daughters" of that king, who, under circumstances similar to those in which Cordelia was placed, gave a similar answer to her father, that, although she loved, honored, and revered him in the highest degree that nature and filial duty could require, yet she thought it might one day happen that she would more ardently love her husband, with whom, by the command of God, she was to constitute one flesh, and for whom she might leave father and mother. It does not appear that Ina disapproved of the "wise speech" of his daughter; and the sequel of Cordelia's history is probably a development added by the imagination of the chroniclers to this primary fact. However this may be, the anger and misfortunes of King Lear had, before Shakspeare's time, found a place in several poems, as well as formed the subject of one drama and several ballads. In one of these ballads, mentioned by Johnson, under the title of "A lamentable Song of the Death of King Leir and his three Daughters," Lear, as in the tragedy, goes mad, and Cordelia, having been killed in the battle gained by the troops of the King of France, her father dies of grief upon her body, and her sisters are condemned to death by the judgment of the "lords and nobles of the kingdom." Whether the ballad preceded Shakspeare's tragedy or not, it is very probable that the author of the ballad and the dramatic poet derived their facts from the same source, and that it was not without some authority that Shakspeare, in his denouement, departed from the chronicles, which give the victory to Cordelia. This dénouement was changed by Tate, and Cordelia restored to her rights. The play remained on the stage in this second form, to the great satisfaction of Johnson, and, says Mr. Steevens, of "the upper gallery." Addison, however, pronounced against this change.

As to the episode of the Earl of Gloster, Shakspeare has imitated it from the adventure of a king of Paphlagonia, related in Sidney's "Arcadia;" only, in the original narrative, the bastard himself deprives his father of sight, and reduces him to a condition similar to that of Lear. Leonatus, the legitimate son, who, having been condemned to death, had been obliged to seek service in a foreign army, on learning the misfortunes of his father, leaves all at the moment when his merits were about to gain him a high rank, in order to hasten, at the risk of his life, to share and succor the misery of the old king. The latter, restored to his throne by the aid of his friends, dies of joy on crowning his son Leonatus; and the bastard Plexirtus, by a feigned repentance, succeeds in disarming the anger of his brother.

It is evident that the situation of King Lear and of the King of Paphlagonia, both persecuted by the children whom they preferred, and succored by the one whom they rejected, struck Shakspeare as fitted to enter into the same subject, because they belonged to the same idea. Those who have blamed him for having thus injured the simplicity of his action have given their opinion according to their own system, without taking the trouble to examine that of the author whom they criticised. Starting even from the rules which they are desirous to impose, we might answer that the love of the two women for Edmund, which serves to effect their punishment, and the intervention of Edgar at this part of the dénouement, are sufficient to acquit the play of the charge of duplicity of action; for, provided that all the threads at last unite in one knot which it is easy to seize, the simplicity of the progress of an action depends much less upon the number of the interests and personages concerned in it than upon the natural and clearly visible play of the springs which set it in motion. But further, we must never forget that unity, in Shakspeare's view, consists in one dominant idea, which, reproducing itself under various forms, incessantly produces, continues, and redoubles the same impression. Thus as, in "Macbeth," the poet displays man in conflict with the passions of crime, so in "King Lear" he depicts him in conflict with misfortune, the action of which is modified according to the different characters of the individuals who experience it. The first spectacle which he brings under our notice is the misfortune of virtue, or of persecuted innocence, as exemplified in Cordelia, Kent, and Edgar. Then comes the misfortune of those who, by their passion or blindness, have rendered themselves the tools of injustice, namely, Lear and Gloster; and upon these the effort of compassion is directed. As for the wicked personages, we do not witness their sufferings; the sight of their misfortune would be disturbed by the remembrance of their criminality; they can have no punishment but death?

Of the five personages subjected to the action of misfortune, Cordelia, a heavenly figure, hovers almost invisible and half-vailed over the composition, which she fills with her presence, although she is almost always absent from it. She suffers, but never complains, never defends herself: she acts, but her action is manifested only by its results; serene regarding her own fate, reserved and restrained even in her most legitimate feelings, she passes and disappears like a denizen of a better world, who has traversed this world of ours without experiencing any mere earthly emotion.

Kent and Edgar each have a very decided physiognomy; the first of them is, like Cordelia, a victim to his duty; the second interests us at first only by his innocence. Having entered upon misfortune at the same time, so to speak, that he entered into life, and equally new to both conditions, Edgar gradually develops his faculties, learns their character at once, and discovers within himself, as need requires, the qualities with which he is gifted; in proportion as he advances, his duties, and his difficulties, and his importance increase; he grows up and becomes a man, but, at the same time, he learns how costly is this growth; and he finally discovers, when bearing it with nobleness and courage, the whole weight of that burden which he had hitherto borne almost with gayety. Kent, on the contrary, a wise and firm old man, has known all and foreseen all from the very outset; as soon as he enters upon action, his march is determined and his object defined. He is not, like Edgar, urged by necessity or met by chance; his will determines his conduct; nothing can change or disturb it; and the aspect of the misfortune to which he devotes himself, scarcely wrings from him an exclamation of grief or pain.

Lear and Gloster, in an analogous situation, receive from it an impression which corresponds to their different characters. Lear, impetuous and irritable, spoiled by power and by the habit and need of admiration, rebels both against his position and against his own conviction; he can not believe in what he knows; his reason offers no resistance; and he becomes mad. Gloster, naturally weak, yields to his misery, and is equally incapable of resistance to his joy; he dies on recognizing Edgar. If Cordelia were alive, Lear would still find strength to live; but he breaks down by the effort of his grief.

Amid all this confusion of incidents and coarseness of manners, interest and pathos have never, perhaps, been carried further than in this tragedy. The time in which Shakspeare laid his action seems to have emancipated him from all conventional forms; and just as he felt no difficulty in placing a King of France, a Duke of Albany, and a Duke of Cornwall, eight hundred years before the Christian era, so he felt no necessity for connecting the language and the characters of his drama with any determinate period. The only trace of intention which can be remarked in the general color of the style of the drama is the vagueness and uncertainty of the grammatical constructions, which seem to belong to a language still quite in its infancy; at the same time, a considerable number of expressions which bear a close resemblance to the French language, indicate an epoch, if not correspondent with that in which King Lear is supposed to have lived, at least far anterior to that at which Shakspeare wrote.

Macbeth. (1606.)

In the year 1034, Duncan succeeded his grandfather, Malcolm, on the throne of Scotland. He held his right of his mother, Beatrice, the eldest daughter of Malcolm; the younger daughter, Doada, was the mother of Macbeth, who was thus cousin-german to Duncan. The father of Macbeth was Finleg, thane of Glamis, mentioned under the name of Sinel in the tragedy, and in the chronicle of Holinshed, on the authority of Hector Boëtius, from whom the narrative of the events concerning Duncan and Macbeth is borrowed. As Shakspeare has followed Holinshed's chronicle with the utmost exactness, it becomes necessary to give the facts as therein related; and they are, moreover, in themselves replete with interest.

Macbeth had rendered himself celebrated by his bravery, and "if he had not been somewhat cruel of nature," says the chronicle, "he might have been thought most worthy of the government of a realm." Duncan, on the other hand, was an unwarlike prince, and carried his gentleness and kindness to excess; so that if it had been possible to fuse the characters of the two cousins together, and to temper the one by the other, the people would have had, says the chronicle, "an excellent captain, and a worthy king."

After some years of peaceful dominion, the weakness of Duncan having encouraged malefactors, Banquo, the thane of Lochaber, "as he gathered the finances due to the king," found himself compelled to punish "somewhat sharply" several notorious offenders, which occasioned a revolt. Banquo was robbed of all the money he had collected, and "had much ado to get away with life, after he had received sundry grievous wounds." As soon as he had recovered of his hurts, he proceeded to court to lay his complaints before Duncan, and at last persuaded the king to summon the rebels to appear before him; but they slew the sergeant-at-arms, who had been sent with the royal mandate, and prepared for defense, at the instigation of Macdowald, one of their most important chieftains, who, collecting his clansmen and friends around him, represented Duncan to them as a "faint-hearted milksop, more meet to govern a set of idle monks in some cloister, than to have the rule of such valiant and hardy men of war as the Scots were." The revolt spread particularly throughout the Western Isles, from whence a host of warriors came to join Macdowald at Lochaber; and the hope of plunder attracted from Ireland a large number of Kernes and Galloglasses, [Footnote 25] ready to follow Macdowald whithersoever it should please him to lead them. By means of these re-enforcements, Macdowald defeated the troops which the king had sent to oppose him, took prisoner their leader, Malcolm, and beheaded him after the battle.

Duncan, in consternation at this news, assembled his council, at which Macbeth, after having blamed the king severely for his lenity and slackness in punishing the offenders, which had given them time to collect an army, offered to undertake the conduct of the war in concert with Banquo. His offer was gladly accepted, and the mere report of his approach with fresh troops struck such terror into the rebels, that a great number of them secretly deserted; and Macdowald, having tried to make head against Macbeth with the remainder, was utterly routed, and forced to fly to a castle in which he had placed his wife and children; but, despairing of being able to hold out, and fearing the cruelties of his opponents, he killed himself, after having first put his wife and children to death. Macbeth entered without obstacle into the castle, the gates of which had been left open. He found only the body of Macdowald in the midst of his murdered family; and the barbarism of that rude age was revolted by the fact that, unmoved by this tragic spectacle, Macbeth cut off Macdowald's head, and sent it to the king, and hanged the body upon a gallows. He made the inhabitants of the isles purchase the pardon of their revolt at a very high price, which did not, however, prevent him from putting to execution all those whom he could find in Lochaber. The inhabitants exclaimed loudly against this violation of his pledge, and the reproaches which they heaped upon him irritated Macbeth to such a degree that he was on the point of crossing over to the isles with an army to take vengeance upon them; but he was dissuaded from this project by the counsels of his friends, and more particularly by the presents with which the islanders a second time purchased their pardon.

A short time afterward, Sweno, king of Norway, having made a descent upon Scotland, Duncan, to resist him, placed himself at the head of the largest portion of his army, and intrusted the rest to the command of Macbeth and Banqno. Duncan was defeated and put to flight; and he took refuge in the castle of Perth, in which he was besieged by Sweno. Duncan, having secretly informed Macbeth of his intentions, feigned a desire to surrender, and protracted the negotiation, until at last, having learned that Macbeth had collected a sufficient force, he appointed a day for giving up the fortress; and, meanwhile, he offered to send the Norwegians a supply of provisions, which they accepted all the more eagerly because they had suffered greatly from famine for several days. The bread and ale with which he furnished them had been adulterated with the juice of an extremely narcotic berry, so that, having eaten and drank greedily, they fell into "a fast dead sleep, that in manner it was impossible to awake them." Then Duncan sent word to Macbeth, who arriving in all haste, and entering without opposition into the camp, massacred almost all the Norwegians, most of whom never stirred, while the others were rendered so dizzy by the effects of the narcotic that they could make no defense. A large number of sailors from the Norwegian fleet, who had come to share in the abundance which prevailed in the camp, shared also in the fate of their fellow-countrymen; and Sweno, who escaped with ten others from this butchery, could scarcely find enough mariners to man the ship in which he fled to Norway. Those vessels which he left behind were, three days afterward, so tossed by an east wind, "that, beating and rushing one against another, they sank there," at a place called Drownelow Sands, where they lie "even unto these days (1574), to the great danger of other such ships as come on that coast; for, being covered with the flood when the tide cometh, at the ebbing again of the same some parts of them appear above water."

This disaster caused such consternation in Norway, that, for many years afterward, no knights were made until they had sworn to avenge their countrymen who had thus been slaughtered in Scotland. Duncan, in celebration of his deliverance, ordered solemn processions to be made throughout the realm; but while these thanksgivings were in progress, he was informed of the disembarkation of an army of Danes, under the command of Canute, king of England, who had come to avenge the defeat of his brother Sweno. Macbeth and Banquo hastened to meet them, defeated them in a pitched battle, and forced them to re-embark, and to pay a considerable sum for permission to bury their dead at St. Colm's Inch, where, says the chronicle, "many old sepulchres are yet to be seen graven with the arms of the Danes."

Such are the exploits of Macbeth and Banquo, of which Shakspeare, following Holinshed, has made use in his tragedy. A short time afterward, Macbeth and Banquo were traveling to Forres, where the king then lay, "and went sporting by the way together, without other company save only themselves," when they were suddenly accosted by three women "in strange and wild apparel, resembling creatures of the elder world," who saluted Macbeth precisely as it is related in the tragedy. Upon this, Banquo said, "What manner of women are you that seem so little favorable unto me, whereas, to my fellow here, besides high offices, ye assign also the kingdom, appointing forth nothing for me at all?" "Yes," saith the first of them, "we promise greater benefits unto thee than unto him, for he shall reign, indeed, but with an unlucky end; neither shall he leave any issue behind him to succeed in his place; whereas, contrarily, thou indeed shalt not reign at all, but of thee those shall be born who shall govern the Scottish kingdoms by long order of continual descent." Herewith the women immediately disappeared. Soon afterward, the thane of Cawdor having been put to death for treason, his title was conferred upon Macbeth, who now began, as well as Banquo, to place great faith in the predictions of the witches, and to devise means for obtaining the crown.

He had a good chance of succeeding legitimately to the throne, for Duncan's sons were not yet of age to reign, and the law of Scotland ordained that, if the king died before his sons or direct descendants were old enough to undertake the management of affairs, the nearest relative of the deceased king should be elected in their stead. But Duncan having appointed his son Malcolm, while still under age, Prince of Cumberland and successor to the throne, Macbeth, who saw his hopes destroyed by this proceeding, thought himself entitled to take revenge for the injustice he had experienced. To this, moreover, he was incessantly stimulated by his wife, Guach, who, burning with desire to bear the name of queen, and being, says Boetius, "like all women, impatient of delay," continually reproached him with his want of courage. Macbeth, therefore, having assembled a large number of his friends at Inverness, or, as some say, at Botgosuane, communicated to them his design, killed Duncan, and repaired with his party to Scone, where he obtained possession of the crown without difficulty.

Holinshed's chronicle relates the murder of Duncan without any detail. The incidents which Shakspeare has interwoven into his drama are taken from another part of the same chronicle concerning the murder of King Duff, who had been assassinated more than sixty years before by a Scottish lord named Donwald. The following are the circumstances of this murder, as related in the chronicle:

Duff had shown himself, from the commencement of his reign, very anxious to protect the people against malefactors, and "idle persons who sought to live only upon other men's goods." He put several to death, and compelled others to withdraw to Ireland, or else to learn "some manual occupation wherewith to get their living." Although, as it would appear, these fellows were connected only in a very remote degree with the high nobility of Scotland, the nobles, says the chronicle, "were much offended with this extreme rigor, accounting it a great dishonor for such as were descended of noble parentage to be constrained to get their living with the labor of their hands, which only appertained to plowmen, and such others of the base degree as were born to travail for the maintenance of the nobility, and to serve at their commandment." The king was consequently regarded by them as an enemy of the nobles, and unworthy to govern them, as he was, they said, devoted solely to the interests of the people and clergy, who at that time made common cause against the oppression of the great lords. The discontent increased daily, and several rebellions arose, in one of which some young gentlemen engaged, who were relatives of Donwald, the king's lieutenant of the castle of Forres. These young men were taken prisoners, and Donwald, who until then had faithfully and usefully served the king, hoped to obtain their pardon; but not succeeding in his attempt, he was filled with resentment. His wife, who was irritated against the king from a similar cause, spared no efforts to increase his anger, and reminded him how easy it would be to take his revenge when Duff came, as frequently happened, to reside at Forres without any other guard than the garrison of the castle, which was entirely devoted to them; and "she showed him the means whereby he might soonest accomplish it."

Duff came to Forres a short time afterward, and, on the evening before his departure, when he had gone to bed after spending a longer time than usual at prayers in his oratory, Donwald and his wife sat down to table with the two chamberlains, whose "reare-supper or collation" they had carefully prepared, and feasted them so well that they fell into a lethargic sleep. Then Donwald, "though he abhorred the act greatly in heart," at the instigation of his wife, summoned four of his servants who were aware of his plot, and whom he had gained over by presents. These entered the king's chamber, killed him, carried his body out of the castle by a postern-gate, and, placing it on a horse which they had provided for the purpose, conveyed it to a place about two miles distant from the castle. Having got some laborers to help them to turn the course of a little river that ran through the fields, they dug a deep hole in the channel and buried the body in it, "ramming it up with stones and gravel so closely, that, setting the water in the right course again, no man could perceive that any thing had been newly digged there. This they did by order of Donwald, that the body should not be found, and by bleeding, when Donwald was present, declare him to be guilty of the murder." Donwald, in the mean while, was careful to be one of those who kept guard, and did not leave his post during the whole night. The subsequent circumstances relative to the murder of the two chamberlains are exactly as Shakspeare has represented them in "Macbeth;" and the same may be said of the prodigies which he relates, and which took place at the death of Duff. The sun did not appear for six months, until at last, the murderers having been discovered and executed, it shone forth again upon the earth, and the fields became covered with flowers, "clean contrary to the time and season of the year."

To return to Macbeth. The first ten years of his reign were marked by a wise, equitable, and vigorous government. Several of his laws have been preserved, of which the following are specimens:

"He that attendeth any man to the church, market, or to any other public assembly, as a retainer, shall suffer death, except he have living at his hands, on whom he so attendeth." The punishment of death was also decreed against all who became sworn retainers of any other person than the king.

"All manner of lords and great barons shall not contract matrimony with other, under pain of death, specially if their lands and rooms be near together."

"All armor and weapon borne to other effect than in defense of the king and realm in time of wars, shall be confiscated to the king's use, with all other movable goods of the party that herein offendeth." It was also enacted that "a horse kept by any of the commons or husbandmen to any other use than for tillage and laboring of the earth shall be forfeited to the king by escheat."

"Such as be appointed governors or (as I may call them) captains, that buy within those limits where their charges lie any lands or possessions, shall lose both lands and possessions, and the money which they have paid fur the same. And if any of the said captains or governors marry their sons or daughters unto any manner of person that dwelleth within the bounds of their rooms, they shall lose their office; neither shall it be lawful for any of their sons or copartners to occupy the same office."

"No man shall sit as judge in any temporal court without the king's commission authorizing him thereto. All conventions, offices, and acts of justice shall pass in the king's name."

Other laws are intended to assure the immunity of the clergy and the authority of the censures of the Church, to regulate the duties of knighthood, the succession of property, and so forth. Several of these laws, some of which are rather singular for the time, were passed from motives of order and regularity; others were destined to maintain civil independence against the oppressive power of the officers of the crown; but most of them are evidently intended to diminish the power of the nobles, and to concentrate all authority in the hands of the king. All are mentioned by the historians of the period as wise and beneficent laws; and if Macbeth had obtained the throne by legitimate means, and had continued in the ways of justice as he began, he might, says Holinshed, "have been numbered among the most noble princes that any where had reigned."

"But this," continues our chronicle, "was but a counterfeit zeal of equity showed by him against his natural inclination." Macbeth appeared at length in his true colors, and the same feeling of his position which had led him to seek public favor by justice changed justice into cruelty; "for the prick of conscience caused him ever to fear lest he should be served of the same cup as he had ministered to his predecessor." Now begins the Macbeth of the tragedy. The murder of Banquo, executed in the same manner and for the same reasons as those which Shakspeare ascribes to him, was followed by a great number of other crimes, so that "at length he found such sweetness by putting his nobles thus to death, that his earnest thirst after blood in this behalf might in no wise be satisfied." Certain wizards, in whom he placed great trust, had warned him to beware of Macduff, whose power, moreover, gave him great umbrage, and he only sought a pretext for giving vent to his hatred of him. Macduff, informed of his danger, passed over into England to invite Malcolm, who had taken refuge in that country, to return to claim his rights. Macbeth became acquainted with this plot, "for kings," says the chronicle, "have sharp sight like unto lynx, and long ears like unto Midas;" and Macbeth maintained spies in the houses of all the nobles of his realm. The flight of Macduff, the massacre of all his family, and his conversation with Malcolm, are all facts taken from the chronicle. Malcolm at first met Macduff's entreaties with objections based upon his own incontinence, and Macduff replied as in Shakspeare, with this addition only, "Make thyself king, and I shall convey the matter so wisely that thou shalt be so satisfied at thy pleasure in such secret wise that no man shall be aware thereof." The remainder of the scene is faithfully imitated by the poet; and all that concerns the death of Macbeth, the predictions that had been made to him, and the manner in which they were at once eluded and accomplished, is taken almost word for word from the chronicle, in which we see at last how, "by illusion of the devil, he defamed, with most terrible cruelty, his reign, which in the beginning was very profitable to the commonwealth." Macbeth had assassinated Duncan in the year 1040, and he was himself killed in 1057, after a reign of seventeen years. [Footnote 26]

Such is a general view of the facts to which Shakspeare undertook to impart a soul and life. He places himself simply in the midst of the events and personages, and, setting all these inanimate things in motion with a breath, he enables us to witness the spectacle of their existence. Far from adding any thing to the incidents furnished him by the narrative from which he has borrowed his subject, he omits many things; he is especially careful to lop off every thing that might injure the simplicity of his progress, and embarrass the action of his personages; and he suppresses every thing that might prevent him from fathoming them with a single glance, and portraying them with a few bold touches. Macbeth, with all the crimes and great qualities ascribed to him by his history, would be too complicated a being; it would be necessary for him to possess at once too much ambition and too much virtue for one of his dispositions to maintain itself for any time in presence of the other, and too cumbrous machinery would be required to make the balance finally incline to one or the other side. Shakspeare's Macbeth is brilliant only by his warlike virtues, and especially by his personal bravery; he has only the qualities and the defects of a barbarian; brave, but not a stranger to the fear of peril when he believes in its proximity; cruel and sensitive by fits and starts; perfidious through his inconstancy; always ready to yield to any temptation that presents itself, whether it lead to crime or to virtue—he displays, in his ambition as well as in his criminality, that character of thoughtlessness and mobility which belongs to an almost savage state of civilization. His passions are imperious, but no series of reasonings and projects determines and governs them; they form a lofty tree, but one devoid of roots, which the least breeze may shake, and the fall of which is a disaster. Hence arises his tragic grandeur; it resides in his destiny more than in his character. Macbeth, if placed at a greater distance from the expectation of succession to the throne, would have remained virtuous; but his virtue, would have been restless, for it would have been merely the fruit of circumstance. His crime becomes a punishment to him, because it is circumstance which has forced him to commit it; this crime did not proceed from the depths of Macbeth's nature, and yet it clings to him, envelops him, enchains him, racks him in every part, and thus creates for him a troubled and irremissible destiny, in which the unhappy victim vainly writhes, doing nothing that does not plunge him still deeper, and with increasing despair, into the career which is henceforward prescribed to him by his implacable persecutor. Macbeth is one of those characters marked out in all superstitions to become the prey and instrument of the perverse spirit who takes pleasure in destroying them, because they have received some spark of the divine nature, and who, at the same time, meets with but few difficulties in his task, for the heavenly light darts but a few fleeting rays into their souls, which are obscured by storms at every instant.

Lady Macbeth is just exactly the wife of such a man, the product of the same state of civilization, and of the same habit of passions. She adds to this, moreover, the fact that she is a woman without prudence, without generality in her views, perceiving at once only a single part of a single idea, and giving herself up to it entirely, without ever admitting any thing that might distract or disturb her attention from it. The feelings which belong to her sex are not unknown to her; she loves her husband, knows the pleasures of a mother, and could not kill Duncan herself, because he resembled "her father as he slept;" but she aspires to be queen, and for this cause Duncan must die; she sees nothing in the death of Duncan but the pleasure of being queen; her courage is easy, for she does not perceive any thing to make her recoil from the deed. When her passion is satisfied and the action committed, then only will the other consequences be revealed to her as a novelty of which she previously had not the slightest anticipation. Those fears, and that necessity for new crimes, which her husband had foreseen at the outset, she has never thought of. She was quite willing to throw the crime upon the two chamberlains, but it was not her idea to kill them; she did not arrange the murder of Banquo, or the massacre of Macduff's family; she did not see so far forward; she had not even divined the effect which would be produced upon her by such a sight, when she entered the room in which Duncan lay dead. She leaves it in agitation, no longer contemning the terrors of her husband, but merely urging him not to dwell too much upon images, by which we see that she is beginning to feel herself besieged. The blow is struck, and will reveal itself in the admirable and terrible scene of her somnambulism: there we shall learn what becomes of a character apparently so immovable, when it is no longer sustained by the blind fury of passion. Macbeth has become hardened in crime, after having hesitated to commit it, because he knew its character; but we shall see his wife, succumbing beneath the knowledge which she has acquired too late, substitute one fixed idea for another, die to deliver herself from its influence, and punish, by the madness of despair, the crime which she was led to commit by the madness of ambition.

The other personages, introduced merely to fill up this great picture of the progress and destiny of crime, have no other color than that of the position given them by history. The Witches are, indeed, what they should be, and I do not know why it is the custom to exclaim with disgust against this portion of the representation of "Macbeth." When we see these vile creatures the arbiters of life and death, of all the chances and all the interests of humanity, disposing of them in accordance with the most contemptible caprices of their odious nature, to the terror which their power inspires is added the dread occasioned by their unreason, and the very absurdity of such a spectacle only augments its effect.

The style of "Macbeth" is remarkable, in its wild energy, for a refinement which we may indeed blame, but which it would be wrong to consider as contrary to truth as it is to naturalness. Refinement of language is not incompatible with rudeness of manners and ideas; it seems even to be rather common in times and positions in which general ideas are wanting. The mind, which can not remain idle, then attaches itself to the slightest verbal connections, takes delight in them, and makes a habit of them, which we meet with in all analogous positions. Nothing can be more far-fetched than the spirit of the literature of the Middle Ages; and what we know of the speech of savages contains many choice ideas. Refinement is the characteristic of the wits of the lower classes; and even the insults of the common people are sometimes composed with a quite singular fastidiousness, as if, at those times when anger excites their faculties, their mind seized with greater facility and abundance upon relations of this kind, the only ones which it was capable of attaining.

It is believed that "Macbeth" was performed in 1606. The idea of writing a tragedy upon this subject, which would necessarily be pleasing to King James, who had just ascended the throne of England, was probably suggested to Shakspeare by a short poetical dialogue, which the students of Oxford, in 1605, recited in Latin before the king, and in English before the queen, who had accompanied him to that city. The students were three in number, and probably spoke in turn. Their speech turned upon the prediction uttered to Banquo; and, in allusion to the triple salutation which Macbeth had received, they hailed James King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. They also hailed him King of France, which destroyed, somewhat gratuitously, the virtue of the number three.

Julius Cæsar. (1607.)

Among those tragedies of Shakspeare to which public opinion has assigned a first rank, "Julius Cæsar" is the one of which the commentators have spoken most coldly. Johnson, the coldest of them all, contents himself with saying: "Of this tragedy, many particular passages deserve regard, and the contention and reconcilement of Brutus and Cassius is universally celebrated; but I have never been strongly agitated in perusing it, and think it somewhat cold and unaffecting, compared with some other of Shakspeare's plays."

It is to adopt an entirely false principle of criticism to judge Shakspeare by himself, and to compare the impressions which he has succeeded in producing, in a given style and subject, with those which he calls forth in another style and subject; as if he possessed only a special and singular merit, which he was bound to display on every occasion, and which constituted his sole title to glory. His vast and true genius must be measured on a larger scale; we must compare Shakspeare with nature, with the world; and in every particular case, the comparison must be made between that portion of the world and of nature which it was his intention to represent, and the picture which he has drawn of it. Do not expect from the painter of Brutus the same impressions and the same effects as from the delineator of King Lear, or of Romeo and Juliet. Shakspeare penetrates to the inmost recesses of all subjects, and can derive from each the impressions which naturally flow from it, and the distinct and original effects which it ought to produce.

That, after this, the spectacle of the soul of Brutus should he, to Johnson, less touching and dramatic than the display of any particular passion, or of any particular position in life, is a result of the personal inclinations of the critic, and of the turn taken by his ideas and feelings. We can not find in it a general rule upon which we may found a comparison between works of an absolutely different kind. There are minds so constituted that Corneille will fill them with more emotions than Voltaire, and a mother will feel her nature more agitated and disturbed by Mérope than by Zaire. The mind of Johnson, more strong and upright than it was elevated, could understand tolerably well the interests and passions which agitate the middle region of life, but he never could attain to those lofty eminences in which a truly stoical soul can exist without effort or distraction. The age in which Johnson lived, moreover, was not an age of great devotements; and although, even at that epoch, the political climate of England preserved its literature in some degree from that effeminate influence which had enervated our own, it could not entirely escape from that general disposition of the national mind, that sort of moral materialism, which, granting, as it were, to the soul no other life but that which it derives from the contact of external objects, did not suppose it possible for it to be supplied with other sources of interest than the pathetic, properly so called—the individual sorrows of life, the anguish of the heart, and the storms of the passions. This disposition of the eighteenth century was so powerful, that, when introducing the death of Cæsar upon our stage, Voltaire, who justly boasted that he had made a tragedy succeed without the aid of love, nevertheless did not think that such a spectacle could dispense with the pathetic interest which results from the painful conflict of duty and affection. In this great struggle of the last efforts of dying liberty against budding despotism, he sought out, and gave the first place to, an obscure and doubtful fact, but one which was adapted to furnish him with the kind of emotions of which he stood in need; and from the position, real or fictitious, of Brutus placed between his father and his country, Voltaire has constructed the basis and lifespring of his tragedy.

Shakspeare's drama rests entirely upon the character of Brutus; and he has even been blamed for not having entitled his work "Marcus Brutus" instead of "Julius Cæsar." But if Brutus is the hero of the play, the power and death of Cæsar form its subject. Cæsar alone occupies the foreground; the horror felt for his power, and the necessity of deliverance from it, fill the whole of the first part of the drama; the other half is consecrated to the recollection and consequences of his death. It is, as Antony says,

"Cæsar's spirit ranging for revenge;"

and, that his sway may not be lost sight of, it is still his spirit which, on the plains of Sardis and of Philippi, appears to Brutus as his evil genius.

The picture of this great catastrophe, however, finishes with the death of Brutus. Shakspeare desired to interest us in the event of his drama only as it related to Brutus, just as he has presented Brutus to us only in relation to the event. The fact which furnishes the subject of the tragedy, and the character which accomplishes it, the death of Cæsar and the character of Brutus—this is the union which constitutes Shakspeare's dramatic work, just as the union of soul and body constitutes life, both elements being equally necessary to the existence of the individual. Before the death of Cæsar was planned, the play does not begin; after the death of Brutus, it ends.

It is, then, upon the character of Brutus, the soul of his drama, that Shakspeare has stamped the impress of his genius; and it is all the more admirable in this picture, because, while remaining faithful to history, he has made it also a work of creation, and has presented Plutarch's Brutus to us as truthfully and completely in the scenes which the poet has imagined, as in those which the historian had supplied. That dreamy spirit ever busied in self-examination, that disturbance of a stern conscience at the first indications of a duty that is still doubtful, that calm and resolute firmness as soon as the duty becomes certain, that profound and almost painful sensibility, ever restrained by the rigor of the most austere principles, that gentleness of soul which never disappears for a single moment amid the most cruel offices of virtue—in fine, the character of Brutus, as its idea is present to us all, proceeds animate and unchanging through the different scenes of life in which we meet it, and in which we can not doubt that it appeared under the very aspect with which the poet has clothed it.

Perhaps this historical fidelity may have occasioned the coldness of Shakspeare's critics regarding the tragedy of "Julius Cæsar." They could not discover in it those features of almost wild originality which strike us in the works which Shakspeare has composed upon modern subjects, foreign to the actual habits of our life, as well as to the classical ideas upon which the habits of our mind nave been formed. The manners of Hotspur are certainly more original to us than those of Brutus, and they are also more original in themselves. The grandeur of the characters of the Middle Ages is strongly impressed with originality; the grandeur of the ancients arises with regularity upon the basis of certain general principles, which leave no other sensible difference between individuals than the difference of elevation to which they attain. This was felt by Shakspeare; he merely thought to enhance Brutus, and not to make him singular. The other personages, being placed in an inferior sphere, resume somewhat of the liberty of their individual character, because they are free from that rule of perfection which duty imposes upon Brutus. The poet also seems to play around them with less respect, and to allow himself to ingraft upon them several forms which belong to himself rather than to them. Cassius, disdainfully comparing the bodily strength of Cæsar to his own, and running through the streets of Rome by night in the midst of the storm, to assuage the fever of dangers which devours him, bears much greater resemblance to a comrade of Canute or of Harold than to a Roman of the time of Cæsar; but this barbarian tint throws over the irregularities of Cassius an interest which would not, perhaps, arise with such liveliness from the historical resemblance. M. Schlegel, whose opinions upon Shakspeare always deserve great consideration, seems to me, however, to fall into a slight error when he remarks that "the poet has pointed out with great nicety the superiority of Cassius over Brutus in independent volition and discernment in judging of human affairs." I think, on the contrary, that Shakspeare's admirable art consists, in this piece, in preserving to the principal personage an entire superiority, even when he is mistaken, and in making this evident by the very fact that he falls into error, and yet is deferred to, and that the reason of the others yields with confidence to the mistake of Brutus. Brutus goes so far as to do himself a wrong; in his quarrel with Cassius, overcome for a moment by terrible and secret grief, he forgets the moderation which becomes him; in fine, Brutus is wrong once, and yet Cassius humbles himself, for Brutus has in fact continued greater than he.

Cæsar's character may perhaps appear to us rather too much disfigured by that boastfulness which is common to all barbarous times in which individual force, incessantly called upon to engage in the most terrible struggles, can sustain itself only by a lofty consciousness of its own power, and even has need to be supported by the idea which others entertain of it. It was necessary to display in Cæsar the force which had subjugated the Romans, and the pride which crushed them; Shakspeare had only one position in which he could manifest this state of the soul of his hero; and he, consequently, laid the color on too thickly. Nevertheless, his Cæsar, I confess, does not appear to me more false than our own. Shakspeare even seems to me to have better preserved, in the midst of his rhodomontades, those forms of equality which the despot of a republic ever maintains toward those whom he oppresses.

The tone of "Julius Cæsar" is more generally sustained than that of most of the other tragedies of Shakspeare. Scarcely, throughout the whole of the part of Brutus, do we meet with a single vulgar image; and the only one at all open to the charge of vulgarity occurs when he gives way to anger. The visible care which the poet has taken to imitate the laconic language which history attributes to his hero has very rarely led him into affectation, unless perhaps in the speech of Brutus to the people, which is a model of the scholastic eloquence of the age in which the author lived. The language of Cassius, more figurative because it is more passionate, and distinguished by a less simple loftiness than that of Brutus, is nevertheless equally exempt from triviality. Antony's harangue is a model of adroitness, and of the feigned simplicity of a skillful tactician who is desirous to gain the minds of a coarse and changeful multitude. Voltaire blames Shakspeare, at least with severity, for having presented under a comic form the scene at the feast of Lupercal, the substance of which, he says, "is so noble and interesting." Voltaire sees here nothing but a crown demanded of a free people who refuse it; but Cæsar making himself, in presence of the people, the actor of a farce prepared for his own aggrandizement, and in despair at the applause bestowed on the manner in which he acts his part, was in truth, to the wits of Rome, something extremely comic, which could not be presented to them under any other form.

The action of the piece comprises the period from the triumph of Cæsar, after the victory gained over young Pompey, until the death of Brutus, which gives it a duration of nearly three years and a half.

There is in English another tragedy on "Julius Cæsar," composed by Lord Sterline, and known to the public, as it would appear, several years before Shakspeare composed his drama, so that he may have borrowed some ideas from it. This tragedy ends with the death of Cæsar, which the author has thrown into the narrative form. A Doctor Richard Eedes, celebrated in his time as a tragic poet, had also written a Latin play on the same subject, which was printed, it is said, in 1582, but which has been lost, as well as an English play entitled "The History of Cæsar and Pompey," which was written before the year 1579. In 1607, a play was printed in London under the title of "The Tragedie of Cæsar and Pompey, or Cæsar's Revenge." This drama, which extends from the battle of Pharsalia to that of Philippi, was performed at a private theatre by some students of Oxford, and it is supposed that it was printed in consequence of the successful performance of Shakspeare's tragedy, which Malone's chronology refers to the same year, 1607.

"Julius Cæsar" was performed, as corrected by Dryden and Davenant, under the title of "Julius Cæsar, with the Death of Brutus," and was printed in London in 1719.

The Duke of Buckingham also remodeled this same tragedy, dividing it into two parts; the first under the title of "Julius Cæsar," with many alterations, a prologue, and a chorus; and the second under the title of "Marcus Brutus," with a prologue and two choruses. Both were printed in 1722.

Othello. (1611.)

"There was once in Venice a Moor of great merit, who, for his personal courage, and the proofs he had given of his conduct, as well as his vigorous genius in the affairs of war, was held in great esteem by the lords of the republic. It happened that a virtuous woman, of great beauty, called Desdemona, not drawn by female appetite, but by the virtue of the Moor, fell in love with him; and he, subdued by the charms and noble sentiments of the lady, became equally enamored of her. Their passion was so successful that they were married, although her relations did all in their power to make her take another husband. They lived together in such peace and concord while they were at Venice, that there never passed between them either word or action that was not expressive of affection. The Venetians, resolving to change the garrison which they maintain in Cyprus, selected the Moor to the command of the troops which they destined for that island. Although he was extremely pleased with the honor proposed to him, yet was his joy diminished when he reflected on the length and inconvenience of the voyage. His wife was very much vexed at seeing the Moor disturbed; and, not knowing the reason, said to him one day at dinner, 'How can you be so melancholy, after having received from the Senate so high and so honorable a distinction?' 'My love for you, Desdemona,' replied the Moor, 'disturbs my enjoyment of the rank conferred upon me, since I am now exposed to this alternative—I must either endanger your life by sea, or leave you at Venice. The first will be terrible, as I shall suffer extremely from every fatigue you undergo, from every danger that threatens you; the second would render me insupportable to myself, as parting from you would be parting from my life.' 'Ah! husband,' returned Desdemona, 'why do you perplex yourself with such idle imaginations? I will follow you wherever you go, though it were necessary to pass through fire instead of only going by water in a safe and well-equipped vessel.' The Moor then tenderly embraced his wife, saying, 'May Heaven long preserve us in this degree of reciprocal affection!' Soon afterward, he went on board the galley with his wife, and sailed for Cyprus with a favorable wind.